The IIGS was a fun little toy.
My first experience was programming the LogoWriter turtle on an Apple IIE to draw pictures. And by pictures I mean like a square, and a circle, and you know maybe several ovals in a design, if you wanted to get fancy; but back then that was me making images on a fucking computer, instead of with a pencil and paper, and that was legendary in my little brain. And I had no idea I was actually learning programming at the time. Not that I know much now, but I’m constantly exposed to it, and I always refer back to how that worked, and frankly it all works exactly the same way now, just with different words and terms and symbols. I wasn’t really aware that what I was using was an Apple per-se the way we think of it now, but it’s still a happy memory that has stuck with me up until this day.
I grew up in the //e era. That shit was a blast. I learned a lot about Assembly and I learned Basic back then too. Copying disks, defeating copy protection was a rite of passage. I was actually bummed when Steve left and things got so bad.
So when Steve came back and things picked back up with the iPod, I was kinda jazzed for it. But I never bought in to the hype. iPods started the whole ridiculous pricing model. First thing I actually bought was a 3GS because there really was nothing else like it.
I got into Mac laptops because my work gave me one and I was a Linux nerd by that time so the fact that it’s Unix under the hood has always been super appealing to me, still is. But the pricing still keeps me several years behind, I do not buy Apple new, always used. Gotta give them props for hardware longevity though. My daily driver is a 14/yo Air.
Never have felt the magic like back in the day though. Now it just feels like the lesser of several evils.
OSX was the big change in feel for me, and I really didn’t like it though I can’t put my foot on why. Hmmmm. Our first home computer was a Macintosh Plus, and we had Macs exclusively for a really long time. I eventually switched to Windows XP for my first PC I put together myself. I still miss the old Macintosh systems 1-9, and sometimes I get Linux themes based on them for a nostalgia fix. I also love using Mini vMac to emulate those older systems.
I think part of it was that they (the pre OSX systems) felt full of signs and evidence that they were made by actual people. It wasn’t overly polished corporate product. They felt amateur in a way, I guess? I don’t know man, it just felt so much more real. Like it was made by people who worked on it because they thought it was cool or fun.
Thank goodness I eventually found Linux.
Burning CDs with it. It was an early unit, somewhere around 1997, blank CD-Rs were $20 each, and it was just so incredibly easy.
Never.
Apple always felt constraining, and unintuitive, starting with the first Mac and it’s tiny-ass screen.
