My first Apple product that I used - Apple IIe.

At the time (5th-6th grade), these weren’t too exciting since game consoles were superior gaming devices. We never owned one, but we had them in our school’s computer class and in that environment, they were exciting because anything is more exciting than textbooks.

Our class was a particular challenging group of youth, and we did not treat the equipment with tender care and love. I distinctly remember floppy disks being thrown around like frisbees. It was still a step up from just a few years prior. In 2nd grade (same school), we had a computer class that had a single computer, and we would learn the anatomy of a computer - the keyboard itself was a challenge since we had to learn “complex” controls such as TAB, ENTER, CAPS LOCK, and SHIFT. Only in the last part of class did each student get a turn to play Pac-Man. You literally got one chance, so if you died in 5 seconds, then you only got 5 seconds to use the computer. Imagine giving a new piece of technology to someone for only 5 seconds. What a tease!

For a more visual experience, this picture was the closest thing I found that mimics my 5th grade classroom environment.