The Apple MacIntosh SE
As the investing public continued to bid the shares of Apple Inc. higher and higher this month (Aug 2012), I decided today to take my original “portable” computer out of its blue padded travel bag for a little airing out. This was the first computer that I ever purchased for my own use. Our office used mainframes and I had used DEC minis at the time but, at the time that I purchased this computer, I was just starting out on my MBA degree at the University of Manitoba. One of my fellow students,Kit Wilson, noticed me trying to use the University’s mainframe word processing language to prepare my course reports and suggested to me that I consider an Apple personal computer instead. I don’t remember exactly what I paid for this newest Apple wonder but, in those days, this newest version of the Macintosh “portable” (at 17+ lbs) cost about $4,000, sported a 20 MB hard drive and came with a MB of ram upgradeable at great expense to 4 MB. In each case, you read right. The capacities in those days were measured in MB’s not GB’s or TB’s. The SE had an internal hard drive and that was a great move forward since it meant that I could carry this portable behemoth back and forth to the University without having to have a huge collection of 400 Kb or 800 Kb floppy disks. The prices that people are asking for these on EBay is highly variable. I don’t think that I will sell mine just yet. Too much nostalgia!
My MacIntosh SE served me well and, every so often, I fire it up to see if it still works. It does!
As the market bids up the shares of APPLE in anticipation of a new iPhone and a smaller iPad, I can’t help but wonder what the next great thing will be that will capture the imagination of the end users. I no longer own Apple shares but wish the best of luck to those who do. I can hardly wait to see what comes next.
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Memory lane. I had one of these!