My father introduced me to the Mac in 1984 with a 128k. I was pissed. I was in 7th grade and had done a little Basic programming in school on Apple IIe’s and IIc’s. This Mac thing sucked, where was my ability to write programs? I had started writing a simple text game, at school, based on the Price Is Right game show. It would ask you to bid on items and then award you money when you won. Simple but it was fun to write. This new Mac thing was useless if I couldn’t do that.

The guys down at the local Apple store (not those Apple Stores) had convinced my dad, a computer virgin, that this Mac thing was the next big thing. He mostly wanted to write letters etc and the easy to use MacWrite program that came with the computer sold my dad. So the computer came home to our humble country double-wide on 5 acres and we set it up. After playing around with the word processor and MacPaint program for a while I began a desperate search for how to write in Basic on this thing. I was young and Mac resources were almost nonexistent. I was bummed. A few cheesy adventure games existed, but I was sick of freaking black and white pixel art programs. Why didn’t he just get a IIe or IIc I kept asking myself?

Since then my dad abandoned the Mac and has used PC’s for the last 10 years or so. I started using Mac’s again in 1994 after a long hiatus from computers altogether. Since then I have made my living on the Mac, using my programming skills, business degree and creativity to somehow squeak out a living. Through the years my dad has asked me about the new Macs and if they really are that great. I have gotten tired of trying to convince Windows zealots of the enlightening experience of owning a Mac, that it’s about the experience and transparency of day to day computing. But with dad I have always seized the opportunity to tell him about the neat new gadgets and features. He has been wanting a new computer for a long time and really wanted a Mac, he really liked my G4 iBook and said something like that would be just fine. But when he visited this last week and I sat down to finally help him make “The Purchase” he couldn’t get over the idea of a 17″ MacBook. I told him it was more than he needed but he could not help making the “Hot Rod” Mac notebook his after such a long departure into the world of Windoze.

So dad has a new MacBook, should be here in a few days and I’ll spend the day showing him how to use all of the “i” programs - he is genuinely stoked. Thanks dad for getting us a Mac in 1984, I am glad to see you come back.