My first Mac and the state of Apple user training
7/20/2007My first Mac was an Apple IIsi. I purchased it from Casey's Page Mill in Colorado who marketed specifically to screenprinters. He no longer sells computers, but he does sell the vellum screenprinters use to make positives. Even though I was based in Massachusetts, he got the order because he seemed to understand what screenprinters needed to accomplish.
I remember visiting a local dealer who demonstrated a graphics program for doing t-shirt designs. When I asked him about making a trap outline, he said the program could do it, but he could only demonstrate an outline WITHOUT making a trap. (A trap is a slight overprint so that when printing two colors that align there is a little fudge factor in the registration.) I think the program he showed me was Typestyler, which cannot do traps. My confidence shot, I paid more and went with Casey's, confident that he could answer a question when needed. Typestyler is a fun program and is the only application I use in classic. It was Illustrator that made creating traps easy, and that was undoubtedly one of the reasons why it became the standard in the print industry, before the web industry was even born.
Mr. Casey writes on his website: In 1991 we developed the first ever interactive multimedia training CDs. These trained on Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. The CDs contained voice narration, music and animation.
His statement is true but not accurate. Before he made the CD's he had the training available on audio cassettes. That was how I learned to use Illustrator. I had a boombox set up next to my computer, and I would play & stop as I worked each step he was describing. The audio tape was based on Illustrator 88, but I had the "new" version, Illustrator 3. It was a good way to learn, and I don't think I ever called him to ask him a question about Illustrator, although he was always available if I needed him. He was my guru, and he walked me through many technical hardware issues and upgrades.
It makes me wonder why Apple still doesn't provide training like this on the web. All the effort Apple puts into training Apple Store Geniuses and AppleCare support could be better directed into making one great training session for everyone. All Apple has accomplished with opening their own stores is to hire Steve Jobs clones with the same skills (or less) than the people they put out of business. The computer is communicative technology, and Apple is not using it to its fullest potential.