In a little over a month Apple will have its 40th anniversary. You may be a long-time fan who remembers that first Apple I or even the Lisa. Perhaps your first Apple was a Mac Plus or an LC II. Whenever you stepped into the Apple stream, something amazing was happening. In 1976 the Apple II had color graphics and there was that marvelous VisiCalc. Later, the WYSIWYG interface opened up a new world for those of us enduring the challenges of DOS a command line interface. By 1985 you could combine the Apple LaserWriter with Adobe’s PageMaker and become a desktop publisher.
While the Macintosh Portable was more luggable than portable, those 1991 PowerBooks running System 7 were a joy. Over the years, your first PDA might have been a Newton, you might have photos from your first Apple Quick Take, or you may have even had a device that ran the PiPP!N platform, but when that first iMac DV and iMovie came along, it was amazing, letting home users record and edit video without the need of expensive video equipment and years of training. Logic, iDVD, Final Cut Pro, and GarageBand weren’t far behind and each gave creatives new ways to create. By 2001 we had iTunes, Apple Stores and iPods; it is hard to remember how revolutionary the iPod was in a world of boom boxes and cassette players now that the world uses iTunes for everything from music releases to podcasts to iOS apps and everything in between. In 2008? we met the iPhone and haven’t looked back. What about 2010? We got the iPad, and Apple just kept on inventing. Today we have the Apple Watch and entire feature movies filmed on iPhones.
As you are reading this, you are thinking: “But wait…. what about Local Talk? What about ClarisWorks or FileMaker or the iSight or …” and that is my point. Think of all of the surprises over the last 40 years, so many that the long list above is only a quick glanceThe good news? The first 40 years were only a start. Be there.
(You already knew that address, didn’t you?)
