DUsers is an Apple Macintosh users' group at Drexel University in Philadelphia. It was founded in the Fall of 1983 [1] [2] by Drexel students interested in learning more about the Macintosh, even before it was released to the public. Drexel University had made the decision to require that all incoming freshmen of Fall 1983 were required to buy a computer, and had selected Apple as the provider. [3]
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. It is considered one of the Big Four tech companies along with Amazon, Google, and Facebook.
The Macintosh is a family of personal computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Inc. since January 1984.
Drexel University is a private research university with its main campus in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1891 by Anthony J. Drexel, a financier and philanthropist. Founded as Drexel Institute of Art, Science, and Industry, it was renamed Drexel Institute of Technology in 1936, before assuming the name Drexel University in 1970.
DUsers is widely acknowledged as the first Macintosh users group. The first president was Denise Walls, a Mechanical engineering major from Williamsport, Pennsylvania and the first vice president was computer engineering major Steve Weintraut of Cherry Hill, New Jersey. [4]
Williamsport is a city in, and the county seat of, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, United States. In 2017, the population was estimated at 28,348. It is the principal city of the Williamsport, Pennsylvania Metropolitan Statistical Area, which has a population of about 114,000.
Cherry Hill is a township in Camden County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township had a population of 71,045, reflecting an increase of 1,080 (+1.5%) from the 69,965 counted in the 2000 Census, which had in turn increased by 617 (+0.9%) from the 69,348 counted in the 1990 Census. As of 2010, the township was the state's 15th most populous municipality and the second-largest in Camden County, after having been the state's 13th most populous municipality in the 2000 Census. An edge city of Philadelphia, Cherry Hill is situated on the Delaware Valley coastal plain, approximately 8 miles (13 km) southeast of Center City, Philadelphia.
A few years after the DUsers were formed, there was a large gala event held at Drexel to premiere the release of a documentary called "Going National", that chronicled Drexel's implementation of a Mac-centric campus. The event was attended by Steve Jobs, who was the founder of Apple computer. The original President, Denise Weintraut (Walls), and Vice President, Steve Weintraut, started dating that night and a few years later were married in June 1988. They have 3 children, Zachary Weintraut, Nicholas Weintraut, and Emily Weintraut.
The DUsers held 2 large Macintosh expos on campus, MacFair 85 and MacFair II (1987). Both of these events were very successful and raised a large amount of money for the group's activities.
Some of the other key founding members of the DUsers were Terrill L. Frantz, Seth Grenald, Charles Stack, Christine Axsmith, Debbie Pollack, Arthur Cohen, Scott Brown, Dave Dubin and J.C. Dubs
Christine Axsmith is a computer security expert who was fired from BAE Systems, a CIA contractor, for posting on a top-secret internal government blog that "waterboarding is torture, and torture is wrong".
In the fall of 2004, DUsers was officially disbanded, with all its remaining assets turned over to TechServ, a club based primarily on performing community service through technology and supporting the open source software movement. [5]
