My memories of the Macintosh

[Peltigera]

My memories of the Macintosh

By Andrew Webb
BBC Technology Video Producer


This week sees the twenty-fifth anniversary of the launch of the first Macintosh and I was, more by accident than choice, one of the earlier adopters.

My college - the University of Westminster - had created a sophisticated computer lab, stacked out with the cube machines. Back then, this was cutting edge stuff.

In our first week, we were taught how to use a word processor and then print via a network. It feel like a real privilege to be in a world of cut-and-paste and spell checking.

It was not that computers were a new concept to me. I was the proud owner of an Amstrad PCW 8512 and it saw good service during my A-Levels. But once at university Mr Sugar's household PC was not up to the job.

Essays were, on average, five pages long but as the floppy disks could only store three pages, a typical report was split between two disks and then plotting the changes before an excruciating job of editing between disks ensued.

Things that we take for granted, such as the near instantaneous saving of documents, were 20 minute affairs back then.

You can imagine how the row of Macs at the Central London campus seemed like a godsend.


Mac meltdown

Then came the dissertations.

All seemed perfect until 10 days before the deadline, when something went badly wrong. Every time you saved a file it corrupted and became unreadable.

I had invented a safety system of leaving a disk with small files at home every day, so I only lost a small amount of work.

But some of my fellow students had just one file named "dissertation" stored on the network. It did not end well.

Amstrad rescue

So my trusty Amstrad came to the rescue, as I printed book references, title pages and credits over the course of 10 hours on a dot matrix printer.


My Amstrad also proved highly desirable as a replacement for the typewriter that Chiltern Radio provided for my first job.

Lugging it around Southern England was a hassle. I once had to sing the hold music on my telephone to some rather suspicious policemen to prove I wasn't stealing from my own house at 3am.

What a far cry from today's sleek and inconspicuous Macbooks and Vaios.

Mind you, as I write, I'm waiting for Windows XP to reinstall on a brand new laptop that won't boot.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Story from BBC NEWS:
news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/7847024.stm

Published: 2009/01/23 15:05:19 GMT

© BBC MMIX

[MacBeth]

I have never used a Mac, but those I know who have them are devoted.
I have used the computers my employers have provided for so long that I often forget there are choices. I use what they decide to buy.

[shiftless2]

There are some posititive things to be said about Macs (or at least Mac users):

[Calluna]

Heh heh...I love current macs. Everything post-OSX has been wonderful. Before that, though, meh, not so much. When I was in college, we had those "cubes"...MacPlus computers in our totally modernized computer lab. Those were the days when you could scroll through a document as fast as possible and still read the whole thing while scrolling. And, if you clicked something wrong, you got that distinctive "eep."

By the time I was doing my post-doc, they were well-past obsolete. Yet, we still had two in our lab running one program that nobody has ever adapted to a more modern operating system but was invaluable to our research at the time. Every time we'd find one tossed away to university surplus, or sitting out at a curb for trash collection, we'd grab it in the hopes it had useful spare parts should we need to fix one of our precious mac pluses. They were AWFUL by then. We had a sign posted over one of them: "I'm slow and stupid, please be patient."

But, there are days I miss those slow and stupid computers. How wonderful it was to start it calculating something or send a print job to the dot matrix printer and know you had 20 min to go get a cup of coffee and socialize while there was nothing else you could do on the computer...and that was still an improvement in productivity over old punch cards or calculating by hand.

[MacBeth]

shiftless, that is as close to that line as you can ever go. And make sure you do not go there often.

There are times and places for almost everything. Sometimes the place is not here. Thanks for keeping that in mind

[Pax]

lol, heck, I have a six-month-old laptop that is slow and stupid. There's so much crap on it that it goes on coffee breaks of its own for no apparent reason. I don't mean it hangs up -- I mean, I open a menu item, among other things, that for no apparent reason causes the hard drive to spin for about 20 seconds while it figures out what the heck to do with itself. In some ways it's the slowest computer I've ever had to work on.

[joethree56]

A couple of days ago I had my first serious encounter with a laptop running Windows Vista. I have to say that it was my nastiest and most frustrating computer experience for years.

[Calluna]

Jan 24, 2009 18:06:04 GMT -5 joethree56 said:

A couple of days ago I had my first serious encounter with a laptop running Windows Vista. I have to say that it was my nastiest and most frustrating computer experience for years.

LOL! Everyone I know who got computers with Vista pre-installed have since then wiped it off and installed XP instead.

Pax, have you run a scan for viruses and spyware? When a computer that new is getting that sluggish, it can be a sign that it's infested with something.

[Rob]

I just wiped out the latest version of OSX and reinstalled the previous version, because the new one would only let me save a file to the network once, no matter what kind of file it was. After the first time, I'd have to save it to my desktop and then drag it into a file.

[wayneinfl]

I haven't had any problems with Vista.

Macs weren't really around when I was dealing with computers. In junior high, and high school we had Apple II's and TRS-80's. I never dealt with anything with a mouse until the late 90's when I bought my first computer.

Looking at shiftless's post, I may be able to warm up to them.

[Calluna]

Jan 24, 2009 23:30:38 GMT -5 Rob said:

I just wiped out the latest version of OSX and reinstalled the previous version, because the new one would only let me save a file to the network once, no matter what kind of file it was. After the first time, I'd have to save it to my desktop and then drag it into a file.

Really? I wonder if it's the network that has some incompatibility. We finally have people in IT who have decided to make our networks compatible with Macs, and as a result, we suddenly have a new surge of Mac users coming out of the closet on campus. I haven't had any problems. The only problem I have is that when the computer goes to sleep, it loses the connection with my external back-up drive, and then I get told that Time Machine isn't making back-ups. But that's usually just a matter of turning off the external drive and turning it back on.

[Calluna]

Wayne, you're repeating yourself! I guess we found a new glitch here (or maybe it's Vista...hee). Since this site is fairly new, if you haven't noticed it yet, on your own posts, you have the option to delete or edit on your own...that's the delete and modify buttons up at the top right of your post. So, when there are little glitches that leave you stuttering here, you can easily clean it up yourself. I also like it that if you think of something after you post your reply, you can go back and add it without making another post.

[joethree56]

There isn't really a direct comparison between a machine running Windows and a Macintosh as the former is simply an operating system and the latter is an intergrated operating system/hardware package. In my (limited) experience with the Mac I found its performance was good but I would hate to be tied to its rigid way of doing things and its limited software choice. I detest Microsoft's cynical treatment of its users and the sheer bloat of its systems (especially Vista). A couple of years ago this prompted me to explore the most popular alternatives and I have been using Linux for quite some time now. I still maintain a machine using XP but this is largely for My wife to use with various 'historic' craft programs etc.
Linux runs faster, is cleaner and is less prone to viruses and is very very stable. It and its software is also completely free of cost.

[wayneinfl]

I don't know about Linux. My father in law installed it on one of my computers and I found several applications that would not run on it. Maybe I need a different version of Linux? Anyway, I don't have time to fight with a computer. So whatever works I use. Vista works for now.

I only keep a computer for 3 years or so. Not as a rule but in that amount of time, one of my kids will probably spill soda all over it or throw up on it. By the time it gets bogged down with viruses, etc. it will be obsolete anyway.

The repeat- I posted and went into another application and didn't realized I had sent the first post. The old MS site had a delete, too. I used it from time to time. I like the new site for the edit function.

[shiftless2]

Jan 24, 2009 9:08:51 GMT -5 MacBeth said:

shiftless, that is as close to that line as you can ever go. And make sure you do not go there often.

There are times and places for almost everything. Sometimes the place is not here. Thanks for keeping that in mind

Macbeth - there's a Mac Chick of the Month website - this just happens to be an exceptionally pretty girl using a Mac - don't see how it's anywhere "close to the line", any line.

[MacBeth]

If that were your decision to make here, that would be be helpful. But G and I are in agreement that we are not interested in any more of those photos.

I do encourage you to post them in a community where you handle the administrative end of things.

But what was said about these pictures is not up for discussion in any way that would change our position about them

There are lessons to be learned - both is what some see as acceptable and what others see as blatantly sexist. You came up to that line here. Does not make you wrong and me right. Just makes it the boundaries of this community

[Calluna]

Jan 25, 2009 12:39:34 GMT -5 joethree56 said:

There isn't really a direct comparison between a machine running Windows and a Macintosh as the former is simply an operating system and the latter is an intergrated operating system/hardware package. In my (limited) experience with the Mac I found its performance was good but I would hate to be tied to its rigid way of doing things and its limited software choice. I detest Microsoft's cynical treatment of its users and the sheer bloat of its systems (especially Vista). A couple of years ago this prompted me to explore the most popular alternatives and I have been using Linux for quite some time now. I still maintain a machine using XP but this is largely for My wife to use with various 'historic' craft programs etc.
Linux runs faster, is cleaner and is less prone to viruses and is very very stable. It and its software is also completely free of cost.

Unfortunately, in a world of windows users, I'm forced to stick with software that's compatible with what they know and use. That limits the ability to switch to Linux. I like the Open Office software available, and would love to ditch MS Office, but would run into trouble with sharing files with coworkers. I would have been totally lost with Linux previously, but since they've come out with several GUI versions, it looks pretty simple now. I'm also just nervous because I'd be my own tech support if I did that. One of my ex's used to do a lot of stuff using the terminal commands, and I'm definitely not someone who could use a computer at that level. I could probably learn; afterall, I did manage to use a computer back in the days of DOS commands, but I'm just not sure I want to put the effort into that now.

I'm considering that when my current PC becomes obsolete and I replace it, I will use it to play with Linux and figure out how it all works without jeopardizing work productivity during the learning curve.

[joethree56]

Calluna, that is exactly the way I approached it. In fact I got hold of a very old basic pentium III comp and tried dozens of 'flavours' of Linux. I like you would not want to have to mess about with the command line in spite of it being easier than the old DOS commands. Now that Linux has matured there is virtually no reason to use command line at all. Yes you would be your own support were you to go this route but for the fact that there is masses and masses of online usergroups who run help forums. A search for Ubuntu for example will confirm this. On my journey into Linux territory I have had a lot of fun which is not a word that readily springs to mind with MS.