About Ron McElfresh

My name is Ron McElfresh and I live in Honolulu, Hawaii. I’ve owned an Apple Macintosh since early March 1984. In the 24 years since that first Mac, I’ve seen Apple go through good times, bad times, and worse times. Today, Apple is healthy and strong, and the Macintosh is once again the darling computer to own.

A Little History

I owned other computers before the Mac, including my first computer, an original sewing machine Osborne 1. I cut my computing teeth on the arcane command lines of CP/M, the green dot of dBase II, SuperCalc before Lotus 1-2-3 or Excel, and WordStar (word processing for real men), and nearly went blind with that 9-inch black and white screen.

Since then, I’ve owned and used a little of everything. IBM PCs, Compaqs, Dells, Gateways, Sony Vaio, and nearly every kind of Mac. From the original 128k Mac, to various LCs and Quadras to PowerMacs, PowerBooks and everything in between.

At the other end of the scale I’ve managed various flavors of Linux, Unix, and even QNX. These days I prefer the Mac.

Why The Mac?

The Mac was not only the first desktop computer system to eliminate the need for command line access, it also carried a strong user philosophy. The operating system should get out of the way so the user can actually use applications and utilities.

While I’m comfortable in the command line and do a fair amount of Linux and OS X system administration, my preference is to point and click to get things done.

The Mac excels at helping computer users get things done with a minimum amount of fuss and bother.

The Internet

My first exposure to the public internet came in 1994 while I was a Product Manager for GTE. I still remember watching the first web page load on my Mac’s screen in Mosaic.

I had used CompuServe and AOL and thought they would be useful if only there was more content and faster bandwidth.

My internet history is extensive. I worked as general manager of one of Honolulu’s first ISPs, Hawaii OnLine in the early dial up days of the public internet.

Superior customer service and tech support, reliable dial-up with local dial-in numbers on each Hawaiian island.

Web sites are always good for a chuckle and a distortion of facts.

Claim To Fame

When Hawaii OnLine was sold to a mainland telephone company I signed on as director of product marketing for then Hawaii-based Digital Island, which was sold to Cable & Wireless.

Digital Island operates a global private network that provides hosting, content delivery and networking to business customers looking to bypass Internet congestion. Its shares traded as high as $148 in December 1999 before crumbling along with other Internet-related stocks.

Then I got into the online travel and airline ticket business as head of Cheap Tickets web site. The company went public in 1999. Meanwhile, the site grew from a few thousand customers to over 4.5-million registered users and $250-million in annual ticket sales before being sold to travel consolidator Cendant in 2001.

Then I retired.

The Mac & OS X

In recent years I’ve been involved in the creation and management of web sites which use the popular Expression Engine content management system.

That includes NoodleMac, Kate’s PixoBebo, and the popular Mac site, Mac360, and many others.

I’m a longtime Apple watcher, a Mac user, and a wannabe writer, owing to years of toiling away in the analog mines of broadcast news and commercial production. The best Mac I’ve ever owned is a 17-inch PowerBook which started life on OS X Jaguar. It’s five years old and going strong.