Hypercritical

January 2014

Macintosh

by
The Macintosh team

Thirty years ago today, Steve Jobs introduced Macintosh. It was the single most important product announcement of my life. When that upright beige box arrived in my home, it instilled in me an incredible sense of urgency. I greedily consumed every scrap of information about this amazing new machine, from books, magazines, audio cassettes, and any adult whose ear I could bend. This was the future—my future, if I could help it.

The death of Steve Jobs in 2011 brought back a lot of these same memories. What I wrote then echoes my thoughts on the Mac’s 30th anniversary.

I was 9 years old at the time. That year, my grandfather had changed my life by purchasing a Macintosh 128K, and convincing my parents to do the same. My grandfather also had a subscription to Macworld magazine, including multiple copies of issue #1, two of which I took home with me. I cut the Macintosh team picture out of one [see above] and left the other intact. (I still have both.)

I pored over that magazine for years, long after the technical and product information it contained was useless. It was the Macintosh team that fascinated me. That’s why I’d chosen to cut out this particular picture, not a photo of the hardware or software. After seeing the Macintosh and then reading this issue of Macworld, I had an important realization in my young life: people made this.

That last part is the most important. It wasn’t just the product that galvanized me; it was the act of its creation. The Macintosh team, idealized and partially fictionalized as it surely was in my adolescent mind, nevertheless served as my north star, my proof that knowledge and passion could produce great things.

Memories are short in the tech industry. For most people, Apple and Steve Jobs will always be synonymous with the iPhone, an uncontested inflection point in our computing culture. For me, the introduction of the Macintosh will always be more important. Though people who didn’t live through it might not feel it as keenly as I do, the distance between pre-2007 smartphones and the iPhone is much smaller than the distance between MS-DOS and the Mac.

On a personal level, nothing will ever replace my tanned-plastic beauty, the greatest electronic gift I had ever received, or would ever receive. My attachment to the Mac explains why, in the late 1990s, I was desperate to know everything possible about the fate of Apple and the future of the Mac operating system. Almost fifteen years later—half the Mac’s life—I’ve reviewed every major release of OS X and zero releases of iOS. Don’t get me wrong, I love my iPad and iPod touch, but you never forget your first.

I’m eternally grateful to the people who created the Mac, and to the countless others who kept it alive and shepherded its rebirth. In this age of iOS, it’s heartening to hear Phil Schiller say, “Our view is, the Mac keeps going forever.” That’s just fine with me.

The Road to Geekdom

by
Labyrinth

Ask a room of computer geeks how they came to deserve this appellation and you’ll likely hear many similar stories. “I got my first computer when I was very young. By the time I was a teenager, I’d logged thousands of hours at the keyboard doing everything imaginable with my computer: gaming, programming, networking, upgrades, the works.”

That’s certainly my story. I was lucky enough to get a Macintosh in 1984, and it changed my life. I spent so many hours in front of that computer, I often look back in wonder at how I found so much to do with so little. This was years before I had an Internet connection. I had very little software and no convenient way to get more. My dollar-a-week allowance didn’t go very far. The only other person I knew with a Mac was my grandfather who lived two hours away. Nevertheless, I put in the hours—willingly, joyfully—and became the seasoned Mac geek you see before you today.

My Macintosh origin story is part of who I am. Being there from the beginning (and staying with the Mac, even through the dark times) gives me a useful historical perspective on the platform. But this is not the only road to geekdom.

The Mac is actually one of the few things I’m a geek about that I’ve been in on since the start. Geekdom is not defined by historical entry points or even shared experiences. A geek must possess just two things: knowledge and enthusiasm.

A Man Makes a Car

I became interested in remote control cars in high school after seeing a friend drive one in his backyard. He’d been building and racing RC cars since he was in elementary school. I was fascinated by these machines, but I worried I’d never be a “real” RC car geek like my friend.

I saved my money, bought a car, built it (badly) myself—and then crashed it. Undaunted, I bought replacement parts, fixed it, learned to drive it with far less crashing, and eventually bought a better car. Most importantly, I subscribed to Radio Control Car Action magazine and read every issue from cover to cover as soon as they arrived at my house.

A year or so later, I found myself in my local hobby shop answering another customer’s questions about his car. It started to dawn on me that I now knew more about RC cars than the average hobby shop patron. I was no longer an outsider looking in.

Around the same time, I was engaged in one of those cheap-music-for-membership marketing schemes that led to me having to select some CDs on a whim. I ended up getting Achtung Baby, and it knocked my socks off. I’d been aware of U2 for years and had probably heard the hits from The Joshua Tree on the radio dozens of times, but I’d never really been into the band—or any band, for that matter. Achtung changed that.

I started to work my way backwards through U2’s catalog, buying as many CD long boxes as I could get my hands on. I bought and read biographies of the band. At my local library, I devoured reviews of all their past albums in Rolling Stone and Spin. I found every magazine with a cover story about U2. When I couldn’t find anything else in the stacks of back issues, I turned to the library’s microfiche collection.

In college, I finally had easy access to singles, b-sides, and bootlegs, allowing me to complete my collection. I also had a fast, reliable Internet connection for the first time. This was beyond the local hobby shop; I was communicating with other U2 fans across the entire planet.

I learned to play the guitar (badly) and downloaded tab for my favorite U2 songs. Dissatisfied with the state of lyrics websites (some things haven’t changed), I transcribed every U2 album, single, b-side, and rarity, leading to the creation of my first public website, The U2 Lyrics Archive. This was my first claim to fame on the net. (The site is gone now, but when the official u2.com website launched a few years after mine, it contained lyrics copied from my site, typos and all.)

A Sort of Homecoming

Remote control cars existed for decades before I got my first kit. Achtung Baby was U2’s seventh album. Yet I was once a serious RC car geek and an unassailable U2 geek. It started with enthusiasm. Given the opportunity, I channeled that energy into a dogged pursuit of knowledge.

You don’t have to be a geek about everything in your life—or anything, for that matter. But if geekdom is your goal, don’t let anyone tell you it’s unattainable. You don’t have to be there “from the beginning” (whatever that means). You don’t have to start when you’re a kid. You don’t need to be a member of a particular social class, race, sex, or gender.

Geekdom is not a club; it’s a destination, open to anyone who wants to put in the time and effort to travel there. And if someone lacks the opportunity to get there, we geeks should help in any way we can. Take a new friend to a meetup or convention. Donate your old games, movies, comics, and toys. Be welcoming. Sharing your enthusiasm is part of being a geek.

Anyone trying to purposely erect border fences or demanding to see ID upon entry to the land of Geekdom is missing the point. They have no power over you. Ignore them and dive headfirst into the things that interest you. Soak up every experience. Lose yourself in the pursuit of knowledge. When you finally come up for air, you’ll find that the long road to geekdom no longer stretches out before you. No one can deny you entry. You’re already home.

Apple’s 2013 Scorecard

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At the beginning of last year, I posted a list of things Apple can and should do during 2013. It’s time to settle up. Because I’m feeling scholastic, I’ll give a letter grade to each item.

Out of the 10 items on my to-do list, Apple did 8 of them well enough to earn a checkmark. (The TV thing was always a bit of a reach, anyway.) I’d call that a solid year.