Voyage of the Paradigm Ship

I first saw the original Apple Macintosh computer in 1984 at the Team Electronics store in Duluth, Minnesota. I was blown away! It was so “uncomputer-like.” The compact form-factor, and the use of a mouse input device was very unique. But it was especially that black-on-white graphical display that held me mesmerized. It was like watching TV! I knew I wanted one. But since my wife and I lived pretty much hand-to-mouth at the time, I was not in the position to buy.

That moment would have to wait for roughly three years. It was 1987, and my wife and I were then living in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, Canada. Swift Current was a town of about 15,000. If you can believe it, they had a computer store—one that sold Apple computers. That I would purchase a Mac was all but assured by a very clever sales strategy—the owner let me take one home for the weekend! I had to take out a loan (about $3,500 Canadian!), but I made the purchase—a 512Ke with an ImageWriter II dot-matrix printer. It’s been Macs for me ever since!

Here is a great blog site run by Andy Hertzfeld called Folklore.org. Andy was one of the principal members of the original Mac developer team. The blog is a collection of stories surrounding the creation of the Macintosh computer, and served as the basis of his book Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac was Made (O’Reilly, 2004).