‍Computers have always fascinated me. My first computer use was in 1968  learning FORTRAN, (FORmula TRANSlator), in 1st year engineering.

‍Back then you used a machine that punched your program onto paper cards. Then you had to submit the “deck” of cards at a counter in the computer room. A computer operator would feed the deck into a card reader and the mainframe computer ran your program. You would pick up your printout hours or days later. Computers were part of the workplace and I used various systems including IBM terminals and HP desktop computers.

‍I used a personal computer for the first time in 1974 when the office acquired an MCM/70 a pioneering Canadian microcomputer. I had to learn A Programming Language (APL), which uses mathematical notation for its code. APL was also a Canadian invention. The MCM/70 came with 8 kilobytes of RAM and zero, one, or two cassette drives!

‍I saw a new computer made by Apple named LISA at a computer show. The LISA used a graphical user interface (GUI). The computer came with a full complement of applications: LisaWrite, LisaCalc, LisaDraw, LisaGraph, LisaProject, LisaList, and LisaTerminal. These applications all used a GUI. A colleague and I were able to persuade management to purchase one of these machines even though IBM was the standard issue. Unfortunately LISA was very expensive and it was not successful in the consumer market.

‍I moved onto the iMac line of computers. The first one had a 15” display 233 MHz processor 32 MB of RAM, a 4.0 GB hard drive all in a transparent bondi blue case. In 2006 its video board went bad and I needed a new computer.

‍Apple introduced the Macintosh in January 1983 on a commercial aired during the Super Bowl XVII.

‍I had my first experience with this new type of computer in 1984 when it was purchased as the office computer.

‍I’ve used Apple computers ever since. Although the hardware was excellent, I think it is the software and the graphical interface that is the real attraction. I’ve owned several versions of the Macintosh.

‍I studied the options available and landed on the newly introduced Mac Pro. It was Apple’s first professional desktop based on Intel processors. It was not only a beautiful design but the machine was very customizable and easy to make changes to internal components such as its memory and four disk drives. The display I bought had a 24” screen.

‍The Mac Pro was my main computer until 2012 until its operating system, OS X Lion 10.7.5, could no longer be updated. I still use it as a backup system with its four drives. It’s almost 20 years old and still works fine.