Being old and nerdy, I have many memories around Apple. I remember my cousin’s neighbors getting an Apple IIC for Christmas and being so jealous I almost literally died. Even the monitor stand was cool as hell. I got over it, but the longing never went away. And then when this ad for the Apple IIc came out… No kid’s bedroom was ever cooler.
I also have a distinct Apple memory from visiting the Menlo Park Mall in Edison, NJ. There down in the lower level of the Macy’s store was the computer room. I remember going down there, alone, to look at the Apple computers. My memory gets fuzzy, but I think I remember the room being all black with down lights illuminating pedestals that held plexiglass cases in which different Apple computers were displayed. You couldn’t touch them at all. I was a messy kid from a not-really middle-class family and there would simply be no way for my single mom to afford anything in that room. We weren’t even at the mall for Macy’s. There was a Woolworth’s (which was a five and dime) that mom shopped at.
Years later, in high school, I remember using a Macintosh for the first time and it completely changed everything. It was as clear to me then as when I first saw the iPhone in 2007. In 1985, I saved up all my paper route money to buy a Macintosh for $1,1001 from a guy who dropped out of Drexel. Then I had to have it repaired. Then I had it upgraded to 512k. Then I bought an ImageWriter printer. Then I bought a Paradise Mac10 hard drive. Then the Mac finally died and I couldn’t afford a Mac for many years (until 1991).
But I think my most favorite memory was a trip to a Macworld conference in Boston in the summer of 1997. Mrs. Bob knew how much I wanted to go to a live keynote but also knew I didn’t feel worthy enough to buy a ticket to go, so she arranged it all. And, wow, what a keynote. Steve Jobs was back (although not yet CEO) and, as always, knocked it out of the ballpark. He even had Bill Gates up on the screen. One Steve Jobs quote has stuck with me (along with lots of others) to this day, “We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose.” I used to be embarrassed to admit that I booed at Bill Gates, but given his friendship with Epstein I’m over booing that guy.
I look forward to more years of nerding and I suspect I’ll always be using something from Apple.
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That’s around $3,300 in 2026 dollarydoos. ↩︎