Apple Memories

I was in college back in 1984 and had the good fortune of being friend with some of the most dynamic young computer scientists at Ohio State University. I'll never forget the day that one of them called me over to his place. "You've got to see this!" I could hear his familiar enthusiam for exciting new technology in his voice.

He ushered me into his bedroom and showed me a squat beige little unit. One of the first Macintoshes to hit the streets. He explained the mouse, how to launch an application, demonstrated MacWord, MacPaint and the desk accessories in the Apple menu (which was just an unbelievably cool idea -- useful little utilities that were available no matter what other program you were running at the time. OMG!.

It's hard to explain to someone who didn't grow up with graphical user interfaces how utterly amazing this all was.

We were in a world where "copy c:\docs\hstry,doc c:\docs\hstry01.doc" was the height of user interface simplicity.

It was so hard to wrap my head around, I had to believe that it was covering up some hidden complexity. "How do you get to the command line?" I asked him.

"There isn't one."

"B-b-but how do you do system level administrative things?"

"You do everything through the Desktop interface."

(Insert sound of my mind exploding.)

I had to have one. Immediately.

God bless, Mr. Jobs. And thank you.