Apple experienced wild times in the 1990s. While in the first half of theancoval on the verge of collapse, in the second half of it Steve Jobs after his triumphant return, he got the worst of it. In our country, however, at that time you could mostly encounter classic PCs with Windows, but there were a few companies or households where he reigned supreme Apple. Among them was the family of Johana Fundová, the author of FB and Instagram pages Pure Nineties and the Nineties book, which should hit store shelves this fall. What was the nineties childhood like with a bitten apple?
You are writing a book called Nineties about the nineties of the last century in the Czech Republic. One of the topics is games. I myself remember playing Dyna Blaster, Prince of Persia, Wolfenstein or Mortal Kombat. But you were a bit different with games because your family owned a Macintosh. What did you like to steam the most?
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I can think of games like Oxyd, Prime Target, or Wolfenstein. Oxyd was a logic game where the player had to use a black ball to build pipes and oxygen generators. Prime Target was a classic shooter set in American cities.ancI really enjoyed playing it, I really enjoyed the American interiors. As for Wolfenstein, I don't need to introduce it, do I?
However, it was great that, in addition to the game itself, we also had an editor on our Macintosh computer, in which we could create our own maps and levels. And I really enjoyed that. In the editor, you could create as many secret rooms as you wanted, add soldiers and dogs as you wanted, create long corridors, in short, anything according to your own creativity and mood. And then you played what you created. I spent really long hours with this. Other games I can think of at random include Number Eaters, Snood, Blobbo or Space Junkie. It was worse because my classmates often didn't know these games because they were playing something else on their PCs. So I was sad that I couldn't boast about my gaming achievements to them. There was nothing left to do but compete for a better score with my older brother, who would definitely remember more games and their technical specifications. But I was also used to those hardcore games, because in the school computer labs we played Prehistoric on the PC, for example, and Mortal Kombat on a friend's computer.
When we first wrote, you told me an interesting thing - owning a Macintosh made you feel "inferior" in the 386s because you couldn't talk about games with your friends. Your first magazine was printed in a completely different font than we were used to from our XNUMXs Windows 3.1. What model of Macintosh did you have and - if I may be so cheeky - how did you get it?
When I was about in the first grade - so about 1996 - my father bought home a Macintosh LC II, which was already a few years old at the time, which was our first family computer. According to him, there was nothing to think about, because at that time Mac OS was completely incomparable with the desktop and icons Windows, also offered the use of high-quality graphics software and was also resistant to viruses. 2-3 years later, he bought us a newer computer at the bazaar, a Power Macintosh 7200/90, which he replaced the first one with. We played games, created text documents or tried the Internet for the first time on both computers.
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However, in 2001, due to poor compatibility of Mac OS with Windows we also bought a classic PC for home, because on the old ones Apple computers could not even open worde-documents, as is common today. So we needed to be able to write, for example, school reports in a format that teachers could open on their computers (at high school we had the option of submitting assignments on floppy disks). Later, at the beginning of the new millennium, we had a Power Mac G3 at home and then a Power Mac G4, but due to the poor compatibility, we used the aforementioned PC for everyday things, which my older brother and I took turns using. By the way, when we bought the PC, I had to get used to a mouse with a left and right button! From the Macintosh, I was used to only one main button on the mouse.
Do you remember any technical specifics of the nineties, something that a person a generation younger would not believe you? Today's children may find it incomprehensible that we are old computers with Windows they first had to be turned off via the Start menu, and only then physically turn them off with the button.
As for the Macintosh, the legendary "Let's" confirmation button stuck in my memory. Today's generation of children might not even know what the word "be" means, right? Of course, I can't fail to mention the slow dial-up connection to the Internet, when it wasn't clear until the last moment whether it would really work, amid the legendary sounds of the modem. And we could connect only in the evening, when the internet was cheaper. The worst part was that the moment someone picked up the phone, the connection dropped completely. Today's younger generation probably wouldn't be able to imagine that. Just like the incredibly slow speed of printers or the gradual loading of Internet images that take a while to load.onec sometimes did not even load. A separate chapter would be the first Nokia mobile phones, which usually only held 10 messages, so they had to be constantly deleted.
Many “children of the nineties” remember how they later Wordthey played with WordArtem. In what way? appWhat did you create? And if you can compare it to Worderm, what was different?
We used the ClarisWorks program on the Macintosh. I had a lot of fun creating various text documents and writing letters to my grandmother in the program, for example, combining different font styles and adding simple black and white pictures. I also used this program to create my magazine, called Super Rybka, sometime in the 4th grade. We printed it on a StyleWriter printer (which, by the way, was also from Applu, it didn't lack the legendary colorful apple) and then I copied and stitched all the pages several times at my father's work.
Somewhere on old floppy disks I should still have various text documents from ClarisWorks or recordings from audio a program that we could use because we had an external microphone with our Mac – which was quite nice by the way and matched the design of Macintosh computers. And about WordI definitely didn't come to Art when we had our first PC in 2001, so I WordI also tried different inscriptions and spent a lot of time on them. I even Wordu created her first simple website about Harry Potter because Word allowed me to save documents in html format. I then uploaded the document to sweb.cz. I would rather leave the quality of that website without comment, haha.
What comes to mind when you hear the word "8210s and technology"? Did you have a dream piece that you wanted to own? For me, it was, for example, a GameBoy, a translucent landline, a computer with a Pentium, later a PlayStation, a Nokia 3 or an iMac G21, although some of these are more icons of the beginning of the XNUMXst century. What did you long for?
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In the mid-nineties, there was a Japanese family living near us, and my brother and I would sometimes go to their children's garden to play with them. They spoke only Japanese and we only Czech, but that didn't bother us at all, because this is no obstacle in childhood. And those Japanese children had very modern toys that their family brought them from Japan - I remember, for example, a small electric children's motorbike that they rode. We envied them those toys and I asked my parents why we didn't have such fun toys. They explained to me that unfortunately these things weren't available in the Czech Republic yet, and I thought it was terribly unfair. As for the late nineties, I wished my parents had an answering machine because I enjoyed watching American TV series where the family almost always left messages after coming home from people who couldn't reach them. And of course, I secretly dreamed of having my own computer one day, because like in most other households, we had to take turns using the computer in the family.
As we mentioned in the introduction, the topic of technology will not be missing in your book Nineties. Could you at least give our readers a hint of what they can look forward to in this chapter?
Yes, a separate chapter will be devoted to technology. In it, I will focus on various phenomena of the time, such as cards for phone booths, Nokia mobile phones, computer games (such as the legendary DOOM) or the creation of the Seznam catalogue search engine. At the same time, 4 people have their own author's memoirs in this chapter, spanning several pages: Ondřej Neff's memoirs focus on the time when he founded the online diary Neviditelný pes in 1996. Ivo Minařík describes his first experiences with the Internet and e-mail. Ondřej Novotný, in turn, recalls December 31, 1999, when the Y2K technological apocalypse threatened. And the author of the last memoir in the chapter is Adam Konrád, whose love for computer games led him to the USA, where he works at the Bethesda game studio.
You stayed. AppAre you still loyal to your company, or do you prefer competition?
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Yes, I use it Apple products. But even when using them, I get annoyed every now and then. TooneAfter all, the legendary rainbow wheel can really torment even the most patient of individuals. At work, I use a work MacBook Air, I also have my own at home Air. I used to have Macbook Pro and it lasted me for maybe 7 years, I liked it a lot, it had a better display and I was better at working on it. Air It just makes me a little angry sometimes. As for the mobile phone, I bought it last year. iPhone Xs, because I don't have the screen size anymore nestmy friend iPhone SE. But I was expecting a slightly better camera, paradoxically I like the photos from my friend who uses it better. iPhone XR. Anyway, I like that I have products for both work and leisure Apple. In my previous job, I had to get used to it after a long time Windows and it was challenging at times. Actually, even after 2 years of daily use, I didn't get used to it.
When can we look forward to the release of the Nineties?
The book should be released at the end of October this year and will be available both in regular brick-and-mortar bookstores and on the Albatros Media e-shop, which publishes it. I will publish all updates regarding the book's release on Facebookui Instagram Pure nineties.
At the end of the interview, I can't help but ask myself a fundamental question: Dylan or Brandon?
I don't have to think for a second. Dylan McKay of course. Forever!
