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silveradept[Welcome to December Days, where I natter on about things organized around a theme (sometimes very loosely), one a day, for 31 days. This year, we're taking a look back at some touchpoints along the way of my journey with computing and computing devices.]
I picked the Mac for this story, even though all of the computer labs at my university contained Windows machines and Linux machines, because this story is, to some degree, about being able to use whatever machine was available, rather than being stuck with one specific type of machine. (And because Macs and OS X will return in a later story in this series.)
So! My university believed firmly in having computing resources available at multiple points on the campus. Each of the dormitories themselves had a computer lab for the residents that could be entered by providing an access card. Luckily for me, the one attached to my dorm also had an exit into the student union building, which made it really handy for when I wanted to avoid the snow outside for as long as possible when going to it from classes in the winter. In addition to the dorm-attached labs, several of the major university campus buildings also had computer labs inside of them. The IT budget for those machines, licenses, and maintenance had to be massive, even beyond the scale of what I might have thought of at the time, and that was with knowing the size of the University's physical footprint and that an entire Electrical Engineering and Computer Science building existed on a separate campus and would need sufficient computing to support that program as well.
The primary computer lab that I would use outside of the dormitory one was called "the Fishbowl" on campus, because it was a large open space that a person stepped down into that had high glass walls on all sides where passers-by could look down and see the students hard at work on whatever they were doing. There was not a ramp into the Fishbowl, but there was a specific set of computers before getting to the stairs, one of which had been kitted out significantly for accessibility needs, whether for low vision, motor issues, chair height access, and the like. I assume it also had screen reader software installed.
On a purely physical matter, the Fishbowl was always a lot warmer than the rest of the space outside. Maybe the design of it helped trap heat inside, maybe it was just the sheer amount of computers and monitors and bodies in use, but even if I was wearing my heaviest outside costs, hats, and gloves to brave the weather outside, I would almost always have to work in the Fishbowl in shirt sleeves so as to avoid overheating from the amount of warmth that was present. "Gently steaming in the Fishbowl" is something I would use as a way of explaining what I was doing if I felt like being funny.
The Fishbowl was divided nearly evenly in two between Windows and Macintosh machines, with a small segment of Linux machines available for the EECS students. At this point in time, Apple had recently (so, within a few years) made the jump to OS X, a more Unix-based system, from the previous operating system they had been using for Macintoshes for about 15 years. Up to this point in my life, most of my exposure to Macs had been with the relative that owned one since she worked in graphic design, publishing, and other things that would have warranted purchasing a Mac and the accompanying software for those tasks that was not available for PCs. So I had exposure to OS 9 and how many of the things were launched and closed and otherwise managed on Macs. The two things that often trip me up about Mac design is that first, Apple believes firmly in the idea of having a mouse with a single button, so someone used to being able to right-click and access a context menu has to learn how to control-click or option-click to get to the thing they were expecting, and second, closing the last window when a program has been launched doesn't close the program, as it does on Windows or other Desktop Environments. Otherwise, there really wasn't much of a difference between the two for what I needed to do with them, which was usually composing assignments in between lectures or discussions where going back to the dorm (or back to the house, when I moved to out-of-dorm housing) would take time that I could spend more usefully elsewhere. And when I wasn't in the library, trying to find resources to help me make my papers and assignments better. Sending drafts back and forth by email to myself was a normal thing, just to know what progress I had made and could them continue to work on when I got back to base at the end of the day. I'd also have e-mail up for any interesting distractions to arrive and give me a break from doing the work that I was doing. (Unless I was being extra focused on what I was waiting, at which point I'd be able to screen out the incoming distractions until I was doing with the writing blitz.)
I never thought of it as weird that I could find either a Windows machine or a Mac and just go to work, but I have a sneaking suspicion that would be one of those "wizardry!" kinds of things if someone who had a different background in computing were to watch me smoothly transition between Windows and Macs and back again, based on how often I impress co-workers with being able to work with all different types of devices and computers without dropping a beat or getting flummoxed or confused when someone wants to do something with their machines. From what I remember if being in the Fishbowl, there were almost always Macs available to use, so I would use them. They had the Microsoft Office Suite on them, they had the email client on them, they were functionally identical, other than the desktop look and the single click needed to launch the programs rather than the double click needed for Windows. I feel like that might have made me weird, that I wasn't deterred in any way by things not being exactly what I was used to, but even then, I probably understood things in general or the abstract rather than specifically where stuff was. Maybe that is weird. I don't know.
Now that I'm an information professional outside of the university environment, I can appreciate how good the student body had it to get all of those computing resources available to them, wherever they were on campus, such that they could usually find a good machine available in a short walk from where they were, so long as it was somewhere on one of the academic campuses. Working in a public library means not having enough machines for all the desire, and of one type only, and restricted to sessions of only a certain length, rather than being a student that can pull an all-nighter (or nearly so) without having to sign back out and sign in again every so often and hope there's still a machine available to them. I didn't have to rely solely on the computer labs, since I had my own machine in my room, but I don't think I appreciated then the ease to which I could find a computer and get to work. I also kind of wonder how they did property disposal of wall of those machines when they were done in the computing labs, and who got them and for what price.
On the matter of OS X itself, it started with a bigger color palette than OS 9 had, but they also ditched the bombs and sad faces and other anthropomorphization that did make OS 9 pretty fun even when it was having issues. So spinning color circles and the like, and the new dock that held both program shortcuts and what does were open but had been minimized, and for once, when you dragged removable storage to the trash, it transformed into an eject icon. Eventually, I think it transformed into the eject icon when you first start dragging it, so as to make it clear how you remove them safely. Because I was always a little worried about dragging things to the trash as a way of ejecting them. (And, in fact, Space Quest IV trolled us with a GUI that looked like the classic Mac OS environment. Some things got dragged to the trash to get points and make things easier to complete, but there was also a disk icon marked "SQ4". Drag that disk to the trash and the game quit immediately, without the opportunity to save, or even a funny death message like would accompany many other silly decisions.) But it also represented a little bit of a shift toward a corporate policy for Apple that I definitely don't approve of. There's still a ways to go to get to that particular story, though, because the iPod, for example, is still going to be in the click wheel style for a significant time and neither the iPad nor the iOS that it runs have come into being.
- CPU: Apple-IBM-Motorola PowerPC third generation (G3) or forth generation (G4) processor
- Memory: 1-2 GB RAM (likely)
- Graphics: ATI Rage 128 Pro with 16 MB VRAM or ATI Radeon with 32 MB VRAM (likely)
- Sound: Internal mono speaker, inputs for 3.5" mini jacks for stereo output.
- Inputs/Peripherals: Keyboard (USB 1.1), Mouse (USB 1.1), 100MBit, possibly 1000MBit Ethernet (RJ45, CAT-5e cable), network-attached printers
- Storage: 40 GB ATA Internal Hard Disk Drive, DVD-ROM Optical Media Drive
- Operating System: Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther"
I picked the Mac for this story, even though all of the computer labs at my university contained Windows machines and Linux machines, because this story is, to some degree, about being able to use whatever machine was available, rather than being stuck with one specific type of machine. (And because Macs and OS X will return in a later story in this series.)
So! My university believed firmly in having computing resources available at multiple points on the campus. Each of the dormitories themselves had a computer lab for the residents that could be entered by providing an access card. Luckily for me, the one attached to my dorm also had an exit into the student union building, which made it really handy for when I wanted to avoid the snow outside for as long as possible when going to it from classes in the winter. In addition to the dorm-attached labs, several of the major university campus buildings also had computer labs inside of them. The IT budget for those machines, licenses, and maintenance had to be massive, even beyond the scale of what I might have thought of at the time, and that was with knowing the size of the University's physical footprint and that an entire Electrical Engineering and Computer Science building existed on a separate campus and would need sufficient computing to support that program as well.
The primary computer lab that I would use outside of the dormitory one was called "the Fishbowl" on campus, because it was a large open space that a person stepped down into that had high glass walls on all sides where passers-by could look down and see the students hard at work on whatever they were doing. There was not a ramp into the Fishbowl, but there was a specific set of computers before getting to the stairs, one of which had been kitted out significantly for accessibility needs, whether for low vision, motor issues, chair height access, and the like. I assume it also had screen reader software installed.
On a purely physical matter, the Fishbowl was always a lot warmer than the rest of the space outside. Maybe the design of it helped trap heat inside, maybe it was just the sheer amount of computers and monitors and bodies in use, but even if I was wearing my heaviest outside costs, hats, and gloves to brave the weather outside, I would almost always have to work in the Fishbowl in shirt sleeves so as to avoid overheating from the amount of warmth that was present. "Gently steaming in the Fishbowl" is something I would use as a way of explaining what I was doing if I felt like being funny.
The Fishbowl was divided nearly evenly in two between Windows and Macintosh machines, with a small segment of Linux machines available for the EECS students. At this point in time, Apple had recently (so, within a few years) made the jump to OS X, a more Unix-based system, from the previous operating system they had been using for Macintoshes for about 15 years. Up to this point in my life, most of my exposure to Macs had been with the relative that owned one since she worked in graphic design, publishing, and other things that would have warranted purchasing a Mac and the accompanying software for those tasks that was not available for PCs. So I had exposure to OS 9 and how many of the things were launched and closed and otherwise managed on Macs. The two things that often trip me up about Mac design is that first, Apple believes firmly in the idea of having a mouse with a single button, so someone used to being able to right-click and access a context menu has to learn how to control-click or option-click to get to the thing they were expecting, and second, closing the last window when a program has been launched doesn't close the program, as it does on Windows or other Desktop Environments. Otherwise, there really wasn't much of a difference between the two for what I needed to do with them, which was usually composing assignments in between lectures or discussions where going back to the dorm (or back to the house, when I moved to out-of-dorm housing) would take time that I could spend more usefully elsewhere. And when I wasn't in the library, trying to find resources to help me make my papers and assignments better. Sending drafts back and forth by email to myself was a normal thing, just to know what progress I had made and could them continue to work on when I got back to base at the end of the day. I'd also have e-mail up for any interesting distractions to arrive and give me a break from doing the work that I was doing. (Unless I was being extra focused on what I was waiting, at which point I'd be able to screen out the incoming distractions until I was doing with the writing blitz.)
I never thought of it as weird that I could find either a Windows machine or a Mac and just go to work, but I have a sneaking suspicion that would be one of those "wizardry!" kinds of things if someone who had a different background in computing were to watch me smoothly transition between Windows and Macs and back again, based on how often I impress co-workers with being able to work with all different types of devices and computers without dropping a beat or getting flummoxed or confused when someone wants to do something with their machines. From what I remember if being in the Fishbowl, there were almost always Macs available to use, so I would use them. They had the Microsoft Office Suite on them, they had the email client on them, they were functionally identical, other than the desktop look and the single click needed to launch the programs rather than the double click needed for Windows. I feel like that might have made me weird, that I wasn't deterred in any way by things not being exactly what I was used to, but even then, I probably understood things in general or the abstract rather than specifically where stuff was. Maybe that is weird. I don't know.
Now that I'm an information professional outside of the university environment, I can appreciate how good the student body had it to get all of those computing resources available to them, wherever they were on campus, such that they could usually find a good machine available in a short walk from where they were, so long as it was somewhere on one of the academic campuses. Working in a public library means not having enough machines for all the desire, and of one type only, and restricted to sessions of only a certain length, rather than being a student that can pull an all-nighter (or nearly so) without having to sign back out and sign in again every so often and hope there's still a machine available to them. I didn't have to rely solely on the computer labs, since I had my own machine in my room, but I don't think I appreciated then the ease to which I could find a computer and get to work. I also kind of wonder how they did property disposal of wall of those machines when they were done in the computing labs, and who got them and for what price.
On the matter of OS X itself, it started with a bigger color palette than OS 9 had, but they also ditched the bombs and sad faces and other anthropomorphization that did make OS 9 pretty fun even when it was having issues. So spinning color circles and the like, and the new dock that held both program shortcuts and what does were open but had been minimized, and for once, when you dragged removable storage to the trash, it transformed into an eject icon. Eventually, I think it transformed into the eject icon when you first start dragging it, so as to make it clear how you remove them safely. Because I was always a little worried about dragging things to the trash as a way of ejecting them. (And, in fact, Space Quest IV trolled us with a GUI that looked like the classic Mac OS environment. Some things got dragged to the trash to get points and make things easier to complete, but there was also a disk icon marked "SQ4". Drag that disk to the trash and the game quit immediately, without the opportunity to save, or even a funny death message like would accompany many other silly decisions.) But it also represented a little bit of a shift toward a corporate policy for Apple that I definitely don't approve of. There's still a ways to go to get to that particular story, though, because the iPod, for example, is still going to be in the click wheel style for a significant time and neither the iPad nor the iOS that it runs have come into being.
