November 4, 2007

Apple marketing has long done a number on me. And not just in these flashy days of iPod "shadow dancers" and all that "hip" stuff. No, even back in the reserved, suit-and-tie days of 1986-or-so tidy product ads featuring the Apple Garamond font, I was held in thrall.

I purchased what I believe was the first Amiga 1000 sold in Virginia, way back in October 1985. The Amiga was amazing, but it did lack software for the first (many) months of its existence. I was loving the Amiga but lamenting the lack of software and then, as it turns out, romanced by Apple's straight laced ads for the early '86 Apple IIe bundle of goodies, consisting of an enhanced IIe, new composite screen with a "mono mode," UniDisk 3.5 drive, and the Mac-like Quark Catalyst desktop interface. Yes, those ads prompted me to sell the Amiga and go back to the 8-bit Apple II (I was a //c user prior to the Amiga). Kind of amazing to think about.

Part of it, I believe, was the Apple store I was familiar with. There was this great store in Williamsburg, Virginia called Next Generation Computers and later Connecting Point (or perhaps the other way around - I don't recall exactly). I've long loved the colonial feel of Williamsburg and it somehow meshed with Apple's target image in their ads. The two together was a proposition I could not avoid. And so I sold the Amiga and became an Apple II user once again.

I thought I would share this little twist in my computing history. Who says marketing doesn't affect the savvy few? Ah well. I still love the II, in part because of all that Apple Garamond goodness.