Steve Jobs, 1955-2011
Oct. 5th, 2011 11:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cmdr_zoomI have, in a box in the storage room across the hall, an Apple ][+ with monitor. It's the same model as the first desktop computer I ever used, back in 1982 or so. I played games and learned to program in BASIC on it. Also in that box are several old floppy disks (5 and one-quarter inch, and genuinely floppy) including the first one I ever owned. I'm lucky enough to have found someone a few years back to convert these into disk images, so they're preserved for the future; I can load them up in an emulator even if the disks themselves go the way of all things.
I could put that computer together and turn it on right now - and I'd be tempted to, if it weren't so late - and it would run. But one of the two people who made that machine, and everything since, possible, no longer can.
Here's to the rainbow years, and all those fun afternoons in the library or the school computer lab. Here's to the little beige toaster that could, and that famous commercial. Here's to the machines I used to sneak into the university's comp-sci building to stay up all night playing with. Here's to everything that starts with the letter "i". And here's to the only computers my mother has ever liked.
And oh yeah - fuck cancer.
I could put that computer together and turn it on right now - and I'd be tempted to, if it weren't so late - and it would run. But one of the two people who made that machine, and everything since, possible, no longer can.
Here's to the rainbow years, and all those fun afternoons in the library or the school computer lab. Here's to the little beige toaster that could, and that famous commercial. Here's to the machines I used to sneak into the university's comp-sci building to stay up all night playing with. Here's to everything that starts with the letter "i". And here's to the only computers my mother has ever liked.
And oh yeah - fuck cancer.
