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.

[4/4]

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.

[3/4]

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.

[2/4]

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.

[1/4]