Apple Thoughts: Hello World!

Lita Kaufman, forced to write about herself in first person, has this to say about her Apple cred:

I am a New York based attorney and a proud Mac user for over 23 years, which means I fit into the cliché of an Apple product owner all too easily. My introduction to the world of Apple and Macintosh came in August, 1985, when as a graduate student in Medieval and Early Modern History, I volunteered to be my department's representative to the new Social Sciences computer lab. The lab, like Noah's ark, featured two each of IBM PC ATs, Osbornes, Franklins, Apple IIs and a strange looking computer called a Macintosh. The attraction was instantaneous, and since there was no version (at that time) of SPSS (Statistics Package for the Social Sciences) for the Mac, I had near exclusive use of the little computer. That situation lasted only until a Laser Writer arrived, and the half-dozen candidates working on their PhDs on the lab's other computers promptly got into fist fights over time slots to re-type their dissertations on the Macintoshes.

The first Mac I owned was the iconic 512ke, and my dearest companion through law school, and eventually replaced by a Mac SE in 1989. Ever the maverick, I elected not to have an internal hard drive, but opted to purchase a 100 MB external Jasmine hard drive. When talking was about my new computer at a cocktail party, an appalled co-worker asked me what in the world I would need all that disk space for. I shrugged and simply replied, "stuff."

My fascination with both Macs and storage is still a running joke among my friends and colleagues. I have the firm belief that an unmounted hard drive is a crime against nature. My current rig includes a 2.66 ghz quad-core Mac Pro, a pair of Apple Cinema Displays, 10 terabytes of hard drive space (just because, you know, it never hurts), a 17" MacBook Pro, an AppleTV, 180 gb iPod Classic, and an iPhone 2G. That doesn't include the layabouts that I can't bear to part with - the G5 tower, G4 iBook, 15" PowerBook, and the worst Macintosh ever made - the Performa 550.