My life in Apples

[imomus]

As a complement to the Wired article that just went up, Why Apple Makes Me Cry, I thought I'd make a pictorial history of all the Apple computers I've owned. Think of it as my tribute to ultra-pretentious Nathan Barley character Doug Rocket (modelled on the Eurythmics' Dave Stewart), who installs an exhibition entitled "Laptops I Have Owned, 1993-2003" in the lobby of his money-haemorrhaging creative agency. To make things a bit more interesting, I've tried to source contemporaneous photographs of the beloved machines. I've changed Apples as often as I've changed cities and hairstyles, it turns out.

My first "Apple" wasn't an Apple at all. In 1992 I stuck a Gem Apple emulator containing the requisite Mac ROMs into the slot at the side of my Atari STE1040 and managed to run Apple System 6.0.7 very, very slowly on it. I was able to buy my first real Apple thanks to a publishing deal with Rhythm King Music in 1993. The Duo Dock 230 cost over £2000. I remember assembling the complicated structure for the first time in my flat on Cleveland Street, central London, switching it on and feeling like I had a working space craft in my house. The laptop part slotted into the desktop, taking you from a tiny 12" black and white screen to a "huge" 14" colour one. I didn't switch my music-making activities to the Mac -- those stayed on the Atari, which was pretty good for sequencing. What I remember mostly doing is playing two CD-ROMs I'd bought in Japan, "Rodney's Wonder Window" and Kuniyoshi Kaneko's "Alice". It was a good way to seduce Japanese girls, to bring them back and sit them down in front of the Duo. I remember also playing flight simulation games on the laptop while flying to Japan, and that really helping me overcome my fear of flying. If the 747's engines failed, Hellcats suggested, you still had a chance to glide back to earth.

Next thing you know I'm married and living in Paris. Shazna inherits the Duo 230 and I buy an Apple IIvi with a 17" monitor. Actually, it's the blandest and most boring computer I'll ever know. I'm struggling to keep my Apple-mania alive at this point, reading John Sculley's book about Apple without much enthusiasm (he's as interchangeable -- an exec head-hunted from Pepsi -- as the machines are). Anyway, you can see both of those computers in this big collage of my Montmartre flat, circa 1995. By this point I'm making music on the Mac, recording albums like "Philosophy of Momus" and "Slender Sherbet" on it, as well as doing the sleeves myself. I get pretty obsessed by interactive media, start a website, then teach myself Director and make a CD-ROM. Informatique sex games include capturing Laila France dribbling condensed milk out of her mouth on a webcam (it's the most intimate thing we ever do).



Next thing you know I'm back in London, in a flat in Clerkenwell overlooking Barbican tube station. I have a beige G3 tower and a flatscreen monitor, one of the first, and hilariously expensive. But you can play TV on it too. I'm separated from my wife, dating Japanese girls again. But it's Shazna who emails me from New York to tell me that Steve Jobs, newly returned to the company he co-founded, has released a new computer that looks like a cross between a fishtank and a lava lamp. In 1999 I begin my Vaudeville Tour by admiring the orange iBook Kahimi Karie's manager shows us in the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, and end it by purchasing an orange version of the portable in Toronto.



After that there's a succession of white iBooks. I use them to make my "Stories of O" trilogy of records. The first is bought in Tokyo when I'm living there in 2001. It has a Japanese keyboard, naturally. Although I never use the Japanese keys (unless I'm asking Shizu to write something for a Google search), I consider them a badge of honour, a status symbol. I go through four of these white iBooks -- two 12"s and two 14"s -- in four peripatetic years (the white models aren't as sturdy as the molded orange one, and I see rather too much of the "blue screen of death").

Which brings us up to the present: Berlin, 2007. I'm a bit more settled these days, and my Apple plans reflect that. My next computer will be a desktop, my first in ten years. In the next couple of weeks I'm planning to buy a 24" iMac. The price of the machine can be offset by just three articles or three concerts, and I'll probably make at least one album and one book on it.

I've lost count of how many Apples I've owned -- if you include all the retro Classics and Performas I bought at markets to run favourite old sequencing software like EZ Vision, it's something like fifteen. Sure, they sometimes make me cry with frustration, but I still weep tears of delight and gratitude when Steve Jobs rolls out the new ones. It's my albums that really define the years for me, and my girlfriends. But behind those, it's my Apples. Of course they make me cry.

Comments

ecology

[(Anonymous)]

Why not be radical, don't buy the 24" iMac, and instead invest in a garden allotment. Gardening is what I do, and dirty jeans is what I wear. RW

Re: ecology

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Don't tell me, you tapped out this message on a flowerpot with the tip of a trowel?

[(Anonymous)]

You'd find them an awful lot cheaper if you just went for direct sponsorship from the manufacturer.
mixu62

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You'd find them an awful lot cheaper if you just went for direct sponsorship from the manufacturer.

It seems to work for Seal, but not for me. The closest I got was the day, five years ago (http://imomus.com/dailyphoto221101.html), an employee of Chiat Day, Apple's ad agency in LA, invited me in to add to a little encomium they were organising to celebrate the iMac turning three. I sang "I am Mai Noda's strawberry iMac, switch on my screen / A strawberry-coloured Apple computer, also in green". What more could they have asked for? But not only did they not give me a free computer, the bastards didn't even use my endorsement. They went with Seal instead.

[(Anonymous)]

I know you'd get stick from the sherman tanks, but what do they know those deluded whippersnappers?
mixu62

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/2006/07/judgejudy-prank4.html

[xishimarux.livejournal.com]

Sort of wierd...

Childhood = Apple IIc/e Kung Fu and Oregon Trail.
A little later = Performa and seeing my friends video he made with it.
Pre-Teen = Wanted to be a pheek so I build a PC to get access to BBS's with the info I needed.
Teen = Computer Club 1st year of high school still getting free phone calls learned about HTML1.0. Built more PC's.
Late Teens = No more pheeking but more sex/techno/raves.
Adult 22+ = PC destroyed my techno compositions for the last time. Broke down and got a really good deal on a used G4 1.25x2 + 17" Dell flat screen for 1200us.
Current = Apple for life and I'm looking to get a intelmac soon.

It's funny when I'm using my Apple it's fun like when I was a kid. It's easy to use and everything works. Thanks for the great entry :)

[(Anonymous)]

If PCs prevent people from making techno songs then perhaps they're not bad machines after all.

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

I recall you writing about this subject before, now haven't you?

Everyone likes Macs

[(Anonymous)]

http://tinyurl.com/y86kmr

[(Anonymous)]

I've owned 4 Macs in 12 years but this year I switched to PC after frustration with the OS9/OS X/intel changes and expensive prices. Now everything works (well...so far, anyway) and I don't have to spend a bloody fortune.

I'm sorry to say that in my experience, Mac users are some of the most deluded people in the world paying out high prices and ignoring quite bad design faults (ie, painfully slow processors -no right button mouse for speed and efficiency, for instance) all because they like to think they're in the 'think different' club.

'thought different' club?

[(Anonymous)]

You're a shrinking majority of reason.

– homepage.mac.com/produkt

[desant012.livejournal.com]

Aquarian emotions, man, totally. Hey, our birthdays are coming up next month - I think I'm going to celebrate by crawling inside a bag of amniotic fluid and sealing myself in the drywall of my apartment. I'll emerge the day Apple invents artificial body design, finally achieving perfect human beauty. How about you?

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

You know what makes me weep? Windows Vista and its DRM bullshit. While we're all getting emotional over computers, I thought I'd share my two cents on the subject:

One of the great things about the internet today is that it's allowed me to sample so much for free. It's broadened my interests a lot because I've been able to experience so much. I operate on the basis that if I download content I really love, I'll buy it legitimately to support the creator.

The mainstream only really focuses on whats popular, which leaves you in the situation where if you want to preview media that's outside of the mainstream, you have to purchase it. The problem with this is, I just don't have money to waste on "testing the water" so to speak with a particular album/movie/etc. However, saying this, my download-happy antics have infact increased my spending -- I now have the confidence to buy stuff and know I'm gonna enjoy it, because I've been able to gauge what I really love through sampling.

Also, just because I'd download something for free doesn't mean I'd buy it, so all these losses that get attributed to pirating are over-inflated.

A fantastic example of illegal downloading benefiting an industry can be seen in the Anime/manga fansubbing/dubbing communities.


I was never a massive fan of Apple, but with Windows taking more and more steps to quash pirating, I refuse to progress onto Vista in the future. If people dont make a stand, Windows will be the death of something I feel has had a massively positive impact on my life, and modern youth culture as a whole -- the ability to experience such a broad range of creativity through downloading. I'll use XP for as long as I can, then when I'm literally forced to have to switch to Vista, then it's Apple/Linux all the way for me...

...Probably Linux coz Apple is just a corporate whore in Indie clothing. ;o)

[(Anonymous)]

Unless you have specific mission-critical apps that are specific to either platform, I can't see why anyone would persist with apple or windows! One costs you money=time, the other costs you time=money.

Linux/(K)ubuntu is the obvious way forward for those who want an alternative to mainstream slavery, etc. The hardware is cheap, the software free, powerful, reliable and totally customisable - why wouldn't you want to choose that path?

mixu62

[beiderbecke.livejournal.com]

ah, i remember the days of the imac book and the revamped volkswagen. to be 10 years old and newly aware of consumer targeting - i swear, that computer/car combo was meant for children.

[fishwithissues.livejournal.com]

great entry and article both. i deeply sympathize with these oddly strong feelings, and I'm impressed you could write that much about apple without sounding like a horrible nerd. i guess that's part of it though. macs aren't "nerdy" in a cartoonish sense of the nerd. they're more gay than nerdy.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I'm getting a lot of comments on the Wired site from red-blooded American homophobes telling me I'm a "wuss" and should "get a grip", or that I really just want Steve Jobs to "hold my hand".

Actually, one of the more interesting parts of the keynote was when Jobs placed a call to a man in the audience suggesting they go catch a movie later. The guy started ad libbing at the end something about "Not that we want people to get the wrong idea... huh huh", but Jobs very pointedly ignored the gay innuendo. Even in San Francisco, even to an audience of Mac devotees, there are some things you don't even joke about in American corporate life.

[pixelmist.livejournal.com]

It's funny, I just wrote a little piece lamenting the filthiness of my once-perfect iBook. It makes me sad. This is my first Apple. Am I doomed to a future of electro-aesthetic heartbreak?

Think of it as my tribute to ultra-pretentious Nathan Barley character Doug Rocket

If you're gonna do it, do it right: grow your hair out and record an album of afro-beat inspired electropop. It's what the people want, Momus. Or don't you care about your fans?

Also, give me a grant to finish my novel. It doesn't have to be 20,000 pounds; a pat on the back will do.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Consider the pat patted!

[(Anonymous)]

I don't use Apple. I'm a computer programmer, both by trade and vocation, and I grew up in Unix. For me, using the black box that is OSX would be like a musician using a guitar wich only plays a number of preset tunes.

But there are more important reasons for not using Apple products. They offer the most hardcore monoculture in computing, and they're the most enthusiastic pushers of DRM (http://www.defectivebydesign.org) around. You tend to raise the ire of their fans when you say it, but Apple is an enemy of the open society.

EVERYONES A CRITIC

[ex-mimic736.livejournal.com]

ARE YOU SAYING THAT MOMUS ONLY USES PRESET TUNES AT HIS CONCERTS!?!?!?

[ex-mimic736.livejournal.com]

Blue Jeans

[bonsai-human.livejournal.com]

I would have loved it if you'd addressed my last comment, as all this is effectively "why I love blue jeans".

[simasima.livejournal.com]

Unless I missed it in the comments, what music-making software were you running on these older machines? Ironically, before I read your post, I was pricing Powerbook Duos on eBay.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

EZ Vision and SoundEdit 16, mostly. Although, ten years ago, it would've been Deck and StudioVision. I de-evolved (largely due to annoying dongle-related problems, whereby I couldn't prove to the machine that I'd paid money for the software. That sent me back to the more open software that didn't require stupid hard drive authorization procedures).

I saw a Duo 230 in my local fleamarket the other day. Didn't ask the price, though.

EZ Vision

[(Anonymous)]

You still using EZ Vision? Or something like Garageband now?

Re: EZ Vision

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I used EZ Vision making Otto Spooky, Garageband making Ocky Milk. The next one will use Logic, I think.

Blue screen.. ?

[justincash.livejournal.com]

Maybe this has already been asked. Not sure, and I don't really have the time to go through all 60 of the former comments, to check.

Momus, you've mentioned the "Blue Screen of Death" several times now. Both in the Wired article and now here on the blog. I'm curious how and when are you seeing a blue screen of death on a mac?? I've only been on macs since around June 06, but thought that was a Windows only situation.

Not calling you out on this, just curious.

Re: Blue screen.. ?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

G3 iBook motherboard problem. Freezes on startup. Screen is blue. Death!

[xchimx.livejournal.com]

probably the first and last apple computer i plan on purchasing, though certainly not the last apple product. hardware specs don't add up to the cost unfortunately for apple.

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

This line of thought will bring you into contact with two distinct groups of computer users:

1.) Those who care about user interface
2.) Those who do not care about user interface

From a practical standpoint, Apple products are underpowered and overpriced. From a usability standpoint, most non-Apple software interfaces are a crime against humanity.

The current incarnation of MacOS is resolutely stable and makes excellent use of the x86 hardware. There are those who will disagree with this; but the alternatives they shall proffer are either 1.) not capable of running the software creatives need, or 2.) made by Microsoft, which anyone who uses a computer powered by their software for more than a week will detect as a disingenuous suggestion.

Microsoft's Vista will present an interface that borrows heavily from OSX and introduces some of its own innovations. The gap will be closed significantly but Micorosoft will still have a hard time competing with Apple for stability and ease of use.

The debate that has cropped up here is older than the world wide web.

[justincash.livejournal.com]

That is why I did not even voice my opinions. I will run my big Mac Cult mouth somewhere else.

mancrush

[(Anonymous)]

http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/01/speaking-of-dudes-who-have-man-crush-on.html