For the past week or so, I’ve been furiously working on my MacWorld presentation, trying to find exactly what I want to say, and just the right way to say it. It’s been a lot more difficult than I had anticipated. This is going to be a very different type of experience than what people are used to at keynotes. I’m not going to talk about the future of anything, or pontificate about how Apple is doing this or not doing that . . . I’m strictly there to entertain the audience. I’m a little nervous about how they’ll respond, so I’ve thrown out everything and started over too many times to count. The entire time, I’ve watched the clock get closer and closer to 9:30 Thursday morning.
When I least expected it (around seven this morning as I packed lunches for Ryan and Nolan), the whole thing sprung into my head fully formed. What a relief! This is my favorite way to write: I can see the entire thing in my mind, like I’m looking down on a huge map. Because I know how the general landscape looks, I can zoom in on some areas and discover really interesting and unexpected details, then pull back to see the whole thing. The entire time, I know where I’m headed, so I’m not afraid to take some side trips as I transcribe what my brain’s come up with when I wasn’t paying attention.
I’m not going to publish all my remarks ahead of time like I usually do, because I think there will be a webcast, and I don’t want to give it all away . . . but it’s been so much fun to develop, I don’t want to wait two whole days to share it with an audience, so I’m going to preview a little bit of it right now:
I was twelve going on thirteen the first time I saw a Macintosh computer. It happened in the summer of 1984 — a long time ago; even longer if you measure according to Moore’s Law.
I was in a bookstore in the San Fernando Valley, looking for a magazine (I think it was called “Byte.”) My friend Brian told me that this magazine was filled with playable arcade games — all I had to do was copy the programs, written in BASIC, to my TI 99/4a.
“Wil, we’re late for dinner. We have to leave now.” It was my father. He held my brother’s hand, and my six year-old sister sat atop his shoulders.
I looked at the rack in front of me: the magazine I had hoped to find wasn’t there, and now I would have to leave empty-handed. I tried to stall him.
“Hey, did you see this, dad?” I took a book off the shelf. The picture on the cover showed that someone had written “hello” in cursive on a computer’s built-in monitor.
He took it from me and looked at it.
“That should keep him occupied for a minute, and I can find this maga—”
“Jeremy,” he said to my kid brother, “take this to mommy and tell her we’re ready to leave.”
Before I could protest, my brother ran the book across the store, my mother paid for it, and we were on our way to The Jolly Roger restaurant to celebrate my being cast in a movie called “The Body.”
In 1984, my family had almost achieved escape velocity from our white trash roots, but we were still poor. It was a big deal to go out to dinner, it was a big deal to buy a book, and I didn’t want to tell my dad that he’d paid for something I didn’t want. So I masked my disappointment and began to read.
“This is made by Apple? Oh, man! Kevin has that Apple ][, and it’s totally lame! It doesn’t play Pac Man like the arcade, and you can’t even hook it up to the television!”
To give this thought some context: in 1984 I thought that Thriller was “awesome” and letting my boxers hang out the bottom of my corduroy OP shorts was “rad,” so perhaps I wasn’t the best judge of what was and wasn’t lame.
It took less than fifteen minutes to drive from the bookstore to the restaurant, and I read that book the entire way. By the time we got out of the car, I had completely forgotten about my silly TI 99/4a. This “Macintosh” computer, I had decided, was the future.
“Dad! This is so cool!” I said as we got out of the car. “You use this thing called a ‘mouse’ to tell the computer what to do!”
My dad nodded politely while he helped my mom get my sister out of her car seat.
“Oh really?”
“Yeah! And it’s got this puzzle game built right into it, and you can use this mouse thing to draw pictures, and it’s got something called ‘MacWrite’ that I could use to write stories, and there’s a clock, and it makes a happy face when you turn it on, and . . .”
I took the book with me into the restaurant, and by the end of the meal I had convinced myself that I had to own one of these machines.
“Mom,” I said, in my most grown-up voice, as we finished dinner, “a lot of other kids at school have computers, and they use them for homework, and to learn math and stuff.”
“What about your Texas Instruments thing?” She said.
“Pish!” I said, “That thing? All that can do is play games! And it doesn’t have a mouse. I hear that all the new computers will have mouses. They’re very important.”
My parents looked at each other.
“We’ll think about it,” they said, in unison.
“Oh? Good. Because, you know, it has a built-in monitor, so I wouldn’t have to hook it up to the television when you guys want to watch TV.”
“Thank you for thinking of us,” my father said, dryly.
I beamed. This was going very well.
“And it’s portable, too! See?” I opened the book, and showed them a picture of the handle that was built into the top. “I could get a carrying case, and take it with me to Aunt Val’s when we go to visit. I could totally entertain myself, and I wouldn’t bother you guys at all.”
“That’s very thoughtful,” my mother said.
“Have you thought about selling cars?” my father asked.
“No. Why?”
After I tell the story of how I got my first Mac, and give a quick synopsis of my history from then until now:
“In 1988, I attended my first MacWorld, and after about an hour here, I realized that, even though I’d upgraded it to four megabytes of RAM, my MacPlus was woefully out of date. I was flush with cash from my weekly gig on Star Trek, so I went nuts: I bought a Macintosh IIx, a 30MB SCSI hard drive, a 2400 baud modem, and eight 1MB SIMMS. When I booted it the first time, I experienced a rush of excitement that I hadn’t felt since I first completed that cool built-in puzzle back in 1984: two hundred and fifty-six fabulous, vibrant, living colors splashed across my screen.”
Then, I plan to segue into Just A Geek. I’ll talk a bit about how I wrote my entire final draft on my iBook, and then I have this thing that I hope Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak will maybe hear someday: “Steve and Woz? Thank you for being such a big part of my life. Thank you for showing people like me that if you dream it, you can do it, even — especially — when nobody else believes in you.”
I’ll read two stories that I hope have a little bit of a universal appeal: The Trade, and Fireworks. If everything goes well, I’ll come in at just under an hour, and everyone will enjoy themselves.
And remember, if you’re in the area and are not coming to MacWorld, you can still come out to Borders in Union Square on Friday night, where I’ll be reading from and signing Just A Geek. I start at 7pm.
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My first computer was an Apple IIc. Yes, I’m a geek too.
sounds great so far! and i love the Stand By Me references.
First “computer” i ever had was a commodore 64, with those manky green-only coloured monitors, it was about the time that the super mario was coming out on the NES so it was pretty cool at the time. (god i sound old saying that. The commodore was sooo slow cos any game or program u bought had to be loaded up via tape/cassette and it took forever) Anyways i got this game called “paperboy” and always failed at a certain level. Got a cheat of a magazine (by cheat it meant literally typing out about 4 “a4” pages worth of stuff onto the comodore before loading the game up. the worst thing was it only worked once and then u had to retype the whole thing next time u played…. I beat the game though with the cheat!! (hey i was bout 6-7 so gimme a break!)
“My first computer was an Apple IIc. Yes, I’m a geek too.
Posted by Keith Coogan at January 11, 2005 01:32 PM”
um, is this post from Keith Coogan, the actor?
If so, I enjoy your work…
Interesting though – I have no idea about macs other than the ones we used to have in school (1986) where you could program it to do simple math calculations.
Are macs better than PCs? Or just more preferred by supercomputer users?
Thanks
Casey
Orlando,FL
Ahh “Byte” magazine. I believe I copied a game out of there in Basic for my old Vic20 that I purchased at a garage sale.
Heh, the thing I love the most about reading people’s stories about computers back in the 80s and 90s is the specs. My first computer had a whopping _one_ whole megabyte of RAM. It was a 386 from Packard Bell…and somehow I now have a job working with computers. (That Packard Bell was the worst computer I’ve ever encountered; hardware failure all over the place.)
The thing that really hit me about how computing has advanced is when I heard about an 8GB USB key. My parents’ computer, bought in the summer of 1999 from Gateway, has a *6* GB hard drive. Oh, how times have changed.
My first computer was a TI 99/4a. I still remember playing “hunt the wumpus” on a 14 inch black and white tv. I also remember spending hours writing a basic program that was, essentially, a ball bouncing around the screen.
When I was in college, my boyfriend had a very lucrative job processing computer punch cards. And later, I had a temp job doing data input on a TRASH-80. Aaack, does this date me?
Later I was a UNIX snob, doing time in the wonderful world of man pages. Grep, grep, grep…
Ever see the film Office Space? It’s such a classic; I can so relate…
Hey Wil, I wanted to let you know that you’ve inspired me to start my own blog. You can find it at:
http://heartmybeat.blogspot.com/
…and I do give you credit in my first post 😉
I hope the weather is warmer and drier for you later this week here in the Bay Area. (But truthfully….fat chance of that…so bring a raincoat or at least an umbrella!)
Sounds like you’re in the “writing zone” now, Wil. Keep going while you’re ahead…
For the record, however, you could do much more on a TI-99/4A than play games! It was programmable in BASIC and Assembler and eventually in Small C using a compiler my father ported. I guess you won’t be getting that invitation for Texas Instrument’s keynote address 😉
My cool uncle had an Apple and my cool friends had C64’s but that TI was my introduction into programming. While it was a strange processor I had a good chuckle while doing work for my M.Sc. on Texas Instruments DSPs for cell phones. Those chips are the successor to the 9900 so twenty years after working on that home computer it was actually useful for me to know about TI’s funky use of workspaces instead of registers.
Harry
I don’t know a whole lot about Macs
though I remember them from when I was a child and we had them in school. I wish I could come to this event,I really enjoyed reading what you are going present at the event. (I really need to take a trip to CA one of these days,lol).
I remember playing around with macs in 1983 while I was in a halfway house. It seems the local school districts all had macs and the teachers that came to help us bone up on our reading, writing and math skills were able to secure about 4 or 5 of them for the halfway house.
They were pretty damn nice, too.
Gee, your friend Kevin’s Apple ][ kinda sucked…
I had an Apple ][+ then e, and it was hooked up to a TV, until we eventually got a green and black monitor, and the first game I ever had on it was Gobbler, which was a Pac Man clone.
🙂
And now there’s the MAC MINI!
My God! You had a 99/4A, too, Wil? Rock!
My TI was my constant companion through high school…I had the P-Box, the disk drive, the memory expansion, Extended BASIC, all that stuff. I not only played games on it, I wrote some decent games for it. I left it behind when I went to college, though, and the next computer I got was an XT clone about three years later.
I don’t know what became of that old TI, but, one day, if I have the money, I might try to find the parts to put one together like I used to have. Or just run an emulator on my Linux box…
One of the wonderful things about your writing, Wil, is that even though there are some stories (like today’s about discovering the world of Mac) to which I can’t relate through my own experience, I still have a terrific time reading them. My husband, seated at the computer next to mine, asks what I’m laughing at and I just have to say you have to read it for yourself. Those lucky folks who get to attend your talk and the reading/signing.
My uncle had a Heathkit computer that he put together that used a casette (you know that format of music that’s gone the way of the 8-track?) drive. Talk about clunky! The only game he had for it was a moon lander simulation. I still think about that when I have hardware problems…
I remember getting the first Mac lab in high school – all those dull beige cased ][c’s! Snakebyte ruled.
hey wil,
good luck with the reading etc, its wicked good so far! i wish i could be there to see/hear the rest of it! i’ll just have to wait for the web link i guess!
take care,
“long days and pleasant nights”
rach
My first computer was an Apple IIc with 128k of RAM. Yes K not MB! We got it as a christmast present from our mom when we were kids. It was the christmas of my 8th grade year. We LOVED that computer! (You should have seen me trying to talk mom into a 10 MB hard drive for that computer…it was almost as expensive as the computer itself and she said, “No, the floppy drive will be good enough.”) My best friend and I programmed all kinds of goofy stuff on it.
Ahhh, those were the days.
That same friend and I will both be there Friday night to hear you read, and we are very much looking forward to it! Thanks again for taking time out to do this on a Friday night!
Hey Wil,
That sounds like it will be a very entertaining speech. 🙂 Good Job! I hope the kids lunches got made after all that thinking? (HaHaHa)I love the Stand By Me beginning, and the story about your Dad. Typical kid stuff, the audiance will giggle to themselves in amusement and nostalgia, and will relate totally.
I have been inspired by you to write again, and below I am going to put my blog addy and I would love you to keep up with it and maybe make a comment if you have time! I only have one entry so far as I created it today but I will post daily and will have some of my writing and stories up soon. Leave a commmet, I would love to see that you are reading it and what you think of my stories.
Oh, I forgot my blog addy so you can visit mine
http://quinceycg.blogspot.com/
I remember MacWorld that year. I was lucky enough to be near end the line for autographs at the Qume booth. I had a horrible crush on you, and we spent several minutes geeking out about Macs and how much we loved them. I’d always been a big fan of “Wesley” – but it was that day that I truly learned who Wil was, and I’ve remained one of your biggest fans ever since. Thank you for WWDN, and for showing us that celebrities can live their lives with a high level of integrity.
To Casey C in Orlando…
Yep, that’s Keith Coogan. He and Wil did “Toy Soldiers” together.
I liked Keith in Hiding Out the best. He was great! Adventures in Babysitting, next. [Although, Elizabeth Shue is the main reason why I like Adv/Babysitting. No offense, Keith!]
Ahhh.. the good old days of the Mac Classic and IIcx. I’m sitting here writing this entry on my 17″ Powerbook using VPC (heh don’t ask.. work makes me) reveling in the fact that Wil seems to be another die-hard Mac user. After spending many an hour reading entry after entry here, and listening last night to the NPR interview, I went out this morning and bought a copy of Just a Geek to read on the flight back to Dallas. I’m in SF right now for Macworld but unfortunately won’t get to see Wil since I fly back tonight. Have fun on Thursday Wil, and I’m sure you’ll do fine. From everything I’ve seen and heard from you, the participants are in for a real treat!
Jeff
Hmm, everyone else feels old since they know what you’re talking about. I feel unsufferable young because I haven’t the faintest clue! Ha.
But I envy those who’ll get to hear your entire story, sounds funny! Have a great time, Wil!
Every time you say “Union Square” I get excited and think you mean NYC. And then I remember, and feel like somehow the center of my universe is on the wrong coast. Tonight in this sleet and rain, the city’s a flood.
I hope you enjoy your MacWorld presentation. Your audience certainly will.
Wow, your story about the Apple Computer takes me back in time as when I was in my twenties I had an Apple IIe as my first computer. A friend of mine started a fantastic business back in the mid eighties and he claims he owes much of his success to MacIntosh.
Last summer, I saw an apple IIe displayed in a glass case at a local jr. college here in the Bay Area (part of some exhibition documenting computer evolution). I squealed to my mom, “Look mom, it’s our computer!” (At the time, that computer of ours had just been donated to the local Goodwill where they probably just scratched their heads upon receiving it.) Yep, back in the day, we were the only ones in the neighborhood w/ a COLOR monitor hooked up to our apple IIe… Ooohhhh… 😉 Enjoyed your preview, thanks for sharing. -t
Sounds awesome so far, Wil! I’m very excited to hear you speak. (I’m your online groupie…I virtually flock to every one of your interviews.) Please do come and visit us again in Portland, OR…pretty please?
i worked with computers at the various radio stations i’ve been employed at long before i actually owned one…i played a video game on a computer for the first time on a trs-80…the game was space lander…you had to calculate the angle of descent, speed, and fuel consumption of your ship in order to land safely on the moon…i don’t know how many times i crashed my ship into the moon before i finally got it to land safely…but there was much joy when i finally did.
! dude ! I had a spectrum. Anyone remember them? the cute squidgy grey buttons, half an hour load times for the worst games ever? Though to be fair I was born in 1984, so I hate to think how long they took to load back then. Keep up the good work. In a fit of foolishness I just decided to buy your books from amazon. Even though I am overdrawn. They had better be good!
John
Ah yes the early Macs.
I never had the luxury of owning any sort of computer in the early days, but my first experience with an Apple was the Lisa!
http://oldcomputers.net/lisa.html
I used one of these incredible machines for all sorts of things, especially graphics at my work… I must admit at times it was more play than work!!
But compared to any other “personal” computer around at the time, it was amazing.
Eventually the Macs took over, for me to some extent, the Lisa had a greater variety of software tools than the early Macs, but still compared to any other pc at the time it was a neat tool…. and toy!!
Unfortunately, I never persued a Mac ownership, ending up going down the pc route…. (mea culpa)!
Wil, thankyou for your wonderful recollection of the impact that meeting Mac made to you.
Again, your landscape of words helps us all to enter your world and relive a part of it and our own as well.
All the best at Macworld and keep on writing about all the joys of life.
Great hommage to Mr. King in your “first time I saw a Macintosh” spiel, Wil. I’m still snickering.
I really feel old. I remember walking across campus in college balling my eyes out because my roommate had dropped my punch cards and they were all out of order…
>
Pook
I’m a late comer to the world of personal computers. However I do remember in the eighties, it seemed every computer I encountered in school was an Apple.
I know most viruses get written for pc windows, but I wonder what other advantages a Mac has. Are they simillar to pc/windows at all?
“Have you thought about selling cars?” Comedy gold. Now we know where you get it, Wil.
First computer I ever used was a Commodore PET in elementary school. First computer my family ever owned was a Commodore 64. My Commodore 128 lasted me all the way through high school and college, and finally died right before I started teaching. For some reason, I went to a Mac rather than an Amiga. Then the Mac died, and I turned to the dark side. But I’ve used both Windows and Mac machines at various jobs since; I’m biboxal.
Did you really say “Pish” ?
Not to worry you will have them from the beginning. I have used computers since 1981. I am a librarian and we used acoustic couplers to connect a phone (the old kind with a base and the part you held in your hand)to the databases we used. And you had to go to special classes to learn the “secret” language you needed to communicate with the database.
How did we all live in the before times?!
Wil,
Loved your story. It flowed so smoothly. Your parents have a great sense of humor and you have inherited it. Keep up the good work.
Freeman 🙂
Okay, I gotta share my apple story too. My dad was an early computer fanatic, and he insisted on buying me an apple ][e for my college papers. I found it incredibly intimidating. I was so afraid I would crash it by hitting one wrong button. That’s why I was so proud of writing my first paper on it, and the morning it was due, I excitedly hit the “print” button. This was my first paper AND my first lesson in the importance of having enough printer ribbon on hand. (Remember printer ribbon instead of ink cartridges? Why hasn’t the nightmare changed with the technology?) Anyway, I had to quickly hand write the paper off the computer screen, and I got a lousy grade on it. This was my first lesson in how a computer affects your writing style. Soon after this, my sister-in-law commandeered the ][e for the nephews. I didn’t get another personal computer until 1999.
Wil, the memories you evoke!!
So no one’s mentioned the Atari ST line. 520ST here, hooked up to a TV. But it had mostly standard ports, 512K of RAM, and a single sided 3.5 in floppy. Beat the heck out of the Mac pricewise and it had a GORGEOUS color monitor or black and white monochrome that was also very nice. It was my THIRD computer behind the ’99 and ’64. Lot of PC for the money, good games, useful, etc. What was the name of that $40/mo service you could dial into then back out of to various area codes? Connect PC, PC connect, can’t remember…Daddy, what’s a BBS?
For the record, I had an Apple][+ when that came out. It could be hooked up to a TV (although we had a dedicated monitor for it) and I did have PacMan for it (and lots of other games). It also had an AppleCat 300 baud modem (later supplemented with the huge 1200 baud expansion board).
And then we got an Apple ][GS. It was a lot better than the Mac. It had a color monitor, mouse, hard drive, lots of programs, better quality sound board, etc. And then Apple dumped it like a $3 hooker and stopped supporting it so they could concentrate on the Mac. And that’s the story of why I’ve never had a Mac. My dad was so pissed that he refused to ever let Apple see another nickel of his money after they stopped supporting (and encouraged vendors to stop supporting) the brand new computer he had just bought.
I do remember 80’s computers, probably not as well as Wil, as I was born in 1978, but I do remember. My first computer was an Apple IIc. Back in high school, a year or so after we sold the IIc, my dad threw away all my old disks for it, including the Applesoft Basic disks with my programs from computer camp, all 3 Zork games, and a whole slew of other stuff. He said it was worthless because we didn’t have a system to run them on. Sniff, sniff. Now I have one that I got for free. It would be cool if I still had the disks so that I could fire up my old stuff and reminisce.
If anyone is interested in the history of the various models offered by Apple, check out the site: http://www.apple-history.com
It has info and tech specs on all the computers Apple has made. Its pretty cool.
Best of luck Wil on your speech on Thursday. 🙂
Curt
my first computer is a dell latitude d600 this is my first very own but then again im only 14
Your blog is always an entertaining read, and since you update it so often a WB link to it sits prominently in my Firefox browser. Thank you for sharing your thoughts so purposefully.
Thank you.
Here’s a mention of you:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/6181
Wil,
Thanks for the preview. Loved it! Wish I could make it out to Macworld to hear it in person. Today’s keynote must have been something live. I’ll bet you got to see his Steveness in person. Ah, two of my heros in the same room. Don’t know what I’d do!
My first computer was a Colecovision Adam, complete with Basic compiler, but my brother mostly played games on it. The first computer I bought was a crappy 386. Next came my love affair with the Mac.
And I haven’t looked back since. It’s nice to use a computer that actually does what you want it to do, with minimal standing on your head.
Best of Luck on Thursday!
My first computer was a TI 99/4A – my parents got it for free as a promo when they recarpeted the house. We had it hooked up in the basement to the Sears 13″ color TV. I spent many an afternoon copying Basic programs from phone book-sized manuals, just to see a blocky little man “dance” around the screen.
Later in junior high, I bought a Commodore 64 from a local doctor’s son who was upgrading to an Amiga. Some friends and I used to swap programs all the time. In high school, I saw my first Mac in person, a Mac Classic owned by the (wealthy) stepfather of one of my friends. Another friend’s family bought a 386 when they first came out (I think it was to the tune of $3K or so) and if we were really lucky, we got to play a game on it every so often…
It’s wierd how things like this just seem to come out of thin air when we least expect them to.
I had organized the annual “Transgender Day of Rememberance” memorial here in Indy. When my main speaker fell through, it was up to me to fill the gap. I stressed and stressed and stressed about it… but nothing came. The night before the vigil I woke up at 2am and the memorial speech came gushing out. I couldn’t even type fast enough.
Weird how those thinks work, eh?
I wish i was you.
Hey there Wil,
Are you still doing a book signing at Macworld on Thursday? If so, is it happening just after your presentation?
Thanks in advance
The very first computer I ever used was an Atari 800 that my cousin owned. We used to sit hunched over that thing for hours typing in machine language programs. I vaguely remember working on one that was supposed to be a horseracing game, but we never got it to work. As soon as I graduated High School in 1983, I let him talk me into buying the latest system out – the 800XL. I even got an external hard drive for the thing. Big mistake, as Atari never supported the machine and they had a new one out less than a year after I bought it. The XL came with a basic database that I filled trying to catalog all my books. It got relegated to the top of my closet and I think I finally got rid of it a few years ago.
Only one mention of Atari above, and the “newer” ST at that! My first computer was an Atari 800 XL. I hooked mine up to a green monochrome monitor because my parents didn’t want me sitting too close to the TV. I guess they read somewhere that computer monitors were not bad for you like TV was.
I also remember those insane cassette tape drives. One rainy day I spent 4 hours typing in lines of game code from BYTE magazine, then “saving” it to the tape. My mom made me lunch, and when I came back to reap the rewards of my labor I discovered that the program (we didn’t call them applications back then) hadn’t been saved!
My mom went berserk on my behalf. I just shrugged and started typing again. 20 years later she still recalls that story.
Love your blog Wil!