I am an Apple Whore

I am an Apple Whore.

Ever since I saw my first Mac shortly after graduating from high school I was enamored with Apple. Their products just made sense to me. ;; At the time there was nothing else like it. Windows was just starting to make headway with their Windows 3.1 OS which was really just window dressing for the underlying DOS operating system.

In college I worked in Computer Services doing PC and Mac maintenance work for the various departments and also worked for the on campus Apple rep. It was a sweet deal.

I was hired by the Apple Computer Educational Sales Agent for Texas right out of school to work as a Systems Engineer. Having both Windows and Mac experience, they were thrilled to have me and I was thrilled to get the job. It was a sweet gig: I worked out of a home office (apartment actually), had all the latest cool toys from Apple to play with and show off, and made SERIOUS money (margins were high in those days).

I got to go to MacWorld in San Francisco several times and flew all over the country going to training seminars. It was a real geekfest. ;; Visiting the Apple Campus in Cupertino was a hoot. Back before Steve came back, we were allowed to see technology demos of products months before they were released. It was awesome. The atmosphere was always laid back. The hallways had tables with homemade cookies and the cafeteria had world class chefs that cooked up amazing meals. One of the best hamburgers I ever had was from the grill at Apple.

I was paid to fight the fight and show that Macs could indeed "do that" and I had a solid answer for every objection presented to me by the local ;; Windows disciples in the school district. Most of the time it was just correcting the Mac myths that were making the rounds at the time (some still persist) and I really enjoyed the work.

I also was a member of the local Macintosh Users Group and fought the fight in my spare time, often going to local computer events and talking with other local computer users about various issues and showing them just what a Mac could and could not do.

I was never one to trash the Windows guy for using Windows. I have always told people to use what computer they are comfortable with. However, I would unload with both barrels on the guy that would get in my face with "Macs SUCK because....." ;; That was usually a mistake on their part. We rehearsed for times like that. ;; We usually knew what they were going to say before they said it.

We also knew the weaknesses to the Windows platform and used that to our advantage. We never told them Windows sucked. We would just demo things that were difficult or impossible to do on Windows at the time and let them draw their own conclusions, usually in our favor.

Today I am the "Mac Guy" in our shop among other things. ;; I have even made a few converts while working here.

Here are a few photos from those days:



Here I am with Guy Kawasaki, Apple Evangelist.




Here I am with Steve Kahng, CEO of Power Computing that made Mac Clones. Check out the Bungie Marathon T-shirt.




Here I am with Steve Wozniak.

and finally here are the Grooms cakes from our wedding:



Lemme know if you have any questions!