#8 TRUE CONFESSIONS: Week 5
Okay, deep down, I am a Apple baby. I have been using PCs for 99% of my adult life but I will never be able to say I like them better than an Apple. Way back when, in fifth grade, we were exposed to computers for the first time. I believe it was called an Apple II. We played Swashbuckler, Oregon Trail, Frogger and such. I learned how to format paragraphs and spell check. It was like a miracle right in front of my eyes. Up until high school, Apple was all you could find in our school. I learned how to fudge margins to make that paper just a half a page longer, and one time to smoosh the letters together to make my very verbose prose on Hemingway fit onto 2 pages. I did my graduate research on an Apple in my home but was fully exposed to PCs in their labs. I fought with them, swore at them, learned things like WYSIWYG and GIGO. Apple never did this to me. It found every word that I typed to be beautiful and perfect! I bought my very own place a few years ago. The computer did not come with me. A very sad day. I don't miss having a computer cluttering up my space. I just miss saying, with a righteous air about myself, I have an Apple. So I finally broke down and dove into Apple again. This time an iPhone. I resisted the first generation. What did I really need it for. I had a phone already, I'm no music monster, I can get on the Internet at work. Then I actually tried out my friend's iPhone. What wonders did I behold! I could have games, music, phone, camera, Internet, texting, address book, GPS. Then the 3G comes out. I make myself wait and, yes, I now have one. It has changed the way I use technology. I went to a tiny island off the Bahamas, no phone, no Internet, no TV, you know the kind of place. I turned on my iPhone, and what do you know. Everything worked. I talked to my dad, checked my mail until I realized, hey, I'm on vacation! I could still take pictures and listed to music. What a toy! I long for the day when I could download books onto it and not disc by disc. Well, the day has come, I downloaded three books onto my iPhone through NetLibrary. It's not yet connected to my hip but I do tend to keep it near by......it's an Apple after all, you just want to be near them. I yearn for those days when the computer I was working on communicated with me in a meaningful way or maybe I just miss childhood........or maybe I just like saying, once again with a righteous air, I have an Apple.
Steve Jobs & Co. definitely knew what they were doing when they got those Apple IIs into the schools. Wasn't it the founder of the Jesuits who said, "give me a boy from the age of six to the age of sixteen, and he is mine for life"? Okay, bad example.... ;-)
ReplyDeleteI hear you. I'm a Mac Girl, through and through. (That's why, the "news" on my blog is decidedly "un-PC", because that's the news that matters to me, what's important in the tech world as far as I'm concerned). Apple has been an innovator since Day One; the rest are mostly copycats and wannabes -- at least as far as the cool, cutting edge, fun & artistic side of tech goes. I think Microsoft excels in some of the business and word processing apps, but even when you've been using something like Word or Excel for years, a simple change like a new update can cause frustrating and annoying problems that are so unnecessary! Macs are beautifully designed works of art that are not only logical but intuitive in their technology, proving that they can use both sides of the brain!
ReplyDeleteI started high school in 1995 (okay. totally dating myself) and my high school had an initiative that all students had to have a laptop. So, I show up for orientation with my dad, meet my teachers, the dean, my coach and get a shiny new Apple 520c or something. And it was loooove baby. It was also when the internet was taking off, and I got really into that too. So, right time, right place.
ReplyDeleteThe laptop I am working on right now I bought in 2004 for library school and still works like a champs. (Looking for wood to knock on). They are beautiful to look at, easy to use and never had the problems and frustrations that my PC counterparts have.
Did I drink the Apple kool-ade? Most definitely, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
Do you have a favorite iphone app? I really like Shazam! It's a free one- if you hear a song on the radio, you Shazam it and find out the title, artist. It records a bit of the song and runs it against a database. It is so much fun.