chadbag

I, however, had learned programming on Apple ][+ that the grade school had and gave me access to since I was helping their tented and gifted teacher teach the kids programming, and we had an Atari 400 and later Atari 800 at home along with a DEC PDT 11/150 single chip LSI-11 based computer my dad bought through a DEC employee purchase program.  We had that computer for several years until my dad realized there was no employee purchase field service (repair and maintenance) program and any repairs would be more than we paid for the computer.  I learned a ton about programming on the Atari 800 and the PDT 11/150 running RT-11.  

But when the Lisa came out I wanted one but didn’t have $10k to spare as a high school student.  When the Mac was released I wanted one badly but it was not in my student budget.  

Later I bought an Atari ST for midi and general use and lusted after a Mac.  I went to work for DEC and attended night school (paid by DEC) to try and finish my degree.  Since I had two classes part time I qualified to buy a student discounted Mac and bought a Mac Plus for around $900 student price in Fall 1989.  Been a max use since.  I eventually went back to full time school to try and graduate and bought a Mac LC.  I still have it and it booted last time I tried.  Eventually bought a Mac LC 475 with PPC upgrade added and then a 7200, and later a 9500 and a Umax clone.  I have none of those.  I bought a Bondi Blue iMac on the first day and used that for years.  I still have it and it boots (tried a year ago) though the power supply is flaky.  Probably failing capacitors.  Had an iBook G3 for many years and then inherited a 2014 MBP from a job when the company failed.  They let me keep my machine as payment for helping wind things up.  Still have that though my daughter uses it most of the time.  It had an issue in 2017 and I had a paid side gig so bought an iMac to finish that gig and the iMac has been my main personal machine since.   I did get the MBP repaired and as I mentioned, my daughter uses it regularly as do I when we travel.   Family also has a 2015 iMac and my son has an M1 MacBook Air. 

I’ve worked in Mac development since 1993 when I started at WordPerfect and while I’ve mail my been doing iOS since 2012, as DED mentioned, it’s basically the same as Mac with a different UI layer.  Same with iPad.  (And watch and TV etc).  

It’s been refreshing to work with the modern tech that Jobs developed at NeXT and brought to Apple.  One of my Mac jobs wanted to put their stuff on the web and we started using WebObjects (right before Apple bought them) and that was my entry into the dynamic OO of OpenStep (macOS iOS etc) and Objective-C (then and some now though Swift has replaced a good percentage).  Been a great ride and may but last another 13 years.  

Though the computing world and future in the early 1980s was exciting, it’s just as much or more so now in the matured world of computing we live in. 

My Atari 400 had 16k bytes of RAM upgraded to 48k.  And used 88k floppies.   My phone, on which I’m typing, has gigabytes of RAM and 256gb of storage.   Amazing.  Will be amazing to see where we are at when I retire in the mid to late 2030s.  

I’m interested is evidence that Apple is actually infringing whatever patents Massimo is claiming.  This sort of O2 Sat technology has been around forever.  The patent is not on O2 sat tech.  It is on a specific “new” refinement of the tech.  Has Massimo presented evidence showing actual infringement or are they just saying “Apple must be infringing to be able to do that” like many of these claims seem to be.  

This is one reason I’m always a version or two behind.  I don’t want to be surprised or have things “break” when I don’t have time to deal with it.  I’m always busy and use my Macs for real work and managing of my life and such surprises are more than I want to deal with so I tend to upgrade conservatively.