1984? Easy answer. I get on the first plane to California and look up a man named Ronald Wayne in the phone book.
I go straight to his house and offer him $1000 for the shares he is about to sell. Come back to present time and I am now the richest man on the planet, with a 20% ownership of Apple.
Ron was a part owner of Apple when it was set up in the Steve’s garage. He famously sold his shares for just $500 in 1984 as he needed the money, and didn’t think Apple would go anywhere.
First, let’s set the scene by going even further back to 1982 or 1983…. Something like that.
I wake up at 2:00AM to get available testing time on our mainframe computer. I’m working on integrating a newly-purchased Accounts Receivable package with our legacy systems. And working from home, thankfully.
First I call the computer room and give a heads up that I’m getting on to the Lead Graveyard Operator, Alexander, who had the most awesome telephone voice in the world.
Next, I fire up this beast:
It’s a Texas Instruments TI “Silent 700”. The “Silent” part was…. aspirational. It made a caterwauling series of sounds when it negotiated connection to the mainframe via those acoustic coupling rubber cups on top that attach to an analog telephone. At a ground-pounding, nitro-burning speed of 300BPS! That’s 300 bits PER SECOND, for you young-uns.
Like so:
(Oooo… a touch-tone phone, not a rotary dialer!)
I’d type commands on the keyboard and they would be printed out on that roll of thermal paper, as well as messages back from the mainframe.
Hi tech, for the time.
Now to the real answer. Flash forward to 1984. I get one of these:
Yep, it’s the first Mac!
Graphical interface! Diskette! Mouse! Fast processor. Comes with software. That and the printer were only about $3500! In 1984 dollars! Moar gratuitous exclamation marks!!!!
I thought I’d died and gone to computer heaven. It was kinda heavy, but I got a soft case with handles for it and took it to work almost every day. Until some few years later all the programmers had PCs on their desks.
I loved that thing. I would have taken it to bed with me but it was too bulky.
