My First Mac

Early Lisa User and Beyond

Frank Acevedo - 2001.09.04

It was 1977, fresh out of high school. Dad, who had worked at Hughes Aircraft for 20 years by that time, hooked me up with a summer job . The plan was to go to city college at night when summer ended. Little did I know that the next 13 years I would be employed by Hughes myself!

Full rooms of Digital Equipment computers existed - 100 feet long by 40 feet wide with large air conditioning units to cool the beast down! The floor below was a super high security computer simulation lab for what we now know as Stealth Aircraft.

The department I worked in had millions in R&D money; getting new "toys" was fun. The purchased a Lisa for inventory control for just a few to play with, and soon everyone was making appointments for it's use. Shortly the first generation of IBM's arrived, and it was just a question of funds, but some of us new Apple hard-core followers hung tough and convinced the department managers to purchase a few 128K Macs.

Life was good!

I was able to run circles around the line by line DOS programers, using OverVue to produce readable management reports of inventory very quickly as opposed to paying someone to develop a program or spending hours learning Lotus 1-2-3 and DOS commands. Although I was popular with management, I was hated by overpaid software engineers who soon found it a struggle to keep a high paid job.

The years clicked by and the names are foggy: SE , Classics, IIci, LC II, PowerBook 145b. At home, the IIci has served me well for many years and has been retired as a footrest, given its under $15 value.

Dual Umax C600s that do just about anything keep me happy now. Given the fast falling prices of new equipment, I have found it much better to stay a few years behind the curve.