Greetings to all of you out there in Vintage Mac Land! It’s great to be back!
15 years ago this month my first ever article was published here on Low End Mac. After a nearly 13 year hiatus I am back writing for Low End Mac, and I am extremely excited to be here!
Why have I been away for so long? Why did I leave without saying goodbye? What have I been up to all these years? Those are excellent questions, but I have an answer for you. For nearly 13 years I’ve been working for Apple at the Apple Store.
Over the years I have been a Mac Specialist, a Lead Personal Shopping Specialist, a Technical Expert, a Sales Specialist, a Project Manager, a Mentor, a Personal Trainer, and a Visuals Expert. Needless to say, I’ve seen a lot of change at Apple over the last 13 years. When I first started the new iPhone was the first iPhone, and many of the products that we take for granted today hadn’t even been invented yet.
Why leave Apple? Well, as a condition of employment I wasn’t allowed to write about or do any work related to computers outside of Apple while I worked for them (that’s why I left Low End Mac in the first place). As it turns out you aren’t even allowed to help a friend by walking them through a procedure on their computer. Apple discovered that I had recently helped a friend with a data transfer to their new computer, and decided to let me go.
I hadn’t thought that helping a friend set up their new computer on my own time would be considered a conflict of interest, but I’m mature enough to accept that my career at Apple has ended as the consequence of that action.
Honestly Apple terminating me has been one of the most liberating things that has ever happened to me. The thing I disliked most about working for Apple was that I wasn’t allowed to write for Low End Mac. The things that I like to write about generally had nothing to do with current Apple products, and I always felt that I had forfeited my Right to Free Speech to work for them.
Working for Apple had been my life long dream since I was 8 years old, and despite my sometimes less than favorable feelings toward the internal culture, bureaucracy, and retail level leadership, working for that company for as long as I did was an incredible honor. The hardest part is that all of this came about as the COVID-19 pandemic hit us here in the States, leaving the entire country in a state of shut down. Now I’m just trying to figure out what I want to do, and when I’ll be able to do it.
Anyway, now I’m back, and I’m excited to be here creating new content for Low End Mac! I’ll be publishing an article on the Apple IIGS soon, and I’m busy writing an article on the first generation of Power Macs (the 6100/7100/8100 series) soon after that. I look forward to hearing your input and reading your comments, and I hope to have a long career writing about and helping people keep these old machines alive!
