History, perceptions and personal experience

Today is the 25th anniversary of the MacIntosh computer from way back in 1984. This video of Steve Jobs proudly showing it off is very revealing about the state of computing in those early days. What the Mac did then was not much compared to today, but the real comparison was against what other computers did at the time, which was even less with much more pain attached. We need to remind ourselves of that historical perspective. Don't compare history against today, but against the values and capabilities of the time. That's why they're all clapping so much.

My first computer was a Zeinth running some form of DOS. I bought it through the school and I had spent a lot of time asking people for recommendations. It was horrible. I had to have the manual on my lap all the time and I was always disappointed with the printing of my work. Using it was like trying to give yourself a migraine headache. Finally I just gave it back to the school and walked away. I didn't care how much money I'd spent on it I just wanted it to stop.

Then I got a Mac.

Wow, I did more work in that first week than I had the whole time I was using the Zenith and it was fun instead of painful. The world then divided into two groups – people who were using PCs and people who were using Macs. You felt sorry for the PC people who seemed to be self delusional about even noticing the differences. Over the years when Windows came out the PC people all said, see it's just like a Mac, but it wasn't, it wasn't at all, but they couldn't see it. Then when I asked for help with my computer I always got a twenty minute lecture why Macs were inferior to PCs. Finally it was too much and I started learning and doing repair work myself. It was easy and still fun. I no longer needed the IT people to yell at me. I was independent.

Over the intervening years we've all come to get along better, but there's still that perception gap, an inability to fully see that the user experience is primary, that it isn't at all about the hardware or the sever but the experience, that sophisticated software is actually easy to learn and fun to use, that a computer helps you more by doing less, that it's the work you make that's important not the machine, and finally that the best advise comes from your own understanding not from someone else's perceptions. My only wish is for you to have as much fun working as I do, but remember, it's all about the work and how you get there is up to you.

gunther