The passing of Apple's co-founder Steve Jobs has triggered me to dig into the history of Apple and its first computer dated back in 1970s.
It is incredibly impressive to see how computer has evolved over time and how the world has become hooked into the technology so seamlessly.
Today, computer is no longer a computer. With the advancement in technology, it is indeed "devices" that we are talking about. Devices that are no longer confined to a box with CPU, a monitor screen, and a keyboard for input.
My first experience with computer was back in late 80s when I was in secondary school. Back then, computer was synonym to luxury item with not many people could afford, so do I. As an initiative to foster computer literacy among students, my school back then had organized "Kelab Komputer" which students could enjoy usage of computer and some instructor led classes with a nominal fees of RM5 a month. I was fortunate to be able to participate in the club and have had my first ever experience with a computer.
At that time, the lab was equipped with the Commodore 128 - a computer with white color body, a type writer like keyboard, and a mouse. Obviously the Commodore is no longer in operation now (company went bankrupt in early 2000), but the design and UI of the computer was as good as Apple's Macintosh at that time. Guess what, the computer did not have MS-DOS and as far as I can recall, I have to type in the instruction is BASIC to get the computer to work! Yes, I wrote a couple of programs in BASIC (ranging from hello world to some graphical patterns looping).
I still remember the name of my teacher, Mr Lee Foo San. He was a very knowledgeable person in computer and I considered that to be scarce at that time as many did not know what computer was let alone using it.
Quite an interesting memory to me comes to think about it.
