25 Jan 09 Dave Yates and Macs – A history in The Guardian

As reported under my user name of Pyrus in The Guardian

 

In 1992 I bought a Mac LCII with an earth shattering 4Mb of RAM and a 40Mb hard drive. I was to be liberated to create graphics faster, better and right on the bleeding edge. 

 

Formerly I had sketched with pencils, I had embellished with Magic Markers, I had crafted prototypes, meticulously created key lines with scalpel cut tramlines and fine point draughsman pens. I had stripped film and acetate in and out of things. I had done this patiently through amendment after amendment and 1992 was the year it was all going to change.

Armed with a creative brief and a fortnight to deliver I scoffed at the nay-sayers who predicted the death of ‘real’ design, plugged the LCII in and switched it on.

I loaded PhotoShop, and Quark. I opened up the software. It froze and crashed. Launch – crash – launch – crash. I phoned the shop they talked about RAM and other things. I said “I see” but what I meant was “uh???”. They told me to “Zap the P-RAM”. Realising, by now that I was technically brain-dead, they explained that this was the equivalent of “giving the machine a good kick in the bollocks”. With fingers contorted onto the Command, Option, P and R keys all at the same time, I got my girlfriend to press the ‘On’ button. Three sets of start-up chimes and back came the desktop, apparently chastened  by the having it testiculars zapped.

I launched PhotoShop – Crash – launch – crash -launch – crash. 

After a week of this and lots of phone calls, I told the bloke from the shop to come and sort it out. He turned up and regailed me with stories of virtual memory allowing me to get 8Mb of RAM out of it and then sold me RAM Doubler – giving me 16Mb of RAM out of the thing. 

A new week started. I launched PhotoShop. Yippee. It opened. I started to create things – I played with the stunning array of twelve fonts and marveled at how easily I could switch from one to another. I spent all day putting the basics into the my project, with each key-stroke I became more skilled and even had a couple of Eureka moments. 

Then at about 10pm, it crashed and I lost all of it. I zapped it’s P-RAM repeatedly, metaphorically hoofing its nads with relish. The rest of the week went on in a similar fashion. I developed a nervous twitch where my left thumb and middle finger would simulaneously press the Command and the S buttons every two or three minutes. Even this would cause it to crash at times and the data would disappear. I would shout at it “Nooo! DON’T PLEASE…. I’ll zap your PRAM if you dare… Oh you Bastard”.

By Friday afternoon of week two, I had learned zap the P-RAM nonchalently by putting the stapler on the Command and Option keys while holding the P and R keys with one hand and drinking coffee with the other. I wanted the machine to think I didn’t really care and it was pointless trying to piss me off.

I also had to revert to the Magic Markers with less than two hours to deliver the visuals. Ironically I was congratulated on the more edgey style of graphics.

I stuck with MAC and I’m glad I did. But it was in 1992 that I started using the phrase ‘Zap it’ for any technical thing that went wrong. Apple’s legacy to me from that era is this phrase, now hard coded into my vocabulary. My love for Macs happened much later. Certainly at that time I hated the bloody thing with a passion.