Instead, you had to load your apps—er, your programs—from a 5.25-inch floppy disk (yes, they were literally floppy) or a cassette tape.

Or, if you were feeling especially creative, there was another alternative: writing a program from scratch, in a programming language called Integer BASIC.

Short for “Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code,” BASIC was a programming language so simple that even a 10-year-old, math-challenged kid like me (back in 1979, anyway) could parse it.

Developed by Wozniak himself, Integer BASIC was a variation of BASIC that was fused into the ROM (read-only memory) hidden in the Apple II’s soothing, molded-plastic shell.

Once you booted up the Apple II (there was no Apple logo on the initial loading screen, by the way; instead, the text “APPLE ][” would appear centered at the top of the screen), you’d get a square-shaped cursor at the bottom of the display that blinked next to a caret (the “>” symbol).

From there, you could type commands, like “LOAD” (to load a program into memory) or “RUN” (to run a program) … or you could just starting programming.

A BASIC program consisted of lines of numbered code, and to start writing a program, you’d just type “NEW” to clear the Apple II’s memory, then type a number (you’d generally start with “10,” to give yourself a little room in case you wanted to add an earlier line of code), and then enter the first line of your program.

So, here’s the easiest BASIC program I know, and one that I wrote many times on my dad’s Apple II:

10 PRINT “BEN”
20 GOTO 10

Yep, pretty (and appropriately enough) basic—a program that just printed my name over and over, in an endless loop.

(Why is everything in all caps? Because the original Apple II and its immediate successor, the Apple II Plus, couldn’t display lower-case characters; that wouldn’t come until Apple IIe, from 1983.)

Primitive stuff, yes … but amazing, too. For the first time, regular people like me and my dad were writing computer programs, on our own home computers—at a time when the most complicated gadget in the average American household was probably the TV set.

Now, just to be clear, there wouldn’t have been an Apple II without the ingenuity of Steve Wozniak’s elegant, efficient engineering.

But it was Steve Jobs’ marketing savvy, his unerring (well, almost always unerring) sense of what people wanted, and his passion for great, sometimes even delightful products (indeed, “delight” is the word that springs to mind when it comes to Jobs’ masterful product unveilings) that turned the Apple II from a marvel of engineering into a common sight on kitchen tables and in home offices.

And that was the real breakthrough.

Rest in peace, Steve. We’re going to miss you.

(Image credit: Vintage Computing and Gaming)

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Read Apple’s statement here, and my own thoughts about Steve Jobs here.

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Steve Jobs resigns as Apple CEO
After years of battling cancer, Apple’s visionary CEO handed over the reins Wednesday, with Steve Jobs (who had already been on medical leave since January) stepping aside in favor of acting CEO Tim Cook. Read more…

How Steve Jobs changed my life, and yours too
I don’t know any other CEO whose gadgets changed the world—or my world, anyway—at least six times. Read more…

Wireless networks snarled after East Coast quake—but not Facebook or Twitter
The crush of callers following Tuesday’s scary earthquake here on the East Coast soon jammed the airwaves, leading AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile to urge subscribers to text, e-mail, or tweet their friends and family—just please, don’t call. Read more…

A cheat sheet for first-time HDTV buyers
Do you really need 3D on your very first HDTV? What about those new-fangled Internet widgets? And is 240Hz better than 120Hz—whatever that means? Help is here. Read more…

Do I really need a new iPhone? (reader mail)
Nope, you don’t need to give up your old iPhone, but don’t be surprised if you think twice after taking the speedy, eye-popping iPhone 4 for a test drive. Read more…

Facebook gives privacy, sharing controls an overdue makeover
The wide-ranging changes to Facebook’s privacy controls should land on your profile within the next few days—and yes, they’re for the better. Read more…

A fold-up, full-size keyboard for the iPad
Logitech’s new, honest-to-goodness keyboard for the iPad 2 promises the best of both worlds: a full-size physical keyboard that fits into an iPad-size case. Read more…

How to connect your old VCR to a new HDTV
So, want to hook up your old VCR to a new HDTV? Yes, it’s possible, even if your VHS deck doesn’t have an HDMI video output. Read more…

Quick iPhone tip: How to zip back to the top of a web page
Dreading having to flick your way all the way back to the beginning of a web page on your iPhone? Here’s a quick and easy shortcut. Read more…

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Update: Rest in peace, Steve.

We didn’t have a modem or even a disk drive for loading programs, although my dad would eventually spring for the $600 Apple Disk II floppy drive, designed by a scrappy young fellow named Steve Wozniak. Instead, we used cassette tapes, which we played on a standard cassette player plugged into the Apple II’s green circuit board.

Primitive? You bet, but mesmerizing, especially once we’d managed (after painstakingly adjusting the tape player’s volume and pitch dials) to load a text-only game called “Apple Trek.” My dad, meanwhile, was thrilled by a new business program for the Apple II called VisiCalc—the very first spreadsheet program, as it turned out.

I remember long, glorious summers at home, split more or less evenly between doing cannonballs into the pool and darting back into my dad’s office, swimsuit still damp, to tinker on the Apple II’s keyboard. Yeah, it was life-changing, all right.

Now, keep in mind that in the pre-Apple days, most people were still afraid of computers. Remember the murderous HAL 9000 and his piercing red eye from the movie “2001”? That was the prevailing image of computers, even in the late 1970s.

But the soothing, molded-plastic Apple II was friendly and inviting; heck, you could even pop off the lid and look inside, no screwdriver required. By thinking about users rather than focusing on, say, market share or bulleted lists of features, Apple managed to push those frightening images of HAL and his malevolent red eye into history. For the first time, it felt like we owned the computers, rather than the computers owning us.

Steve Jobs, who resigned as CEO of Apple on Wednesday, didn’t build the Apple II alone, of course; his co-founder Steve Wozniak, among dozens of other engineers, toiled night and day to make the Apple II a reality.

But while he presided over Apple, Jobs managed to unveil a remarkable string of hits—some that changed categories, and others that created new ones. The Macintosh. The iPod. iTunes. The iPhone. The iPad.

Yes, there had been, say, MP3 players before the iPod came around. But the first crude MP3 players—like the first so-called “kit” computers before them—felt like they’d been made for engineers. The friendly, ice-white iPod with its spinning wheel was made for people. Same with the iPhone, and its jaw-dropping touchscreen—made for your finger, not a stylus.

Jobs doesn’t just have an unmatched sense of design. He’s also a master showman. “Look at that—isn’t that cool?” he’ll say over and over during product demos, and even jaded, hardened tech reporters (including, yes, this one) find themselves nodding in approval.

Jobs is also known as an obsessive, sometimes pitiless taskmaster, building up his troops with cult-like zeal one minute only to tear them to pieces the next.

His powers of persuasion—and derision—are the stuff of legend. He lured the high-flying CEO of Pepsi, John Sculley, to Apple with the famous line, “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?” Then he’d plop his bare feet on a desk while grilling nervous job candidates, only to dismiss them after firing off a vague question or two. Or so the stories go.

And yes, Jobs saw his fair share of failures. Remember the Apple III? Probably not. Same goes for the Lisa, the Cube, the iPod HiFi.

But I don’t know any other CEO whose gadgets changed the world—or my world, anyway—at least six times, or who managed to turn product demos into thrilling theater, or who inspired such adoration … and jet-black hatred.

Jobs is one of a kind. Apple will go on without him, as will the rest of the tech world. But it’ll never be the same as when he manned the bridge.

P.S: If you haven’t already, check out the wildly entertaining “Pirates of Silicon Valley,” a 1999 made-for-TV movie about the early rivalry between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Great stuff (and yes, it’s on YouTube).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEyrivrjAuU&w=550]

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iCloud, you cloud, we all cloud
Lifting its usual veil of silence, Apple went ahead and told the world earlier this week that it would take the wraps off a new “cloud services offering,” dubbed iCloud, during Monday morning’s keynote. Naturally, it didn’t take long for insiders and various anonymous sources to fill in the blanks.

In a nutshell, word is that iCloud will be a relaunch of MobileMe, Apple’s subscription-based online service that lets you store files in a cloud-based disk drive (called “iDisk”) and sync your email, contacts, calendars, and photos across all your Macs, iPhones, and iPads. The new iCloud service, the rumormongers claim, will add music streaming to the mix, complete with a utility that scans the tunes on your hard drive and instantly mirrors all your songs on a remote server (via a technique called “scan and match”). Your mirrored tunes would then be available for instant streaming to any PC, Mac, iPhone or iPad, provided you’ve got a Net connection.

Pretty cool, but most predict that iCloud music streaming will eventually cost you—perhaps to the tune of $25 a year, although Apple may initially offer the service for free. Still, that would be a bargain compared the current $99 annual subscription fee for the existing MobileMe service.

Prediction: iCloud music streaming is pretty much a lock, although it’s not clear when it’ll actually launch (this fall, I’m guessing) or how much it’ll cost (my bet: free for the first year).

Mac OS X “Lion”
Another not-so-secret project that Apple’s been working on is the latest version of the Mac destop operating system. Code-named “Lion” (and following in the footsteps of “Snow Leopard,” “Tiger,” and “Panther”), Mac OS X 10.7 is slated to arrive sometime this summer. Many of its new features take their cues from the iPad, including a full-screen app launcher with pages you can “swipe” with your mouse, the iPhone’s famous “pinching” gesture, a new mail application that a kissing cousin’s to the iPad’s, and a “resume” feature that saves the state of your apps before you close them (in the spirit of app multitasking behavior on Apple’s iOS devices).

That’s what we know; what we don’t know is exactly when Mac OS X “Lion” will hit stores, and whether it’ll mark (as rumored) the first major Mac OS update available via download on the Mac App Store.

Prediction: I’ll go out on a limb and guess that Apple’s “Lion” will roar onto the Mac App Store on Monday, the day of the keynote.

iOS 5
Little is known for sure about the next big revision to Apple’s mobile platform for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch; indeed, the only official word on iOS 5 is that it’ll be demonstrated on Monday.

The buzz, however, is that the new OS will boast a completely revamped system for notifying users of incoming alerts and messages—something beyond the blunt, intrusive pop-ups that appear when you get a text or a calendar alarm goes off.

There’s also chatter that iOS 5 will offer “deep” integration with Twitter (something beyond mere photo sharing, apparently) and full-on voice commands.

If all that sounds pretty vague, well…it is, and it’s not clear how much of the iOS 5 speculation is real and how much is just wishful thinking.

Prediction: I’ll put my money on improved notifications and voice commands for the revamped iOS, with a release date sometime in the fall.

iPhone 5
Apple has unveiled a new iPhone during its past few WWDC conferences, but the prevailing wisdom is that it won’t happen this year. Instead, think September, say those in the know, who believe the upcoming iPhone “4S” will boast a speedier dual-core processor (similar to the one in the iPad 2), an improved camera, and a design that’s virtually identital to the iPhone 4.

Prediction: Monday’s keynote will (sadly) come and go without a new iPhone, but hey—good things come to those who wait.

New Time Capule that automatically downloads, caches software updates
Eagle-eyed Mac bloggers have been noticing that supplies of Apple’s Time Capsules, which wirelessly back up your Mac’s hard drive to a built-in backup drive, have been running low—usually a sign that an update is in the offing.

Indeed, 9 to 5 Mac says it’s heard that a new Time Capsule will boast the ability to regularly tap Apple’s servers for any new software updates and download them automatically, allowing users to quickly install them rather than having to wait for a potentially lengthy download. Another possibility, according to the blog, is that the updated Time Capsule might store your most oft-used iCloud files to speed up any buffering delays. Interesting.

Prediction: It sure sounds like a new Time Capsule is immanent, but I’m not feeling all that confident about what new features are in store. Your guess is as good as mine.

So, what are you hoping to see unveiled during Monday’s keynote?

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