still building and burning

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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142 thoughts on “still building and burning”

  1. Nice one ! My first computer was a sinclair zx81. I learned my first basic programming on that one. It had 2 KB ram and later i bought a 16 KB ram-pack for it. Later on i bought a zx spectrum. I still have it as a gadget on my desk at the office where i work. The responses i get from co-workers are hillairious 🙂

  2. Ah macs. They rock. I’ve loved them ever since I switched from my Atari 800 xl to an Apple IIe in the early eighties. I had to wait for my first Mac until college (couldn’t afford one until then), but I’ve loved them even in my ten-year haitus into pc land. I most recently rejoined the ranks with my new powerbook and 10.3. Apple has revitalized themselves once again. I trust you caught Steve’s keynote today. I wasn’t there for it, but i got it over webcast, as I’ll most likely have to get yours as well. T’is a shame, but work won’t spring for the conference. I’ll be walking the floor on a day-pass Wednesday, so maybe I’ll run into you. I’ll be going to the borders gig too — try not to geek out on you too much. I always love seeing you at signings or events, exchanging a few friendly words. It’s nice to see that one of us ‘geeks’ has found a really awesome gig and is noteworthy enough to be asked to give a keynote at Macworld… just because you’re you and you do what you do. Good job, bro!

  3. My first computer was a Sinclair Spectrum 48k, one of the original rubber mat keyboard ones. I remember the keyboard membrane never recovering from Daly Thomson’s Decathlon.
    I then progressed to a Spectrum Plus (plastic keyboard, same membrane technology underneath). Actually I still have that one languishing in my garage – minus a few keys.
    We used to have a weekly magazine in the UK around this time called ‘Input’ which had source code you could program into your Spectrum/Dragon-Tandy/Commodore Vic.

  4. I was at that Macworld show (or maybe it was 1989), wandering through the booths. “Hey, there’s Wil Wheaton”.
    You and your friend had a telnet session open and were trying to hack into one of the companys’ networks (unsuccessfully, it appeared). 🙂

  5. I broke my first computer before i could walk, but i was too young to remember what it was.
    Penny in the fan slot does it every time!
    Congrats on learning the value of an “Apple” early. ^_^
    Good luck tomorrow! We’ll be looking forward to the webcasts!
    OH, and i thought you meant Union Square NYC…. We’d love to have you over!!
    ~Marj ^_~

  6. My first computer was an Apple ][e, the ones they had at school in the library. The programs they had were ones that taught us how to type and solve math problems quickly, lest the saucers with the answers on them reach the ground first and blow up. I shunned video games for a long time because I was traumatized by the beeping sound the computer made every time I wasn’t fast enough and a saucer blew up.
    But if there was one game I loved, it was this educational series of games that typically came on two floppies. There were a couple different kinds of games in each edition, but the biggest one was an RPG-ish “Choose Your Own Adventure” kind of game. They were most often history based and the one I remember the most was about the American Revolution. You were some random colonial who had to help do the whole tea party thing and the whole Paul Revere’s ride thing. One thing I remember was looking at a map and trying to figure out how far it was between two points “as the crow flies”. When you’re in the first grade, you don’t come across that term often and I kept getting it wrong.
    Does anyone here have any idea of what the name of that series of games is?

  7. Awesome story, thanks for sharing :o)
    Being the middle child, most of the electronics negotiations were done by my older brothers… and I thankfully got to reap the rewards of their persistance.
    The first computer I have real recollection of (aside from a commodore terminal we had at one point and an apple IIe I played lemonade stand on…) Was a mac “classic” that my dad borrowed from work to use at home. The first papers I ever typed for school were done on that thing. A few years later when it was time to actually buy a dedicated family computer, we went and got an Apple IIci. Wow, were we the coolest. It had a COLOR screen, and could play so many more cool games.
    I remember learning how to assign little GIFs as icons for folders, and proudly put a pixelated captain picard as my own folder on there.
    My brothers convinced my dad to ‘upgrade’ this thing so many times… we were one of the first families I knew that had an external drive that could play CDs that had GAMES on them (myst was our first cd based game…) an external hard drive (because we typed so many papers for school… really… ;o) a scanner, and an external modem that my parents forever regretted buying. *LOL*
    A couple years ago, I dug this thing out of my parents basement, and shipped it to NY. Yeah, shipping probably cost more than its worth, unless you try and price the nostalgia factor. It actually still works, and I could even get online with it if I were very patient….
    Maybe I’ll just hold onto it for another 10-15 years, and when I have kids, they can hook the thing up and laugh at the pixelated picard proudly emblazoned on a ‘katrina’ folder holding a half dozen book reports from the 80s. Like a digital time capsule.

  9. Now I have to tell my old Mac/old pc story. Wil, see what you made me do 😉
    I used the Trash 80 in Jr high and I remember geeking when someone brought the speaker and the software to make it “Speak.” Being young and male, We made it curse, but it was programmed to bleep on a Curse.
    I also went to computer camp where I learned more about Basic and Pascale. The pascale software made a turtle move around the screen. Does anyone else remember that software? I wanted it so bad after my parents purchased my very own IIc, but the pascale software was too expensive and I never got it.
    I also remember Byte magazine with those really long programs you could copy to the IIc. I used to hate all those pages of data.

  10. People say that alcoholics remember their first drink, so what does it say about those of us who remember our first brush with an Apple computer? My parents worked for IBM and Digital and I still managed to be a child of the Apple. Hearing your story strikes such a familiar chord for me. I remember, fondly, my first Apple IIe and subsequent introduction to the Mac Classic. It’s been an endless love affair since. 🙂
    ~marnie

  12. I hope you have a great time at MacWorld. I love the prelim. I live in the Bay Area and I’m so sorry I won’t be able to be at the book signing. But I have read both of the books and I LOVE THEM!!! The weather is supposed to be nice this weekend. Have a great time will!! They’re gonna love you !!

  14. Hey Jesse,
    Yes, Clint Pulley is my father. His Geneve (successor to the TI-99/4A) was finally retired a few years ago though it hadn’t seen much use for some time… A bit slow by today’s standards 😉
    Another bit about LOGO: originally it was developed by MIT with Texas Instruments and the TI-99/4A and the Apple II were the two original supported hardware platforms. Terrapin Software licensed the original Apple II version and still upgrades and sells it today.
    Harry

  15. Wil, I’m so excited to attend. I got very lucky this year and my consulting gig bought me a MacWorld Users pass. I didn’t tell them, but the best part is that I get to go hear you speak tomorrow! I can’t wait, as I’ve been a long time WWDN lurker, this is my first chance to hear you speak. I might make it to Borders too, depends on work. 😀

  16. Your preview is wonderful!! Makes me wish I could attend!! Best of luck, Wil.
    Have read both of your books and enjoy your blog immensely!! You are a wonderful storyteller.
    M.

  17. WOW
    wonderful – hopefully you can post all of it soon.
    I remeber the early mac but didn’t get one till the performa series 🙂
    Now my boyfriend works for apple 🙂
    Unfortunaly I haven’t been to a macworld yet but oneday soon I hope to go…
    Maybe when we move to California 🙂

  18. I just wanted to say that in my book Thriller is still cool 🙂
    But then again so is most 80’s music 😀

  20. I was laughing so hard after I read the first line of your presentation I had to come back five minutes later to read the rest of it. 🙂

  22. Oh man, I got my first computer about the same time(C-64). I remember taking a day or two just to type in some of those games from “Compute!” and “Byte”. Seemed like the best ones were always written in assembly code and a real pain in the ass to type in. I also remember getting really excited when my school got in the Apple IIgs “Woz” editions in.

  24. Awesome recollection Will, you have captured the magic of experiencing technology. The splash of 256 wonderful, amazing, enthralling colors. You were way richer than me though, all I could afford was a Timex Sinclair that used a tape recorder to store data files…I never could get that to work right.*sigh* Thanks for the memories.

  25. My dad worked in DEC’s (Digital Equipment Corp) software division in the early 80’s, but our first home unit was the TRS-80 with the vaunted cassette drive, ugh! Later we had a couple of DEC machines including the Rainbow. I started with Mac’s in college (the early 90’s) and now I own 3, an Imac desktop and two g4 laptops…back when I started that probably would have been enough power to run NASA.

  26. Hi Harry,
    Thanks for the info on the Turtle/LOGO. I did some research and it is the same thing I worked on in Computer Camp. That Turtle brings back so many memories. Who would’ve thought I could get a job in computers back then.
    I do remember those text RPG like games, but I do not remember any titles.
    Thriller does rock.
    Thanks,
    Chris

  27. Believe it or not, my first computer wasn’t until the summer of 2000. Windows Millineum. And I still have it! I came from a poorish family too, eating out was always an event. I plan to buy a brand new computer sometime before summer.

  28. HAha, that’s awesome! I remember when “the mouse” came into existence. It was this beautiful, strange, slightly scary concept. My grandma tried to use the mouse as a “pedal” when I set up her computer. I had to tell her “Grandma, this isn’t a sewing machine, this is a computer and you’re stepping on the mouse.”
    This really *really* confused her at first, but she eventually got the hang of it. 🙂

  30. Ah, the stories of first computers! I saved my ice cream money for a year to purchase a Vic 20! Never worked right, but I owned a computer. After that came the Atari 65 XE (or was it XL), then an IBM PS2-25. (Ah the joys of 2 3.5 floppies, no hard drive, and running Fortran and CAD programs on a boat anchor! The best thing I can say for that expensive machine is that it was unbreakable. I tried throwing it on to my loft bed in college only to have it miss and crash onto the FRAME of the bed below. It survived with only a slightly bent piece of sheet metal!) After that, well, computers became more affordable, with more ‘stuff’. Now if only I could keep up with all of it!

  31. Oh my, what a memory jogger! My first computer was an Atari 800 with a full 64K memory and a cassette deck for backup. I think that cost me about

  32. Writing you from a PowerBook G4, Titanium, 2001 edition. My first computer was a Commodore 64 at school. I learned how to write my name in flashing letters in Basic. The experience left me so traumatized that many years later, in graduate school, I chose to write my thesis in long hand and type it up on an electric typewriter. Soon after that, I was hired by a crazy woman who was brave enough to tell me, learn how to use these and I’ll give you a raise. ::trumpet fanfare::
    The computer I learned on was a PowerMac 5200. I was hooked. Jump to tonight, I look around my work area and I have the aforementioned Titanium, the iPod hooked up to the stereo and an old PowerBook G3 that I use for storage. I have attained techno-joy.

  33. seems like the first post for an… [wait for it…] IBM PCjr. Stop laughing. Okay, keep laughing. Lemme know when you’re finished.
    Dad bought it in ’84 for the family. 1 5.25″ floppy, 2 cartridge slots, and a wireless keyboard [both the original “chicklet” one and the regular one], 128k ram [stock] PLUS a Tecmar jr. captain & jr. cadet add on modules that went on the entire side of the box to take it all the way up to 512k, just like full on PC XTs & ATs. [kickass!] heh.

  34. Well, my first ‘real’ computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000 that my grandfather built for myself and him as a joint gift. we had a blast on that thing! He taught me to code, and I taught him how to game, LOL!
    the Times is gone, and so is my Grandfather, but I now have a HP running Win XP (Yeah, I know, it’s not an apple, LOL! Sorry Wil!) I too came from the ‘working class’ of the food chain, so I’ve been there as well.
    Good luck at MacWorld Wil! you’re gonna hit the mark, I know it!

  37. Good intro. Refreshing clarity about the specifics of your computer use in the past (most people are like, “oh yeah I had one of those Radio Shack deals, TRS-something” back then.
    There are only a handful of “white trash” or otherwise “poor” computer users from a score ago :-); since it’s such a small group, you’d probably be wise to delete your reference too it at the conference (so you don’t alienate the yuppie progeny at Mac world).
    signed
    80’s poor mac user

  38. Have fun at MacWorld, Wil! Wish I could attend one of your readings someday….it would be great to see you on stage again.
    Happy New Year to you and yours!
    Em

  41. I dont even remember what my first computer was. All i know it was 95 or something and I was overjoyed to not have to use the computers at school that so many people touched. I have a thing with germs. The whole i would be wondering who touched the keys, did they wash there hands after using the bathroom,and/or did they wipe their noses. I also wasnt allowed to anything to the computer but turn it on and use it only for basic reasons. I was still content to not some unknown ailment and not suffer a horrible death from germs. Yeah, i was a wierd kid and am now a wierd adult.
    Anywho, the one thing that stood out from your whole story was you packing the kids lunches. I thought that was sweet.

  43. Saw you during your days at Acme in LA and you were funny. Good to hear that you will be speaking at MacWorld. Your story made me consider that what might be familiar to one is a completely new and stimulating experience to another. I’m an older geek, but this is my first MacWorld.
    Break a leg.

  44. My first post! Woohoo! 🙂
    The first computer I used was a C64 of my brother’s. Great games, and it only took an eternity to load them! After saving money from working at a warehouse, I bought my first computer, a ColecoVision ADAM add-on with printer and spare power supply.
    Since then I’ve been through many computers from a C128D to many PCs from the Tandy 1000EX to my current Athlon 1000. I also have a couple of Beige G3 PowerMacs that I’m using for email and learning web page design.

  46. I love what you have so far! It’s going to be a great presentation. I’m shooting you tons “Awesome MacWorld Mojo” right now. 🙂

  48. Ah, the joys of the early computer. Our first home computer was an Atari 800XL–I must have been around five. We had the oh-so-spiffy cassette drive, and my dad did all sorts of crazy programming on it. In about ’86 we went the PC route, and I’ve never looked back (as an engineer, I don’t have much choice, at least at work), but I have some early memories of the Apple IIe at my little Catholic grade school. Anyway, what you had written sounds wonderful–even as a non-Mac user I can appreciate it!

  49. I have no MAC, but I am still a geek. I am thinking that if I was to make a lot of money someday I would buy the best MAC and the best PC, and then race them.
    Downhill.
    And then I would go get some beer.
    Yes.
    That is what I would do.

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