With the much too soon passing of Steve Jobs, I suppose I can pause to reflect on my early infatuation with Apple products, and muse about what might have been if Jobs had not been ousted from Apple during that entire period. The college computer labs were stocked with the fabled Macintosh, a product which Jobs had directed before he was fired in 1985. The all-in-one Mac, introduced in 1984, didn’t change much in ten-year existence. My first computer was a Macintosh Classic II, and it was also my first major credit card purchase. I kept that Mac for all of two weeks, because two days after I bought it, Apple released the Color Classic. This was something that would frustrate me throughout my Apple period. Apple always kept information about its new products secret. I didn’t know if this was a trade issue with its competitors, or its just wanted sell all the “old” stuff before anyone who could make informed decisions on their purchases. I took my “old” computer back to the store for a swap, and ended-up paying an additional $500 for the Color Classic. Unfortunately, the Color Classic had major “issues.” One was that it had a smaller screen; another was that its 640 x 400 pixel screen was non-standard. Most third-party games and programs that required a 640 x 480 screen, and if you tried to install this software, you’d often find you couldn’t use them because if the menus were on the bottom of the screen, they’d be cut off and you couldn’t access them. So I sold my Color Classic at a used PC store and purchased a Quadra 800. I also splurged on a Powerbook 140, with its 8.9 inch passive screen. It was terribly expensive (although I hardly noticed when they scanned another credit card), and its “cool” factor was somewhat mitigated by the fact that Windows laptops had noticeably larger 10-inch screens.
From there I cooled my heals with a Performa while I waited for the much-anticipated Power PC line; because the 68x series processors could not multitask, Apple had to find an alternative in order to take advantage of the internet. My first Power Mac was the 6100/60, the bottom-feeder of the line with a 60 MHz processor (most processors today are at least 2 GHz); I recall that the power supply unit died within a week, and an Apple technician made a house call to replace it. The initial problem with the Power PC was that because it had an entirely different structure than the 68x series processors, there were few software programs able to run to natively on the Power PC, and at least initially few software companies were willing to write programs in the native Power PC code. Thus there was little improvement in speed, because non-native programs had to run in emulation mode. My last Apple computer was the Power PC 6300 in the old Quadra 630 case, using a Power PC 603 processor, allegedly running at twice the megahertz of the 601. It still had the same problems as the 6100, but I have to admit that this was my favorite Mac, since it was an all-in-one entertainment machine, with a built-in TV tuner.
But by then I had about seven credit cards maxed-out, and I had to cure myself of my Apple addition. It was partly Apple’s fault: The Motorola processors could never compete with Intel’s chips, and it was much easier to judge Intel chip’s relative merits. Windows 95—although hardly comparable to the Mac’s operating system, began the process of blurring the lines. And as I’ve mentioned before, Apple is selling its computers almost exclusively on the merits of its operating system; its computers continue to lag behind PCs in hardware, especially in hard drive capacity and the failure to adopt Blu-ray drives, the inclusion of which would force it to improve its hardware capacity.
It was a fascinating ride while it lasted. These days, Apple is the computer of choice in Hollywood, and I am surprised by the number of people I see with Intel-powered Apple laptops. Back in the day, I was worried about hitching my wagon to Apple because during the 1990s its sales were declining because of the confusion caused by the myriad number of products whose relative merits were difficult to quantify. Jobs, who was fired in 1985 because he was viewed as a loose cannon, was tentatively reinstated in 1996, and since then saved the brand by abandoning the Motorola processor and taking advantage of the hand-held device market. Back in the early 1980s, Jobs was viewed as a man who had too many crackpot ideas and wouldn’t let anyone get in his way; in retrospect, his brainchild—the Mac—was the product that made Apple relevant in the early days, and his later foray into products outside “the box” saved the company and re-established its relevance.
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