Watching Apple win the world
I bought my first Macintosh in the late 80's. I was a college student writing my senior thesis and it seemed like the thing to do. My roommate -- a future MBA -- suggested I buy a Windows machine, but I went with a Mac because something about the look and feel appealed to me.
For the next 30 years I stuck with that decision. It wasn't always easy. There was a period in the 90's where I practically had to hide the fact that I was a Mac user while at work; mention that you had a Mac at home and you opened yourself to smirks and open disrespect. Even my father referred to Macs as "toys." (He's a committed Windows user to this day.) There were many long years in which it was nearly impossible to find Mac shareware for certain tasks; the developer community was supporting Windows and basically nothing else.
There are a number of people like me, people who owned Macs when that seemed ludicrously stubborn in the face of market inevitability, people who smile a little bit when they hear the latest bit of Apple world-beating financial returns. Back in the day we knew our "toys" were the best computers in the world, and now the rest of the world knows it, too.
Design excellent products, focus on the user experience, and you can make absurd amounts of money; I'm happy to live in a world where that's still true.
