I just realized, thanks to The Digital Edge blog that this is the 30th birthday of Apple computer.

That sounds about right because my first encounters with Apple computers were in elementary school (I’m in my mid thirties). We were taught Logo and Basic. Eventually, my parents bought an Apple IIe. At that time I think I was in junior high. I wrote papers in AppleWorks and printed them on an Epson dot matrix printer. That was like, the coolest thing ever, although only a close second to the 80 column text card. I also played a crapload of games (some I loved, some I endured) in glorious green screen, that were accessed through the venerable CATALOG, RUN, or BRUN commands. We also got our first forays into hacking when it was learned that by punching a hole on the side of a floppy disk you could turn it double-sided.

Anyhow, the Apple adventure continued in college when I got an SE30. It rocked as a first Macintosh, although I think I partially owe my poor eyesight to laying out the college newspaper on that tiny greyscale screen via PageMaker.

System 7 was a real marvel until it got kind of bloated in its later iterations. Lots of quirks that we tolerated back then now seem ridiculous, like extension conflicts, desk accessories, and the Chooser. It got to the point where in order to troubleshoot the dreaded bomb-graphic system error, you had to start up without extensions and manually reactivate each one until your Mac functioned normally. I do remember this making a pretty good excuse for not turning in a paper on time, though.

But somewhere in the nineties Apple lost its way. Steve Jobs was ousted, they had too many products, couldn’t compete with Microsoft’s ever-improving Windows, and many gave up on Apple as dead. David Pogue has some entertaining memories of this period. During these dark times I almost bought a PC, but in some lapse of common sense, went with a PowerMac 7100. Luckilly, after that it was all uphill, with an two iMacs, an iBook, several iPods, and now a MacBook.

The resurrection of Apple by way of the iMac, OS X, the iPod, the iBook, and soon the iPhone is one for the history books. Now Apple’s stock is at an all-time high over $100 a share, and the only thing that could derail Apple going into WWDC and the iPhone launch is Steve Jobs choking on a tofu Popsicle or Al Gore announcing a Presidential run, stealing Apple’s thunder.

Now that I think about it, I have so many fond memories of Apple because it clearly was an integral part of my entire life. Every day, I interact with an Apple product, be it the computer or an iPod. Its use for word processing alone over the years means I’ve typed papers, emails, resumes, and now blog posts on an Apple keyboard.

Anyhow, I have one book that might bear some revisiting, called “So Far” that was put out for Apple’s 10th anniversary.

Here are book reviews of iWoz and The Second Coming of Steve Jobs.

So happy birthday Apple. I look forward to the next thirty years. Perhaps during that time Apple will have a go at multitouch, HD television, the biodegradable computer, iPersonal Cyborg Assistant, iVirtual Reality, iSpace Travel, and iSocial Security.

Disclosure: I own a tiny amount of Apple stock.

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