Every Friday, I have lunch at the same Mexican restaurant with a handful of guys. One is the IT director for a local school, one is a retired photographer and professor and another helped operate one of the first Apple dealers in this part of the country.
Every Friday, we talk about Apple, photography, tech news and more. It’s a great way to round out the week, and (as a self-proclaimed Apple historian) it’s endlessly fascinating to talk about how Apple and its platforms have changed over the years.
Needless to say, I’m the youngest person at the table. I was born almost exactly two years after the Macintosh was introduced, in fact. The personal computer as we know it has existed my entire life.
As I’ve written about in the past, I wasn’t introduced to the Mac until I was a sophomore in high school. The first machines I used were G3s running OS 9. While they seem primitive now, these Macs were years beyond the compact Macs that were many people’s first computers.
The original Macintosh introduction still speaks to me because the ideas Steve Jobs brought to the table still resonate today. I have a growing collection of Macs stashed around my house because I love the hardware. I write essays about obsolete products because I think the lessons learned from them are still applicable today.
I — and millions of other people — care so much about the Macintosh because so much cares goes into it. For many, it’s far more than a collection of circuits — it’s a tool with which almost anything can be created.
image via Jonathan Zufi