Give so They Buy

7^th January 2012

Dear Cassi,

   

Do you recall the first time you used a computer? I do. It was one of those Apple IIe units with dual floppy drives and a green monochrome screen. Those units were donated to schools by the Apple corporation in a highly successful attempt to promote their product.

   

I’ve been told that this action caused the only point of domination for Apple computers in the market. Everyone new Apple, so everyone bought Apple. It worked for a spell then the spell wore off and everyone went back to PC and its Windows formatting.

   

The first time I worked on a color unit was when I went into therapy for my learning disorder. I recall the Jones Clinic rather well. They had a lab of “IBM clones” that I worked on as half of my treatment. These devices were next to useless by today’s standards but I recall them being fun.

   

After my mother died my father got me a word processor that worked better than any of those computers. That business lasted until my freshman year in high school when I got a real computer. It had a half gig hard drive and sixteen megabytes of ram. That was the going system for 1994 and I thought the world of it back then. There is no greater change in our world than the computer in the last twenty years. At least most of those are for the better.

Stay safe, Cassi,

Richard Leland Neal