I can't even remember the year right now, but the place was Atlantic
City (before they tore down the old casinos), at the First East Coast
Computer Fair. I was there exhibiting my Wave Mate Jupiter II small
computer systems (also available as a DYI kit). Everyone was wearing
IBM tee shirts (Itty Bitty Machine company --IBM later made them
change the name --what became of them?). Apple was there in a booth
with a (prototype?) Apple (1) computer. It was just a circuit
board. They had a crude homemade case, monitor, and a keyboard that
they pointed out was not part of the product. It was not impressive
at the time. These were the days when the big names in PCs worked in
garage shops.
Years later, my dealers were also Apple II dealers. They sold my
systems as small business systems, and the Apple II to the schools,
and for home use.
More years later (1979), I sold my computer company, and went into
development of a dual floppy disk drive. The product was becoming a
hit when DEC scooped us up. I remember that DEC made some overture
about buying Apple at the time, and Steve laughed and said something
like he would more likely buy DEC.
A few years later (1984-5) and the Mac arrived. I saw one at the
local PC store. I said, "This is the future of user interfaces, and
I am getting on board now". I immediately bought two (one for me and
one for my wife) along with a printer. It was the first computer I
owned that I did not design and build myself.
At DEC they made a policy that employees must use DEC computers. I
managed to get an exception and had a MAC on my desk for the rest of
my career, even after merging with Quantum Computer Corp.
All those companies were broken up and transformed into something
less than their heyday. However, Apple has yet to reach it's peak!
Apple has hung in there, and so have I.
Here's to the next 30 years of innovations!
Dennis
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