Mainly Macintosh

My Macintosh Manifesto of Appreciation and Scribing

I have been using Macintosh computers more than other personal computers, at least at home, for over twenty years.

Two decades ago, I bought my first Mac, a 512 KB Fat Mac - as it really was called at the time, owing to the fact it had more than the 128 KB memory that was in its twin, the original Mac.

Since then, I have owned 5 Macintosh computers.


What has always impressed me about them was the simplicity of both programming and using them.

Macintoshes work in a consistent way. So consistently, in fact, that one rarely has to read a manual for a Mac application before starting to use it.


Macs have always been at the forefront of object-oriented programming (OOP). I bought an object-oriented Pascal compiler for my first Mac. I also had a freeware Modula-2 compiler for it.

Today, my Mac comes with a ton of well-known object-oriented programming languages:

• AppleScript
• C++ (from GNU)
• Java (from Sun)
• Python
• Ruby

The Mac is at the forefront of a lot of cutting-edge computing.

• clustering
• programming
• web server
• web applications
• scripting
• open source
• XML
• graphics design
• super-computing
• movie making (MPEG-4, QuickTime)
• digital photography
• digital music (MP3)

Many of these things Apple either invented themselves or pioneered.

Here I plan to jot down some notes from time to time about things I might be using my Macintosh for, how other people use their Macs, and what useful things I would like to do with my Mac.

posted by John Collins @ 1:23 PM