Many years from now, I'll be hunched over in a creaky old pine rocker on the porch of my retirement home. For hours at a time, I'll sit staring at the trees, lost in thought. Then a passing car will startle me out of my reverie and suddenly I'll begin to blurt out words like an old radio whose short-circuited wiring has accidentally righted itself. My utterances might seem incoherent at first, but whoever takes a moment to listen will quickly realize that they're not incomprehensible, merely ancient: "MacPaint ... AppleShare ... ImageWriter ..." I will tell anyone who will pretend to listen, "I was a Mac person." Maybe I'll get really lucky and catch the ear of a young history buff. She will recognize some of my strange utterings from her History of Technology class and understand right away that I come from the dawn of the Age of Personal Computing. With wide eyes and hushed voice, she'll want to know if I ever saw a Macintosh with my own eyes. I'll tell her truthfully and in all modesty, "I owned one." The Mac will presumably be pure history by then.

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