My very first one ever was in the mid-eighties, I started working for a software house that my wife was a programmer at. I was doing project administration. I was given a computer, the first time I had any reason to use one. Beige plastic with green words on a black screen, a C: prompt and a blinking cursor.
My initial confusion at having to have a mental picture of my directory structure, just so I knew where things were. Storing things on great big floppy disks. typing weird instructions.
I used things like WordPerfect, which like KwikFit wasn’t quick, it wasn’t perfect. I had to learn as I went along, which meant I asked lots of stupid questions.
One day my project had gone off to have some meeting about code that I wasn’t needed for, and I was left on my own. I had been given a card to install in my computer, so I decided to get on with that.
Thirty minutes later the boss came back in the room to find me with the lid open and a massive screwdriver sticking out of it. Granted, it did look bad, but I was only propping the lid open. He approached me gingerly, as if I was defusing a bomb, his tentative questioning —what are you doing? — making it clear that nobody thought I had a clue what to do with this computer thing.
I remember hours of playing a text-based game of Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. Nobody could tell from across the room if you were reading a report or playing the game.
My first personal home computer was a replica of my work one, but nowhere near as powerful. Also beige, and with a massive 20MB Hard Drive. And no, kids that was not a typo — 20MB was cutting edge, state of the art back in the day.
A few years on and I was asked to train admin staff to use a Mac for drawing project flow charts and all kinds of wizzy things. Sleek and beautiful and with a mouse and everything. Now we are talking. This was worth playing with.
So the internal battle started in our house. I was in love with the look and the ability and the design and the feel, and I joined the cult of Ive and never looked back. Wife and colleagues very clear that it was no good for serious work and more of a toy. In its way it was lovely and looks great, but they really don’t belong in the office.
Roll forward to today and I am writing this on a MacBook Pro with 24GB RAM with 1TB of Hard Drive space and plugged into a 5k Apple Studio Display.
I can connect things via bluetooth, or magic. I can have video calls with a number of people at the same time. I can watch videos and look at photos and play music. I mentioned all of this because that first computer really couldn’t.
I am living in the future.