The end of an era

Apple III
I'm feeling really bad about Steve Jobs' death.  In fact, when I heard the news I shed a few tears for him.  I knew he was sick, but I had no idea it had gotten so back. 

I guess as a computer geek who earned a computer science degree in the 80's, he and Bill Gates are the people I admired. 

The Apple Macintosh and Radio Shack TRS-80 were the first personal computers I ever used (not counting the Commodore 64 I received when I graduated from college).  At the time I thought they were the coolest computers ever, even at their very high price tags--several thousand $$$. 

Even without a hard drive! 

And now I have an Apple iPod, iPad, and iPhone that I carry with me that have way more computing power than those first PCs.

You may even be more shocked to learn that the very first computer I ever used in 1982 didn't use a keyboard for input, it used punch cards.

One command per card. 

Wow!  Am I ever old! 

You had to run these cards through a card reader in the correct order.  I remember I dropped a stack of them once. 

That's probably the most I've ever cursed in my life.  (After that incident I learned to number my cards)

TRS-80
Such a brilliant man.  I think it says a lot for living life to the fullest each day. 

Thanks Steve for the very significant contributions you made to the industry!

You will be missed.

Comments

Yogi♪♪♪ said…
Oh yeah, those were the days. The keypunch cards.
October 6, 2011 at 5:40 AM
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