This year we will be busy on our anniversary so I decided to write the post a little early. On June 1st, we will have been married 25 years! I thought I would focus my writing this year on comparing technologies then and now.
1986: We were excited to get our first VCR and thought we were so naughty to buy that before we bought a washer and dryer.
2011: Today we have multiple DVRs and a washer and dryer, though Alan doesn't seem to know the location of the washer or dryer. That's OK. Priscilla can't find the DVRs.
1986: One of our first purchases was a CD player so we could listen to Huey Lewis and the News, Cyndi Lauper, Billy Idol, and The Pretenders.
2011: Priscilla still listens to those groups on her iPod nano, well except Huey Lewis. She's not that square.
1986: Our wedding photos were analog.
2011: Alan just got a 12.1-megapxiel digital camera with 12x optical zoom, wide angle equivalent to a 25-mm lens, 3-inch 460K-pixel LCD, and a built-in GPS.
1986: Our wedding video was analog.
2011: Today our video camera is an iPhone that does 720p HD and 30 frames per second.
1986: Priscilla came home from work one day shortly after the wedding to discover a long coax cable snaking from the living-room TV, down the hallway, into the office, and attached to a 1-bit digitizer connected to the RS-422 port of a MacPlus.
2011: Alan still engages in strange projects involving long coax cables, serial ports, and obscure contraptions from RadioShack.
1986: Alan used the 1-bit digitizer to grab individual frames from our wedding video to make digital "photos"!
2011: Today we have to think about what 1-bit actually means... :-)
1986: We had no way to send emails to our family on our honeymoon.
2011: These days lots of relatives send us email, too many emails. Just kidding!
1986: In theory we could have sent AppleLink emails to our co-workers, if we could have found a computer to use.
2011: Our co-workers today use iChat and WebEx.
1986: We would have had to use a hotel phone or pay phone to call relatives on our honeymoon, if we had wanted to call them, which we didn't. We were a little busy. :-)
2011: These days we travel with two iPhones, two iPads, and a MacBook Air. We still don't call relatives, though.
1986: No Google maps. No Google. No Web!
2011: What, no 3G, no WiFi!? (while traveling to 3rd-world countries, such as Indiana). We are lost!
1986: AppleTalk, of course, some IPv4, no IPv6.
2011: Priscilla: "Are we ready for IPv6 day?" Alan: "Yawn."
1986: No Twitter! No Facebook!
2011: Priscilla: "Argh!" Alan: "Yawn."
1986: No digital toys for the bedroom.
2011: Still no digital toys for the bedroom, just digits, decimal and hexadecimal, and no yawing, hopefully.
1986: No blog posts.
2011: Lots of blog posts. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
