Computers and monitors

Written By H. Pike Oliver

I may have gone over/the-top. A new 16” M1 Max MacBook Pro arrived last afternoon and is in the middle of the image below. It is connected to a 34” LG monitor above it and also to a 15” ViewSonic monitor on the right. The computer on the left is the M1 MacBook Air that arrived a year ago and is now the backup machine.

I love the fact that the Apple M1 Max chipset can power up to three monitors. For an older guy like me this is a bit like science fiction. My first encounter with computing was at San Francisco State (then College, now University) as urban studies student in the mid 1960s. In an analytics class, I learned to code in Fortran IV, by making punch cards and submitting them for processing on an IBM 1620 computer. The “1620” in the name of the machine stood for 1,620 KB!

The M1 Max chipset in the computer I received this week has 55 million transistors. The machine has 32 MB of RAM along with a 2 TB hard drive. It’s likely more computing power than I’ll ever use. But it does let me operate both the Microsoft OS (via Parallels) and the Mac OS at the same time with no memory overload messages. Back then I nearly changed my major to computer science, but I decided I was too fascinated with the past, present and future of cities. And then when I got interested in how most of the urban environment gets created, that is how I found my way into the world of real estate.

H. Pike Oliver

H. Pike Oliver focuses on master-planned communities. He is co-author of Transforming the Irvine Ranch: Joan Irvine, William Pereira, Ray Watson, and THE BIG PLAN, published by Routledge in 2022.

Early in his career, Pike worked for public agencies, including the California Governor's Office of Planning and Research, where he was a principal contributor to An Urban Strategy for California. For the next three decades, he was involved in master-planned development on the Irvine Ranch in Southern California, as well as other properties in western North America and abroad.

Beginning in 2009, Pike taught real estate development at Cornell University and directed the undergraduate program in Urban and Regional Studies. He relocated to Seattle in 2013 and, from 2016 to 2020, served as a lecturer in the Runstad Department of Real Estate at the University of Washington, where he also served as its chair.

Pike graduated from San Francisco State University's urban studies and planning program and received a master's degree in urban planning from UCLA. He is a member of the American Planning Association and the Urban Land Institute and a founder and emeritus member of the California Planning Roundtable.

https://urbanexus.com
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