iPad owners average age

[GailLA]

My first home computer was a TRS-80 Color Computer (CoCo). However, I took a Fortran IV class in high school. I had to use a keypunch and put my punch cards in a mail box to have my program run overnight. My cards would be returned to me with the printout of the results wrapped around them. Of course before you punched your cards, you wrote out your program on special sheets with 80 spaces for the 80 characters you were allowed to have per line, in pencil -- yes you programmed in pencil on paper.

Anyway, I guess a lot of us here have some history with technology.

 

[stever]

Yup.
I had already noticed that there were a lot of us on these forums in the upper age brackets.

The first computers I ever got my hands on, were when I went into the USAF at age 18 in 1971.
Any of us who scored over a certain level in a Data Processing Aptitude test, went straight into Computing Tech Training.

All Mainframe stuff, still quite a few years before any Personal computers would show up.
Huge reels of magnetic tape, mylar tape feeds, and keypunch cards, sorters, collaters, readers, etc.

Tried to leave IT a couple times, but that never lasted long.

.

 

[col.bris]

Well I am 66 in August so there you go My first Apple product was in 1977 Apple II

I also waved my magic wand and fixed the title of the Poll. Almost added 65 and over but decided to leave it alone

Col Down under

 

[deoknam]

What a cute thread i wish my mom at 62 can tinker with a computer too . You people are so cool!

 

[greener]

I am possibly the oldest member of this group, am curious, so anyone older do so please, I turn 70 in July and love this iPad, I also own 3 laptops and 4 desktops but use the iPad more than the rest anymore, mainly because it is so portable anywhere one goes, my first CPU was also a trs 80 from the shack, I am a retired printer and technology made by skilled trade obsolete, I.e. Now it's desktop publishing, And was offered early retirement at age 58 now spend more time playing with new technology than I did at job

 

[Teacher's Pet]

Thanks to those of you who have been contributing to tech since the punchcard days. We have a huge variety of age groups here and I think it creates a better experience, as does the quality of respectful members who contribute so many positive things. I'm only 25 myself.

I often wonder what the technology will be like when I'm telling my grandchildren, "Yes, I know it's hard to believe, but I swear when I was your age, we really did have to actually touch our computers to operate them. In fact, we even had to plug them in just to charge the batteries,"

 

[adam]

Just turned 16

 

[iBean]

Most of us "Q-Tips" (White hair on top) are the ones that started and brought this industry to what it is now. I remember my 1st computer (TR-1000)had no hard drive and no place on board to store programs. I was a forward thinker, by insisting on 2 drives, so I could put the program disk in 1 and a storage disk in the other. I remember having to reach back to the back of the desk-top to turn on the switch to make it go! Course, that was much later in life, when I was learning to use the smaller desk-top version. I remember many a college date being canceled due to the computer main-frame my boyfriend was baby sitting. It would go off the deep end from time to time and eat & spit out data processing cards and run mountains of connected computer print-out paper through the machine and on to the floor. His job was to clean up the mess, and try to stop it before it ran out of paper, without screwing up what it was processing. Who knew we would all be carrying around iTouches with more computing power in them, than the whole main frame could generate!
PS My iPad arrived yesterday 5 days early! Went from China to Memphis in 20 hours, then Memphis to San Antonio in 8 hours, then to my local delivery town of Kerrville in an hour, then to my delivery truck and to my work in about 3 hours! Fed-Ex has their game down PAT!

 

[Fotonutz]

Good grief.... before I took the poll, I tot I was one of the older geeks around here as I tot the iPad was meant for the younger generation.

Incidentally, I'm 45.

Started in 1978 on the Apple II, Atari 800, Commodore 64, Sinclair ZX81. Moved on to BASIC, FORTRAN & COBOL in the latter years and those languages are already obsolete a long time ago.

Although I didn't have a chance to work with punchcards, I did use cassette tapes and 8" floppy disks
Still have an unopened box of 8" floppies in my office which I showcase to the younger generation.

 

[gentlefury]

31 first computer had a turbo button....lol

 

[RobertBasil]

Well, I was born in 1944, my 1st real computer was a TRS-80 from Tandy, I still have some parts to my Commodore-64, remember running all my programs in Basic, and have owned every edition of the iPhone. I bought an iPad 16GB last week and will get my new iPhone 4 on June 27. And iVan, I owned a '57 Chevy when it was new.

So you owned a new '57 Chevy when you were 13? I don't think so. ;-)

 

[rdharper]

The curve is truncated

Curve would benefit from two more bins. You can see the mean, but not enough definition over '55.

First car was 1957... I was 14, Dad bought me a 52 Studebaker which I could drive if I replaced the main bearings, which I did.

First programming was Fortran in 1965. First job was programming Fairchild's first computerized semiconductor test system in 1969.

Own a lot of computer's, but my DD is a T400, iPhone and iPad.

The iPad user interface is a big help to these old eyes. Jobs is right, it's almost magical. And I say this as one that understands both the hardware and software.

 

[jcaramia]

Turned 18 last February.

 

[Wolffmann34]

31 first computer had a turbo button....lol

HaHa - I remember the 'turbo' button, but my first computer didn't have any drives even, you turned it on, wrote the program, when you turned it off the program was gone (I did get a big floppy drive for it later.)

 

[Nova69]

I'm 62 and am retiring at the end of this month. My first computer came as a box of parts that I had to assemble myself. My first modem came somewhat later, was 300 baud, and required that you dial the number on your phone, rip the cord out of the handset, and connect it to your modem before you lost the connection. There was no internet and you had to dial up each computer you wished to contact individually. It was great progress when Geni and Compuserve eventually came around.