Ever Again?
Brushing this off for a few thoughts on Steve Jobs. Between work, home, friends and relatives, I’ve actively lobbied people into dropping, collectively, $40K to $50K into apple in the last 8 years. Given Apple’s stock price, I’m guessing I’m not the only one.
I’m a “switcher”. As a kid, a teenager, and a college student I was not an Apple Person. Who knows why I switched. But here’s the story.
Winter, January 2003. Wifi was “a thing” now, I stopped playing quake X (thanks Halo), and I was doing more productive things than ever with my computer. I didn’t know how to program, but for some reason, at that point it time, I decided that if I was going to sit in front of a computer all day, it should be a beautiful fucking computer. And the white ibook, 12”, was a beautiful fucking computer.
But I didn’t want to drop $1500. On anything. So it was MacWorld 2003, some new powerbook was announced, and craigslist was flooded with used ibooks for $700.
$700 was still fucking expensive (I had bought my last three computers for $700 combined (not even including Diante’s computer which I got for $40 worth of gamecube stuff). But oh god the want. So I put a bid in, and some dude in the Richmond told me to come by.
When I was halfway there he said someone offered him $750, would I match that or beat it. And I was like, “No!” and hung up. I flipped a bitch in SF and was heading back for the bridge when he called me back, apologized for the bad karma. I met him and bought it.
I wasn’t planning on selling my PC(s), particularly given that the computer was slow and couldn’t easily run half the software I needed to run. But 2 weeks later I sold all my PC’s. I was done with that. Two weeks after that I flipped the iBook for a powerbook Ti I bought from some guy that did stunts on a 1000 cc road bike for a living.
I use computers more and more every year, somehow. I love to program now, and I still, everyday, when I sit down to one of my 3 macs (one that I’ve had since 2005), I think, wow, this is a fantastic machine. Nevermind my iThings.
So yes. Steve Jobs, whom I’ve never met, has created objects that I spend over 50% of my waking hours using to do just about everything I do. Crazy. Absolutely nuts, really.
Can someone that I’ll never meet have more tangible, beneficial impact on my day to day life? It’s hard to imagine.
Thanks.
