The Apple II Time Machine
I still remember my very first Apple II experience. It was the fall of 1981, probably not far from November 15, and I was in eighth grade. Along with a few other students, I had been chosen for a special independent study program. I was to pick a long-term creative project -- anything I wanted -- and work on it at my own pace. I still recall how terrified I was when the fearsome Ms. Johnston called me out of class into the hall, and how relieved I was that I hadn't done anything wrong.
My ambition at the time was to be a writer, so my original plan was to write a novel. However, my parents suggested that I learn something about computers. I found myself unable to disagree with their reasoning. (It was one of those parental suggestions that you go along with if you know what's good for you.) And so it was that I found myself driven to the high school once a week, with another kid named Todd I didn't know, squeezing in a little computer time before school started.
There were two Apple II Plus computers in the small AV room off to one side of the library "pit." One had a 12" black-and-white monochrome monitor. The other was connected to a 19" black-and-white TV through an RF modulator. The machines both had 48K RAM and a single Disk II drive. The big screen was kind of fun due to the size of the text -- I could almost read it even with my glasses off -- but the smaller screen was much, much sharper.
For my first meeting with Mr. Starr, the high school's Computer Science teacher, I'd done a little research. I'd used a precious four bucks of my savings to buy Radio Shack's pocket guide to the BASIC programming language, and scribbled out a little program of my own on a sheet of notebook paper. Mr. Star took a look at the program, pointed out a couple of differences between Apple BASIC and TRS-80 BASIC I couldn't have known about, and told me to go ahead and try it. And so I typed it in, character by laborious character, and, much to my astonishment, I discovered that my little program actually did what I wanted. For a kid who had never got to tell anyone else what to do in his life, it was an explosive rush.
Mr. Starr let me take the Applesoft Tutorial with me. I studied that book like it was my Bible. Every week I'd try things I'd guessed from reading the book -- honing my instincts by playing computer myself, since my actual computer time was so limited. Eventually, I finished the tutorial, and Mr. Starr let me have the Applesoft Reference and the DOS 3.3 Manual.
I remember those days with almost supernatural clarity. There was a certain early-morning musty smell about the high school in the winter, before the other students started arriving. Getting up earlier than I was accustomed to left me a little groggy, making the whole experience seem rather like a dream. That ambience became indelibly associated with my earliest Apple II memories.
The next year I started high school, continuing to study programming on my own. Soon I'd become proficient in Applesoft and started learning 6502 assembly language. The school had a copy of the DOS Tool Kit, with the EDASM assembler. I discovered Nibble magazine, and learned more about programming from studying the program listings they printed than I learned from any single book. (My friend Scott and I spent our high school years competing to see who'd be the first to get a program published in the pages of Nibble. Neither of us ever did so, but we still worshipped the magazine.) I learned the Apple II creation mythos, of how the Two Steves birthed a revolution in their garage, and got a free subscription to Softalk by using a serial number from a computer at the school. (They stopped publishing before it was time to renew.)
The school had taken pains to acquire a mating pair of Apples, and so there were four machines when I returned the next fall. You still had to sign up for your weekly hour of computer time, and since I wasn't in a class, I always ended up with the worst possible times. I didn't care. But the next year there was a whole room full of Apples -- IIes, mostly -- and I could usually bully my way in anytime I wanted by threatening to turn in someone who was playing games (which were banned in the lab). The year after that they added a second lab, with Apple IIcs, for typing classes. By my senior year, they'd built an enormous, ugly concrete balcony over the library and put both labs up there, along with a few of the stunning new computers -- the Apple IIGS. There was also a nearby writing center with a lonely Apple IIe. I spend a lot of time there with my friend Rex, working on a bad Douglas Adams ripoff titled Starship of Fools, which we did in fact finish and which I still have. You see, I still wanted to be a writer.
I completely skipped both BASIC courses, preferring instead to explore on my own. As a junior I got special permission to take the Advanced Placement computer science course, which taught Pascal. I spent so much time in the computer lab that most of the other students thought I was a lab assistant. (I helped more than a few of those people finish their projects, so they didn't kill me when I did stupid things like accidentally turn off a power strip five computers were connected to.)
In my senior year, I bought my own Apple IIc using earnings from a summer job in the Sears paint dpartment. Later, I did contract programming for Kitchen Sink Software (they also published one of my utility programs, MicroDot), wrote for -- and later, edited -- Ross Lambert's publications The Sourceror's Apprentice, Reboot, and 8/16, became a GEnie sysop, edited II Alive, attended my first KansasFest, and, later, my first AppleFest. (My first AppleFest was also the last AppleFest.) One of my earliest ambitions was to work for Beagle Bros, and my dream came true -- in a sense -- when Quality Computers, the company I went to work for after college, ended up buying the Apple II side of Beagle Bros. (The company's sole Mac product, BeagleWorks, was sold to WordPerfect Corporation.)
None of these more recent memories, thrilling though they are, are quite as vivid as my earliest ones. Especially the smell. Occasionally, even now, I'll catch a whiff of a similar odor and be taken back to those days almost involuntarily. Scents can be powerful cues for memories.
The Apple II was, for me, and for a lot of other peple who had formative experiences like mine, a real time machine. I can think of my first Apple days and be instantly transported into the glowing past. You're never too young for nostalgia.
The influence of the Apple II was responsible in large part for creating the future we now live in. The first word processors and spreadsheets ran on Apple IIs. So did the first popular integrated software package, AppleWorks. Even IBM's PC was a direct response to the inroads the Apple II was making in business. Sales of the Apple II funded the Macintosh. Some of the biggest names in entertainment -- like Sierra, Broderbund, and EA -- got their start selling Apple II wares. The guys who founded id Software used to work for a little company in Louisiana that published an Apple II disk magazine. By the time the Internet came to prominence, however, the Apple II was largely a historical footnote. That's the only major part of modern personal computing that wasn't touched by the Apple II.
The Apple II was more than a computer to me and to thousands of others. It was a vehicle for a lot of people's greatest accomplishments -- the ones for which they feel the most pride. Including my own, and, just maybe, some of your own. We've all become a part of the future we envisioned. That was, after all, what the personal computer revolution was all about.
-- Jerry Kindall
