I’m producing this post on my MacBook Pro. This is my Mac story and personal tribute to Steve. Like millions of other people, he’s had a huge impact on my life. His innovations did not just give me amazing tools to work with during my graphic design career, and ”insanely great” tools to stay better connected with friends and family, but innovations that touched and changed my life in many ways.
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.
