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Science & Tech Quote by Sinbad

"But I said wait a minute, I'm going to get a computer, I can do this as well as anybody else. So I did some studying so I knew what kind of boards to get to put a PC together. But there was a guy sitting there with Apple. I said, 'what's that?' and he goes, 'Apple with 128k, it's all built into the box,' and I bought it. That was my first computer"

About this Quote

Sinbad frames his origin story like a classic stand-up bit: swagger, a plan, and then a left turn. He starts in DIY mode, talking himself up as the kind of guy who can build a PC "as well as anybody else". That bravado matters because it sets up the punchline-level reversal: the minute an Apple appears, his careful competence evaporates into curiosity and convenience. "Wait a minute" is doing double duty - it signals self-belief, then becomes the beat where the future hijacks the past.

The subtext is a cultural pivot in miniature. The early personal-computing era sold two competing fantasies: mastery (you learn the boards, you assemble the machine, you earn your power) versus magic (it "all built into the box", you just enter). Sinbad admits, without embarrassment, that the magic wins. The humor isn't in dunking on him; it's in how instantly the market's seduction works. One sentence he's a striver studying hardware. The next he's a consumer captivated by a simple demo.

Contextually, it's also a snapshot of Apple mythology before it calcified into corporate lore. The "128k" detail is nerd-precise, but Sinbad uses it like a layperson's talisman: proof that this thing is real, new, specific. For a comedian whose brand is approachable everyman energy, the anecdote lands as a story about surrendering to ease - not because you're lazy, but because the future is designed to make resistance feel dumb.

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TopicTechnology
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Sinbad on First Computer and the Democratization of Tech
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About the Author

Sinbad

Sinbad (born November 18, 1956) is a Comedian from USA.

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