Technology | Nostalgia | Life Story
Remembering the Apple II Series: A Key Chapter in Early Personal Computing
Reflections on the Apple II’s influence from school days to professional work in the 1980s
This is an updated version of an article I wrote a few years ago for some of my now-defunct blogs.
At School
Thanks to my high school computer studies class in the 1980s, the Apple II was the first computer that I ever used — and that makes it a very significant machine for me.
My high school year was the first one there to do computer studies. Initially, the class was not very well-equipped, and we had to make do with something like three Apple II machines.
I had nothing to compare it with, and it shaped my ideas about 8-bit microcomputers. Eventually, the class would get several BBC Micro computers as well.
In the early days, I remember playing Asteroids in an after-school activity and having to share the Apple II computer with a classmate. During lessons, we used them to learn BASIC…