I met my wife Adriene while showing her how to use a Macintosh computer at Eastern Computer Graphics. She was the cute receptionist and I was the Macintosh specialist. She wanted to learn how to do computer graphics. I wanted to learn how to get her to go out with me. One lesson lead to another.

I proposed to her by getting her to come look at a new animation that I did with a cool new Mac animation program. The animation ended with a sign asking “will you marry me?” She said “Yes”. Nineteen years later we have two kids, a dog and a house full of Apple products: iPhones, iPods, iPads, Macs old and new.

My Mac life started in 1984 when I was a sales rep selling computer components from Rockwell International and Alps Electric.  I hated the job and being on the road all the time. One day in 1984 I picked up a new magazine called MacWorld. A few days later I purchased my first Macintosh. At the time I shared an apartment in Queens, NY with a good friend who had just recently purchased an Apple II. He thought I was crazy for buying a computer that only had a few applications called MacPaint, MacDraw and MacWrite.

I unpacked it, plugged it in, watched it boot up, looked at the little Mac with a smiley face and fell in love. Didn’t read any manuals, just started playing and using it. I played all night – my first sleepless night as a result of working on a computer. I had no idea how many more were in my future. (I took the picture of my 128K Mac to the left with my iPhone)

My first drawing was of this boat. I believe it is a pretty good rendition of the Yacht Ha-Ra. I spent two years as captain of that yacht. It was an experience of a life time traveling up and down the US east coast and Bahamas. Somehow I went from traveling to Paradise Island and fishing for big Tuna off the Island of Bimini to selling computer chips for Rockwell. That’s another story for another time.

The sleepless night of drawing boats and figuring out the tricks of MacPaint and MacWrite was inspiring. I decided I’d try and get a better job, maybe a marketing job with one of the Marine Supply companies I was familiar with and use this crazy new computer to get it. I’d try to combine my love of boats and new love of Mac computer graphics.

My cover letter and resume had the above boat drawing on it. Almost every response included a question asking how I was able to put the boat on my cover letter. It landed me a few offers with my favorite being the Boat House in Sea Bright, NJ. The owner Dave wanted me to produce a marine mail order catalogue to complement and expand his two stores business. He was a computer geek himself and was intrigued by the Mac and what I could do with it.

Dave’s offer was a good one, but what sealed the deal was finding an apartment in Sea Bright across the street from the ocean, and a few hundred feet from the Shrewsbury River. My Mac did not get me back on a boat in Paradise, but living and working in the Marine Industry was close. My new goal was to make a living where I could own a boat rather than work on one.

The first catalogue was huge success, allowing the Boat House to sell a volume of products across the country rather than to just the boaters in the vicinity of the two stores. The first catalog was produced with MacPaint, MacWrite and an Apple ImageWriter.

By today’s graphic standards the catalogue was crude, but it sold lots of boat tarps and marine radios. I had great fun designing it and putting it together. The quality improved greatly once we discovered the new Aldus PageMaker desktop publishing software and found someone with a new Apple LaserWriter who printed out pages for $1 per page.

I moved on from the two-color 16-page Marine catalogue to a job producing a 48-page, full-color catalogue for a company called Impact 2000, who was producing a knock-off of the relatively new mail-order company, Sharper Image. They were using a new desktop publishing program called Quark Express.

At this time I was traveling once a month into NYC to go to the New York Mac Users Group. The group met in a large church which seemed appropriate for a bunch of Evangelical Mac Users who met monthly and learned about new Macintosh applications and devices.

Since I was not a big fan of the commute into NYC, we pulled together a small group of people on the Jersey Shore that started meeting every other week to share tips and tricks in the new as fast changing industry of Desktop Publishing. A friend and fellow Mac maniac, Don Stier and I decided to make the group more official and started the Shore Area Macintosh Desktop Publishing Association or SAMDPA. We continued to meet every other week with anywhere from 20-50 people showing up to meetings.

Don taught me how to use Adobe Illustrator’s bezier drawing tool. I ended up working for him at a company called Keptel, where he was responsible for all their marketing collateral materials and product sheets with technical drawings done in Adobe Illustrator. I was not a traditional Illustrator, but with Adobe Illustrator I could draw just about anything. I designed and drew the GeekGeer logo at the top of this site in Adobe Illustrator.

Eastern Computer Graphics recruited me to be their Macintosh Specialist, where as I mentioned above I met my wife, who started her own career in Mac computer graphics. Both of my kids started to read at an early age, with some help from some great reading games on my Mac.

After working at Eastern Computer Graphics I started a company called MACstein Co. There were a few more companies and a few more jobs, but Macs were always part of my work and life. I went to every MacWorld while they were in Boston and New York. Going to hear a Steve Jobs Keynote, was like going to a rock concert only better.

For the past ten years I’ve been a partner at eSlide, a computer graphics company that specializes in presentation graphics. Unfortunately, we do all our work with PC’s since all our big corporate clients use PC’s. But I still have a MacBook laptop on my desk next to my big Windows PC. And I believe presenting from an iPad is going to be a new trend, so Apple computers will again be in my business life.

Memories of Apple events, products, applications and most of all memories and the inspiration of Steve Jobs will always be part of my life. He was probably the coolest geek on the planet and he made it cool to “Think Different”.

After 25+ years in the computer graphics industry which started with my first Macintosh, I do own a small boat that I cruise around the Shrewsbury River every chance I get (photo to left was taken yesterday with my iPhone). Boating tradition calls for naming your boat. I never put a name on mine, and maybe when I launch it next Spring, I’ll name it “Think Different”. Thanks Steve.

I still have a few geekgeer glasses around if anyone is interested – but they are now the collectors edition and very expensive.

These GeekGeer glasses had a special screen anit-glare coating that was leading edge eye wear technology at the time that is now long outdated because you don’t need anti-glare for the latest flat screen monitor technology. I don’t think anyone could really imagine how different the world would be in 15 years due to the Geeks taking over the world with the internet and “World Wide Web”!

What’s better being called a Nerd or Geek? Bill makes being a Nerd cool!

Steve is one of the “coolest” Geeks on the planet. He’s changed the world with his product design and marketing genius.

He should have highlighted how really wonderful technology can be and what it has done for the world and what it can do for the world and how Microsoft is at the forefront . . . but let’s see what Steve has to say . . . maybe that is where he is heading. . .
“what we take for granted today, was science fiction 10 years ago” he’s saying. Ok he’s going in the right direction. “Microsoft is empowering people to enrich their lives”. What is project Natal he’s talking about? He’s saying Xbox has changed the landscape of entertainment in the living room. They sold 500 Million games. Now he’s talking about Bing “their decision engine”. I guess that is supposed to be better than Googles “search engine”. Ford is bring the internet to the car dashboard with Microsoft’s sync technology – just what we need more driver distractions. Does it come with a direct link to do a search for a new insurance company to cover you after your next accident?

Windows 7 the biggest accomplishment of the year. Interesting enough, the only place I have Windows 7 running in on my new MacBook Pro. And I’m impressed. It runs well. I’m running the Beta Office 2010 apps on it, and in the past week only froze once.

I wonder how many times he rehearsed this presentation? I also wonder if they are using PowerPoint 2010 to drive the visuals behind him? He says Windows 7 has a 94% customer satisfaction rate – better than the 9.4% they achieved with the Windows Vista operating system.

There are 4 million windows applications. Wow. But I wonder how many of those Windows applications actually work or are useful?

He just brought out the Sr. Product manger Ryan out to introduce a number of PC’s using Windows 7. He sounds a little Steve Jobs like. He is showing some cool computers. One as thin as three poker chips. Now he is showing us the all important gaming machines. What is more important in this world than some good game computers.

This guy is a better speaker than Ballmer, but no where near as good as Steve Jobs. Now if you a product manger at Microsoft, you need to be a presentation speaker start performer. He is now pretending that h is a student. How cute. He is showing some cool text book software. Maybe technology will transform the sorry state of our educational system.

Yahoo, he’s loading up PowerPoint 2010. He is showing how you can have multiple people at multiple locations work on the same PPT file. The file can merge the changes from both PowerPoint users. This is all too much for me. I have to take a break.

Back. They’re showing Windows PC TV. Some cool stuff, the silverlight technology “the secret souce of TV and Internet integration” says Ballmer. Wonderful, I can record 4 HD shows at the same time. Why would I eve want to do that? Oh, I can now view my DVR content on my ATT phone. Windows TV not for me.

Ahhh, the big announcement: Slate PC’s, the new form factor that will be available this year. They are as portable as a phone, but as powerful as a PC. He says perfect for reading, surfing the web, watching TV. He’s showing the prototype of the HP State PC. It is cool looking. Looks very much like an oversized iPhone. he’s showing the Kindle book windows software.

Here comes Seth again, showing us how important technology has come. It’s supposed to be funny. They need to fire their marketing firm.

Robbie Bach is on stage talking about Entertainment technology. “When technology works the way you want it too, that is the WOW moment”. . . He’s talking about XBOX . . . games that rival real life. . . . sure that is what I need a game that rivals my real life.

They are going to introduce a new Genre of game – the Psychological thriller. And finally the game millions of gamers are waiting for the next Halo. Oh, in respect for the IP being demonstrated onstage they are suspending the media feed. Like no one in the room is recording it and going to upload it to YouTube before the demo is over? They’re back now.

XBOX live. Looks interesting. 20 million people are XBOX members. The numbers sound amazing. Maybe I have to buy an XBOX. Zune Video sounds really interesting too. How retro, they are bringing back all the old arcade classic Artari games. You’ll be able to invite your friends to play in your personal arcade. Once again they are suspending the media feed. I’ll have to check it out on YouTube later.

Introducing Project Natal for XBOX 360. From what I can tell is a 3D experience controlled by your body movements? Cool. Movements of your body controls the computer. Very cool. More than 3D. This is amazing. You get to go into your computer. You act the computer understands. “jump in”. I’m in. It will be available “this holiday 2010″. I’m getting on the waiting list now.

Good finish. Robbie was the best speaker of them all, and had the most exciting new product to announce: Project Natal.

Another Steve Jobs Presentation Success?

When Steve Jobs presents the world listens. Yesterday he presented Apples latest new product, the iPad at a much anticipated industry event. His presentations are often the high bar to be measured against. His style has changed little over the 20 years I’ve seen him present. I remember watching him present the Apple Newton many years ago at the then yearly MacWorld Boston event.He does have a few advantages over your typical presenter such as he wanted better presentation software, so he had Apple develop Keynote. I’d love to know why they never developed a Windows version. A bigger advantage is that he always has a great, exciting, newsworthy product to show and demo. My favorite memorable “Steve the Presenter” moment was pulling the Apple MacBook air out of a inter-office envelope. He’s part marketing magician.

He makes it look so easy and relaxed, but from what I’ve have read and heard from people that have worked at Apple events he rehearses often and until it looks unrehearsed. He did look a little tired this time, but he still looks like he is recovering from his liver transplant. After what he has been through it is amazing that he has the perseverance to continue to put himself through the new product development, media circus and pressure of a worldwide speaking event.

I’m glad he did. I look forward to his speaking engagements as much as a new Pixar movie, not to mention the excitement of the new product he was launching. I’m sold. I’ll buy one when it ships in a few months.

The iPad may not make much of a dent in the PowerPoint world, but I’ll want to try the new version of Keynote developed for it. You have to listen carefully to the presentation, but it does hook up to a projector so you can present from it.

Now, back to working on a client’s PowerPoint presentation that she would like us to make it look as Apple Keynote “Wow” like as possible.