Rant #2,171: Apple of My Eye

Today is Friday, June 29, the 180th day of the year.

Incredibly, we are nearly at the midway point of 2018.

On a personal note, I would like to wish my long-time friend Howie a nice birthday.

We have known each other since 1964, grew up in the same neighborhood--Rochdale Village, South Jamaica, Queens, New York--and in recent years, revived our friendship after long periods of hiatus.

I wish nothing but the best for him. He was a good kid and is a good adult.

Anyway, Howie shares his birthday with two major events in the history of Apple Computers, both worth noting.

First, today, in 1975, Apple founder Steve Wozniak tested the initial prototype of the Apple I computer.

Thirty-two years later, in 2007, Apple released its first mobile phone, the iPhone.

It is rare that you can say events are monumental and earth changing, but I guess that these two events are and were just that.

Wozniak built the Apple I computer by hand, and his friend, Steve Jobs, was so impressed with the machine that he thought it could be sold to the general public.

And thus began the computer age, as the Apple I was the fledgling company's very first product sold to consumers.

Decades later, with the company kind of floundering and losing its way among the personal computer crowd, Apple released the first iPhone.

Among the world's first smartphones--phones that had the ability to do many other things, including surfing the Internet and taking pictures--the device's popularity lifted Apple into the stratosphere, and it has never looked back.

Personally, it took me many years to move from a PC to an Apple computer, but you are reading this blog, which was generated from my Apple computer at home.

However, I personally have never moved over to an Apple phone. I like what I have just fine--a Samsung--but I will tell you, my wife and son swear by their iPhones.

So today is a big day in Apple history, and if you use an iPhone or an Apple computer, you really have to take pause and think that these advances, well, advanced your lives.

Although we all kind of moan about the use of computers--and the overuse of these devices--we live in the computer age, and these devices are as commonplace as televisions were to earlier generations--and I specifically mean Baby Boomers.

What would we be without TV, and conversely, what would we be without computers?

To co-opt a Beatles song title, we would be "Nowhere Man."

So we have to thank the two Steves, Wozniak and Jobs, for having the foresight to think out of the box a bit, and create something that has changed all of our lives, for better or worse.

And let's be honest about it, the two of them epitomized the American spirit, the American passion to do more, the American passion to excel.

I think we, as a society, have somehow lost that passion over the years, and yes, computers and the Internet have made things too easy for us all.

What will be the next great invention, the next creation that will change our lives forever?

It is hard to say, but you can't argue that computers and smartphones have made all of us a part of the high-tech world, if even we only know how to turn these things on and use their basic abilities.

So today is something of a monumental day in world history, and I will leave it at that.

Me, my allergies are really bothering me today, I have to go to the hell hole I call work, and the weekend is right around the corner.

This day will blur into all the others I guess.

So anyway, have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday as we move into July.

See you then.