Apple’s Thirty Years and Beyond

April 1, 2006 by SGE

Yes, it’s April Fool’s day but it’s not a joke that the famous Apple computers company, famed for its IPods and Mac computers have reached their thirty year mark.

Strangely in that last thirty years, I personally went through a cycle, from being one of the first Apple computer users (remember the days of Apple II), switch to the IBM PCs and subsequently went back to the Mac PCs. On the operating systems side, I started with DOS, Windows, Linux and then Mac OSX. I was never a Apple fan and at one time, I was a Mac hater, because my ex-girlfriend was a Mac-fanatic. All it took was a reunion with my NUS classmates three years back. One of my classmates brought in a 15″ powerPC and as usual, I shunned it at my first sight, while maintaining being a Linux user (and I still play wiith Linux systems) for the longest time. He knew that was coming and pressed a button on the dock. That popped up a X11 terminal, and that surprise got me asking him, “You mean that the operating system running in Apple now is Unix.” He smiled and said, “Yes.” Of course, we continued to discuss the specifications of the Mac OSX system. This incident changed my view towards Apple and believe me, if Steve Jobs changed the operating system tomorrow away from UNIX, I am out.

As soon as I started working with a 12″ powerpcs, as most of the large human genome centres (The Broad Institute and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute) are all adopting the use of Mac OSX with apple computers. I was surprised a year ago during an astrophysics meeting, I found that ninety percent of the people who I used to know have switched to Apple computers. Some people credited Steve Jobs with the IPod and the IMac designs which revived Apple, but to me, I thought that Mac OSX was the best decision that he has ever made, because it brought in the Linux people who are now driving part of the Unix development in Mac OSX systems. Strangely, most people in the academic circles are beginning the switch because it offered the Unix scientific computing aspects pegged with powerful graphics support. I also enjoyed with people from Apple, who I am currently working on a private project with them to develop a fun piece of technology for my genome work. I find the people from this company to be innovative and open to new ideas.

If you want to know about the story of a famous entrepreneur who come back from falling down at one point, Steve Jobs has an interesting history behind him, not to mention his famous speech last year at the Stanford 2005 graduation ceremony.

Well, all I have to say as a Mac user now, happy birthday to Apple and hopefully, they will drive new heights for the next 30 years.