Thread by @Huxley_D

In Jan. 1997 I was 15 and obsessed with computers. My family happened to be in San Francisco and we drove by Moscone Center where I saw banners proclaiming that MacWorld Expo was happening. The pic is me around that time 🙂

A short thread ⬇️

#RetroComputing #Apple #Mac #macOS

I made a sign on a pizza box reading "SPARE MACWORLD PASS?" I only stood outside for ~10 minutes before a nice woman in a business suit gave me her pass and said "tell anyone who questions you that I'm your mom!" I went in and spent a joyful day exploring the exhibit hall.

1997 was a tumultuous time in @apple's history and for the #Mac / #macOS platform, as evidenced by San Francisco being blanketed in militaristic / revolutionary posters defending the small (but feisty!) ecosystem of Mac clones

Of the many memories from that day, a few still stand out - maybe especially getting to use a 20th Anniversary Mac which was later given to Steve Wozniak as a token of appreciation

I stopped at a booth showing removable-disk drives (I suspect it was SyQuest but can't be certain), but the people working that booth were utterly standoffish to me - obviously not interested in wasting their time on some random kid.

By contrast, the folks at the Iomega booth *lit up* when I stopped by, and treated me a like a guest of honor, showing me around, explaining all their products, etc.

By the time I left their exhibit, I was carrying two large bags of swag: tee-shirts, buttons, stickers, a bright yellow Zip disk, basically anything they could think to give me.

Maybe they just didn't want to deal with packing all that stuff up (this was the last day of the show), but they made me feel so special, and I never forgot it.

I remained a loyal Iomega fan from that day forward, even after a SCSI Zip drive with the 'click of death' nuked a big school project a couple years later.

Iomega (and SyQuest, for that matter) is gone now, after a slow fade from relevance brought about by a variety of factors they were unable to cope with: CD burners, USB flash drives, the Internet itself. That said, I still own and enjoy a few Zip drives!

In my (pre-COVID) career, I've had the opportunity to work the floor at giant tech trade shows, including a couple times at Moscone.

It was such a special feeling to stand in that place again, and I tried to leave every visitor I met with the same feeling that the Iomega team gave me all those years ago.

Just gonna tag a few folks who might enjoy this thread: @Foone @gruber @bleedsixcolors @macworld @Mac84tv @benjedwards @blakespot

I should also note that this whole thing was inspired by @ThisDoesNotComp's excellent recent video about the rise & fall of SyQuest - definitely worth watching: