Science & Tech Quote by Andy Hertzfeld

The giddiness here isn’t about booting a machine; it’s about touching sovereignty. Hertzfeld describes a tiny, almost childish ritual - on and off, on and off - that reads like play, but it’s really a first encounter with personal control over computing. Earlier computers weren’t “yours” in any meaningful sense. They lived in institutions, behind glass and gatekeepers, scheduled and permissioned. You didn’t flip them; they flipped you, dictating time, access, and hierarchy.

That compulsive toggling becomes a micro-drama of the late-1970s shift from mainframe culture to the homebrew, garage-built ethos that would birth Apple’s mythology. The Apple II didn’t just run programs; it relocated authority from the operator class to the individual. Hertzfeld’s phrasing - “the power to do so” - is telling: he’s not marveling at speed or graphics, but at agency. The act is deliberately pointless, which is precisely the point. When a capability is newly liberated, you test it in the most direct way possible, like jiggling a doorknob after years of locked doors.

As an inventor who helped shape the Macintosh era, Hertzfeld is also quietly confessing the emotional blueprint behind user-friendly design: people don’t only want features, they want mastery without negotiation. The quote captures the intimate politics of early personal computing: technology as a private lever, not a shared resource, and the thrill - slightly mischievous, slightly revolutionary - of finally getting to pull it.