I bought my first Apple in 1978; sat down with Woz’s Red Book (which I still have) and taught myself programming. In December of that year, I was\u00a0awakened by a woman, unidentified, who has seen my advertisement for “Apple programming.” She asked what I thought of Apple’s own accounting\u00a0software. I replied that I was not in competition with Apple, and that I frequently recommended their software. Still anonymous, she asked nothing\u00a0else; simply said “Thank you” and hung up.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
An hour later, the phone rang again, and I was offered a job as the first outside contractor ever hired by Apple. From that day to this, even in semi-retirement, I’ve made my living with Apple products. Programming; writing for Mac Home Journal; editing TechNotes; consulting. Today I continue to\u00a0program albeit for the iPhone. My Macs are used for video editing and photography. My day is still spent before a glowing screen. \u00a0I estimate that I’ve\u00a0spent over 150,000 hours “at the wheel.”<\/p>\n
It was coincidence of some sorts: I went to school with Bill Atkinson; was taught by Jef Raskin. My sister was in Woz’s plane when it went down, along\u00a0with Jack and Candy. I was introduced to Apple just after they moved from the Red House to the Bandley Street warehouse. I remember looking over\u00a0the cubicle walls: “That’s Woz office. Job’s is over there… and back \u00a0there is where we glue the rubber feet on the computers.”<\/p>\n
Over the years I worked on DOS; the ROM for the Apple \/\/c; the Apple ][ GS; the original AppleWorks and much more. My work, because of Apple, took\u00a0me on some of my greatest adventures, including whale research in Alaska; work for NASA, and PBS. I met with both Steves several times, and when\u00a0I “officially” retired from Mac programming a couple of years ago, Steve J called me to chat about the old days. We were not “friends” but long-time\u00a0acquaintances, and that he’d phoned me spoke volumes about him.<\/p>\n
Almost exactly half my life has involved Apple, its people and products. It has been, in a very large sense, my reality.<\/p>\n
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote to Steve. I got the chance to tell him some of these things, and that he could rest knowing that he not only changed the\u00a0world, but changed it for the better.<\/p>\n
Goodbye, Steve.<\/p>\n
Thank you.<\/p>\n
Tracy Valleau<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I bought my first Apple in 1978; sat down with Woz’s Red Book (which I still have) and taught myself programming. In December of that year, I was\u00a0awakened by a woman, unidentified, who has seen my advertisement for “Apple programming.” She asked what I thought of Apple’s own accounting\u00a0software. I replied that I was not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mac-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":286,"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285\/revisions\/286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}