Apple at 50

Apple was founded on April 1, 1976 — fifty years ago today.

I can’t say I grew up with Apple devices: ours was an IBM PC and eventually a Windows NT household because that’s what Mom and Dad used at work, and because I fell in love with video games at age five.

We did have Apple Macintosh IIs in my elementary school classrooms, however, and I would race to finish my work early so I could play SimCity or KidPix.

I was friends with a kid who lived on my parents’ street whose family owned a Mac. I didn’t go over to his house often — we used to play outdoors mostly in those days — but I remember once or twice sitting down to use his family’s alien device that didn’t require arcane commands to use. I could point and click through the simple interface. I thought that simplicity meant it wasn’t a “real” computer.

Later, I purchased one of the first-generation iPods. It was a truly magical device…

For about two months.

Mine bricked itself one day and I remember being so mad about it that, instead of trying to replace it or have it serviced, I threw it out and swore to never own another Apple product.

It wouldn’t be until university shortly after that, when I began studying Information Security, that I would fall in love with macOS. It first grabbed my attention with its amazing design language. Then, I learned it was a UNIX operating system that could run most of the apps I needed on a daily basis. The only thing it couldn’t do was game, so I remained fascinated from a distance.

Setting aside my iPod grudge, I saved enough money from my day job to eventually own a 17" MacBook Pro.

It was a magical machine.

I loved the experience of this device immediately. There was endless configuring, poking around the system, and marveling at the sleek Leopard interface. I quickly discovered first- and third-party apps that I can’t live without to this day — shout out to Little Snitch and Alfred. Time Machine is the simplest backup software I’ve ever used, and the hardware of every Apple product I’ve owned since that ill-fated iPod has been exemplary. MacOS was (and is, to a lesser extent) beautiful and just faded into the background so I could focus on using the device to solve my problem.

Because I spent so much time playing World of Warcraft back then, I kept my gaming PC around for another 15 years, but over that time I left the PC ecosystem and embraced Apple’s. I’ve flirted with Linux here and there, but those were academic excursions: I keep coming back home to Mac.

As a product — not just a collection of technical specs — the Mac is superior to any other computing platform I’ve used in my 35 years of computing. I still enjoy sitting down to use my Mac every day, and I can’t put into words why. It’s just become an extension of myself, I suppose.

Here’s to Apple, on their 50th anniversary. Here’s to the Crazy Ones with a vision to create a different kind of computer. Here’s to another 50 years.