三十年前，史蒂夫·乔布斯推出了Macintosh，这是我生命中最重要的产品发布。当那个立式米色盒子来到我家时，它在我心中点燃了强烈的紧迫感。我贪婪地吸收着关于这个伟大新机器的每一丝信息，从书籍、杂志、录音带，到任何我能缠住耳朵的长辈。这是未来——如果我能帮助的话，这就是我的未来。乔布斯2011年的去世勾起了许多相似的回忆。当时我九岁。那年，我的祖父通过购买Macintosh 128K改变了我的生活，并说服我的父母也这样做。我的祖父还订阅了Macworld杂志，包括多份创刊号，其中两份我带回了家。我剪下了一张Macintosh团队的照片，另一张则保持完整。（我至今仍保留着两张。）多年来，我沉迷于这本杂志，即使它包含的技术和产品信息早已过时。最吸引我的是Macintosh团队。这就是为什么我剪下了这张照片，而不是硬件或软件的照片。在看到Macintosh并阅读了那期Macworld之后，我在年幼的生命中有了重要的领悟：这是人们创造的。最后一个部分是最重要的。不仅仅是产品激励了我；更是它的创造过程。在我青少年时期，Macintosh团队被理想化和部分虚构化，但它仍然是我的指南针，证明知识和激情可以创造伟大的事物。

🌟Macintosh的发布是作者生命中最重要的时刻，它激发了作者对科技的热情和对创造力的敬畏，这种影响持续至今。

📰作者九岁时，祖父购买Macintosh 128K并订阅Macworld杂志，这些资源让作者深入了解了Macintosh团队，并深刻体会到科技产品背后人的力量。

💻作者对Macintosh有着深厚的个人情感，认为它是最好的电子礼物，这种情感也促使作者长期关注苹果和Mac操作系统的命运，即使是在iOS盛行的时代，Macintosh的重要性依然不可替代。

🧭Macintosh团队在作者青少年时期成为了他的精神支柱，证明了知识和激情能够创造伟大的事物，这种信念影响了作者对科技行业的看法和追求。

🙏作者对Macintosh的创造者以及所有为Macintosh的延续和发展做出贡献的人表示感激，并期待Macintosh能够像他一样，在未来继续存在。

Thirty years ago today, Steve Jobs introduced Macintosh. It was the single most important product announcement of my life. When that upright beige box arrived in my home, it instilled in me an incredible sense of urgency. I greedily consumed every scrap of information about this amazing new machine, from books, magazines, audio cassettes, and any adult whose ear I could bend. This was the future—my future, if I could help it.

The death of Steve Jobs in 2011 brought back a lot of these same memories. What I wrote then echoes my thoughts on the Mac’s 30th anniversary.

I was 9 years old at the time. That year, my grandfather had changed my life by purchasing a Macintosh 128K, and convincing my parents to do the same. My grandfather also had a subscription to Macworld magazine, including multiple copies of issue #1, two of which I took home with me. I cut the Macintosh team picture out of one [see above] and left the other intact. (I still have both.)

I pored over that magazine for years, long after the technical and product information it contained was useless. It was the Macintosh team that fascinated me. That’s why I’d chosen to cut out this particular picture, not a photo of the hardware or software. After seeing the Macintosh and then reading this issue of Macworld, I had an important realization in my young life: people made this.

That last part is the most important. It wasn’t just the product that galvanized me; it was the act of its creation. The Macintosh team, idealized and partially fictionalized as it surely was in my adolescent mind, nevertheless served as my north star, my proof that knowledge and passion could produce great things.

Memories are short in the tech industry. For most people, Apple and Steve Jobs will always be synonymous with the iPhone, an uncontested inflection point in our computing culture. For me, the introduction of the Macintosh will always be more important. Though people who didn’t live through it might not feel it as keenly as I do, the distance between pre-2007 smartphones and the iPhone is much smaller than the distance between MS-DOS and the Mac.

On a personal level, nothing will ever replace my tanned-plastic beauty, the greatest electronic gift I had ever received, or would ever receive. My attachment to the Mac explains why, in the late 1990s, I was desperate to know everything possible about the fate of Apple and the future of the Mac operating system. Almost fifteen years later—half the Mac’s life—I’ve reviewed every major release of OS X and zero releases of iOS. Don’t get me wrong, I love my iPad and iPod touch, but you never forget your first.

I’m eternally grateful to the people who created the Mac, and to the countless others who kept it alive and shepherded its rebirth. In this age of iOS, it’s heartening to hear Phil Schiller say, “Our view is, the Mac keeps going forever.” That’s just fine with me.