I was an Apple II person back in the 80s. In elementary school we learned to program in Logo in 2nd grade in the Apple IIe lab, then Applesoft BASIC in 6th grade. (Although I’d already taught myself BASIC by then.)
My first computer, which I got around 5th or 6th grade, was an Apple IIGS. I eventually upgraded it to a whopping 3.125 MB of RAM and replaced the 2.4 MHz CPU with a 10 MHz upgrade. My first hard drive was 40 MB, which I had to partition because the ProDOS filesystem only supported volumes up to 32 MB. LOL. (Later when that drive died I upgraded to a 270 MB disk. So many partitions, until HFS support was added and I could go to just one 32 MB boot partition and a big HFS partition for the rest.) I used a 2400 baud modem for a few years before making the upgrade to 14.4 kbps (although the service I dialed into only supported 9600 bps).
The kids at the college where I work just can’t understand why I find our 64-core servers with 512 GB of RAM and 6 TB hard drives and 10 Gbps ethernet so amazing.
While in Seattle we visited the Living Computer Museum. http://www.livingcomputermuseum.org/
My son was in Geek heaven!! He was more interested in taking out the cartridges and disks that had the games on them and trying to “talk” directly to the computer… figured out how to use the “print” feature on most of them…lol
I do a bunch of work in the UI world and this is one of my examples of the disconnect between new software application users and the old guard designers.
There are an enormous number of people who know this only as a save icon. They don’t have a reference as to why it’s the save icon (unlike the delete trashcan). They just know it’s always the save. You’ve got to have some old school experience to remember a 3 1/2" floppy.
There’s going to be a similar # of users coming who won’t understand what a CD is. Or potentially a DVD either. Those users have already been born.
I remember getting an add on card that gave higher resolution. And then using it for my trig final project. I used it to get an interesting curve which I then had to draw dot by dot on paper. I also got the help of my teacher to learn how to plot the inverse which I also drew Loved that class
Was just talking about this in relation to the phone icon, and the term “hanging up”. After a little sleuthing around I found this:
A skeuomorph is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues from structures that were necessary in the original.
Examples include pottery embellished with imitation rivets reminiscent of similar pots made of metal and a software calendar that imitates the appearance of binding on a paper desk calendar.
-Wikipedia
Skeuomorph got some play in the industry a few years ago when Apple went to flat icons and new pictures for apps. It was their latest “invention” to replace their earlier “invention” of a trash can.
Hijacking the account - My first computer was a Mac Plus. Parents brought it home when I was in kindergarten. I spent hours and hours playing all sorts of games and also started learning how the computer worked. We had a 2400 baud Zoom modem that we used with America Online. I remember waiting hours as pictures of the starship Enterprise were downloading to the machine over that connection.
We had a couple of computer rooms full of Apple IIgs and Apple II’s in my elementary school. The hours we spent playing Oregon Trail. One summer, they had a special program where we could go and spend a couple of hours in the computer lab every week. We did had assignments to finish but we were also given time to just play around the machines. Those were some fun times.
My wife also mentioned my fixation on the Newton. I really thought Apple was onto something with those devices. Wish I had one now. I keep eyeing them on eBay although I don’t think she would approve.
I haven’t really held onto any of my old machines although my parents still have a Mac Classic in the basement sitting on a shelf. I should go grab it and grab some of the floppies to see if any of them still work and load up some of the old games. I should show them to my children so they know what the save icon actually represents.
I had my kids sit with me from pretty much as soon as they could hold themselves upright when I worked on the PC.
Then when they were in 3rd grade they took a typing class so in 4th grade they did their homework on the PC. There was a big report they had to write on the state of their choice that they worked on through the year. The PC was a great way to keep them organized and eliminated all the torn pages from over exuberant erasures.
They’re all in the computer biz in one way or another now.
(I don’t know if my Newton would power up anymore. Hmmm…)
My first hard drive was 40 MB, which I had to partition because the ProDOS filesystem only supported volumes up to 32 MB. LOL. (Later when that drive died I upgraded to a 270 MB disk. So many partitions, until HFS support was added and I could go to just one 32 MB boot partition and a big HFS partition for the rest.) I used a 2400 baud modem for a few years before making the upgrade to 14.4 kbps (although the service I dialed into only supported 9600 bps).
