Twenty-five years ago, a new age dawned...  and it was insanely great...

I remember this so well - the sense that something new had happened, a window into a new world that suddenly existed, full of possibilities...  And you have to love Steve Jobs; even twenty-five years ago, he was the consummate showman.

Of course I pulled out Hen3ry, my trusty Mac/SE, and booted him up to celebrate.  Beep!  No problem, came right up with his cheery little gray-and-white screen.

I showed Megan, and she asked whether "it worked"?  I said sure, go ahead and play with it.  "Where's the Internet?"  Ha.  Remember when computers were stand-alone?  Yeah, those were the days.  In fact Hen3ry used to have a Radius full-screen page monitor attached (long-since dead), and was used every day for word processing.  I *still* have the Apple LaserWriter I used too, and it still works.

[ Update: Dave Winer ponders What made the Mac different.  A nice post, I'd forgotten all the ways in which the Mac was different, but it certainly was... ]