Digital communications technologies disrupt information industries. That’s Craigslist siphoning off newspaper classified ads. It’s Hulu helping 20 somethings cut the cord. It’s Pandora (or Spotify, if you wish) facilitating micro-radio stations.
One of the largest information industries in the country, higher ed, has had its hands full with state budget cuts; digital tech has not decimated the bottom line. (Yet.)
Continue reading
Steve Jobs and Laurene Powell Jobs, 2011 by Lea Suzuki
In 1984, I convinced my about-to-be (then) husband not to buy a Macintosh ($2,495/$5,440 in 2011 $). It wasn’t just because it was expensive. It wasn’t interoperable, you see, and the dairy cooperative we worked for was an IBM shop. Mainframes and IBM PCs (not clones) didn’t talk to Macs. Heck, Microsoft Word wasn’t around yet!
Instead, we bought an Epson cp/m machine with 5 1/4″ floppies, a green screen and a great software bundle (Peachtree). And a dot-matrix printer, of course. I can’t imagine that it was interoperable either, but it was less expensive. And it was the gateway drug to the life I lead today. Continue reading
I returned from vacation to discover that Steve Jobs had announced his resignation as Apple’s CEO.
Continue reading
It was early 1984. Apple had just released the Macintosh, but IBM (and its partner/stepchild/competitor Microsoft) had jumped into the nascent personal computer market in mid-1981 with the IBM PC. However, the tried-and-true operating system (or tired-and-old, depending on your point of view) of the day was not DOS but CP/M.
Somehow I convinced my then husband-to-be that we should not buy a Mac (shiny!) but an Epson CP/M computer that came bundled with Peachtree Software’s office suite: word processing, spreadsheet and database. This was years before Microsoft would release Office for the Mac (1989) or Windows (1990).
What I didn’t know was that what I thought of as “ease of use” was a direct result of the work done for the Osborne 1, a “portable” computer launched 30 years ago today (April 3, 1981). According to Thom Hogan, who had been Osborne’s director of software, the Osborne 1 was the first computer that allowed the buyer to “take the box home, unpack it, plug it in, and start using [the] computer.” Continue reading
Friday afternoon, I went to Alderwood Mall to get a gander at the line for the iPad2. Here are some faces (all taken with permission). I was struck by how many people already had an iPad. (When I asked, I was told the old device was being shared with family members or friends.)
The folks who were first in line (a bunch of young guys) were from Vancouver BC and had been in line since before 5 am; Apple opened the doors at 5 pm. An Apple employee told me later Friday night (about 8 pm) that half of those in line had been turned away.