When I entered college in the mid-’80s, I did so as an Electrical Engineering/Computer Science (EECS) student. My high school counselor noted that I had taken our school’s computer classes and told me, “Computer programming would be a good field to go into.” The actual extent of my programming experience had more to do with designing Lode Runner levels than learning BASIC, but, it was true, I liked computers for some reason. A career in programming seemed like the thing to pursue.

During my first year of college I stumbled upon one of the university’s Apple computer labs. The room had a few Lisas and perhaps a dozen Macs—the original 128K Mac, back when they still called them Macintoshes. A student was using one of the Macs to do something—work on a flyer—and I was amazed by how he was doing it. He was using something I had never seen before—a mouse—to freely move the cursor around the screen. The cursor opened menus and panels to change objects’ patterns and shades. The program had different fonts that looked nothing like the glowing green pixel-type I hammered out in command-line rows in my programming classes.

I asked the guy what program he was using. He said, “This is MacDraw, and this computer is a Macintosh.”

He continued working on his flyer—putting a grey box behind a white box to make a drop shadow, making type larger and bold for a headline, and moving elements around on screen. It was astounding. I watched him print the flyer to a LaserWriter in the corner of the lab and caught a glimpse of the output before he picked it up. I’d never seen a computer produce anything like it before.

In those few minutes, my relationship with computers changed.

The next day, I signed up for a Macintosh training session, which after a few minutes of sitting down in front of a Mac seemed unnecessary. I learned to use MacWrite, MacPaint, and MacDraw. I started doing freelance word-processing and graphics editing by renting time on a classmate’s Mac. Unconsciously, I was entering the then-unnamed field of desktop publishing.

A few college quarters later, with a pointed question from my girlfriend—“Why are you studying computer programming when you don’t even enjoy it?”—my school’s EECS program and I parted ways. A year later, I was working as a word-processor/desktop publisher and taking graphic design courses. Twenty-five-plus years later, I am working as a graphic designer and still using Macs professionally and personally.

Graphic design existed before the Macintosh—but I wasn’t aware of it. When I saw the student using MacDraw to make a flyer, I didn’t know that people did things like that for a living. What I saw was someone using a computer to create something. And, the ease—the simplicity—of the Mac as a creative tool changed my view of computers from something to make things for to something to make things with.

I didn’t know who Steve Jobs was when I first saw the Mac. I don’t remember if I knew who Steve Jobs was when I first got a Macintosh Plus, or when I started working in desktop publishing, or when I started studying graphic design.

But, somewhere along the way I learned that it was Steve Jobs that made the first Macintosh so insanely great that it changed the course of my life.

And, for that I say thank you, Steve Jobs. And, thanks for all the good things you’ve given us.

…Thy name is “Titanium.”

In 2001 Apple introduced its Titanium PowerBook G4. It was then, and remains now, my favorite laptop. The PowerBook G4 still wasn’t quite as fast as a desktop Power Mac G4, but it was much, much sexier.

This batch of 2001 Apple ads really only cover two subjects: laptops and DVD authoring. DVD authoring may not be as big a deal in these days of online streaming video, but the laptop lifestyle still seems to be going strong*.

You can fulfill your Apple ad nostalgia via the thumbnails below (and find more at maxpixpix on Flickr).

*Smartphones and mythical tablet devices haven’t supplanted laptops—yet.

…from the days before gigahertz.

Another batch of Apple Computer ads from the late, great pages of MacAddict magazine. In the year 2000 we were still running laptops on 400MHz PowerPC G3s and desktops on 500MHz G4s. Just short of ten years later and smartphones—in this case, the iPhone 3G S—are running CPUs at 600MHz. Desktops are running Quad-core 3GHz chips, sometimes two to a machine.

You can peruse the ads via the thumbnails below or at maxpixpix on Flickr.

(No multi-chip machines in our household, though. Maybe by 2020.)

…(of the data storage variety).

More MacAddict-excised Apple ads from the late ’90s. Miss T actually had a Bondi blue iMac—her first computer!

My first laptop was a PowerBook G3 like the one in the thumbnail above. Good times.

…Apple ads from the ’90s.

In an effort to create more clear, horizontal spaces in the house, I’ve taken the small step of throwing out a stack of old MacAddict magazines. The stack starts in the late ’90s, at the lowest point of Apple Computer, Inc.’s mindshare and stock price—Steve Jobs had just returned to the company, the iMac (never mind the iPod or iPhone) had not been introduced, and business and technology pundits everywhere reported only doom and gloom for Apple and the Macintosh. At the time there were only two print publications that held out any hope for Apple’s survival: Macworld and MacAddict. Macworld’s editorial tone was reasoned and cautiously optimistic. MacAddict was irreverent and fiercely loyal.

Ten years later, the state of the print publication industry and the fortunes of Apple Inc. (Apple dropped Computer from its name in 2007) are very different.

In any case, I’m paging through old MacAddict issues, tearing out articles and Apple ads for the sake of Mac geekdom. If you want to share in the geekery you can see the ads at maxpixpix on Flickr.

More ad tearing, scanning, and posting to come.

…last Thursday.

Macworld Expo was last week, and last week was Apple’s final appearance at the Expo. Quite a bit has been written up about why Apple decided to bow out of the annual January event—the simple answers seem to be:

• Apple doesn’t need Macworld to generate “buzz” about its products—Apple products make their own news
• Apple doesn’t need a tradeshow to put their products in front of consumers—there are 230 Apple Stores worldwide stocked with the latest Apple products
• Apple would rather make product announcements on their own timetable—not Macworld’s

For Apple’s Macworld swan song there were no major platform launches—no iPod, no iPhone, no iGroundbreakingproduct. The stars of Apple’s pavilion were all Mac: iLife and iWork ’09 and a revamped 17-inch MacBook Pro. Correspondingly, gone were the throngs of iPod groupies from ’05 and ’06, and the insane crowds from the ’07 iPhone announcement.

At first I thought, “There’s hardly anyone here.” But, then I realized there were thousands of people in the convention center perusing product displays, grabbing booth swag, sitting in on demos, and talking all things Mac—it just wasn’t crazy crowded.

Just like Macworlds of old.

There were, of course, still vendors selling iPod and iPhone cases, stereo speaker systems, A/V output equipment, you name it. Even Google, which doesn’t sell any physical products, was on the iPhone bandwagon.

IDG, the company that puts on Macworld Expo, has already announced plans for Macworld 2010. What next year’s Expo will be without Apple is hard to say. But, those of us wanting to see the latest must-have from Apple—whatever and whenever that might be—will be doing so at one of those stores with the giant fruit logo on the front.

Good luck, Macworld! Good luck.

I’ve had an iPhone (3G) for just 20 days and I’m still learning how to use it. (Did you know this iPhone-thing is more than just a phone?) For example, one of my early-adopter 2G-owning coworkers pointed out that you can save Mobile Safari URLs to the iPhone’s home screen. “Cool!” I thought, and I quickly tried this functionality with a couple of my favorite sites:

Hahlo

and, Kotaku

However, when I tried to add Max Pictures’ Blather, I got this

Well, that wasn’t going to work.

So, a quick Google search and a tutorial later, and maxpictures.com has its own custom iPhone home screen icon. Now, for the two of you that might potentially bookmark this site on your iPhone (and you know who you are), Max’s icon awaits you.

…on Virgin America.

I dislike air travel. It’s not a fear of flying or anything. I guess I dislike commercial air travel. I don’t like having to get to the airport to meet the airline’s schedule, or dealing with the increasing luggage restrictions and TSA searches. I really don’t like how crowded and small coach seating is. I suppose it’s my just desserts for having grown up consuming the products of caged laying hens and on the odd occasion, veal.

Despite my extreme distaste for commercial air travel I flew back to northern California after Comic-Con. My friend Autoteknik recently raved about Virgin America (both coach and first class) so I decided to give them a try.

The seats on my flight did seem a little roomier than the last Southwest flight I had taken. But, since the cabin was completely full it ultimately made little noticeable difference. Likewise, Red, the in-flight entertainment system available to every traveler, differentiated Virgin from flights I had taken on Southwest, Alaskan, and Hawaiian Air. But, it was an early flight and I was in no mood to make use of Red’s touchscreen-controlled TV, movies, music, chat, or games. In the end I arrived in the Bay Area just as cramped and cranky as I would have had I flown on Southwest. I guess traveling first class is what would have really made a difference.

Following are some low-res iPhone pix from my Virgin America flight.

I guess I’d fly on Virgin again.

…but not for everyone. And, by everyone, I mean, me.

While I knew there would be lines around the block at the Apple retail stores, I held out some hope that the situation would be better at the decidedly unglamorous AT&T stores. Miss T and I made an early morning pass at the AT&T store in Davis. No go—there were at least 80 people in line long before the store was scheduled to open at 8 a.m. Resigned to my fate of launch-day non-iPhoneness, I moped onto the train for my daily schlep to Berkeley.

The early-morning line at Berkeley’s Shattuck Avenue AT&T shop was similar to Davis’—maybe 100 people standing around waiting for their chance for 3G goodness. When I went out for lunch at 1 p.m., the line had disappeared. Either demand had dropped off or AT&T ran out of iPhones.

So, while I’ve missed out on ultimate early-adopter bragging rights, I’ve also hopefully avoided launch-day phone activation issues.

We’ll see how it goes.

And, what, exactly, is WWDC, you ask? WWDC is Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference.

And, why, exactly, should we care about Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, you ask? Macworld.com has some reasons. But, to save you a click, everyone is champing at the bit for iPhone 2, and WWDC seems like the likely candidate for the product announcement and hopefully for actual product availability.

But, more than the actual four-day conference, excitement is building around Steve Jobs’ keynote which starts at 10 a.m. PDT. You can vicariously experience the keynote oohs and aahs at Macworld’s Keynote Live Update. And, you can watch Apple’s simultaneous stock price rollercoaster ride on any online stock ticker (like E*TRADE’s—20 minutes delayed).

Long ago, in a land far, far away, I had a Macintosh LC. The LC was maxed out with 10 MB of RAM and an 80 MB hard drive. Its 68020 processor hummed along at a placid 16 MHz and it communicated to other computers via 1.44 MB floppies and 250 Kbps Localtalk. The LC had no modem because there were only four pages on the Web at the time and they were all in Switzerland. It was 1991 and the LC and 12-inch RGB monitor cost $2400 and barely ran Adobe Illustrator and Aldus PageMaker.

Last weekend, during a round of electronic-recycling prep, I hauled the LC out of the garage, hooked up the monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and flipped the power switch.

Nothing happened.

Somewhere in the intervening years and miles since I had last used the machine, the LC had given up the ghost.

So, back in the boxes went the LC and monitor, and they joined an old SCSI scanner, fax machine, 14-inch monitor, and Power Macintosh 7600. Miss T and I hauled the lot off to San Francisco, and deposited them with the Computer Recycling Center.

*The actual line of succession of my Mac household: Mac Plus > LC > 6100 > 7600 > iMac G3 > PowerBook G3 > iMac G4 > PowerBook G4 > MacBook Pro.

Since a walkthrough of film scanning services and techniques followed by a tutorial on image editing and cataloging would be 2 parts long and 3 parts boring, allow me to point you to Max Pictures’ Flickr page (under the not-so-helpful moniker maxpixpix) where I’ve uploaded some 150 or so of the 4,400+ images currently floating around in my iPhoto ’08 library.

More on this later (unless my compulsion with the photography or the blog goes on the wane).

Slow on the heels of the last photos-posted-late post are a batch of pics from the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. They are, of course, from a jaunt Miss T and I took last month.

So, the story goes like this: after a couple of false starts, one afternoon Miss T and I finally hiked out to the newishly-relocated Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. One exhibit—Tezuka: The Marvel of Manga—was the focus of our visit. Also of interest: Seeing how the Asian Art Museum had been adapted into the former San Francisco Public Library building.

You can see photos of the museum (including some of Tezuka’s works) on our gallery page, or at maxpixpix on Flickr.com. We’re playing around with Flickr right now and seeing how (and if) we can integrate Flickr’s capabilities with maxpictures.com.

Windows-only readers can skip this post.

For those of you wondering if Apple Inc. still makes computers, today’s special Apple Mac Event was a celebration of (almost*) all things Mac.

The first announcement was the new iMac form-factor. Thinner, sleeker, faster, shinier—the new, aluminimum-clad, 20– and 24-inch iMacs run Intel Core 2 Duo processors from 2.0 to 2.8GHz. Still no built-in Blu-ray burner, but I want one of these new iMacs almost as much as I want an iPhone. The keyboard alone is a thing of beauty.

Despite the new hardware offering, the bulk of the Mac Event time was devoted to iLife and iWork. iLife ’08 has significantly updated versions of iPhoto, iMovie, iWeb, iDVD, and GarageBand (where’s the “i”?). iWork ’08 has revised apps Keynote (presentations) and Pages (word processing), and adds a new spreadsheet application, Numbers. I’ve never been excited about presentations, word processing, or spreadsheets, but I’m beginning to feel some tingling in the extremities.

Finally, .Mac (Apple’s e-mail and online tools service) got a storage and functionality bump (to integrate with iLife ’08), and the Mac mini got a silent processor upgrade.

*No Mac Pro, MacBook, MacBook Pro, or Xserve news.

Physical effects

• Humid weather is tiring
• I’m getting old (and, to a lesser extent, Miss T is too)
• Hotels are getting cheaper (as in: not as good)
• Have I mentioned the humidity?
• Parking at the Renaissance Long Beach sucks
• Hard floors tire your feet out (vs. carpeted)
• Humidity makes other people smelly
• Long Beach vs. Anaheim
• Older ears and rock concerts—don’t forget the earplugs

The Expo

• Not so many cosplay pix—too many cosplayers (overload)
• AX bigger every year
• Good to see old AX friends
• Funny to see what kinds of parents bring their kids to AX
• Notes from industry panel
• Ruminations on the Exhibit Hall/dealers room
• Cosplay cuties and creepy old guys
• ORESKABAND rocks. S.O.S. Brigade, not so much.
• Spent money—too much money
• Arrived a day late; left a day early

Technology

• iPhone. How I could have used the iPhone
• Cell phones are the new concert lighter
• Digital SLRs are cool (it would seem)
• Nintendo DSes are the handheld gaming platform of choice