Apple is 50. (And, hey, me too!) It’s kind of a stunning number really, when you consider how tumultuous the tech industry can be. What a 50 years, though.
It feels weird to pay tribute to a corporation, so instead I want to think of this post as appreciating the products and honoring the people at Apple whose work has made a dramatic difference in the lives of so many. My entire professional life has been intertwined with what these talented people have made.
As I was writing down these experiences, it occurred to me that there’s a theme in them. There’s value in not doing what everyone else is doing. Certainly that’s been at the heart of Apple’s continued success and its most important products. That’s been my experience, too.
Unlocking iMovie
iMovie led to one of the most fun experiences I’ve had. After grad school, I started a side project blogging about iMovie ’08, a much-resented but major update to the video editing software that Mac users relied on for things like home videos, class projects, and real estate walkthroughs. Everyone was so put off by the dramatic changes that they undervalued the new benefits, like nondestructive editing.
So I started blogging about it. I’d write posts on how to use the new software, about hidden ways of doing things and how the new features were actually really impressive. It turned out I was the only person on the internet doing this, instead of just criticizing iMovie like everyone else.
Long story short, my little blog—Unlocking iMovie—got the attention of both Randy Ubillos at Apple (basically the father of desktop video editing) and David Pogue who was then at the New York Times. From the blog, I ended up getting three trips to Apple to meet with Randy and the iMovie team and multiple published iMovie: The Missing Manualbooks I co-authored with David. (This is why David so kindly agreed to be on my podcast a little while back. Also, his book on Apple’s first 50 years is exceptionally good.)
This was also an interesting fork in the road, professionally speaking. I imagine an alternate reality where I leaned more into writing about Apple, which I think I would have really enjoyed. But around this time I was teaching at BYU as an adjunct professor and the prospect of getting hired as full-time professional faculty came up. That ended up being my path. I’m lucky to have found my calling, so I’m doing what I’m meant to do. But it’s fun to think about that other life.
EndPin, LLC
During my undergrad, I took a semester off to work full-time for a local company in their IT support group. I was the Mac specialist tasked with supporting the design team, the only Mac users in the whole company. It was a decent job and I briefly considered committing to it as a career path.
But I eventually realized it wasn’t for me, and decided to go to law school instead. Instead of just leaving, though, I came across the idea of starting a Mac-support consulting businesses that we named EndPin, LLC. (An endpin is the pointy stem used to hold up a cello. That was the instrument my wife studied for her degree at BYU.) At that time, there were little pockets of Mac users all over the place, in local design firms or in small groups within larger companies. So I quit, signed up my now former employer as my first client, and signed up a few other businesses. My coworkers thought it was crazy.
This turned out to be an excellent decision. I hired a couple of friends to help with the tech support work and ended up having a small business that paid for our groceries through four years of a JD and MPA. At one point, the author of Who Moved My Cheese, Spencer Johnson, was even a client.
One company over many years
My oldest brother, Peter, in the mid-80s got an Apple IIe for Christmas. That was my first experience with a personal computer. It was magnetic to my other brothers and me. Despite Peter’s best efforts to lock his bedroom and even lock the case holding the floppy disks, we regularly found our way in to play the handful of games he had like Choplifter and Lode Runner.
Since then, I’ve owned a lot of Apple stuff. Here are the notable ones that still feel magical to me:
- PowerBook 1400cs. A laptop before everyone had laptops. My roommate tripped over the power cord one day and broke the power socket off the logic board. I found a used replacement board online for $600. Back then, repairs like this were possible.
- iMac DV in lime green. I’m sad that young people today don’t have the chance to see a product like the iMac come to life. Truly groundbreaking.
- Titanium PowerBook G4. This was a purchase for law school and I absolutely loved that computer. I don’t think a product has felt quite as cool to use as that one. Then my two-year-old son poured an entire glass of water into the keyboard and fried it. During law school finals. RIP.
- iPod (3rd gen). My first iPod. Freaking awesome. What else to say?
- iPhone. The original, which I bought after Apple dropped the price by $200. My wife accidentally dropped it on the pavement and broke the screen. The iPhone was in such demand internationally at the time that I sold it on eBay, broken screen and all, for more than the cost of a new iPhone 3G when that came out two months later.
- iPad Pro, 11in. I remember a moment when I was using this and thought about how my younger self would have absolutely freaked out that such a product existed. The iPad is still my most used and most enjoyed Apple product.
Over the years, I’ve seen the company stumble and amaze, but it’s been a consistent part of my work and personal life. My career is a bit of an oddball, and maybe that’s part of the same core instinct to be different. I’m grateful to the intensely talented people who made all of these incredible products, doing things their own way.
