Tag: Macs Page 1 of 5

At the onset of the holiday season many of us begin receiving more ubiquitous emails suggesting if you purchase a particular product, service, or solution, it will make your life easier.

If that were true, how much would you be willing to pay for it?

I would not be influenced to buy anything that says it’ll make my life easier, unless it would state it’d make my life 100% easier.

When my life is going to be made easier, I like to involve mathematics and request what percentage of easier an entity is discussing.

If you’re only going to make my life marginally challenging, please look elsewhere; I hear what you’re trying to sell and I’m not buying.

I remember when computers, and specifically Macs came on the scene in the 80s during the beginning of desktop publishing.

The early Macs were truly wunderkinds and allowed newspapers and magazines to be largely constructed on the Mac’s desktop.

Computers like the Mac didn’t just make our lives easier, they allowed us to get more work done efficiently, especially when Macs were introduced to the traditional pre-press workflows of printing houses throughout the land.

Did getting more work done make our lives easier?

I suppose it’s all how you look at the overall available technology at the time.

If life being easier equates to more money in pockets, then yes and no.

Creating the expectation of being able to deliver more than the competition was at the core of several printing companies’ strategies for success during the 80s and 90s–both commercial and financial printing outfits.

For pre-press workers, there was no longer the need to “paste up” daily or weekly newspapers and magazines.

You could do it all on the Mac’s, and later the PC’s desktop, once Windows PC commercial applications like Adobe Photoshop were made to run better than the Mac’s equivalent version of the software.

Did worker bees get raises?

No, they just received at best new computers during this golden age of computing and printing.

The Mac was like the old typesetter hardware on steroids, and in a much neater, smaller footprint and package.

The Mac and the PCs that came during and after them running Quark and Adobe desktop publishing software suites were the precursors to today’s creative cloud and digital underpinnings.

Everything can now be done via a browser, whereas the 80s and 90s were the birth of all things productivity-wise.

Today’s life made easier solutions

What I’m writing about here is nothing new.

Saying such and such will make your life easier has always been doublespeak for “get more done.” It also implied that by doing so, you would not be working any less than you were previously.

We didn’t produce as much when our lives were hard.

With technological enhancements we produced way more than before but still our lives did not get easier.

I’ve always made it a point to learn whatever trending software and hardware was our there at any given time between then and now, with then being the early days of the 80s and 90s, and the halcyon period post dot bomb in the early part of the 21st century and beyond to present day.

I’m here to tell you now, no single piece of hardware or software has ever made my life easier.

Newer, more powerful computers and systems, paired with the latest bloat of any software you can name has allowed me to continue working throughout this time of change.

And working has allowed me to make money.

But it hasn’t been all roses along the way.

Making decisions that were best for me allowed my life to become more manageable, less stressful, and yes easier.

For many, the Internet and the latest versions of Adobe Creative Suite have been a technological means to an end.

To be clear, they allowed many human beings to produce more and make money.

I chose the path that involved utilizing technology to its full benefit.

Tech gadgets are tools and can get in the way of enjoying life’s moments.

You don’t have to share everything you do with the world.

In fact, if you choose not to, you can begin to make the case that you and your choices are responsible for making life either easier or more difficult.

The choice is yours, and yours alone when it comes to making life easier.