Ken Case1d ago

Earlier this year, Christophe Laporte of the French-language publication MacGeneration asked if I might share a personal memory about Apple for a project they were working on for Apple's 50th anniversary.

As we approach that anniversary this week, I thought I'd share that memory here as well!

https://fr.ulule.com/50-ans-apple-le-livre-par-macgeneration/

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50 ans d'Apple : Le livre et la 1re journée MacGeneration

Apple fête ses 50 ans : le livre indispensable pour tous les passionnés de la pomme.

Ulule
Guy English1d ago
Show threadKen Case

Every time I see the original bright six-color Apple logo, I'm reminded of the Apple ][ donated to our small school just before the end of the school year. I asked the librarian if I could borrow its stack of spiral-bound manuals over the summer. I pored through that stack of manuals as my family road-tripped from Seattle to South Dakota—my mind fully occupied by the information contained within, as my senses took in the feel of the paper and the smell of the books.

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Mar 31 at 12:58amIvory for Mac
Show threadKen Case1d ago

Even without the computer, I thought about what I could make that computer do when I got back, scribbling out BASIC programs in the back seat with pencil on paper.

I was entranced by the empowering possibilities of that early "bicycle for the mind"—a feeling that has never left me.

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Show threadKen Case1d ago

When Macintosh was introduced as "the computer for the rest of us"—sporting its bright six-color Apple logo—what really caught my attention was the huge stack of Xeroxed "Inside Macintosh" developer manuals: kept in a three-ringed binder at the University's computer center, filled with loads of Pascal APIs. And when Steve introduced the NeXT cube with its stack of API manuals, I was entranced. My life has revolved around the platform ever since.

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Show threadKen Case1d ago

The feeling and smell of HTML doesn't quite compare to the feel and smell of those physical books. But I still think of those manuals whenever I see that bright six-color Apple logo.

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Show threadJohn Cortexiphan1d ago

@kcase @sanguish

I still have these

Show threaddanwood1d ago
@kcase This was my bible for a while…
Show threadian13h ago
@kcase good grief it’s all coming back now 🤣 those crazy Pascal strings 😂
Show threadian13h ago
@kcase heaven forfend you need one more than 254 chars long, right. That ought to be enough characters for anyone.
Show threadMoe Lassus1d ago
@kcase I have a similar memory. For my senior year of high school I convinced my dad to buy me an Apple II. We weren’t poor but a computer was not in the budget. Anyway as soon as they said yes, I went to the book store and bought a book on the Apple II and spent the next several days reading every page until the day we drove to “the big city” and bought it. I think that remains one of the most exciting moments of my life. I still have that Apple II and all of its original packaging.
Show threadBrad Miller1d ago

@kcase I learned to program from that book. It changed my life!

10 print "hi brad" 20 goto 10
Show threadAaron Mahler1d ago

@kcase I have similar memories, but around my first Amiga (I was a Commodore kid and came to the Mac later, ultimately working for Apple for some years). I read and re-read everything I could lay my hands on, learning the CLI and working on paper for the longest time before we actually had one.

I, too, associate the smell of paper and manuals with my early computing life. Later in life, I started collecting 80s arcades machines and their unique smell gets me into project mode to this day.