From Geek to Cool: Me, Steve, & the Mac

Reflections on Growing Up Macintosh

My first experience with an Apple computer was using the original Macintosh in Journalism school in the late 1980s. It was a uniquely fun experience compared to using the IBM computers in the computer lab with their mind-numbing green CRT screens.

When you powered on the Mac it made this happy mantra-like sound of someone taking a deep breath and exhaling. The mouse made the experience interactive and visual instead of having to memorize DOS commands to get work done. There were games built into it. You could name your hard drive and your disks whatever you wanted them to be. What was not to like?

After college, I worked for a year in a grueling inside sales job selling Macintosh II computers to schools. It was a thankless job, but working with Macintosh computers made it bearable. It was a tool that was fun to use and aspirational and innovate for schools and kids.

Later, I worked in another sales job as the "demo guy" to show off what desktop video editing systems in the 1990's could do, and of course the Macintosh was the nerve center behind many of the early video editing systems on the market. Capturing video to a computer. Cutting and pasting it. Adding music and titles. It was fun and cool!

So you could say I was part of the "Macintosh Generation." I grew up with the Mac like a fond friend. We spent a lot of time together. Did some cool stuff. And grew and matured as time went on.

Today I'm a grown-up doing grown-up work on the Mac. I,m the proud owner of an iMac with a 27" plasma screen and a 64 bit Dual Core processor. These days when so much of our lives is about using computers and being connected to the Internet, the fun and ease of use of the Macintosh has never gone away. It's become a nurturing relationship for me.

Steve Jobs, through it all, was the icon behind the Macintosh's coolness. He represented the fun we all wanted to have with computers. He was the guy in the neighborhood with the all the gadgets that you wanted to hang out with. He made us feel good about the computer geek inside us all.

He made it cool to be a computer geek, instead of a nerd. He rebranded us all in a sense and liberated us from this old stereotype, and that felt good.

So thank you Steve Jobs for being you. Thank you for impacting me. And thank you for the Macintosh (and all it's recent siblings). God bless you!