Vale Steve Jobs!

Steve Jobs has gone ... :-(

I am an Apple user and always have been. I do use Windows computers at work, but at home it has always been Apple. I grew up in an era when computers filled rooms, so when I first started to learn how to use personal computers, it was as an adult. The very first computer I used at work was an Apple 2C, which we had in the staffroom, then I bought a 2E for the library. It was nothing like the sleek model I'm using to type this. It had a disk drive into which you inserted first the program, then the floppy disk with your work on it. My library one had two disk drives, so I could just put the program in and not have to remove it every time. You had to use commands, nothing like the easy thing we do now.

By the time I got my own, the Mac Classic 2 was out. You just had to turn it on and away you went. I used it for eight years and only spent $50 for a new battery in all that time. It still works! If there was a way I could still use it I would.

The Mac was a fabulous computer for someone like me who had not learned to use a computer as a child or a teen.

And look at what we have now! This computer allows me to do things I would never have dreamed of, when I was growing up, watching Star Trek. I can film myself and pop it up on Youtube. I can make and edit a film (I'm still working on the Literature Circles movie for school). I can save my old tapes on to my computer and burn them as CDs - or put them up as podcasts. Yay GarageBand!

Yes, there are a lot of things you can also do on Windows, but I learned much more quickly on my Apple. I was able to write my first book with it, without having to re-type whole pages, without having to work out  the commands you had on PCs before Windows

I owe a lot to Steve Jobs. His imagination and skills have made a huge difference to my life and those of others. Vale Steve! We'll miss you.