I decided to do something unusual yesterday.
I felt like I should spend the day reading a certain book.
So, I drove to the downtown Kansas City Library and read…all day.
I can’t tell you the last time I did this…especially on a Saturday.
Today, a day later, I don’t regret it. Although the book was written nearly 30 years ago and is very dated, I came away very encouraged about some of the recent decisions that I have made and some of the plans that I have made for the future.
But, today I am really glad I read the book.
One section of the book was about the “new” technology of the computer typing. The book was published in 1983, a year before Apple introduced the MacIntosh.
The author then recounted some VERY interesting history regarding the typewriter.
The first typewriters were completely mechanical. Even using the “hunt and peck” method, typists would type too fast and cause the typewriter to jam. So, in 1878, Christopher Latham Sholes of Milwaukee, Wisconsin introduced the QWERTY keyboard in order to slow the typists down! Boy, did he ever succeed! If you had a child randomly reconfigure the letters of the keyboard, it would be faster!
And 135 years later, that clumsy keyboard is the one that comes standard on every computer sold today!
In 1932, August Dvorak, a distant relative of the Czech composer Antonin Dvorak, invented the Dvorak simplified keyboard. Every typing record since the end of WWII has been set on this type of keyboard.
While I didn’t know all of this history, I had heard about this keyboard back in the 1990’s. But, my curiousity was stirred.
So, I decided to do a little research online this afternoon.
First, I learned that I can actually choose the Dvorak keyboard layout on my MacBook Pro. That’s interesting…
I then discovered that there are free programs available online that will teach you how to type on this keyboard. Huh…
I then wondered if I could actually buy a Dvorak keyboard. A quick search on Amazon revealed that there is a flexible, silicon layover for the keyboard on the Unibody MacBook Pro.
Ah, the Unibody MacBooks…
They were just introducing them when I bought my current computer back in 2008. I had never considered buying one because I was told that the model that I own was the last one that would run the software that I have used to write several thousand word processing documents.
But, it is still fun to look…
So, I went to Apple’s Refurbished Mac’s web page. I clicked on a computer that was initially released in 2011 and wistfully read through the features when I stumbled upon this:
And since Mac OS X Snow Leopard is designed to take advantage of every processor core,
Wait a minute…
Apple sold Unibody MacBook Pros in 2011 with the Snow Leopard operating system???
But I thought…
I mean, I was told…
The wheels in my mind started turning…
I can buy a new computer from Apple and have it covered with Apple Care for 3 years that will run my old word processing software?
Oh baby, am I glad I decided to spend yesterday reading!
