I will never EVER forget the impact of the commercial your company made for the 1984 Superbowl. I was a Senior in High School and had about 2 years of BASIC programming skills under my belt which I unfortunately learned NOT on Apple products.
My first Mac was the Mac Plus (1988) with an external 45MB Seagate hard drive. Imagine my jaw dropping moment when I pulled the shroud off that Mac Plus to upgrade the RAM (anyone remember SIMM cards?) to see the signatures, engraved in the resin, of the Apple employees who created it, including YOURS.
The YEARS I spent arguing MacOS v Windows are years I'll never get back, but at the end of the day, you made a box full of capacitors, electronics and complexity accessible for ANYONE to use. The fact that your product opened an entire world to my Father at 55 years of age that now allows he and my Mother to have Skype calls with their Grandson every Saturday or Sunday during the winters is just pure magic.
These things, which to some may be small, shaped my life and made me into the early technology adopter that I became and continue to be. Although at times, well, many times, I cursed your business model, you stayed the visionary that you always were and when you went back to Apple, you saved it and made it even better. I still argue with the business model, but who the hell am I to argue with that level of success.... clearly I had no clue.
