Others will have more intriguing stories about how Apple affected their lives, but for me...

Published 2011-08-24

… it's Apple's early commitment to education and Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniack wanting their products in schools that affected me first-hand, and allowed me so many opportunities at a time when computers were showing.

My personal memories…

-- The first computer I ever used -- back in second grade in 1982 -- was an Apple IIe. I remember when Mrs. Jelle told us we'd be getting it and we'd have to learn how to use it. Those born after 1990 just won't be able to understand what that meant.

-- At College For Kids I learned how to program lo-res and hi-res graphics on an Apple IIe, write data to a floppy disc drive and write text-based games in BASIC on an Apple IIe.

-- In sixth grade our computer club's first-ever Computer Olympics gave out prize packages from Apple. During one of our meetings we also took a walk to the high school where there was a Macintosh we could look at. It had this thing called a mouse. In 1986, it was all very ground breaking…

-- And then there are these classic games I first played on an Apple IIe.

-- I learned to type -- they called it keyboarding -- on an Apple IIe. In high school, you wanted to work in the Mac lab with Aldus Pagemaker, Filemaker and Paint. You didn't want to work in the PC lab where you used Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect.

-- I've put together, paginated and "designed" several thousand newspaper pages on a Mac.

-- The first Mac I owned was a Blue & White G3. A year later I found a cheap used iBook that was the same color.

-- And after using a PC for six years or so, this year I treated myself to a Mac Book Pro for web design, development, and am again working to learn the basics of programming.

-- Oh, and then there are the gadgets…

For a small-town school district in 1982 to have access to computers… Well it meant a lot of people got a lot of opportunities. Thanks Steves…