Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Happy birthday, Macintosh!

Today is the 22nd birthday of the Apple Macintosh computer!

Vow! I could never dream of how much the Apple Mac has changed my life! It changed entirely the way how I worked as a designer (actually it changed almost the entire graphic design and graphic reproduction industries!), especially what I had been trained in the design school was mostly by hand in those days. It empowered me to do a lot of things which would never be possibly done by hand or with the skill I learned. It brought me a lot of fun and satisfaction, which made me sharing the Mac to people as if I was sharing a 2nd gospel (see note below). It gave me a lot of pride. It shifted the direction of my career. It made me stayed awake for countless nights and overnights to learn using all sorts of software and solve those technical problems. It consumed me a lot of money running after for the hardware and software upgrades (but also earned me some money too). It also brought me a lot of jealousy and complains from my wife for being a Mac maniac!

My first Mac dated back to 1989, when I bought my first computer in my life for HK$22K! It was a Mac SE with a stone-age configuration which is seen as a joke today -- not to mention about the minimal memory and hard disk storage space it had, just imagine what you can do with a 9-inch black & white monitor (yes, not even grayscale!)... Yet it was enough to make my ex-design classmates amazed about it. The fun of Macintoshing even led me writing articles, reviews, columns in magazines and even a book about it!

Well, it's been 16+ years now, I can say the Mac still empowers me and brings me a lot of fun in computing. I can never imagine working without it. What and how would life be if the Mac didn't come out?

Note: There're 3 things that I couldn't stop myself from sharing with people. I called them the 3 gospels of mine: the Mac, the Palm, and Jesus Christ.

*It's been a long time that I didn't write in English...

3 Comments:

At 1/25/2006 04:39:00 AM, Blogger 學子 said...

好多人成日問:「做 design,Mac 定 PC 好?」雖然慢慢覺得最好兩者兼得,因今時今日電腦已唔係?乜?天價。但 Mac 始終係 designer ?至愛。對自己而言,單係佢對因循守舊思想所作出?革命性 response,已經足以令用者敬佩萬分!非常之 designer thinking !!!

 
At 1/25/2006 01:33:00 PM, Blogger ablogaday said...

學子提醒番我個blog唔記得講既野:

唔好講好唔好用、點樣將革命性既GUI (graphic user interface)普及化等等呢D問題,部Mac擺響度已經係非常之賞心悅目,and perhaps that's why it's so appealing to designers -- 亦可能係呢個原因我咁鍾意睇頭兩個seasons既《24》,CTU裡面個個角色都係用Mac架!

 
At 1/27/2006 02:38:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

回想當天我也曾經擁有呢部 Mac SE ﹐但我竟然唔懂乜叫經典,乜叫 origination 忡親手將佢拋棄!而家真係見佢一次就心痛一次!

自受過此次教訓之後,我馮係 origination 既 Mac product 都會保留…最起碼,我而家忡 keep 住第一部 iPOD 同 iPOD shuffle,睇下佢地幾時成為經典都好丫!

UncleMike

 

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