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This blog contains my random ramblings about everything Mac and some things OT
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Sunday, January 25, 2004
Happy Birthday, Mac! As I saw a few other members of the blogging Mac-community used the occasion to look back in time on their own beginnings with the Mac, here is my story... My first contact with computers was in high school, programming in Fortran, not very inspiring for a mainly visual person. The following years I had on and off to do with computers (learned Basic on the way) and eventually owned a Commodore 16. But none of these got me really hooked, until '87. In early 87 I heard at some seminar for journalists about some new technology, called DTP. It was just mentioned as a new way to visually layout pages on a computer, no pictures, no demo, but it stuck to my mind. A few month later I came across a classified job ad mentioning computer based layout, and at my interview for the job, which I eventually got, I saw my first Macintosh. I had been working in traditional page layout for some time and what I saw there just blew me away. Instead of counting lines and drawing layouts and hoping the typesetter wouldn't mess it all up, I could do it all on my own and see the final outcome on the screen. WYSIWYG and I was hooked. The company, a magazine publisher, had 2 Macs, a Macintosh IIe and a II, networked with some DOS monstrosity with a custom made program to transfer the stories the writers typed on DOS machines and carried over to the layout department on 5.25 inch floppy disks. I started my first day and began my training... I received a pile of papers and was told to design a magazine for insurance brokers. "And, btw, the computer is switched on here. You have about 2 weeks to finish the project." I spent the first half day on exploring the interface (this was pre-multifinder!) and trying out what happens if you click on things etc. After 10 days I had finished my magazine layout and also learned the Mac inside out. Spending every minute during this time reading the manuals and books I found in the office made a good foundation for many years to come. I have never, not for one minute, regretted to be working on this truly great platform. So once again, Happy Birthday, Mac, and to another 20 great years!
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