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Life magazine recently featured a gallery on the Life and Times of Steve Jobs. Take a peak at some photos that you’ve forgotten or never seen to relive the early days of Apple computers. If you really don’t care, then just sit back and chuckle at the 70s and 80s fashions.

Jobs has gone from co-founder, to out of the Apple family entirely, to being re-embraced as CEO. In some way’s Life’s title “His Life and Times” sounds more like a memorial than a retrospective, but let’s think positive. The future remains uncertain for Jobs as far as his health struggles, though Jobs seems to be working to ensure that the idea man in the black mock-turtleneck behind Apple will never be too far. You are in our prayers, Steve. At least mine and Zarvox the iMac’s. I can’t speak for Hal9000.

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I was reminiscing about the old Apple IIe’s and IIc’s that I used in my much younger years.  In fact, I recall being in second grade and we were the first class to have a computer class.  I liked it so much, that over the summer, I took a course at school to play around even more.   It was hard to attract second through fourth graders to word processing.  What we were more interested in is graphics, playing Oregon Trail and making little video games.

I don’t know if one could have really called them “games” because there was no object to them.  You just pressed any button to move a dot across the screen, which could not deviate from its path.  The “payoff” (I use the term very LOOSELY) was to get to the end of the screen where we X and Y plotted our little brains out to have the word “Crash” show up in all its blocky, large pixel glory when you hit the other side of the screen with the dot that was really a little square.

Here are variations on the theme.   These are Apple IIe’s and c’s being awakened from their slumber after being in someone’s basement or attic all these years.  Justinaurelius on YouTube explains limitations of the hard drive, and is seeking to get an old one.

Kevin Gordon gives an unnarrated approach, firing up the Apple IIe with an up close and personal camera perspective. Darnit that it is hard to read what is on the screen. It appears to be a tutorial. I don’t remember that one, but then again, we were much more enthralled by the “cool stuff.”

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