Back in Beige

Image from WikipediaI have just returned to using an Apple as my primary machine. It is good to be home :) Most of the last 13 years has been Windows based work for me. I spent the late 80's and early 90's in the UK music and publishing scene, during the growth of desktop publishing and the transformation of the design/print professions to the Mac.

My wife Rachel, has remained loyal. This year she will of been a mac user for 22 years. WOW, thats a long time - longer than most marriages. In many ways that first experience of the Mac back in'86 changed our lives. She got into the primitive tools, shifted careers into design and found herself on Fleet St during those transformational years. Newspapers, magazine groups, the transformations swept through an industry and we went along for the ride.

By 1990, I had moved from hardware to software and by 1995 we had moved to the States. All driven by beige computing. Sitting here pondering it. How did that 128k machine, with the continual swapping of floppy drives come to have such an influence. To give credit, there were some other innovations along the way that had a hand. The LaserWriter - powered by PostScript (thank you John and Chuck), QuarkXpress, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Acrobat, the list goes on.

My daughter (13) has a Mac - actually two (one at home in her room - an old iMac G3) and a school provided iBook. She is a convert. Her homework is more often a PowerPoint than a written essay. How is that shaping her future?

So, thank you, I am back in beige (with a titanium hue). Enough nostalgia. I better get back to that piece I was meant to be writing on more modern things. Semantic technology and web 3.x .