During recess period in high school one day, my friend ran down to show me something really cool. He had called me a day before about it. My father worked for a newspaper agency that only used Macs. One day he brought back 2 huge boxes. I remember vividly thinking how beautiful the boxes were. It took me a minute to figure out it was a computer. On one side it had “Power Mac G4” in white with a dark midnight blue background on the other box it had a big image of a flat display. Every day after school I would run to my father's desk just to use it. I just loved everything about it. It was running OS 9 at the time. back to my friend, when he finally stopped teasing, he handed me a booklet of some sort with a huge letter X in this ocean blue with curved edges. I flipped through it and kept on flipping through it. The first words out of my mouth were “ is this real” because I want it so bad. I thought my Mac was perfect but now it needs this whatever that was. Every page has little descriptions about features and tools with enticing images. The booklet by itself was a piece of art.
Of course, I bought it! And my first thought after installing it was “I did this by myself without any help”. I remember countless time witnessing frustration either installing Windows or simply printing something from relatives and close friends. 17 years later MacOS have matured and went through a name change.
I have a rant about the future of the Mac now. I miss the old Apple. Steve’s Apple. So much that I even wrote a post about my all-time Mac favorite. The other day I watched WWDC 2004 where he introduced Mac OS X Tiger. A large segment of the event was dedicated to the operating system. Not only that he had a fire in him every time he was on stage, but Steve also loved his company. You can see it every time he demoed a new feature. Today, the Mac as a whole is forgotten. At least that's how I feel. Mohave which is the latest iteration on MacOS lacked the thrill I had when I first watched Steve unveil Mac OS X Tiger. The only thing I’m excited about it is the dark mode. That's it!.
Back then after an event, I would go immediately to Apple's website just to read through every little detail about the newly released products but sadly I don’t recall that last time I did that. I still love my iPhone but that's all Apple think of as of late. It went from an exciting fun company to money focused. To be honest, I don’t think Steve would like everything about apple today. He would probably make some changes. The fact that apple intentionally leaks some product details before an event to lessen the blow of negative reactions is something he is against. That's not “courage”. This is a scared Apple.
I miss Apple and when you visit an apple store and the number of tables that carry the Mac starts shrinking, you know something is wrong. Mac enthusiast should embrace for an imminent change soon!