I bought my first computer a Mac about 27 years ago. It was the first Mac, the 128k. I still think it might have been the best computer I ever owned.
The one I’m using to type this is a wonderful computer, but it doesn’t really do what I want it to do, whereas my old Mac came a lot closer to doing what I want a computer to do.
First of all I love being able to load and store many programs, pieces of music, pictures, documents, etc. on my computer – something my little Mac couldn’t even come close to doing. What my little Mac did though was it loaded an operating system, but not much more when I turned it on. It included a little text program and a little paint program, but not much else. Anything else had to be run from a disk. In other words the computer couldn’t load or access or run any other program until I wanted it to run. That’s what I want a computer to do.
I want a computer to load it’s operating system when I turn it on and Nothing, NOTHING else (well, maybe a clock). I don’t want it to connect to the Internet or load a virus checker, or load ‘explorer,’ or any word processing or music or java or control panel (well, maybe a control panel, but a very rudimentary control panel) or any other programs.I want to be able to tell the computer what else, if anything is going to be started when I turn the computer on, I don’t want the operating system to do that.
I want all those other programs to be stored in the computer and I want to be able to add/download/install other programs, but the only part of them I want added to the operating system would be an icon that includes a link that will open the program for me.
Sometimes I want to do just one thing when I turn the computer on. Maybe I want to write, or draw, or work on a spreadsheet, or browse the Internet, or send an email, or listen to music; but I don’t want the computer to set itself up to be ready to do any and all of those things and many more that I might never ask it to do.
My little Mac was usually booted up and ready to go within a minute. This laptop sometimes takes as much as three minutes (depending on how long it takes to access the Internet). That’s pretty frustrating when I have an idea I want to work on, but the computer won’t even let me open the program because it’s busy opening bits and pieces of hundreds of other programs.
Do today’s Macs do this or do they have the same problem?
