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Those were the days…

September 23rd, 2003 · 3 Comments

Today we were invited to brunch at a neighbor’s home. It was a good time to hang out with other moms. I met a woman, a friend of my neighbor, who grew up in Saratoga, CA, picking apricots in the summers for $3 a flat. I told her I had heard about the orchards. But by the time we lived in the Valley though, the orchards were mostly legend, replaced by buildings, houses and the tech boom. Hard to imagine the trees, while driving down streets where the only sign of fruit was the Apple logo.

Another neighbor said she had noticed my Newton T-shirt that I had worn earlier while jogging around the block. I was surprised! While I do have a nice purple Newton shirt, I rarely receive any comments about it – unlike when I would wear my Green Lake Crew sweatshirt back in college and discover all sorts of secret Seattleites on campus. All the Newton shirt does for me is remind me of my friend who also had a purple Newton shirt too, both of us Newton spouses.

But this woman said she used to work for one of the first software developers for Newton, a health care company that made software for doctors. It sounded familiar to me, memories began returning. So we sat there at brunch on Bainbridge Island, talking about the old days of Newton. Reminiscing about ruins, but it was more like talking about an old friend we had in common – who had since passed away – or discussing a secret society we’d once known.

For our application, she said, it was perfect.
I nodded.
It was like a dinosaur, I said, trying to think of a good analogy.
(As a biologist, I think this comparison works…, thinking about evolution theory)
You still see it around today, I said.
In all those Palms, she agreed.
It was a long time ago. My neighbor asked: When did it come out?
’93, I think, I said.
She agreed.
My husband was there – I had to stop and recount the years – couldn’t quite remember….’96 – ’98 ?
Our conversation then got cut off by the children playing around us and topics changed…..but it was fun to reminsce and remember…..
Long time ago. Those were the days…..

Tags: geek

3 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Katherine // Sep 24, 2003 at 10:32 pm

    David and I still have our purple shirt. I can’t remember whether we have one or two. I know he gave my mom one also. He worked on a Newton medical application in Illinois before we even came to Apple or California. So that was ’94 and ’95. Then he stayed with Newton through ’97. Yes, those were the days. Many memories. We share a lot, Julie!

  • 2 enoch // Sep 25, 2003 at 5:03 am

    i got the t-shirt too, (as well as the 120 and 2000) and convinced 4 other residents to get “pocketDoc” as well, the medical records app for newton. too bad it didn’t continue, it was a great platform. now i just do everything on winterms running EPIC over citrix, which is more usable, but not portable, oh well…

  • 3 Ted Leung on the air // Sep 25, 2003 at 10:10 pm

    T-Shirt memories

    Julie blogged about a conversation that she got into because of one of the old Newton T-Shirts that she has.

    Today Chris Double pointed to a post by Mike Lockwood of the Apple Dylan team, which talked about the Dylan shutdown and the T-shirts that t