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Table of ContentsTitle PageCopyright PageDedicationAcknowledgementsIntroductionBOOMTOWN BY THE BAYSUPER SECRET SKY SPIESCARBURETORS AND MICROPHONESTHE CREAM SODA COMPUTERTHE CONDUCTORTHE LITTLE BLUE BOXHONEY AND NUTSBUCKETS OF NOISESTANLEY ZEBER ZENSKANITSKYHALF RIGHTA LOT OF POOPMERCEDES AND A CORVETTEWHAT A MOTHERBOARDUP TO SPECTHE BEST SALESMENTHE BOZO EXPLOSIONTHE PLATINUM CREDIT CARDWELCOME IBM, SERIOUSLY -EPILOGUEINDEX

Also by Michael Moritz (with A. Barrett Seaman)Going for Broke: The Chrysler Story

The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.141 Wooster StreetNew York, NY 10012www.overlookpress.comCopyright © 1984, 2009 by Michael MoritzThe author gratefully acknowledges Fortune for permissionto reprint content included in the Prologue here.This book, excluding the Prologue and Epilogue,was previously published in a slightly different form underthe title The Little Kingdom: The Private Story of Apple Computer(William Morrow & Co, 1984).All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced ortransmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,including photocopy, recording, or any information storage andretrievalsystem now known or to be invented, without permission in writingfromthe publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote briefpassagesin connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine,newspaper, or broadcast.Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available fromthe Library of CongresseISBN : 978-1-590-20364-4http://us.penguingroup.com

For the best additions sincethe first edition:HCH JWM WJM

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSDozens of people agreed to be interviewed for thisbook. Many did not. I hope that those who openedtheir doors and interrupted more profitable pursuitsdon’t feel they wasted their time. Others kindly let merummage through filing cabinets and peer atphotograph albums while the editors of the San JoseMercury News made me welcome in their morgue.Dick Duncan, Time’s chief of correspondents,tolerated another of my disruptive excursions andgave me a leave of absence. Ben Cate, Time’s WestCoast Bureau chief, provided the unwavering supportthat those who have worked for him will understand.Catazza Jones improved a first draft, Julian Bachtook care of business, and Maria Guarnaschelliapplied a deft and graceful touch.—MICHAEL MORITZPotrero HillSpring 1984

else.I’m sure that when Steve was a teenager, growingup in Los Altos, California, he could never haveimagined that some day he would be at the helm of acompany whose headquarters, according to Googlemaps, is three street turns and 1.6 miles from the frontgate of his high school, that has sold over 200 millioniPods, a billion iTunes songs, 26 million iPhones, andover 60 million computers since 1996; or that his facewould have adorned the front cover of Fortune ontwelve occasions; or that, almost as a sideline, hewould single-handedly finance and help shape Pixar,the computer animation company that has rung upmore than $5 billion in cumulative box office salesfrom ten immensely popular movies. He might wondertoo about those twists and turns that helped make himwhat he is: the fact that his boyhood was spent in anarea that, back then, had not even been labeledSilicon Valley; that Apple’s co-founder, StephenWozniak, was a boyhood chum; that he worked onesummer as a lab technician at Atari, the maker ofPong, the first popular arcade video game; thatAtari’s founder, Nolan Bushnell, had raised moneyfrom Don Valentine; and that Nolan was one of thepeople who steered Steve towards Don. Such are thehaphazard breadcrumbs strewn along the trail of life.These days, thanks to the rough and tumbleexperiences of almost twenty-five years in the venturecapital business, I have developed what I hope is amore refined perspective on the extraordinaryaccomplishments of Steve’s business life—one thatdeserves to be ranked amongst the greatest of anyAmerican, living or dead.Steve is the CEO of Apple but, much moreimportantly (even though his business card does notsay this), he is a founder of the company. As thehistory of Apple shows, there is no greater distanceknown to man than the single footfall that separates aCEO from a founder. CEOs are, for the most part,products of educational and institutional breeding.Founders or, at least, the very best of them, areunstoppable, irrepressable forces of nature. Of themany founders I’ve encountered, Steve is the mostcaptivating. Steve, more than any one other person,has turned modern electronics into objects of desire.Steve has always possessed the soul of thequestioning poet—someone a little removed from therest of us who, from an early age, beat his own path.Had he been born at a different time, it’s easy to seehow he would have hopped freight cars and followedhis star. (It is not a coincidence that he and Applehelped underwrite Martin Scorcese’s No DirectionHome, the absorbing biopic of Bob Dylan.) Stevewas adopted and raised by well-meaning parentswho never had much money. He was attracted byReed College, a school that exerts an unusual appealfor bright and thoughtful teenagers, and which, in the1970s, was tailor-made for any child who wished hehad been at Woodstock. It was there that acalligraphy class sharpened his sense of theaesthetic—that influence is still apparent in all Appleproducts and advertising.Jobs’s critics will say he can be willful, obdurate,

irascible, temperamental, and stubborn—but showme someone who has achieved anything meaningfulwho, from time to time, doesn’t display thesecharacteristics, who is not a perfectionist. There isalso the mischievous, calculating, suspicious twinkleof the souk about Steve. He is an insistent,persuasive and mesmerizing salesman—about theonly man I know with the audacity to adorn busshelters nationwide with advertisements for a productas mundane as a wireless mouse. But he is also aman who, decades ago, was kind enough make visitsto a hospital to visit a CEO felled by a stroke andwho, recently, in an avuncular fashion, has offeredyounger Silicon Valley CEOs generous advice.About the time I entered the venture business,Apple’s board fired Steve in favor of a man from theEast who was a creature of convention.Characteristically, Steve sold all but one share of hisholdings in the company and, at Sequoia Capital, weshook our heads as we watched him shape thecompany that he came to call NeXT. He raised moneyfrom investors (including Ross Perot) at a massivevaluation and I remember visiting its headquarters,which bore all the hallmarks of a fiasco-in-waiting.There was a logo designed by Paul Rand and afloating staircase in the lobby—echoes of which arevisible in the staircases that you can see today inmany Apple stores.NeXT took Steve out of his natural milieu. He wastrying to sell computers to large companies—entitiesnot swayed by products with visceral appeal. It alsomeant he was removed from the fray of the consumerbusiness at a time when computer companies werebeginning to demonstrate that, thanks to their edgewith software and silicon, they had a naturaladvantage over consumer companies struggling tobecome computer companies. Steve persisted atNeXT when weaker beings would have thrown in thetowel, but eventually when the death rattle started toemanate from the company, it appeared that he toowould be consigned to occupy a footnote in history.It’s hard now, twelve years later, to appreciate thedire straits that Apple was in after it bought NeXT atthe end of 1996 in a desperate effort to revivify itself.The Silicon Valley cynics chuckled at the way Stevewas able to sell NeXT for more than $400 million eventhough it only had sold about 50,000 computers.Steve returned to Apple hardened by years ofcommercial adversity.Many are familiar with the re-emergence of Apple.They may not be as familiar with the fact that it hasfew, if any parallels. When did a founder ever return tothe company from which he had been rudely rejectedto engineer a turnaround as complete andspectacular as Apple’s? While turnarounds aredifficult in any circumstances they are doubly difficultin a technology company. It is not too much of astretch to say that Steve founded Apple not once buttwice—And the second time he was alone.For anyone who would like to gain a better sense ofSteve, I suggest going to YouTube and watching thecommencement speech he gave at Stanford in 2005—which must rank as one of the more forthright and

meaningful addresses ever given to a collection ofyoung people. Among the sentiments he conveyedwas the opportunity we all have to make our mark, dosomething special and, above all, follow our own path.He ended that talk with the admonition, borrowedfrom the final edition of the Whole Earth Catalog, to“Stay Hungry. Stay foolish.” This, I have discovered,also happens to be wonderful advice for anyone whowants to spend their life investing in youngcompanies.—Michael Moritz,San Francisco, 2009

INTRODUCTIONWriting about companies can be a perilousoccupation. For like people, companies are neverwhat they seem to be. Both share a natural impulse toput their best foot forward but companies, particularlylarge ones, spend a lot more time and money onappearances than do most individuals.Advertisements are designed to portray thecorporation and its products in the most appealinglight. Public-relations agencies are retained to issuepress releases, deal with reporters, and cope withuncomfortable issues. Security analysts, bankers, andbrokers are sedulously courted to make sure thatstock exchanges give proper attention to thecompany’s shares.There is then some charm about businesses thathave not stepped into the public light. They don’t haveto worry about the strictures of federal agencies orshareholders who appreciate only a cultivatednotoriety. Their founders and managers tend to speakwith fewer inhibitions than executives at largerorganizations, and they guard their secrets with lessanxiety. During their first few years most companiesare content with whatever publicity they can get. Butthe stories that appear in large newspapers andmagazines tend, by virtue of the subject, to be shortand usually gloss over many aspects of a youngcompany’s progress while the appeal of novelty tendsto soften criticism. Yet by the time corporate historiesare commissioned the details of those early stagesare often lost. Myths spring up about life in the goodold days and even the best-intentioned efforts turnfrom fact to fiction. Nostalgia, as the wise man said,isn’t what it was. So there’s much to be said forwriting about a company before its founders and earlyemployees die or lose details in a gin-mottled fog.While they remain small, companies are easyenough to describe but once they outgrow a garageor an office suite they become increasingly opaque.As employees are scattered in factories andwarehouses across the country or overseas, one isleft to deal with impressions that have to be recordedwith the dots and dabs of pointillism. If sheer size isone obstacle there are also more mechanicalobstructions. For trying to figure out the tone andnature of a large American corporation is a bit likecharting the affairs of Gorki. Some stories can begleaned from bitter refugees but a closer inspection ismore hazardous. It’s difficult to obtain a tourist visa,simple to discover the official line, impossible tomove around without being followed, and all too easyto get expelled.Sad to say, small businesses in a particular cornerof California have an irritating habit of turning intolarge corporations. During the past thirty years theorchards between San Jose and San Francisco havebeen mowed down to make way for dozens ofcompanies which now form Silicon Valley. Most ofthese make their money from some connection withelectronics and have grown so fast that it’s easy to

elieve that the prunes and apricots shed some fertileresidue. During the last decade, as developments inmicroelectronics have moved from the missile cone tothe tabletop, these companies have attracted theusual parasitic herd of politicians, managementconsultants, and journalists eager to uncover a curefor the ills that have bothered other industries.To some extent the popular conception of thesecompanies has been formed by contrived illusion.They are supposed to conduct their business in novelways. They are considered to be informal and relaxedplaces to work, where unusual minds can be keptentertained. Their founders are supposed to share thewealth, while hierarchy and bureaucracy, the curses ofconventional corporations, have somehow beenabolished. The heads of companies, we are told, letemployees wander into their offices and are reluctantto fire anyone but thieves and bigots. To listen to thepublicity merchants these companies are started bypeople with daring imaginations and a yen for risk.They seem to introduce new products with thepredictable certainty with which Henry Kaiser oncelaunched Liberty ships and the development of a newchip or a faster computer is invariably portrayed asthe result of the march of destiny. They are rarelydiscussed without some invocation of God, country, orthe pioneering spirit.There is no better example of all this than AppleComputer, Inc., which is Silicon Valley’s mostprecocious child. Within eight years it has gone froma living room to a yearly sales rate of more than $1billion while the stock market has placed a value ofmore than $2.5 billion on its shares. It took less timeto reach the Fortune500 than any other start-up in thehistory of the index and it stands a good chance offalling among the one hundred largest U.S. industrialcorporations before its tenth birthday. Two of itsstockholders are said to be among the four hundredwealthiest people in the United States and well overone hundred of its employees have becomemillionaires. By most conventional standards Applehas dwarfed the accomplishments of any companyborn in Silicon Valley. It is larger than enterprisesfounded decades earlier, it has designed andintroduced new products, and it hasn’t had to seekhelp from a corporate sugar daddy.When I started to think about writing this book,Apple was already a large company. It was perchedbetween the great success brought by the Apple IIpersonal computer and the twin challenges of buildingand introducing a new round of machines andcompeting with the Juggernaut from Armonk, IBM.Apple’s early days were fast slipping into the stuff offolksong and legend and the personal-computerindustry was maturing fast. Small companies that hadmanaged to survive the early days were beginning tofall by the wayside. A few had emerged as leadersand Apple was one.I thought that I could learn more about SiliconValley, the start of a new industry, and life at a youngcompany by focusing on one firm rather than by trying

to come to grips with many. I was interested inwhether image matched reality and whether publicstatements corresponded with private actions. Iwanted to concentrate on the years before Applebecame a publicly held company, examine theatmosphere that nourished the founders, and find outhow their personalities came to affect the company.To a lesser extent I also wanted to come to terms withthe conventional questions: Why? when? and how? “Inthe right place at the right time” clearly explains part ofApple’s success but dozens, if not hundreds, of otherpeople who started microcomputer companies havefailed.For some months I enjoyed a carefullycircumscribed freedom at Apple. I was allowed toattend meetings and watch progress on a newcomputer. But the company I saw in 1982 was verydifferent from the little business that filled a garage in1977. Consequently, I have scattered these corporatesnapshots throughout the book. This isn’t anauthorized portrait of Apple Computer nor was it eversupposed to be a definitive history. Apart fromdocuments that were leaked, I had no access tocorporate papers. The name of one character whoappears briefly in the narrative, Nancy Rogers, hasbeen changed, and some of the people mentioned inthe text have either left the company or assumeddifferent titles. I discovered quickly enough that writinga book about a growing company in an industry thatchanges with dizzying rapidity has at least onesimilarity to the production of a computer. Both couldalways be better if every new and enticingdevelopment were included. But like an engineer Ihad to bolt down and ship. So this is about Apple’sroad to its first one billion dollars.

“Can we ship your party?” Jobsasked.A large set of French windows rinsed the Californiasun. The filtered light, which had the long wash of fall,played along a rumpled line of suitcases, garmentbags, backpacks, and guitar cases. The owners ofthe luggage were seated around a stone fire-place ingenerous crescents of straight-backed chairs. Most ofthe sixty or so faces fell into that blind gap thatcamouflages those between their late teens and earlythirties. About a third were women. Most woreandrogynous uniforms of jeans, T-shirts, tank tops,and running shoes. There were a few paunches,some occasional patches of gray hair, and more thanthe average run of spectacles. Some cheeks wereunshaven and a few were still swollen with sleep.Several blue-brimmed polyester baseball capscarried the silhouette of an apple with a bite gougedout of the side and, in black lettering, the wordsMACINTOSH DIVISION.At the front of the group, sitting on the edge of asteel table, was a tall, slight figure in his late twenties.He was dressed in a checked shirt, bleached jeans,and scuffed running shoes. A slim digital watch ranaround his left wrist. His long, delicate fingers hadnails that were chewed to the quick, while glossyblack hair was carefully shaped and sideburns crisplytrimmed. He blinked a pair of deep, brown eyes asthough his contact lenses were stinging. He had apale complexion and a face divided by a thin, angularnose. The left side was soft and mischievous whilethe right had a cruel, sullen tint. He was Steven Jobs,chairman and co-founder of Apple Computer andgeneral manager of the Macintosh Division.The group waiting for Jobs to speak worked forApple’s youngest division. They had been bused fromthe company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California,across a range of pine-covered hills for a two-dayretreat at a resort built for weekenders on the edge ofthe Pacific. Sleeping quarters were woodencondominiums with stiff-necked chimneys. The woodhad been bleached gray by the wind and the sprayand the buildings were set among sand dunes andspiky grass. Collected together in the clear morninglight, the group formed the footloose confection typicalof a young computer company. Some weresecretaries and laboratory technicians. A few werehardware and software engineers. Others worked inmarketing, manufacturing, finance, and personnel. Acouple wrote instruction manuals. Some had recentlyjoined Apple and were meeting their colleagues forthe first time. Others had transferred from a divisioncalled Personal Computer Systems, which made theApple II and Apple III computers. A few had onceworked for the Personal Office Systems Division,which was preparing to introduce a machine calledLisa that Apple intended to sell to businesses. TheMacintosh Division was sometimes called Mac butthe lack of an official-sounding name reflected its

uncertain birth. For the computer code-named Macwas, in some ways, a corporate orphan.Jobs began speaking quietly and slowly. “This,” hesaid, “is the cream of Apple. We have the best peoplehere and we must do something that most of us havenever done: We have never shipped a product.” Hewalked with a springy step to an easel and pointed tosome plain mottos written in a childish hand on large,creamy sheets of paper. These he converted intohomilies. “It’s Not Done Until It Ships,” he read. “Wehave zillions and zillions of details to work out. Sixmonths ago nobody believed we could do it. Now theybelieve we can. We know they’re going to sell a bunchof Lisas but the future of Apple is Mac.” He foldedback one of the sheets of paper, pointed to the nextslogan, and read: “Don’t Compromise.” Hementioned the introduction date planned for thecomputer and said, “It would be better to miss than toturn out the wrong thing.” He paused and added, “Butwe’re not going to miss.” He flipped another page,announced, “The Journey Is the Reward,” andpredicted, “Five years from now you’ll look back onthese times and say, ‘Those were the good old days.’You know,” he mulled in a voice that rose half anoctave, “this is the nicest place in Apple to work. It’sjust like Apple was three years ago. If we keep thiskind of pure and hire the right people, it’ll still be agreat place to work.”Jobs pulled a torn white plastic bag along the table,dangled it by his knee, and asked in the tone ofsomeone who knows what the answer will be: “Do youwant to see something neat?” An object that lookedlike a desk diary slipped from the plastic bag. Thecase was covered in brown felt and fell open to reveala mock-up of a computer. A screen occupied one halfand a typewriter keyboard the other. “This is mydream,” said Jobs, “of what we’ll be making in themid- to late eighties. We won’t reach this on Mac Oneor Mac Two but it will be Mac Three. This will be theculmination of all this Mac stuff.”Debi Coleman, the division’s financial controller,was more interested in the past than the future and,much like a child hoping for a familiar bedtime tale,asked Jobs to tell the newcomers how he hadsilenced the founder of Osborne Computers whoseportable computer had been putting a dent in Apple’ssales. “Tell us what you told Adam Osborne,” sheimplored. With a reluctant shrug Jobs waited for theanticipation to build before embarking on the story.“Adam Osborne is always dumping on Apple. He wasgoing on and on about Lisa and when we would shipLisa and then he started joking about Mac. I wastrying to keep my cool and be polite but he keptasking, ‘What’s this Mac we’re hearing about? Is itreal?’ He started getting under my collar so much thatI told him, ‘Adam, it’s so good that even after it putsyour company out of business, you’ll still want to goout and buy it for your kids.’”The group alternated between the indoor sessionsand alfresco sessions on a bank of sun-parchedgrass. Some foraged in a cardboard box and donnedT-shirts that had the computer’s name racing acrossthe chest in a punky script. The retreat seemed a

cross between a confessional and a group-encountersession. There was a nervous, slightly strained,jocularity but the old-timers who had attendedprevious retreats said the atmosphere was relaxedand low-key. A couple of the programmers mutteredthat they would have preferred to stay and work inCupertino, but they lounged on the grass and listenedto briefings from other members of the group.Some picked at bowls of fruit, cracked walnuts, andcrumpled soft-drink cans while Michael Murray, adark-haired marketing man with dimples and mirroredsunglasses, rattled through industry charts andprojected sales rates and market share. He showedhow Mac would be introduced between the moreexpensive office computers made by competitors likeIBM, Xerox, and Hewlett-Packard and the cheaperhome computers sold by companies like Atari, TexasInstruments, and Commodore. “We’ve got a productthat should be selling for five thousand dollars but wehave the magic to sell for under two thousand. We’regoing to redefine the expectations of a whole group ofpeople.” He was asked how sales of Mac would affectApple’s office computer, Lisa, which was a moreelaborate computer but built around the sameprinciples.“There is one disaster scenario,” Murray admitted.“We could say Lisa was a great exercise for Apple.We can put it down to experience and sell ten.”“Lisa is going to be incredibly great,” Jobsinterjected firmly. “It will sell twelve thousand units inthe first six months and fifty thousand in the first year.”The marketing sorts talked of ploys to boost sales.They discussed the importance of trying to sell ordonate hundreds of Macs to universities with gildedreputations.“Why not sell Mac to secretaries?” asked JoannaHoffman, a perky woman with a faint foreign accent.“We don’t want companies to think the machine is aword processor,” Murray retorted.“There’s a way to solve that problem,” Hoffmancountered. “We could say to the secretaries: ‘Here’syour chance to grow into an area associate.’”There was a discussion of improving salesoverseas. “We have the kind of hi-tech magnetismthat can attract the Japanese,” Hoffman mentioned.“But there’s no way they can succeed here whilewe’re here and we’re going to succeed thereregardless.”“We were very big in Japan until recently,” BillFernandez, a beanstalk-thin technician, observed in apinched staccato.Chris Espinosa, manager of the writers whoprepared the computer’s instruction manuals, sloppedin his sandals to the front of the group. He had justturned twenty-one, and as he pulled some notes froma small red backpack he announced, “You all misseda great party.”“I heard there was free acid,” somebody piped up.“It was for sale outside,” Espinosa chortled.“Can we ship your party?” Jobs asked sharply.Espinosa blanched and settled down to business.He told his colleagues that he was having difficultieshiring qualified writers, that his staff needed more

Mac prototypes to work with, and that Apple’sgraphics department wasn’t geared to cope withsome of his demands. “We want to make books thatare gorgeous,” he said, “that you read once and thenkeep on your shelf because they look so great.”The work sessions were broken up by coffeebreaks and by walks along the beach, some Frisbeegames on the grass, a few scattered poker games,and a fuchsia sunset. Though dinner was served atlong canteen tables, it bore no hint of the mess hall.Clutches of Zinfandels, Cabernets, and Chardonnaysstood on every table but the breadsticks disappearedmore quickly. After dinner someone who looked like ademure orthodontist, with thinning silver hair and owleyedspectacles, performed what, in computercircles, amounted to a cabaret act. The figure wearinga Mac T-shirt over a long-sleeved dress shirt was BenRosen. He had turned a reputation gained as a WallStreet electronics analyst, the industrious publisher ofan informative, sprightly newsletter, and host of annualpersonal-computer conferences into a career as aventure capitalist. Before he started investing incomputer companies his comments had been soughtas much as his ear.For the Mac group Rosen worked from a casualscript of observations, wisecracks, tips, and industrygossip. He gave a brief survey of some of Apple’scompetitors and dismissed Texas Instruments as “acompany for the case studies of business schools,”though by way of an afterthought he added: “They aresupposed to announce their IBM almost-compatiblecomputer in three weeks.”“What price?” Jobs asked.“Twenty percent under the comparable price,”Rosen replied.He talked about low-priced home computers andmentioned Commodore: “I have a few notes aboutCommodore that I can tell in polite company. Themore you know about the company the more difficult itis to be sanguine.”Some of the frivolous rustle disappeared whenRosen started to talk about IBM whose personalcomputer had been providing severe competition forApple. “One of the fears about Apple,” Rosen noted,“is IBM’s future.” He admitted to being impressed bya recent visit to IBM’s Personal Computer Division inBoca Raton and described what he thought were itsplans for three new personal computers. Then helooked around the room and said: “This is the mostimportant part of Apple Computer. Mac is your mostoffensive and defensive weapon. I haven’t seenanything that compares to it.” He quizzicallymentioned another industry rumor: “One of the thingsgoing around Wall Street is an IBM-Apple merger.”“IBM already said they weren’t for sale,” RandyWigginton, a young blond programmer, shot back.Members of the Mac group started to askquestions. One wanted to know how Rosen thought

Apple’s stock would perform. Another was eager tofind out when a personal-computer software companywould turn a $100 million in sales, while one with astrategic inclination wondered how Apple couldensure that computer dealers would make room ontheir increasingly crowded shelves for Mac.“We have a crisis looming,” Jobs told Rosen, fromthe back of the room. “We’ve got to decide what tocall Mac. We could call it Mac, Apple IV, Rosen I.How’s Mac strike you?”“Throw thirty million dollars of advertising at it,”Rosen said, “and it will sound great.”Rosen was the one interlude in a string ofpresentations by every manager of a department atMac. They provided an abbreviated tour of acomputer company and numbed everyone with awelter of facts. The snappy presentations wereinterrupted every now and again by applause at somepiece of good, or unexpected, news. The engineeringmanager, Bob Belleville, a soft-spoken engineer whohad just come to Apple from Xerox, said, “At Xeroxwe used to say it was important to get a little doneevery day; at Mac it’s important to get a lot done everyday.” The main hardware engineer, Burrell Smith,blushed fiercely, said he didn’t have enough materialto last ten minutes, and played his guitar. Thedesigner of the computer case lit some candles, satin a chair with his back to the others, and played hisremarks from a cassette tape. Others told aboutproblems meeting the standards for electronicdevices set by the FCC.The programmers relayed their progress on thesoftware. Matt Carter, a burly man with a beleagueredlook, who was responsible for part of themanufacturing, rattled through a quick course infactory layout and showed a film of what Apple’s newproduction line for Mac would look like. He talkedabout carousels and bins, automatic inserters andlinear belts, prototype builds and pricingcommitments. Another manufacturing man told aboutdefect rates, improvements in output per person perday, and material handling. The last prompted Jobs topromise: “We’re going to come down real hard on ourvendors. We’re going to come down on ’em like neverbefore.” Debi Coleman, the financial controller, gaveher version of Accounting 101, explaining differencesbetween direct and indirect labor costs, inventorycontrol, fixed-asset tracking systems, tooling analysis,inventory valuation, purchase price variance, andbreak-even levels.At the tag end of the retreat, Jay Elliot, a tall manfrom Apple’s human resources department,introduced himself. “I’m a human-resourcesmanager,” he said. “I really appreciate being here.Thank you for being here. At human resources we tryto leverage top performers—”“What does that mean in English?” Jobs snapped.“Human resources,” Elliot stumbled, “is typicallyviewed as a bureaucratic, bullshit organization . . .”Once Elliot recovered, he suggested ways ofcoping with the need for recruitment. The projectedorganization chart for the Mac Division was dotted

with little boxes filled with the initials TBH. Thesestood for “To Be Hired.” Elliot said his departmentwas swamped with fifteen hundred résumés a monthand suggested panning recruits from the names ofApple’s owner-warranty cards.“Nobody any good sends in their warranty card,”Jobs said. He leaned over the back of his chair andaddressed Andy Hertzfeld, one of the programmers.“Andy, did you send in your warranty card?”“The dealer filled it in,” Hertzfeld said.“See?” said Jobs, swiveling around in his seat.“We could put ads on ARPANET,” Hertzfeldsuggested, referring to the government-fundedcomputer network that links universities, researchestablishments, and military bases. “There would belegal problems with that but we could ignore them.”“We could put ads in newspapers but the catchfactor is kind of low,” volunteered Vicki Milledge whoalso worked in the human resources department.“What we should do,” Jobs said, “is send Andy outto the universities, let him hang out in the labs and findthe red-hot students.”After Elliot finished, Jobs embarked on a soliloquy.He fingered a gray, glossy folder that contained asummary of progress on Mac and warned everyone tocarefully guard all company documents. “One of oursalespeople in Chicago,” he said, “was offered acomplete sales introduction plan on Lisa fromsomebody at IBM. They get everywhere.” He returnedto the easel and a final flip chart that carried thepicture of an inverted pyramid. At the bottom a bandwas labeled MAC and succeeding layers carried theWords FACTORY, DEALERS, SUPPLIERS,SOFTWARE HOUSES, SALES FORCE, andCUSTOMERS. Jobs explained the triangle andpointed to the succession of bands: “We have a majoropportunity to influence where Apple is going. Asevery day passes, the work fifty people are doinghere is going to send a giant ripple through theuniverse. I am really impressed with the quality of ourripple.” He paused. “I know I might be a little hard toget on with, but this is the most fun thing I’ve done inmy life. I’m having a blast.” A trace of a smileappeared on his face.

BOOMTOWN BY THE BAYBulldozers and steam shovels lurched about thequarry, tearing tawny scars across a cheek of thehillside. The machines sent plumes of dust into the airabove the southern end of San Francisco Bay. Largewooden placards declared that the equipment andquarry belonged to the Kaiser Cement Company. Theearth in the dumpsters was going to form thesubstance of the towns that were being built on theplain that spread below the quarry. The trucksrumbled by rolls of barbed wire, coasted past signsthat warned of a steep incline, tested their brakes,rolled onto a country lane, and negotiated the thinbends and chuckholes that led toward Cupertino, avillage that was trying hard not to become a town.From the quarry gates, on those weekday mornings inthe mid-fifties, the position of the crossroads thatformed the center of Cupertino was revealed by thecylindrical shapes of some clay-colored feed andgrain silos.In the fifties the Santa Clara Valley was stillpredominantly rural. In places the greenery wasbroken by splotches of buildings. From a distance itlooked as if someone had spilled small loads ofgarbage that had then been smeared and rakedacross parts of the valley floor to form a string of smalltowns that worked along the plain between San Joseand San Francisco: Los Gatos, Santa Clara,Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Los Altos, Palo Alto,Menlo Park, Redwood City, San Carlos, Hillsborough,Burlingame, and South San Francisco.Most of the towns still had the manners and style ofthe thirties. The buildings rarely rose over two stories.The automobiles could park at raked angles on MainStreet. Corners were frequently decorated with aState Farm Insurance office, a gas station, a branchof the Bank of America, and an InternationalHarvester franchise, and in towns like Cupertino therehad been, not so long before, concerted campaignsto lure a permanent dentist and doctor. The center ofthe world was immediate: a town hall built with terracottatiles in Spanish mission style and flanked by alibrary, police department, fire station, courthouse,and stumpy palm trees.But the towns were separated by all sorts ofdifferences. Each had its own climate which grewwarmer the farther away a town was from the SanFrancisco fog. At the southern end of the Peninsulathe summer climate was positively Mediterranean anda little seminary that overlooked Cupertino couldeasily have been set on a quiet hillside in Tuscany.The towns had their own councils and taxes, their ownordinances and quirks, their newspapers and habits.There were mayoral elections brimming with therumors and innuendo stirred by a community wherepeople, if they did not know the mayor, at least knewsomeone who did. And the towns were, of course,separated by jealousy and snobbery.The lawyers and doctors who built homes in the hillsof Los Gatos said to themselves—with not a touch of

jest—that the brains of San Jose slept in Los Gatos.The people who lived in Los Altos Hills looked downon the Los Altos folk who lived in the flatlands. PaloAlto with its gracious trees and Stanford Universityhad an airy feel and a few electronic businessesstarted by former students. Towns like Woodside andBurlingame, set above the plain, had the tony touch ofhorses, polo games, and rigidly exclusive golf clubs.Burlingame had been home to the first country club onthe West Coast. But the people who lived in nearbyHillsborough often gave their addresses asBurlingame for fear of being mistaken as parvenus.And beyond San Carlos, San Bruno, and RedwoodCity there was windy South San Francisco—anindustrial footnote to the city itself—sited below theapproach and takeoff paths to the San Franciscoairport. Here was a clump of steel mills, foundries,smelters, refineries, machine shops, and lumberyardswhere the City Fathers had advertised their musculartemperament when they had authorized bulldozers toscrape in giant letters on the hill behind the town theslogan SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, THEINDUSTRIAL CITY.But now, right across the valley and especiallyaround Sunnyvale, there were gaps in the orchardsand signs of a new world moving in. Most of the trucksfrom the Kaiser Cement quarry were making forSunnyvale. Draglines, cranes, and road scraperswere waiting for the concrete and steel that was beingused to build the quarters for Lockheed Corporation’snew Missile Systems Division. By 1957 Sunnyvalewas six times larger than it had been at the end ofWorld War II and was beginning to qualify for inclusionin national almanacs. The municipal chatter had anenergetic ring of tax bases, assessed valuation,building permits, zoning requirements, sewer lines,and water power. There were rumors of newbusinesses, speculation that one of the majorautomobile companies would decide to build afactory in Sunnyvale. As the fifties drew to a close,Sunnyvale’s Chamber of Commerce gleefullyreported that the town’s statistics were hourlybecoming obsolete and that a new worker wasarriving in Sunnyvale every sixteen minutes of theworking day. The publicity pamphlets said it was “TheCity with the built-in future” and “Boomtown by theBay.”The newcomers to the city that was “reaching high”and “pacing the future” were part and parcel ofAmerica’s push toward a suburban way of life. Thehomes were insulated from the bustle of a communityand a store was a car-drive away. The housesthemselves had an unmistakable Bay Area look. Theywere low-slung, single-story homes with roofs thatwere either flat or tilted slightly like those of a gardenshed. (The real-estate salesmen said that young boysfound it easy to recover their model airplanes from theroofs.) But from the outside it was the garages thatdominated the facades, making the rooms look as ifthey were tacked on as after-thoughts. The largemetal garage doors seemed like the obviousentrance.Brochures told of radiant heat, “the modern and

healthy way to heat a house,” of wood-paneled walls,cork and asphalt tiles, hardwood kitchen cabinets,and large closets with glide-in doors that “swing withthe greatest of ease.” What the pamphlets didn’t saywas that the local fire departments joked that thesecombinations of posts and beams would burn to theground within seven minutes—and that the blackcommunity was isolated on the wrong side of theSouthern Pacific railroad tracks and the wrong side ofthe freeway.Most of the families who moved to Sunnyvale werelured by the prospect of jobs at Lockheed. Many werecareful and studious. They asked the real-estateagents where the rumored freeway—Interstate 280—might run and checked the projected route on maps atthe Sunnyvale City Hall. They asked friends forrecommendations on schools and were told that PaloAlto and Cupertino had the best reputations along theentire peninsula. There was talk of enterprisingteachers, federal grants, experiments with new math,and open classrooms.They visited the school district and found a mapthat pinpointed the existing schools and revealedwhere future schools might be built. Then theydiscovered the eccentric nature of the boundaries ofthe Cupertino School District: They didn’t have to livein Cupertino for their children to attend the Cupertinocity schools. The school district included parts of SanJose, Los Altos, and Sunnyvale, and the fortunatehouses sold at a premium. In a few places theboundary even divided houses.Jerry Wozniak, an engineer in his mid-thirties, wasone of thousands to be recruited by Lockheed at theend of the fifties. He, his wife, Margaret, and theirthree young children, Stephen, Leslie and Mark,settled in a home in a quiet Sunnyvale subdivision thatlay in the catchment area of the Cupertino SchoolDistrict.At the other end of the Peninsula, in the SunsetDistrict of San Francisco, Paul and Clara Jobsadopted their first child, Steven. Often during the firstfive months of his life they wheeled their baby underthe imitation nineteenth-century streetlamps, over thetram tracks, and across the beach in the shadow ofthe damp sea wall, the fog, the pewter skies, and thegray gulls.

SUPER SECRET SKY SPIESHush-hush, super-super, top-secret Lockheedbecame synonymous with Sunnyvale. As the missiledivision grew during the late fifties it changed thescale of business in the Santa Clara Valley, more orless turned Sunnyvale into a company town, andhelped propel the community toward the fringes ofmystery. Lockheed came to be talked about as aplace where the subjects of science fiction had beenreduced to everyday occupations. Lockheed waswoven into the weft of the national space programand, in Sunnyvale, aspects of Discoverer, Explorer,Mercury, and Gemini came to be as familiar as thenames of some of the astronauts. It would have beeneasy to believe that H.G. Wells worked in Lockheed’spublic-relations department, batting out bulletins on anever-ending source of marvels.There were rumors of a laboratory that wouldsimulate conditions in space, of a tape recorder smallenough to be held in the palm of the hand, and of“Hotshot,” the strongest wind tunnel in private industry.Teams of Lockheed engineers were investigating aspecial fuel cell to power spacecraft, and weredrawing up plans for a prefabricated, four-hundred-tonmanned space platform shaped like the wheel offortune. There were also more sinister rumors. SomeLockheed engineers were known to be working on anintermediate-range ballistic missile known as the“super-secret Polaris” and a “sky spy,” a “supersuper”secret earth satellite armed with a televisioncamera that could peep at the Russians. Thecompany proudly disclosed that its spacecommunicationslaboratory picked up seven minutesof the first journey of an Explorer satellite and alsoboasted that its dish-shaped radio telescope couldmonitor twenty satellites simultaneously. There wereother reports of an astonishing electronic computerinstalled at Lockheed that was supposed to have theintelligence of a human but could also play a sly gameof tic-tac-toe.So when in 1958 Jerry Wozniak began working atLockheed, he was joining a company that, at least soit seemed to the outside world, had large ideas. Ameaty man with a thick neck and large forearms,Wozniak had been strong enough to play offensivetailback on the football team at the California Instituteof Technology in Pasadena where he studiedelectrical engineering. After about a year working asa junior engineer at a small company in SanFrancisco he had quit and together with a partnerspent twelve months designing a stacking, packing,and counting machine for raw materials like asbestossheeting. But the pair had run out of money beforecompleting a prototype, leading Wozniak to conclude:“It was probably a good technical idea but we didn’tunderstand what it took to put a business together.”After graduating from Cal Tech, Wozniak hadmarried. His wife, Margaret, had grown up on a smallfarm in Washington State and had spent a collegevacation working as a journeyman electrician during

World War II at the Kaiser shipyards in Vancouver,Washington, installing wiring on baby flattops as theyrose on the ways. Eventually her parents had soldtheir spread and moved to the warmth of LosAngeles. “California,” Margaret Wozniak had thought.“That was the greatest place in the world.” But with thefailure of Jerry’s business fling and the arrival of theirfirst son, Stephen, in August 1950, the Wozniakswere drawn back into the grip of corporations. Forseveral years they traveled around the SouthernCalifornia aerospace industry, which had beengrafted onto the tumbling tricks of the early aviators.And like thousands of other families, the Wozniakssoon associated towns like Burbank, Culver City, andSan Diego with companies like Lockheed, HughesAircraft, Northrop, and McDonnell Douglas. For a timeJerry Wozniak worked as a weapons designer in SanDiego, later helped build autopilots for Lear in SantaMonica, and bought his first house in the SanFernando Valley before the guiding lights atLockheed decided to form a division in Sunnyvale.While his children spent months playing incardboard houses made out of Bekins movingcartons, Jerry Wozniak grew accustomed to therhythm of the short commute that took him toLockheed. “I never intended to stay at Lockheed verylong. I intended to move to the area first and settledown later.” The company kept its distance fromfamily affairs. Lockheed was hidden behind shields ofsecurity clearances, special passes, uniformedguards, and barbed-wire fences. About the only timechildren glided through the company gates was whenthe general public was invited to watch the aerobaticstunts of the Blue Angels over the Independence Dayweekend. When Jerry Wozniak had to collect workfrom his office on Saturday mornings, his childrenstayed in the car surrounded by the vast parking lotspainted in flat, herringbone patterns. Lockheed waslike an elderly aunt who wanted children to appearonly for dinner.When Jerry Wozniak brought his work home in theevenings and over the weekends and settled down inthe family room with sheets of blue-lined grid paperand drafting pencils, he was usually concerned withdesigns that took full advantage of the miniaturizationof electronic components. Inside the Missile SystemsDivision Wozniak worked on the attitude-controlsystem of Polaris and slightly later on a proposedscheme for using computers to design integratedcircuits. Later still he worked in an area known asSpecial Projects which, he told his children, hadsomething to do with satellites. So Jerry Wozniak wasin a position where it became part and parcel of hisjob to read trade journals, plow through conferenceproceedings, flip through monographs, and generallykeep abreast of developments in the world ofelectronics.While the satellites designed at Lockheed wereengineered to travel millions of miles, the orbits ofLockheed families were more circumscribed. TheWozniaks never took long vacations. A holiday wasusually a Christmas or Easter trip to visit

grandparents in Southern California. There was theoccasional dinner out, a trip for brunch to Sausalito,an outing to a San Francisco Giants baseball game,but for the most part the center of their world wasSunnyvale.Jerry Wozniak was as keen about war games andsports as he was about electronics. He spent hours inthe backyard tossing baseballs with his sons andbecame a coach for The Braves, a Sunnyvale LittleLeague team. But most of all he looked forward to theSaturday morning golf foursome he played withneighbors at the nearby Cherry Chase Country Club—a grand name for a club where, to play eighteenholes, golfers circled the same course twice. Here,too, Wozniak senior and Wozniak junior won a fatherand-songolf tournament. Sunday afternoons weredevoted to televised football games.And for the Wozniaks, as for thousands of otherCalifornia families who raised their children in thesixties, swimming was the sport of primary interest.The nearby Santa Clara swim team earned a nationalreputation and swimming quickly turned intosomething more than a pastime. It was a sport, theelder Wozniaks thought, that could be used to instill asense of team spirit, of competitiveness, andindividual achievement. They enrolled their children inthe Mountain View Dolphins.Margaret Wozniak was a woman with very definiteideas who didn’t hesitate to let her children know whatwas on her mind. When she lectured them aboutausterity they sometimes harked back to her wartimeoccupation and called her Rosie the Riveter, butMargaret Wozniak was something of a feministbefore the term became fashionable. (“When Irealized I wasn’t a person anymore I started to branchout.”) She became president of the Republicanwomen in Sunnyvale—“I liked having friends on thecity council”—and occasionally enlisted the help of herchildren for humdrum precinct work.The Wozniaks played classical records in thebackground, hoping that their children would beattracted to the subliminal levels of the music. ButLeslie preferred teen pop magazines and the SanFrancisco radio shows she could hear on hertransistor radio while her brothers preferred televisionprograms with an element of intrigue like The Manfrom U.N.C.L.E.a nd I Spy and horror shows likeCreature Features, The Twilight Zone, and TheOuter Limits. The sci-fi rubbed off, along perhaps withtraces of Lockheed’s secrecy and the staunchpodium-pounding speeches of local worthies worriedabout the Communist threat. Stephen Wozniakwanted to start a top-secret spy agency at junior highschool. “We were going to be so secret that wecouldn’t even feel anybody else.” The Wozniakchildren kept an eye on a suspicious neighbor theywere convinced was employed by the Russians.In Sunnyvale in the mid-sixties electronics was likehay fever: It was in the air and the allergic caught it. Inthe Wozniak household the older son had a weakimmune system. When Stephen was in fifth grade he

was given a kit for a voltmeter. He followed theinstructions, used a soldering iron to fasten the wires,and successfully assembled the device. Stephenshowed more interest in electronics than either hissister or his younger brother, Mark, who observed,“My father started him very early. I didn’t get any ofthat kind of support.”Most of the neighbors on the Wozniak block wereengineers. One neighbor who bought a home on thetract the same year as the Wozniaks never botheredto have his yard landscaped, but some of the localchildren discovered that he had run a surpluselectronics store and would trade odd jobs forelectronic parts. They weeded or scraped down somepaintwork, kept note of the hours, and swapped theirlabor for parts. A couple of houses in the otherdirection was someone who specialized in radios,transceivers, and direction finders left over fromWorld War II and the Korean conflict. One of StephenWozniak’s neighborhood friends, Bill Fernandez,said, “There was always somebody around who couldanswer questions about electronics.” The childrenlearned to discriminate between the men’sspecialties. Some were good on theory, somefavored explaining things in math, while others had apractical bent and relied on rules of thumb.One man offered lessons to people who wanted toobtain ham-radio licenses. When Stephen Wozniakwas in sixth grade he took the operator’s exam, built a100-watt ham radio, and began tapping out his codeletters. At one point electronics and politics merged.For when Richard Nixon was engaged in his 1962California gubernatorial race Margaret Wozniakarranged for her son to offer Nixon the support of allthe ham-radio operators at Cupertino’s Serra School.Even though Stephen was the school’s only bona fideoperator, the ploy worked. Nixon and a stubby,crewcut. Wozniak appeared together in a photographon the front page of the San Jose Mercury.Wozniak found ham radios more entertaining whenthey were modified and connected to friends’ houses.He rigged up wires attached to speakers to sendMorse code from one house to another anddiscovered with his friends that if they talked into thespeakers they could hear each other: “We didn’t knowwhy but from that day we were into house-to-houseintercoms.”At about the same time, Stephen entered a tic-tactoegame in Cupertino Junior High School’s sciencefair. He and his father calculated an electronicsimulation of the paper game and worked outcombinations in which man battled machine. Stephenfigured out designs for the electric circuits that wouldduplicate the moves while his father secured a supplyof resistors, capacitors, transistors, and diodes froma friend. To his mother’s irritation Stephen assembledthe game on the kitchen table. He hammered nailsinto a sheet of plywood to form electrical connectionsand laid out all the smaller parts. On the flip side of theboard he installed a collection of red and white lightbulbs and at the bottom he arranged a row ofswitches that would allow a player to select a move.

A couple of years after completing the tic-tac-toegame Wozniak spotted an intriguing diagram in abook about computers. This was a machine called aOne Bit Adder-Subtracter which would do what itsname suggested: add or subtract numbers. Wozniakcould follow some of the technical discussion from thelessons he had learned while messing around withkits and designing the tic-tac-toe board. But therewere other aspects that he found entirely foreign. Forthe first time he came up against the idea thatelectronic calculating machines could providesolutions to problems of logic. He began to explorethe algebra of logic and learned that switches—whichcould be only on or off—could be used to representstatements—which could be only true or false. Hebecame familiar with the binary numbering system—aseries of 1s and 0s—that had been developed torepresent electronically two voltage levels in a circuit.The diagram for a One Bit Adder-Subtracter wasvery limited. It could cope with only one bit, one binarydigit, at a time. Wozniak wanted something morepowerful that would be able to add and subtract farlarger numbers so he expanded the idea to a morecomplicated device that he called The Ten Bit ParallelAdder-Subtracter. This was capable ofsimultaneously dealing with ten bits at a time. Hedesigned the necessary circuits by himself and laidout dozens of transistors and diodes and capacitorson a “bread board”—a laminated sheet drilled with aregular pattern of holes. The board was about the sizeof a picture book and was attached to a woodenframe. Two rows of switches lined the bottom of theboard. One entered numbers into the adder, the otherinto the subtracter, and the result was displayed—again in binary form—in a row of small lights.Wozniak had, to all intents and purposes, built asimple version of what engineers called an arithmeticlogic unit, a machine that was capable of coping witharithmetic problems. The machine could operate onthe instructions, or program, that were entered byhand through the switches. It could add or subtractnumbers but couldn’t do anything else.When the machine was complete, he carted it off tothe Cupertino School District Science Fair where ittook the first prize. Later it took third place in the BayArea Science Fair even though Wozniak wascompeting against older challengers. To compensatefor the disappointment of finishing third, he wasrewarded with his first trip in an airplane—a whirl overCalifornia’s Alameda Naval Air Station.“It’ll make the greatest flightsimulator in the world,” Schweersaid.Half a dozen managers from the Crocker Bank sataround a large L-shaped table, sipped coffee frombone-china cups, and watched a white screen unroll

from the ceiling. They might have been in an interiordesigner’s idea of a Hollywood dressing room for amovie star who happened to be a computer. Thetable rested on aluminum cylinders, and potted fernsdappled the purple rug with triangular shadows.Framed sketches hung on the wall and mirrors ranlike a modern brocade around the top of the walls.Dan’l Lewin, an Apple marketing manager with asmooth, square jaw, neatly knotted tie, and freshlypressed blue suit, let the screen unroll. He pressed aconcealed button and a pair of maroon slats, whichran along two walls of the hexagonal room, hummedsideways. Spotlights shone over the backs of somechairs onto two smooth counters that held six Lisacomputers.Lewin had been playing corporate guide for severalmonths and had shepherded similar groups fromdozens of large companies into the same room andthrough the same script and tour. Though Applemimicked the movie industry and called thesedaylong sessions “sneak previews,” they were plottedas carefully as story-boards. They were aimed atpersuading visitors from Fortune500 companies toorder scores of Lisa computers and at quellingsuspicions that Apple was a flimsy company unable tosupport what it hoped to sell. Most of the visitinggroups had been a mixture of longtime computeroperationsmanagers with a professional distrust ofdesk-top computers, and amateurs whose passionfor computers had been kindled by the smallermachines. All the visitors to the sneak room signedforms binding them to secrecy, but Lewin readilyadmitted, “By the time we announce Lisa, everybodywho is important will already have seen it.”Lewin crisply spat out a ream of numbers thatsounded like the authoritative opening paragraphs ofan annual report. He told the group that Appleproduced an Apple II every thirty seconds and a diskdrive every eighteen seconds. He steered themthrough a management chart and observed, “We aregrowing into a more traditional organization.” Heacknowledged that some details about Lisa hadseeped into the press but said this was part of acorporate strategy. “Apple,” Lewin noted, “iscontrolling the press very well. But until you see whatwe’ve done I doubt whether you can understand it. Noother company would be prepared to take the risk.Most companies are interested in making bigcomputers.” Lewin explained that the conceptualfoundation for the Lisa had been laid, not at Apple,but at Xerox Corporation during the mid-to lateseventies. “We took those ideas,” Lewin said, with thepride of a muffler-franchise holder, “and weinternalized them. We Apple-ized them.”After he finished with the opening remarks, Lewinintroduced Burt Cummings, a round-faced, curlyhairedengineer. Cummings sat beside one Lisawhose screen was enlarged on two televisionmonitors fitted to the wall. He immediately plungedinto technical details. “Why do you call it Lisa?”interrupted one of the men from Crocker Bank.“I don’t know,” Cummings shrugged. “There reallyisn’t much of a reason for anything.” He continued with

the demonstration and suddenly the screen became adistorted jumble of letters. Cummings wriggleduncomfortably, surveyed the mess, and added hastily,“It tends to bomb. It’s six-month-old software.”Cummings typed some commands into thecomputer, which proved to be the right medicine, andproceeded with his demonstration, flashing a string ofdifferent pictures onto the screen. “Is this all canned?”asked Kurt Schweer, another of the Crocker visitors.“You’ve seen the Xerox Star,” Lewin said. “That’swhat makes you think this is canned. This is incrediblyfast. That’s what our engineers are proud of.”Every fifteen or thirty minutes Lewin introducedanother manager from the Lisa group. John Couch,the head of the Lisa division, who looked worn andweary, gave an antiseptic history of the computer’sdevelopment and of the importance Apple placed onthe control of software. Lisa, he explained, was part ofa concerted effort to shield the user from the crust ofthe machine with snowfalls of software. He explainedthat the Apple III had been introduced with about tentimes as much software as the Apple II, while Lisawas going to come with about ten times as muchsoftware as the Apple III. He stressed that Apple hadmoved from supplying programming languages likeBASIC with the Apple II to programs for things likefinancial analysis with the Apple III, while on Lisa theuser could do a variety of tasks with a minimum offuss. “Lisa,” Couch emphasized, “originally stood for‘large integrated software architecture.’ Now it standsfor ‘local integrated software architecture. ’” He took aquiet jab at the competition: “Quite a bit of theproblem with Xerox was that they weren’t building apersonal computer. They weren’t giving it to theindividual.”The bankers were ushered, with much flashing ofsecurity badges, into an adjoining building whichserved as the center of assembly for Lisa. WasuChaudhari, a genial manufacturing man, gave them atour of the test production racks where dozens ofcomputers were running through proving cycles.Chaudhari demonstrated that Lisa was easy to takeapart. He removed the back panel and slipped outdifferent parts. “One person builds one product,” hesmiled. “It’s a modified Volvo concept.”“Rolls-Royce would be better. Aston Martin betterstill,” countered Tor Folkedal, a burly Crockermanager.After lunch in a cluttered conference room whichhad been hurriedly converted into dining quarters, thebankers were steered back to the computers. Theywere allowed to play with the machines, nudged andprompted by Lisaguide, the computer’s privateBaedeker, which appeared on the screen. Afterspending a couple of minutes working his way throughthe pictures and explanations, Tor Folkedal exhaled:“We’ll have managers at the bank playing with this allday. It’s a video game.”“You’ve got to get some games on this,” Schweeragreed. “Goddamn! It’ll make the greatest flight

simulator in the world.”Ellen Nold, a thin woman from Apple’s trainingdepartment, tried to assuage any fears about Apple’scommitment to its customers. “We assume whenCrocker buys hundreds of Lisas you’ll want a trainingprogram.” She told them that training sessions wouldbe specially tailored for the bank and that drillexercises would be based on the workaday subjectsfamiliar to bankers. Wayne Rosing, Lisa’s chiefengineer, fielded questions. The bankers wonderedwhen Apple would be able to connect several Lisastogether and swap information between machines.They worried about the difficulty of connecting a Lisato IBM computers, to “the terminal world,” “the Bellworld,” and “the DEC world.” One of the technicaltypes wanted to know the speed at which data wouldtravel between computers and whether softwarewritten for other computers would run on Lisa. Rosingleaned back in his chair and answered all thequestions in a leisurely way. He explained, in answerto one question, why Lisa had no calendar. “We’re sofar along that I had to say, ‘Darn it! We’re going tostop here even if this feature only takes a weekbecause otherwise we’ll never get it out the door.’” Asthe afternoon wore down the bankers were asked fortheir impressions.“I’m not sure you’re clear about who would actuallyuse this,” said Betty Risk, a dark-haired woman whohad listened and watched for most of the day. “Is it forthe executive, or the professional, or the manager?”“Your security’s tight,” Schweer remarked. “It couldhave been an abacus sitting there.” The flinty edgethat hardened his early remarks had softened: “Youguys have come a long way. This is the first time I’veheard any company ask the right questions. Mostcompanies say ‘We can do anything for you if youstand on your head and punch the keyboard with yourtoes.’”Despite the compliments the group from Crockerwas reluctant to make any promises about orderinglarge quantities of the Lisa. Apple was just one ofseveral computer companies they would visit beforedeciding which machines to order. Nobodymentioned numbers and nobody mentioned dollars.“Trying to speak for a bank the size of Crocker isdifficult.” Schweer sighed. “You always bet your jobwhen you propose a standard. It’s easier to pickseveral different makes.” He paused: “Of course, youcould just put your hands over your eyes and pick, orget several and spread the blame.”“And then get half your butt fired,” Lewin chuckled.

CARBURETORS ANDMICROPHONESWhen Steven Jobs was five months old his parentsmoved from the dank fringes of San Francisco to theiron cuddle of South San Francisco. There, Paul Jobscontinued to work for a finance company as a jack-ofalltrades. He collected bad debts, checked the termsof automobile dealers’ loans, and used a knack forpicking locks to help repossess cars that werescattered about Northern California.Paul Jobs looked like a responsible James Dean.He was lean, had closely cropped brown hair andtightly drawn skin. He was a practical, sensible manwith a Calvinist streak who was self-conscious abouthis lack of formal education and would conceal hisshyness behind chuckles and a tough sense of humor.Jobs had been raised on a small farm inGermantown, Wisconsin, but when it failed to provideenough for the two families it was supposed tosupport, he and his parents moved to West Bend,Indiana. He left high school in his early teens, roamedaround the Midwest looking for work, and at the endof the thirties, wound up enlisting in “The HooliganNavy,” the U.S. Coast Guard.At the end of World War II, while his ship was beingdecommissioned in San Francisco, Jobs bet ashipmate that he would find a bride in the shadow ofthe Golden Gate. Nipping ashore, when port andstarboard liberty allowed, Paul Jobs won the wager.He met Clara, the woman who became his wife, on ablind date. She had spent her childhood and highschoolyears in San Francisco’s Mission District.After several years in the Midwest where Jobsworked as a machinist at International Harvester anda used-car salesman, he and his wife returned to SanFrancisco in 1952. It was there that they started toraise their family and experience the perils ofparenthood. They began to endure all the perils thatchildren could find. When their young son Stevenjammed a bobby pin into an electric outlet and burnedhis hand, they rushed him to the hospital. Somemonths later they had his stomach pumped after heand a young accomplice built a miniature chemicallab from bottles of ant poison. In the Jobses’ SouthSan Francisco home there was enough room foranother child and Steven was joined by a sister, Patty.Confronted with the responsibility of filling fourmouths, Paul Jobs characteristically took out twothousand-dollar-insurance policies to cover his funeralexpenses.Commuting occupied a prominent place amongPaul Jobs’s pet dislikes, so after the finance companytransferred him to an office in Palo Alto the entirefamily was tugged farther down the Peninsula. Jobsbought a home in Mountain View, a stone’s throwfrom the area’s first covered shopping mall, where theneighbors were a mixture of blue-collar and lowermiddle-classfamilies.At the Jobs home Steven took to waking up soearly that his parents bought him a rocking horse, a

gramophone, and some Little Richard records so thathe could amuse himself without disturbing the entirehousehold. Some children across the street madesuper-8-mm movies and Jobs junior, dolled up in hisfather’s raincoat and hat, played detective. The familytelevision set that normally was tuned to a steady dieto f Dobie Gillis, I Love Lucy, Groucho Marx, andJohnny Quest cartoons.Like Sunnyvale and Palo Alto, Mountain View hadits share of electrical engineers. They brought scrapparts home from work, tinkered about in the garage,and when they built something interesting or novel,usually displayed it in the driveway. One engineer whoworked for Hewlett-Packard and lived a few doorsaway from the Jobses brought a carbon microphonehome from his laboratory, hooked it to a battery andspeaker, and immediately turned into an electronicPied Piper. Steven Jobs, who had picked up someelementary electronics from his father, was baffled bysomething that seemed to violate the rules that he hadlearned: The carbon microphone had no amplifier andyet sound emerged from the speaker. He reportedthis to his father who couldn’t provide a satisfactoryexplanation so he returned and badgered the expertfrom Hewlett-Packard. He was soon presented withthe object under inspection and was frequently invitedto dinner at the engineer’s house where he learnedsome more rudiments of electronics.Jobs senior found automobiles altogether moreinteresting than electronics. As a teenager he hadscraped together enough money to buy a car and hadturned into a perpetual moonlighter—buying, trading,and swapping automobiles. He took pride in the factthat he stopped buying new cars in 1957 andthereafter relied on instincts and the wit in his handsto rescue and restore old models. Jobs concentratedfiercely on fixing examples of a particular model untilsomething else caught his fancy. He mountedsnapshots of his favorite automobiles either in ascrapbook or in a picture frame, and would point outsubtleties that only a collector would appreciate: aseat decorated with a rare trim or a peculiar set of airvents.After work he would clamber into a set of overalls,trundle out his clinically clean toolbox, and disappearunder the car of the week. He came to know most ofthe clerks at the local department of motor vehicles bytheir first names and on Saturday mornings he trailedaround the junkyards on the Bayshore frontage roadin Palo Alto, sorting through the pickings. Hefrequently took his son along and let him watch thenegotiations and bargaining at the front counter: “Ifigured I could get him nailed down with a littlemechanical ability but he really wasn’t interested ingetting his hands dirty. He never really cared toomuch about mechanical things.” Steven said he wasmore interested in wondering about the people whohad once owned the cars.One of the Mountain View neighbors convincedPaul Jobs he should try his hand at real estate. Heearned his Realtor’s license, did well for a year or so,

ut disliked the hustle, the sycophancy, and theuncertainty. During his second year he didn’t makemuch money. Circumstances were so grim that hehad to refinance his home to tide the family over. Tohelp make ends meet, Clara Jobs found part-timework in the payroll department at Varian Associates,a firm that made radar devices. Finally Paul Jobsbecame so disenchanted with the vagaries of realestate that he decided to return to his trade as amachinist. When he was finally hired by a machineshop in San Carlos he had to work his way up fromthe bottom again.The setback wasn’t something that escapedSteven Jobs. There were no family vacations, thefurniture was reconditioned, and there was no colortelevision. Paul Jobs built most of the home comforts.In fourth grade when his teacher asked her pupils,“What is it in this universe that you don’t understand?”Steven Jobs answered, “I don’t understand why all ofa sudden we’re so broke.” That same teacher,Imogene “Teddy” Hill, saved her nine-year-old chargefrom going astray after he had been expelled fromanother class for misbehaving. Her pupil recalled,“She figured out the situation real fast. She bribed meinto learning. She would say, ‘I really want you to finishthis workbook. I’ll give you five bucks if you finish it.’”As a consequence Jobs skipped fifth grade andthough his teachers suggested he attend junior highschool and start to learn a foreign language, herefused. His sixth grade report noted, “Steven is anexcellent reader. However he wastes much timeduring reading period. . . . He has great difficultymotivating himself or seeing the purpose of studyingreading. . . . He can be a discipline problem at times.”For the Jobses, as for the Wozniaks, swimmingwas important. They first ferried Steven to swimminglessons when he was five and later enrolled him in aswim club called the Mountain View Dolphins. To payfor swimming lessons Clara Jobs spent her eveningsbabysitting for friends. Some years later, when hewas old enough to become a member of the clubswim team, Jobs met Mark Wozniak. Jobs, Wozniakrecalled, was taunted and roughhoused by some ofthe other swimmers who liked to snap wet towels athim. “He was pretty much a crybaby. He’d lose a raceand go off and cry. He didn’t quite fit in with everyoneelse. He wasn’t one of the guys.”Steven Jobs did, however, change schools andstarted attending Mountain View’s CrittendenElementary School. The school drew children from thelower-income eastern fringes of Mountain View andhad a reputation for attracting ruffians and fosteringhooliganism. Local police were frequently summonedto break up fights and discipline children who jumpedout of windows or threatened teachers. After a year,Steven Jobs, who found himself miserable and lonely,issued an ultimatum: He would refuse to return toschool if it meant another year at Crittenden. Paul

Jobs detected the firmness. “He said he just wouldn’tgo. So we moved.” Once more the Jobses hoppedanother step down the Peninsula, attracted by the lureof the Palo Alto and Cupertino school districts. In LosAltos they bought a house with a gently raked roof, alarge garage, and three bedrooms, all of whichhappened to sit within the curious embrace of theCupertino School District.

THE CREAM SODA COMPUTERWhen John McCollum arrived to teach electronicsat Cupertino’s Homestead High School the day itopened in 1963, Classroom F-3 was almost empty.There was a cold concrete floor, cinder-block walls,some gray metal chairs, and on a swivel stand atelevision which carried the school’s closed-circuitannouncements. The classroom and the rest ofHomestead High School looked like a minimumsecurityprison and its boundaries were certainly welldefined. The houses that McCollum could see throughhis classroom window were in Sunnyvale, but hisblackboard hung in Cupertino. When Homesteadopened, Classroom F-3 was so barren that even themost enterprising student would have had difficultyelectrocuting himself. McCollum immediately madesome changes.He hoisted a long, yellow slide rule above theblackboard, pinned the stars and stripes high on awall, unrolled a bright poster that said SAFETY IS NOACCIDENT and a bumper sticker that carried theexhortation FLY NAVY. A couple of long woodenlaboratory benches were bolted to the floor andgradually covered with equipment. Rather than scrimpand save for a few new devices, McCollum used hiswits. The shelves above the benches started to fill asClassroom F-3 became a well-stuffed wastepaperbasket for nearby companies like Fairchild, Raytheon,and Hewlett-Packard. McCollum turned into adecorous alley cat prowling up and down the SantaClara Valley looking for parts. He found his studentssooner or later managed to destroy about one third ofeverything he brought into the classroom. “Onezees,”as electronic distributors disparagingly called onorder for any quantity under fifty, would not do.McCollum, or rather his students, dealt in bulk.Fortunately, the electronics companies were sellingto customers who were so finicky that they sometimesseemed to reject more parts than they bought. Theywould refuse to buy a transistor that had a blurred partnumber, or a resistor whose pins weren’t straight, or acapacitor with a small bubble baked in the paint.McCollum’s greatest coup came when Raytheon gavehim nine thousand transistors (then going for sixteendollars a piece), which a components-evaluationengineer at NASA considered too flimsy to packet tothe moon. There were other substantial trophies andsome came from a warehouse that Hewlett-Packardmaintained in Palo Alto. It was Hewlett-Packard’sversion of a Salvation Army store packed with usedand surplus test equipment which high-schoolteachers were free to rummage through. McCollumpaid regular visits and on a few occasions returnedwith expensive dual-trace oscilloscopes andfrequency counters. Within a few years, and by thetime Stephen Wozniak—and later Steven Jobs—enrolled in Electronics 1, Classroom F-3 had becomea miniature parts warehouse. McCollum hadaccumulated as much test equipment as they had atnearby De Anza Community College, and compared

to the hoard at Homestead, some of the electronicslabs in neighboring high schools might as well havebeen in the Upper Volta.For some of the brighter students and for those whohad been tutored at home, many of the projectsassigned by McCollum were old hat. The formaltheory was not. Electronics 1, 2, and 3 becameStephen Wozniak’s most important high-school class,fifty minutes a day, every day of the week. McCollum’sclass also brought a definite divide between matterselectrical and matters electronic. For the students thiswasn’t a semantic difference; it was something thatseparated the men from the boys. Electrical deviceswere the stuff of play kits composed of batteries andswitches and light bulbs. Electronics was analtogether higher calling that journeyed into the worldof technology, the ethereal realms of physics, and wasdevoted to the peculiar behavior of the mighty andentirely invisible electron.Standing in front of the class, wearing a woolencardigan, McCollum drummed home electronictheory. Stories and set speeches from the twentyyears he had spent in the navy, before he retired inpique at a rule requiring infrequent pilots to fly with abackup, spilled out with such regularity that somestudents took to giving the old favorites codenumbers. McCollum would fidget with his spectacles,placing them on his nose, removing them and tuckingthem into his shirt pocket behind the pens in thestreaked plastic pouch. He started with theory andfollowed up with applications. The students wereparaded through Ohm’s law, Watt’s law, basiccircuitry, magnetism, and inductance. They found thatif they paid attention the lessons stuck and that theirteacher planted seeds that kept sprouting. Theysolved elementary equations, linked resistors inseries and parallel, and watched capacitors chargeup. They built power supplies and amplifiers andlearned how to manipulate alternating and directcurrents.McCollum was also the quality-assurance center.When students finished building radios, hedisappeared into his stock-room, inserted some faultyparts and urged them to troubleshoot with their mindsrather than their eyes. “You have got to be able tothink it through,” he repeated. Keen students broughtthe devices they built in their bedrooms and garagesfor McCollum to scrutinize. He would jab loose partswith a screwdriver and wiggle the solder joints muchlike a rough dentist. On one occasion he criticized aknob on a power supply that Bill Fernandez had builtbecause it behaved in the opposite manner to mostknobs. Fernandez later said, “It was the first time Istarted to think about standards and human design.”To reveal the power of electricity McCollumbecame a showman. He chilled his students with talesof acid burning the faces of people who carelesslyjump-started automobile engines. With a flourish heproduced props from a locked desk drawer anddemonstrated well-tried tricks. He indulged in themundane and would rub a balloon against his sweaterand hang it from the underside of the television. Or he

would dim the lights and throw the switch on a Teslacoil that generated high-frequency currents. The classwould be left watching one hundred thousand voltsleap from the end of the coil and illuminate afluorescent tube held close by. And on other days thestudents in Classroom F-3 would see flamescrackling up the rods of a Jacob’s ladder. McCollummade his mission plain. “I try to dispel the mystery ofelectrons. You cannot see them, but you can see theeffect of them.”Electronics was not, however, a purely intellectualquest. It was also a practical matter that with very littleskill produced all manner of shrieks, sirens, ticks, andother noises calculated to amuse, irritate, and terrify.The same parts that built sturdy voltmeters andohmeters could be turned to far more divertingpurposes. From an early age Stephen Wozniak had apenchant for practical jokes and he usually managedto add a twist of his own. Throwing eggs in the dark atpassing cars didn’t strike him as either entertaining oringenious. But painting an egg black, attaching it tostring hooked to lampposts on either side of the road,and suspending it at a height calculated to smack aradiator grill was more his style. Electronics openedup a new realm for pranks.For instance, during his senior year at HomesteadHigh School Wozniak salvaged some cylinders froman old battery that looked deceptively like sticks ofdynamite. He fastened an oscillator to the cylindersand placed the combination in a friend’s locker withsome telltale wires trailing from the door. Before longthe tick-tick-tick of the oscillator attracted attentionand not much later the school principal, Warren Bryld,was risking his life as he clutched the device anddashed for the empty air of the football field. “I justpulled the wires out and phoned the police. I waspromptly chewed out for being a jackass.” Theperpetrator was tracked down quickly enough, thoughWozniak, on his way to the principal’s office, thoughthe was about to be congratulated for winning a mathcontest. Instead he found himself in the hands of thelocal constabulary and heading for a night’s stay inSan Jose’s Juvenile Hall. The following morningMargaret Wozniak wasn’t appeased by the sight ofher son and yelled at the wardens: “Why haven’t youtattooed a number across his chest?” Wozniak’ssister, Leslie, an editor of the school newspaper, toldhim that space was being held for an exposé ofconditions at the Juvenile Hall. When Wozniakreturned to Homestead—chastened, embarrassed,but with no charges filed against him—he was given astanding ovation by his classmates.On occasion students sought John McCollum’s helpwith a temperamental oscillator and he usually gavepractical advice. But McCollum taught his pupilsabout electronics, not computers. The Homesteadstudents who were interested in computers in the late1960s were not just the smallest minority in the schoolbut could be counted on the fingers of one hand.Electronics and computers were masculine pursuits,though most boys considered it a rather odd pastime.

So the peculiar interests bridged differences of ageand grade and drew the loners together. They shuttledtheir private diversions—what really amounted toobsessions—between their homes and theschoolroom.At Homestead, Wozniak began to spend hishomeroom classes staring through thick spectaclesand scribbling circuit diagrams in pencil on yellowwriting tablets. His sister said, “I felt sorry for him athigh school. He was lonely. He suffered because ofhis nature and because he didn’t fit in. He was alwaysmade fun of. I always felt that I wanted to protect him.”But Wozniak, unlike his sister, did not feel trapped bythe provincial attitudes of Sunnyvale or restricted bythe dress code at Homestead. He was immenselysuspicious of marijuana and other drugs, had nodifficulty accepting warnings about their perils, andtold his parents when he spotted some telltale seedsin his sister’s bedroom. His mother recognized herson’s inclinations: “He was very square at high school.. . . He wasn’t too much with the girls.” Wozniak wasMister Straight.Left to his own devices he collected the electronicsawards in his last two years of high school and waspresident of the electronics and math clubs. Wozniakbegan to design circuits for a machine that couldperform additions and subtractions, and gradually hebegan to add features to the machine. He managedto figure out how to cope with the more complicatedproblems posed by multiplications, divisions, andeven square roots. Allen Baum, two years youngerthan Wozniak, was puzzled by the squiggles andlines. “I asked him what he was doing and he said,‘Designing computers.’ I was impressed as hell.”Baum, a lean boy with dark hair and soft browneyes, had lived in suburban New Jersey until he wasthirteen. Then his family moved to California where hisfather, Elmer, started to work at the StanfordResearch Institute. He later realized: “I would havebeen totally stunted in New Jersey. I always assumedI’d be an engineer and I always assumed the timewould come when I’d learn about electronics.” Hetrailed around the cool SRI computer room viewingthe machines with a skeptical eye until his fathershowed him how to operate the terminal: “Within anhour, Allen was doing things I couldn’t do.”Unlike Wozniak, Baum had not competed inscience fairs, but he shared his interest in the theoryand design of computers. When Wozniak persuadedMcCollum to find a place where he could learnsomething more about computers, Baum wasincluded in all the plans. Through a friend McCollumarranged for his two students to spend everyWednesday afternoon in the computer room at GTESylvania, a company that made electronic devices forthe military. For an entire school year, the twoteenagers made weekly trips to the reception desk atSylvania’s Mountain View headquarters.They signed the visitors’ book, clipped plasticbadges to their shirts, waited for an escort, andpadded off down the corridor, through the tight, metaldoor into the computer room where the drum and thehum of the IBM 1130 slowed conversations to full-

ellied shouts. The white, tiled floor vibrated under theweight of the computer which occupied a cabinet thesize of an eighteenth-century French wardrobe. Therewas a stern-looking keyboard that could be used toenter commands. Programs to produce items like thecorporate payroll were punched on sheaves of thin,khaki cards that were fed into a card reader.Information needed by the computer was stored inrows of magnetic tapes, which lined the walls andresembled large tape recorders, while a noisy printer,like the ones used by telegraph companies, clatteredout type.This was the first large computer—the firstmainframe—that Wozniak had ever seen. Over thecourse of the year Wozniak and Baum were providedwith tips and hints and fragments of an education. Themen at Sylvania introduced Wozniak to a compiler,the software that turns commands entered in acomputer language formed of ordinary letters andnumbers into a binary machine code that thecomputer can digest. Wozniak was surprised. “I didn’tknow the compiler was a program. I figured acompiler was a piece of hardware and I kept pointingat boxes asking, ‘Is that the compiler?’” The Sylvaniaprogrammers also solved the difficulty he hadexperienced in designing a calculator capable ofmultiplying large numbers. But the two teenagerspreferred programming to instruction.They wrote programs in the computer languageFORTRAN, punched them onto thin cards and fedthem into the card reader. They used the computer toraise numbers to many powers and watched theprinter laboriously type out the results. They searchedfor prime numbers and calculated square roots todozens of places. They also collaborated on aprogram to make a knight hop around a chessboard,landing on a different square with every move. Thefirst time they ran the program, nothing happened.The computer sat bone idle while the air conditionerhummed and whirred. They rewrote the program,instructing the computer to report progress after theknight completed every move. It reported the firstcouple of dozen quite quickly and then started to slowand finally stopped.One of the Sylvania programmers told the pairabout a mathematical shortcut to estimate how longthe program would take before it offered an answerfor the knight’s pilgrimage. Wozniak tried theprocedure and found the answer disconcerting: “Icalculated it would take ten to the twenty-fifth years tofind a single solution. I wasn’t going to wait.” AfterWozniak had spent a few months at Sylvania,McCollum allowed him to give a talk on computers toone of the Homestead electronics classes: “It was afine lecture. There was only one thing wrong. Heshould have given it to a sophomore class at college.”The visits to Sylvania, the privilege of being allowedto use a computer, and the tidbits dropped by theprogrammers not only formed the highlight ofWozniak’s week but also spawned other activities.Along with Baum, he started to drift toward theStanford Linear Accelerator Center whose purpose

was far more rigorous than its unfortunate acronym,SLAC, might have suggested. The pair’s interestdidn’t lie in the electrons fired down a two-mile-longconcrete streak that ran like a skewer below Interstate280 and toward the fields around Woodside. Theyheaded instead for the SLAC administration buildingsthat sat on a hillside overlooking Palo Alto andStanford University’s Hoover Tower. There theywandered around the computer room and inspectedSLAC’s IBM 360, a mainframe computer that formedthe keystone of the IBM line in the late sixties. Theywere allowed to use one of SLAC’s card punchers toprepare programs they later ran on the smaller IBMcomputer at Sylvania.But the library was the main lure. The pair spentSaturday and Sunday afternoons browsing throughthe stacks, reading magazines and scouringcomputer manuals. Few places around the Peninsulahad richer pickings. The SLAC librarians subscribedto magazines that were broadsheets forprogrammers and engineers: Datamation,Computerworld, EDM, and Computer Design. Mostof the magazines contained survey cards invitingreaders to check boxes alongside the names ofcompanies they wanted to receive information from.Pretty soon the Wozniak mailbox started to bulge withheavy envelopes that contained brochures, productdescriptions, and manuals of some of the newercomputers. The envelopes bore names like DigitalEquipment Corporation, Data General, ScientificData Systems, Data Mate, Honeywell, and Varian.Almost all these companies made minicomputers,scaled down versions of the room-sized mainframemachines.Named after the short, narrow skirts made popularby London’s Carnaby Street, the minicomputers wereusually no larger than a combination refrigeratorfreezerfor a family of six. The minicomputer makers,just like the companies that designed satellites androckets, capitalized on the great shrinking world ofelectronics. As the semiconductor companiesdeveloped their manufacturing techniques, theysqueezed more and more transistors onto singlepieces of silicon. This made it possible forcompanies like Digital Equipment to producecomputers that, even if they didn’t match theperformance of a contemporary mainframe, weremore powerful than some of the mainframes that hadbeen made five years earlier. Every graph thatappeared in the trade magazines and plotted priceagainst performance showed the machines wouldbecome still cheaper and even more powerful.But even though minicomputers were far smallerthan mainframes, they still needed bulky attachments.Programs were entered on paper tape; the memorywas formed out of dozens of small doughnut-shapedpieces of iron linked by wires and built into blocks thatwere the size of cigar boxes. Results of programsappeared on a Teletype printer. The handbooks andmanuals revealed something of the complexity oftrying to control the flow of millions of bits moving in all

sorts of directions. Digital Electronics Corporation’sSmall Computer Handbook,which the Sylvaniaanalysts gave to Wozniak, became something of anindustry classic because it revealed so much aboutthe computer. It included detailed descriptions of thequirks of the central processing unit, provideddirections about how the memory should bemanaged, presented ways of making connectionswith the Teletype machine, and provided flow chartsto help with the writing and testing of programs.The computer trade magazines were accompaniedby a more specialized literature: the componentmagazines. At the end of the sixties these focused onthe integrated circuits, the chips made bysemiconductor companies like Fairchild, Signetics,Synertek, Intel, and Motorola. For Wozniak and Baumthese magazines became almost as important as thecomputer magazines and computer manuals. Thoughno semiconductor company was making a single chipthat performed like a computer, some did make chipsthat, with sufficient ingenuity, could be combined toact as a computer. The companies themselvesreleased details of the features and performance oftheir new chips on what were called data sheetswhich were chockablock with technical information.These too became sought-after items. Designing adecent computer, a computer that approached thatdistant world, the state of the art, required intimatefamiliarity with the diagrams and details of the datasheets.Though he pored over DEC’s Small ComputerHandbook, the Varian 620i was the firstminicomputer Wozniak subjected to close inspection.It was packed into a brown cabinet with rows of blackand white switches on the front panel. For the firsttime, Wozniak tried to design his own version of aminicomputer with chips he selected: “I didn’t knowhow to make a complete computer but I understoodwhat a computer was.” He began to understand thelayers between the program that a user would typeinto a computer and the very heart of the machine. Hefocused on the heart and understood the idea of a setof precise instructions that formed a code to controlthe machine.But if he had not mastered all the links of computerdesign, Wozniak had fastened onto the idea of usingas few parts as possible. He was delighted when hediscovered a way of combining or eliminating gates,the circuits that form the basis of digital logic. Whenchips contained circuits that would replace severalgates they became the cause of jubilation. Wozniakbegan to concentrate on making parts perform asmany functions as possible. “I started moving towardhigher levels of integration.” Both Wozniak’s andBaum’s parents were startled by their sons’ progress.Like many other teenagers they were free from life’sdreary distractions and had the luxury of enough timeto pursue their obsessions.Wozniak and Baum soon sorted out their favoriteminicomputers and their bedroom bookshelvesbegan to bulge with computer pamphlets. Theystarted to differentiate among computers, betweenclever and clumsy designs. They appreciated

abstruse features like the way in which somemachines handled floating decimal points.Occasionally a name, or cosmetic appeal, tickledtheir fancy like the Skinny Mini which was named forits thin cabinet. Elmer Baum said, “After about threemonths I gave up. They were designing computersand I couldn’t understand what they were talkingabout.”When Wozniak left high school for college he tookhis interests with him. He was rejected by his father’salma mater, Cal Tech, and after a miserable day atDe Anza Community College in Cupertino, heenrolled at the University of Colorado in Boulder. JerryWozniak viewed his son’s attempts to abandonCalifornia and join some high-school friends withsuspicion. “Stephen wasn’t ready to leave home andgo off to college at the same time.” One of the itemspacked into his suitcase was an oscillator that hadbeen specially tuned to jam television reception.Wozniak started to interfere with closed-circuitlectures, provoking the professors to try to adjust thetelevision set. He kept twiddling his oscillator until theteachers were in contortions, convinced that if theykept an arm or leg in the air the interference woulddisappear. He also managed to infuriate someclassmates by jamming a transmission of theKentucky Derby just as the horses were about tocross the line.Wozniak’s life at Colorado revolved around theUniversity’s Control Data computer, CDC 6400. Heread the computer’s manuals, learned some moretechniques in FORTRAN programming and alsobecame familiar with another computer language,ALGOL. For the college administrators Wozniak wasa nuisance who spent too much time hanging aroundthe computer room and far too much time using thecomputer. He ran a couple of programs that spat outreams of paper saying: FUCK NIXON and GOODSCRAP PAPER. “I was spending ten hours oncomputers for every hour of class.” Late-night bridgesessions and hundred-mile jaunts for hamburgersdidn’t help his academic performance either. He wasbadgered by one of the deans and threatened withexpulsion. Wozniak retaliated by hiring a lawyer towrite a threatening letter but that hardly improvedmatters. At the end of his first year he left Coloradowith a suitcase full of more-refined computer designsand a bundle of Fs, and returned to his parents’ homein Sunnyvale where he enrolled once more at DeAnza Community College.Home again, Wozniak was pulled back into thesame small circle and the milieu of cosmetic rejects,data sheets and science fairs. He and Allen Baumtook some of the same classes at De Anza whileElmer Baum also enrolled in a course that taught theprogramming language FORTRAN. After a fewweeks he dropped out and his admiration for theskills of the younger pair increased. Wozniak ran afoulof more teachers as he toyed with computer designsduring linear algebra lessons.

At the end of the year he and Baum accidentallyfound summer work. They were out looking for thelocal office of a minicomputer company when theystrolled into the headquarters of Tenet, a smallcompany that was trying to make computers forcustomers like the California Department of MotorVehicles. The pair talked themselves into jobs asprogrammers and though Baum soon left to start hisstudies at MIT, Wozniak stuck it out and learned howto program a computer system that could serve manyusers simultaneously. He made the occasional jauntto Los Angeles—“I wanted to marry my young cousindown there but she never liked me”—stayed at Tenetuntil it fell victim to the 1972 recession, and thenregistered for unemployment benefits.Meanwhile, he was learning, in a haphazardmanner, much more about computer design. He readthe Xerox copies of computer textbooks that Baummailed from MIT and he still visited school sciencefairs. During one visit he spotted an enlighteningentry. The item that grabbed his attention was amechanical machine that stepped, in sequence,through several instructions. At each step it was wiredto fire off particular signals. Wozniak made a copy ofthe writeup that accompanied the machine and took ithome to read. He translated the concept intoelectronics and grasped the idea of a circuit thatwould step through many small operations in anordained sequence before performing an instruction:“All of a sudden I understood sequencing steps. Iknew immediately that I knew how to designcomputers and I hadn’t the day before. You just knowit. As soon as a good concept clicks you just knowthat it got you there.”The self-taught lesson was of considerable helpwhen Wozniak delved into the innards of DataGeneral’s Nova minicomputer. Designed by a team ofrefugees from Digital Equipment Corporation, theNova gained a reputation for clever and aggressivedesign. A fancy poster that the company mailed outwas a sought-after item in the small world of campfollowers. Wozniak and Baum both hung the posteramong the parade of idols that decorated theirbedroom walls and the former explained theattraction. “There was no other computer around thatlooked as if it could sit on a desk.”The Data General Supernova was a sixteen-bitmachine—it handled sixteen binary digits at a time—and everything apart from the memory was mountedon a single laminated board. Over one hundredsemiconductor chips were slotted into holes in thegreen board and linked by squiggly solder traces. Thelines of solder were etched on what was called aprinted circuit board that formed one of the basicbuilding blocks of computers. The chips mounted onthe “mother board” controlled the most importantfunctions of the machine. Almost every aspect of theData General computer provided some commentaryon the progress of electronics. Though the computer’sarithmetic logic was far more sophisticated, it was stillakin to the adder-subtracter Wozniak had designedwhen he was thirteen. But what had, in 1963, requireda large board and hundreds of parts was contained

on a sliver of silicon in 1970.Along with Baum, who spent his summer vacationsin California, Wozniak started to design his ownversion of the Nova. He wrote to Data General askingfor more information and received several hundredpages of internal company documents. The pairgathered data sheets on new chips made by FairchildSemiconductor and Signetics, pored over thetechnical specifications, and selected the chips thatsuited their needs. They drew schematics—diagramsthat illustrated how the chips would be linked—for acouple of different versions of the computer. Oneused chips made by Fairchild; the other used chipsmade by Signetics.Though Wozniak was the driving force, Baum wasmore than a cheerleader. He was familiar with everyaspect of the design and would suggest how themaximum amount of power could be extracted fromthe chips. They concentrated on the digital electronicsand shrugged off more humdrum concerns. Baumrecalled: “We didn’t worry about things like the powersupply.” At one stage the pair even consideredbuilding their own version of the computer, filled afolder with schematics, and wrote to companiesasking for parts. Wozniak recalled: “Every computer Idesigned I intended to build. Getting the parts was theproblem.”The rigor of designing several different versions ofthe Nova provided Wozniak with some illuminatinglessons. To help his son understand some subleties,Jerry Wozniak arranged for him to meet the designerof a Fairchild semiconductor chip. The Fairchildengineer explained that the number of chips used in adesign formed only one aspect of the final goal. Hetold Wozniak that the space occupied by the chips ona printed circuit board mattered just as much as thenumber of chips. Henceforth Wozniak focused on thetwin objectives of combining as few chips as possiblein the smallest amount of space.The experience with the Data General Novaprodded Wozniak toward a grander diversion. Hedecided to try to build his own computer. Hemanaged to spur the interest of one of hisneighborhood chums, Bill Fernandez, to help with theeffort. They had known each other for several yearsand their fathers played golf together. Though severalyears younger than Wozniak, Fernandez with histense, thin, ivory features had a broader range ofinterests. He became a member of the Bahai faith,studied aikido, and seemed like the sort of personwho might have been at home in sixteenth-centuryJapan as the student of a samurai warrior. He toowas lured by science fairs and one year had enteredan electric lock that had flat switches nailed to a pieceof plywood. He built sirens from oscillators and was,as he readily admitted, thorough and competent butnot given to whim or impulse. He was fastidious, goodwith his hands, and had a knack for installing itemslike car radios.In his final year at McCollum’s electronics class,Fernandez had worked as a technician in NASA’sspacecraft-systems laboratory. There he built, tested,and modified circuits, learned about special soldering

techniques, was taught how to dress leads properly,and was lectured on the perils of nicking wires.Fernandez carved out a corner of his parents’ garageto work on his hobby. He squeezed his own shelvesand workbench between the family water heater andclothes dryer. “Space in the garage was a constantbattle. They were saying I had a quarter of the garagewhen I only had a sixteenth.” But the Fernandezgarage offered a sturdy place to build Wozniak’smachine.Wozniak knew what he wanted from his computer.“I wanted to design a machine that did something. Ona TV you turn a knob and it does something. On acomputer you push a button and some lights comeon.” To build a machine that would blink, Wozniak andFernandez started scavenging for parts from a bundleof semiconductor companies. Intel furnished themwith eight memory chips each of which could store256 bits. Intersil gave a couple of expensive chips thatcontained arithmetic logic units. They rounded upsome switches from a batch of samples belonging toa salesman for a switch company, light-emittingdiodes from a Monsanto engineer, and a metal framefrom one of Hewlett-Packard’s scrap piles. Thelargest batch of parts came from a couple ofapplications engineers at Signetics. Wozniak andFernandez spread their trophies out on the latter’sliving-room floor and sorted out all the adders,multiplexers, and registers. They checked the partnumbers against the data sheets and stuffed theminto rows of small, carefully labeled manila envelopes.Once they set to work there was a division of labor.Wozniak designed the computer on a couple ofsheets of notepad paper and concentrated on thelogic design. Fernandez designed the timing circuitsand the circuits that hooked the computer to the lights.Wozniak watched his younger pal, who was still athigh school, play technician and assemble thecomputer. “He didn’t really have any engineeringbackground but he knew how to build it with straightwires and a soldering iron. He was slow but verycareful and very neat.” For several weeks the pairused their evenings and weekends to build thecomputer and managed to swig down a considerablenumber of bottles of Cragmont cream soda in theprocess. Fernandez bicycled down to the localSafeway with the empty quarts and used the depositsto help buy the few parts they still needed.The Cream Soda Computer was a small version ofthe minicomputers that had caught Wozniak’s fancy—“It was the absolute minimum hardware”—and thedesign was dictated by the off-the-shelf parts in themanila envelopes. The center of the machine wasformed by two four-bit arithmetic-logic units whichWozniak rigged in tandem to give an eight-bit-widecomputer. The completed computer was mounted ona metal frame. One board carried the chips and asmaller one contained the timing circuits—a crystaloscillator and frequency-divider circuit adapted from aSignetics manual. Fernandez fastened eight switchesinto holes he had drilled in a piece of Bakelite.After the Cream Soda Computer was completed,Wozniak started to exercise his control over it by

writing a few programs. The programs were based onthe semiconductor data sheets that revealed whichinstructions were needed to make the chips performfunctions like addition and subtraction. He listed thebits, figured out the operating code, and wrote itdown. All the instructions were executed within fivesteps and followed an intimate sequence thatWozniak muttered to himself: “Load; load the nextbyte of the instruction into the memory addressregister; put that through the alu into the alu outputregister; dump the alu output register into the nextmemory location.”The timing circuit, which Fernandez designed,ensured that five signals were generated in the rightorder of every instruction. The programs performedactions like multiplying the values entered into fourswitches by the values entered into the other fourswitches and displayed the answer in the lights.Wozniak reflected on the importance of the results. “Icannot explain why that means so much to me.Multiplying two four-bit numbers by each other doesn’tsound like a lot. But being able to do something whichyou couldn’t have done without a computer is worthsomething.”When the computer was almost complete,Fernandez invited his friend Steven Jobs to drop bythe garage, take a look at the computer, and meet itsdesigner. Jobs was, in his own way, impressed by themachine and by Wozniak: “He was the first person Imet who knew more electronics than I did.”Wozniak decided to reveal his computer to theworld and called a San Jose Mercury reporter that hismother knew. The reporter, accompanied by aphotographer, appeared in Wozniak’s bedroom for ademonstration. As Wozniak explained some of thesubtleties of the ugly contraption that lay on the floor,smoke started to emerge from the power supplyFernandez had built. The computer expired as astream of high voltage from the power supply blew outevery integrated circuit on the board. Fernandezexamined the power supply and found the fault lay inan unmarked chip he had earned by doing agardening chore for one of the neighbors. He wasmiffed: “We didn’t get our pictures in the paper andwe didn’t become boy heroes.”“He sells goldfish,” Goldman said.Inside a nineteenth-century red-brick building setamong the antique stores, restaurants, and lawoffices of San Francisco’s Barbary Coast, a group offour men gathered to plan Apple’s advertising for thecoming year. It was an afternoon of Indian summerand the conference room, which didn’t have anywindows, was stuffy. The room belonged to Chiat-Day, a medium-sized advertising agency that wasperpetually rumored to be on the verge of losing itslargest client, Apple Computer. A couple of longleavedpotted plants sagged from the heat, a movieprojector was concealed behind a sheet of smoked

glass, and alongside a wet bar a refrigerator heavedlike an iron lung. The four men were seated in plushchairs around a laminated conference table.Henry Whitfield, Apple’s advertising manager, wasin the greatest discomfort. Although he was only in histhirties, he already looked as if he had run through toomany airports and the ghost of an older manappeared around his temples. The other three workedfor Chiat-Day: Fred Goldberg, who had just movedfrom the East Coast and had taken charge of theApple account fifteen days before; Maurice Goldman,an account executive who was balding and in histhirties; and Clyde Folley, another executive who wasneatly turned out from his carefully trimmed beard to apair of soft, tasseled shoes. The four were meeting todiscuss Apple’s general image and to start work on aplan that would help buyers sort out the differencesbetween the Apple II, Apple III, Lisa, and Mac.Whitfield, dragging hard on a cigarette, attackedhis first worry with excited determination. A marketingcampaign for the Apple II had lowered the price of thecomputer to $1,995 and had been so successful thatthe introduction of an enhanced version of thecomputer had been delayed for several months. ButWhitfield was worried that Apple was emphasizingthe price of its best-selling computer.“There are these guys at Apple,” Whitfield said,“who are saying, ‘Let’s make a lot of hay out of price.’Then the left hand says, ‘Don’t advertise price.’ Andthe right hand says, ‘Promote the hell out of price.’ Welook like idiots if the right hand doesn’t know what theleft hand is doing. I don’t think price is an advantagefor Apple. The price of the Apple Two isn’t all that lowcompared to other machines. People don’t know whatprice means.”“It’s almost deceptive advertising,” Goldmanagreed as he stretched out his legs. “Everybody andhis brother has to buy a box, drives, monitor, andprinter. It’s plain misleading. The preconception is thatthey can get into an Apple for thirteen hundred dollars.Then they go into a dealer’s, find they have to spendthree thousand dollars, and come out without acomputer.” He paused. “And pissed off.”“It makes it easy for people to price-shop,” Whitfieldsaid, shaking his head in dismay.“The nineteen ninety-five suggested retail price,”Folley elaborated, “meant a loss of eight percent forthe dealers. The dealers are taking it in the shorts.”“We’ve got fifteen suits against us from mail-orderpeople for price fixing,” said Whitfield as he thumpedthe table with his fist. “You can see them now trying toconvince a judge, moaning about this poor littleretailer and this big company. It’s conceivable that ajudge could say there was a pattern of price-fixing.We want an image like Sony or IBM. You don’t seethose guys running an ad for price.”“Our whole strategic position,” said Goldman, “is toenhance position for Apple. We have to add brandpreference. We’ve got a lot of people who don’t knowabout PCs. People don’t even know they need thesedamn things, and we’re trying to sell them somethingthey don’t think they need on the preference of price.”Whitfield started to complain about Paul Dali,

director of marketing for the Apple II, who was keen toadvertise the price of computers. “How do youconvince him otherwise? He sold thirty-three thousandcomputers or whatever the hell the number was inJuly. I’ve racked my brain and we just don’t haveenough research to convince him that it isn’t price.”“It’s cost benefit,” said Goldman.“He’s got to step back and look at himself as part ofan organization,” suggested Goldberg who had hisfeet propped against the edge of the table.“How do you say that diplomatically?” askedWhitfield.“Wake up, schmuck!” Goldberg said as hesmoothed his fawn tie. He rephrased the suggestion:“Take a global perspective!”After the chuckles subsided, Goldberg turned to thegreater issue. “Apple has to be careful not to getdown and dirty. An Apple means more than just acomputer. Apple means plugging yourself into anenergy source.”“We can’t fight it out with the unwashed masses,”Goldman agreed. “We’ve got to show Apple is thebrand of choice. Stick in the price and you becomethe cheapo.”“Start cutting price,” Goldberg warned, “and youerode position. You can get thrown out at some point.If IBM steps in above you. You get thrown out.”“How the hell are the unwashed masses out theregoing to figure out what to do?” Goldman wondered.“Everybody is trying to beat themselves over the headfor the current market which is only three percent ofwhat it will be.”“It’s the whole corporate image,” Whitfield said.“Crocker Bank doesn’t want to buy a computer from acompany for eleven ninety-five.”Whitfield, who looked as if the cares and the futureof the company were resting on his shoulders, pointedout, “Apple isn’t like General Foods. At GeneralFoods the Sanka guy doesn’t have to worry abouthurting the Jell-O guy. They’re separate. At Appleevery brand manager affects the other brandmanagers.”“Every brand manager wants to sell product,” saidGoldberg.“Yeah,” Whitfield agreed, as he replaced hiscigarette with a strip of bubble gum and continued toenlighten Goldberg about the ways of Apple. “AtApple there’s a fundamental disagreement. Dali’s jobis to sell product but others want to sell image and theidea that a computer is more than just a computer.Going to nineteen ninety-five we were overpriced. Wewere selling an overpriced machine. Suddenly therewas IBM, and suddenly there was Osborne who wassaying, ‘We’re going to give you more than Apple forseventeen ninety-five.’ Then we featured price andsaid, ‘Hi, Mr. Dealer! We love you so much we’regoing to take eight percent out of your hide.’”“What are the corporate objectives?” askedGoldberg.“To reestablish Apple as not being behind intechnology,” answered Whitfield. “We’re hung up inour own underwear. The perception is we’re out herepeddling old machinery. We’ve got to show Apple is

ack on the track. People don’t know where we’regoing and we don’t have enough advertising dollars tobeat them over the head with it. They’ve heard all therumors: ‘Gosh, they’re out of date. They’re late withnew products.’ We’ve got to reinforce the impressionthat Apple’s out there with a full line of products.”“By announcing and making hoopla out of theinterface, you run a major risk of hurting the Two andthe Three,” Goldberg said.“We’ve got to show that Apple is the computercompany,” Maurice Goldman added. “The unwashedmasses don’t know the difference between eight andsixteen bits, much less between a mouse and a greenscreen.”“Price isn’t the news,” Whitfield repeated. “Thecustomer doesn’t know whether price is a goodprice.”“Technology is the news,” Folley suggestedtentatively.Whitfield embarked on a sudden diversion. “I’vebeen looking at the dealer numbers,” he said. “IBM isgetting so friggin’ smart. They’ve got four hundredninety-five outlets now. They’ve been adding them likecrazy. We’ve only got four hundred ninety gooddealers. IBM only went to the guys who didn’t have ahistory of discounting. The Computerland dealerswouldn’t think of selling an Apple. What we should dois buy a dealer, buy fifty truckloads of IBMs, load ’emup and sell ’em for five hundred dollars and bust theirprice level. We need two lawyers sniffing down theirthroats to catch ’em price fixing.” He caught hisbreath. “IBM has no high risk in this marketplace.”Goldberg returned doggedly to the issue of price.“We’ve got hundreds of millions tied up in the image.If we sell on price we’re selling equity. We’re sellingthe franchise.”“Apple makes money on the boxes,” Whitefieldemphasized. “Our strategy is for accessories,peripherals, and software to take lower margins.”“Then there are dealers who discount the box,”objected Folley.“Like Billy Ladin,” said Goldman.“Who is he?” asked Goldberg.“Billy Ladin’s this dealer in Texas,” explainedGoldman. “He’s got something like four stores and hesells goldfish.”“Goldfish?” asked Goldberg who was baffled.“Yeah,” said Goldman. “Goldfish. He says, ‘I’ll givethe goldfish away for nothing. The little boy runs homeand in an hour he’s back with five bucks from his momand then I’ll sell him the bowl, the gravel, and thefood.’”Returning to the problems posed by the introductionof the new computers, Whitfield remarked, “We havean image that we’re a one-shot company. We want tobe your personal computer company. We’re not justselling Lisa. If it was my company, I’d be saying thisinterface is the greatest thing since sliced bananasand all the others are obsolete. I’d be hitting every cityin the country with seminars. We were going toannounce Lisa and ship. But now we cannot. We’vebeen burned so many times at Apple that I know that’swhat’s going to happen. It’s going to slip. Then rumors

will get out that Mac’s a cheap version of Lisa andpeople will be saying why should we buy a Two or aThree when we can wait a few months and buy aMac.”“We want to be your personal computer company,”Folley echoed. “We’re not selling Lisa.”“You just said it,” Goldberg noted.“The question is not Apple but which Apple,”Goldman amplified.“This way,” Goldberg said, “you’re not running anydownside risk. There’s no downside here.”“We’ve got the line,” Whitfield said. He pointedtoward Goldman. “He gave me the line. It was somemorable I’ve already forgotten it.”“Evolution. Revolution,” Goldman said.Goldman explained that Regis McKenna, the headof the public-relations agency retained by Apple, wastrying to arrange stories that would coincide with thecompany’s stockholders’ meeting and theannouncement of Lisa. “McKenna is talking about afront page on The Wall Street Journal and they’realso talking about a cover on Business Week. Thatshould enhance the editorial launch of theseproducts.”“The stockholders’ meeting should reestablish yourpersonal computer company,” said Goldberg. “Itshould reestablish everybody’s personal computercompany.”“They should say, ‘Buy stock, buy computers, buyeverything, ’” said Goldman.The four also had to grapple with the fact that therewould be a four-to-five-month gap between theannouncement of Lisa and the day when it would beavailable at dealers.“When Lisa is in the store we drop a businessinsert into the world,” said Whitfield. “It’ll say ‘See thiswonderful, mouse-activated computer.’ Then whenMac’s available we start with ads saying that mouseactivatedcomputers are taking over the friggin’world.”“Are you concerned,” asked Goldberg, “that anothercompetitor could preempt all this?”Goldman calmed his fears. “We’ve got pretty goodG-Two. Unless there’s the tightest security in the worldon this.”“The day of the stockholders’ meeting someone isgoing to stand up on a podium and they’re going toannounce the bloody thing,” said Whitfield.“What happens if editorial press ever pumpsMcKenna about a low-cost Lisa?” asked Goldman.“If they do that, we’re friggin’ dead,” said Whitfield.“We’d be in real deep trouble. It’ll kill the sales.People can ask it and we’ll have some line like we’llbe coming out with a low-cost computer in a couple ofyears.”

THE CONDUCTORStephen Wozniak, Bill Fernandez, and Steven Jobscame to view each other’s peculiarities through thetelling eyes of friends. They were introspective andwrapped up in the privacy of their own worlds. Whenthey stopped to look, each thought the others wereshy and withdrawn. They were loners. Fernandez firstencountered Jobs after he arrived at Cupertino JuniorHigh School: “For some reason the kids in eighthgrade didn’t like him because they thought he wasodd. I was one of his few friends.” Neither Jobs norFernandez was as obsessed with electronics asWozniak. They didn’t pore over computer manuals, orlinger around computer rooms or spend hoursmessing with instruction sets on sheets of paper butthey still found electronics an engaging and divertingpastime.Fernandez and Jobs meddled together in the quietof their garages. They struggled in their combinedignorance to build a box with a photocell that, when alight was flashed, would switch another light on or off.They didn’t know enough mathematics to form amodel but they drew diagrams and tried to build thedevice with relays and transistors and diodes. WhenPaul Jobs started to work as a machinist at SpectraPhysics, a company that specialized in lasers,Fernandez and Jobs fiddled with the laser parts that,in due course, dribbled back to Los Altos. Theyplayed rock music, balanced mirrors on stereospeakers, pointed lasers at the mirrors, and watchedimages play against a wall.Like Wozniak and Fernandez, Jobs found the forumprovided by science fairs irresistible. While he wasstill at Cupertino Junior High School he entered ascience fair for which he built a silicon-controlledrectifier, a device that can be used to controlalternating current. So when he began to attendHomestead High School it was natural for him toenroll in John McCollum’s electronics class. UnlikeWozniak he didn’t become a teacher’s pet, wasn’tgiven access to the closely guarded stockroom, anddropped the course after a year. McCollum drew hisown conclusions. “He had a different way of looking atthings. I’d put him down as something of a loner. Hewould tend to be over by himself thinking.” On oneoccasion when McCollum couldn’t supply him with apart he needed, Jobs called the public-relationsdepartment of the supplier, Burroughs, in Detroit.McCollum objected. “I said, ‘You cannot call themcollect.’ Steve said, ‘I don’t have the money for thephone call. They’ve got plenty of money.’”But the whirl of electronics was certainly strongenough to intrigue Jobs. He made some trips toNASA’s flight simulator which had been built atSunnyvale’s Moffett Field. He attended meetings ofthe school’s electronics club. Along with a few othershe went to meetings of the Hewlett-Packard ExplorerGroup where company scientists gave lectures. Therewere talks on some of the features included inHewlett-Packard’s latest calculators, developments in

light-emitting diodes and laser inframetry. After onelecture Jobs buttonholed a scientist, wangled a tour ofHewlett-Packard’s holographic lab, and was given anold hologram. On another occasion he called thehome of Bill Hewlett, one of the co-founders ofHewlett-Packard, and asked for some parts. Hewlettprovided the parts and also gave Jobs the name of aperson to contact for a summer job. So at the end ofhis high-school freshman year Jobs spent the summerworking on an assembly line, helping to build Hewlett-Packard frequency counters. Spurred by the devicespassing in front of his eyes at the factory, Jobs setabout trying to design his own frequency counter butnever completed the project.The resistors, capacitors, and transistors that wereused by Jobs and Wozniak came from the localelectronics stores and mail-order firms. Jobs was atleast as familiar as Wozniak with the quality andreputations of these outlets. As they both grew older,and as they graduated from bicycles to automobiles,their shopping choices expanded. SunnyvaleElectronics was one of the most convenient spots.Just off El Camino Real, it was sheeted with fake rockbut its contents were more substantial. It stocked newparts, dozens of magazines and manuals, and alsothe eighteen-dollar walkie-talkies for which Wozniaksaved his thirty-five-cent lunch money while at juniorhigh school. They learned to avoid the Radio Shackoutlets because they thought the parts were inferior.Radio Shack, with its garish neon signs, was a lastresort, a place to be visited late at night when everyother place was closed.Sunnyvale Electronics, Radio Shack, and otherstores like Solid State Music were dwarfed by Haltek,which occupied a block long, light-chocolate buildingin Mountain View across the freeway from threebrobdingnagian hangars the navy had built in the1930s to house airships. From the outside it lookedlike an army mess hall. Inside it was an electronicjunkyard which, like all junkyards, was a crossbetween a graveyard and a maternity ward. Thehaggling at the front counter and the thick partscatalogs mounted in folders with steel spines gavesome sense of supply and demand in the world ofelectronics. Some items, usually small and cheapparts, were brand new, but it usually took a fewmonths for the latest parts to filter down to Haltek.However, the store also carried the electronicequivalent of dinosaur teeth: vacuum tubes. Acustomer certainly had to know what he was after andeven the experienced rifler couldn’t always knowwhether a part was made in the United States or theFar East. It was the sort of place where electricalengineers stopping by after work would bump intoyoungsters perched on the top of metal stepsrummaging for the perfect switch among a selectionof cherry switches, push switches, alternating-actionpush switches, lighted-lever switches, push-pullswitches, and slide switches.Narrow aisles were shaded by wooden shelvesmounted on metal frames that reached from aconcrete floor to a ceiling carrying grimy pipes anddusty neon lights. Hundreds of thousands of parts

filled bins fashioned out of old cardboard cartons.Some of the cartons sprouted spasticated leads.Resistors lay packed in rolls while there were entireshelves devoted solely to capacitors. The moreexpensive pieces of equipment were housed in glasscases or along more hallowed aisles. Some hadexotic names like the Leeds and NorthrupSpeedomax and the Honeywell Digitest. Evengenerators, which convert mechanical energy intoelectrical energy, had as many varieties as the rose:signal and sweep, multisweep, ligna sweep, and (ahybrid) varisweep. According to one frequent visitor,wandering around a surplus store like Haltek “was likewalking around an immense tool kit. It gave you anidea of what was possible.” It was also a place wherethe engineers came to hear about the reputations ofmachines that needed piano movers and others thatwere lighter than a leaf.Jobs spent some weekends working behind thecounter at Halted Specialties located in Sunnyvale.He became familiar with the value and going rate forparts ranging from the latest semiconductor chips tomeasurement instruments. At one point he astonishedWozniak when the pair spent a Saturday morningsorting through the pickings at the San Jose FleaMarket, a vast combination of garage sale andcountry fair which seemed to attract every scavengersouth of San Francisco. Jobs bought sometransistors which he later resold—at a profit—to hisboss at Halted. Wozniak recalled: “I thought it was aflaky idea but he knew what he was doing.”But there was a lot more to Jobs’s life thanelectronics. He was curious and adventurous andopen to the sensations of life. He spent as much timedabbling with artistic and literary pursuits as he didwith frequency counters and laser beams. He wasattracted by literature and classic movies, studiedsome Shakespeare, idolized his English teacher, andwas enchanted with movies like The Red Balloon.When swimming practice started to devour too muchof his time, he quit and took up water polo butabandoned that when the coach encouraged him toknee opponents in the groin. “I wasn’t a jock. I was aloner for the most part.” Some high-schoolcontemporaries, like Stephen Wozniak’s youngerbrother, Mark, thought Jobs was “really strange.” Fora time he played the trumpet in the school marchingband.With a few friends he formed an offbeat groupcalled the Buck Fry Club whose name could beunraveled into an obscene message. They painted atoilet seat gold and cemented it on a planter and theyhoisted a Volkswagen Beetle onto the roof of theschool cafeteria.At the end of Jobs’s junior year he, Wozniak, andBaum engineered a stunt for the graduating class: aking-sized sheet, tie-dyed in the school’s green andwhite colors, which unfurled down the side of abuilding to reveal a giant hand giving a time-honoredgesture. Baum’s mother painted the hand, havingbeen told that it was a Brazilian good-luck sign. At the

ottom of the sheet the three combined their initials!SWABJOB PRODUCTIONS. It wasn’t long after Jobswas summoned to the principal’s office to do someexplaining that Paul Jobs arrived to act a counsel forthe defense.Steven Jobs also ventured farther afield in bothbody and spirit. The arrival of his first car, a red Fiatcoupe that Paul Jobs considered small, cramped andunreliable, made it easier to leave Los Altos. Jobsfound that his car let him visit friends. Unlike manyhigh-school students—when a difference of a yearseems like a decade—Jobs was friendly with peopleseveral years his senior. A couple were students atBerkeley while one or two others attended Stanford.Jobs took to driving his temperamental car acrossSan Francisco Bay to Berkeley and he also likedlingering around the Stanford University coffee shop.The forays into a larger world broadened his generalinterest. He started to experiment with sleepdeprivation and several times stayed up for a coupleof consecutive nights. He started smoking marijuanaand hashish, took to puffing on a pipe, and left thedrugs in the car where his father happened on them.“What is this I found inyour car?” Paul Jobsasked his son. “That’smarijuana, Father.”As a high-school senior Jobs met his first seriousgirl friend. The object of his attentions, Nancy Rogers,trailed him by a year because she had spent twoyears in second grade. With long fawn hair, greeneyes, and high cheekbones, she had a bohemianedge and a compelling fragility. Rogers lived twoblocks from Homestead in a house where her motherand father, an engineer in GTE Sylvania’s ElectronicsSystems Division, were engaged in bitter squabbles.“I was going through turmoil because my family wassplitting up. Steve was kind of crazy. That’s why I wasattracted to him.” Her father thought, “Nancy neededsomeone she could latch onto and Steve was kind toher.” The pair met while Rogers was working on ananimated movie which the school authorities did notlook kindly on. To escape surveillance, much of themovie work was done after midnight in the shutteredschool buildings. A few students, like Jobs, droppedby with lights and stereos. Wozniak, who observedsome of these activities from a distance, harboredwild (and unfounded) speculations that his youngerfriend was engaged in the production of pornographicepics.Jobs and Rogers became high-schoolsweethearts. In Jobs’s final year of high school theyplayed hooky, spent afternoons drinking wine, andtalking. It was as bucolic an existence as suburbanSanta Clara would allow. Jobs dropped his first LSDwith Nancy in a wheat field. “It was great. I had beenlistening to a lot of Bach. All of a sudden the wheatfield was playing Bach. It was the most wonderfulexperience of my life up to that point. I felt like theconductor of this symphony with Bach coming throughthe wheat field.”

When he graduated from high school Jobs was thinand lean. The combination of long dark hair and asparse beard convinced his mother not to buy morethan one graduation photograph. After leavingHomestead, Jobs decided to spend the summerliving with Nancy. The pair rented a room in a smallcabin in the hills overlooking Cupertino and Los Altos.Nancy recalled, “It wasn’t a great statement. We justdid it. Steve was headstrong so we could do it and myparents were falling apart so I could do it. We werereally in love.” Jobs announced the move to hisparents.“I just said one day, ‘I’mgoing to live with Nancy.’“My father said, ‘What?’“‘Yeah. We rented thiscabin. We’re going to livetogether.’“He said: ‘No, you’re not.’“And I said: ‘Yes, I am.’“And he said: ‘No, you’renot.’“And I said: ‘Well, bye!’”Jobs and Rogers shared a romantic teenagesummer. There were strolls to peer through the gatesof the Maryknoll Seminary and long walks on Baldi Hillwhere Rogers painted a picture of a black woman ona wooden post. Jobs tried his hand at poetry, pickedat a guitar, and along with Wozniak, was attracted bythe music of Bob Dylan. They found a store in SantaCruz that specialized in Dylan esoterica and soldreprints of songbooks, magazine profiles, andbootleg tapes of recording sessions and Europeanconcerts. They took some of the Dylan songbooks toSLAC where they copied them on a Xerox machine.There was also the occasional disaster where familyties came in handy. When Jobs’s Fiat short-circuitedand caught fire on Skyline Drive, his father, towed ithome. To help pay for the damage to the car andkeep ends together Jobs, Wozniak, and Rogersfound jobs at San Jose’s Westgate Shopping Center,where they donned heavy costumes and, for threedollars an hour, paraded around a children’s fairylandin a concrete Alice in Wonderland. Though Wozniakreveled in the activity, Jobs took a more jaundicedview: “The costumes weighed a ton. After about fourhours you’d want to wipe out some kids.” Nancyplayed Alice. Wozniak and Jobs took turnsmasquerading as the White Rabbit and the MadHatter.

THE LITTLE BLUE BOXIn a litigious, Victorian English, AmericanTelephone and Telegraph made its policy absolutelyclear: “No equipment, apparatus, circuit or device notfurnished by the Telephone Company shall beattached to or connected with the facilities furnishedby the Telephone Company.” Dr. No, Cheshire Cat,The Snark, Cap’n Crunch, Alefnull, The Red King, andPeter Perpendicular Pimple disagreed. They werephone phreaks who spent their lives perfecting blueboxes—electronic gadgets the size of cigarettepackets—which they used to make free long-distancetelephone calls and tease, outwit, and infuriate thebiggest company on earth.At the time, and especially in later years, theexcuses for playing around with blue boxes and themighty telephone system were as diverse andimaginative as the nicknames. The blue box offeredan opportunity to explore the largest collection ofcomputers devised by man. It provided a worldwideintroduction to the marriage of hardware andsoftware. It was an intellectual exercise. It was achallenge. It brought satisfaction. It grabbed people’sattention. It appealed to a passion for power. It was aprivilege to converse with some of the legendaryphone phreaks. Some even liked to explain, withstraight faces, that there were practical advantages.Blue boxes, they said, provided quieter, more directcircuits than the phone company could furnish. Andthough they knew it was illegal very few admitted thatthey were stealing from AT&T, GTE, or any of thehundreds of small, independent telephonecompanies. “We thought it was absolutely incredible,”Steve Jobs explained, “that you could build this littlebox and make phone calls around the world.”Jobs and Wozniak were inadvertently turned intoblue-box builders when Margaret Wozniak glanced atan article in Esquire that she thought would appeal toher older son. She was right. About a fifth the length ofa respectable-sized book, the piece was called“Secrets of the Little Blue Box” and was subtitled “Astory so incredible it may even make you feel sorry forthe phone company.” The story, published in October1971, was guaranteed to stir anybody’s sense of thefantastic but especially teenagers who had madedummy bombs out of oscillators and played laserbeams on bedroom windows.It told of an underground society composed ofphreaks scattered all across America in pools ofemotional loneliness whose best companions werevoices at the other end of telephone lines. Among thenotable characters were Joe Engressia, a blind manin his early twenties who could fool telephoneswitching equipment by the clarity of his whistle, andCaptain Crunch who assumed his name afterdiscovering that the sound from plastic whistles givenaway in a Cap’n Crunch cereal promotion could beused to help make free toll calls. The 2,600-hertz toneproduced by the whistle happened to coincide withthe basic signal used by the phone company to direct

long-distance calls.Wozniak tore through the story, intrigued by theauthentic ring of the technical detail and the way itdripped with references to frequencies and cycles.Before he had even finished he called Jobs, who wasstill a sophomore at Homestead High School, andstarted reading chunks from the magazine.Telephones and the telephone system weren’tanything that the pair had given any serious thought tobut blue boxes were clearly electronic and theypromised to perform a more than useful function. TheEsquire story started the pair on a paper chase and afour-month quest to build a reliable blue box. Theypeeled up to Palo Alto and rummaged among thestacks in the Stanford Linear Accelerator Centerlibrary looking for books that might offer more clues.The telephone company, alarmed by the detailrevealed in the story, had asked libraries to removetechnical telephone manuals from their shelves. Manyof the manuals like The Bell System TelephoneJournal and The Bell Laboratories Record whereproud scientists had revealed the most intimatedetails of their work had disappeared. Most of theshelves at SLAC had been picked clean, but thepurgers had missed a few vital works and Wozniakand Jobs found the CCITT Masterdata book whichhad survived the purge. They scoured the index forreferences to multifrequency tones and descriptionsof how to build the circuits that emitted the tones,checked the details, and found that they matched thedescriptions given in the Esquire story.Building a reliable blue box was quite anothermatter. To start, the pair decided to build an oscillatorto generate tones that they planned to record oncassette tape. They designed an oscillator from somecircuits described in Popular Electronics but soondiscovered that it was incredibly difficult to get stabletones. Oscillators were temperamental andsusceptible to changes in temperature and thetelephone company’s equipment wasn’t tolerant ofshoddy work. They spent hours tuning the oscillator byhand, trying to hit the right notes and Jobs measuredthe results with his frequency counter. Finally, theyrecorded the tones they needed to make telephonecalls but still couldn’t get the cassette recorder to foolthe phone company.Unable to tame the vagaries of the wave forms andanalog circuitry of oscillators, Wozniak turned hisattention to a digital design. Though a digital blue boxwas far trickier to build than an oscillator, it providedmore precise tones. Wozniak was spurred by theinformal competition that had developed amongphone phreaks to build compact blue boxes. He hadto design circuits that would convert pressure on thepush buttons into clear, consistent tones. To help withsome of the arithmetic he wrote a program to run onone of the Berkeley computers.After some weeks, he had wired his first digital bluebox. Thanks to a clever trick, the box, which containeda small speaker that ran off a 9-voIt battery, didn’thave a special power switch. Any of the push buttonsturned on the power. Jobs and Wozniak tried to placetheir first call to Wozniak’s grand-mother in Los

Angeles but managed to dial the wrong number,presumably leaving some disconcerted Angelenowondering why anyone should shriek, “It actuallyworks. It actually works. We called you for free.”For Wozniak and Jobs, cornering Captain Crunch,tracking down the uncrowned King of the Phreaks,became as obsessive as the quest to build a reliablebox. They called the author of the Esquire story whopolitely refused to reveal Crunch’s real name. Jobsthen heard that Crunch had given an interview on aLos Gatos FM radio station. So the pair trooped off tothe station and again were told that the name couldn’tbe disclosed. Finally, the world of phreaking beingsmall and intimate, another Berkeley phreak toldWozniak that he had worked with Captain Crunch atKKUP, an FM radio station in Cupertino, and that hisreal name was John Draper. Jobs called KKUP,asked for Draper, and was told by the receptionistthat he could leave a message. A few minutes laterthe phone rang: Captain Crunch speaking. Theymade a date to meet in Wozniak’s dormitory room atBerkeley, where he had enrolled in 1971, a few nightslater.What virtually amounted to a papal visit was treatedas such. When Jobs arrived from Los Altos, Wozniakwas sitting on the edge of his bed scarcely able toconceal his excitement, and several others werewaiting for the knock on the door. When they heardthe sound Wozniak opened the door to find a raggedfigure standing in the corridor. He wore jeans andsneakers, had hair that ran amok, an unshaven face,eyes that squinted, and several missing teeth.Wozniak recalled: “He looked absolutely horrid and Isaid, ‘Are you Captain Crunch?’” Draper replied: “Iam he.” Despite his quirky mannerisms and hisscabrous looks Draper provided a full evening’seducation. He started playing tricks on the dormphone, made some international telephone calls,checked out a few dial-a-joke services and recordedweather forecasts in foreign cities.He also showed his listeners how to “stacktandems” by bouncing a call from one tandem toanother in different cities across America, finishingwith a call to a telephone across the hallway. Once thetelephonic chain reaction was created, Draper hungup the one phone while Jobs and Wozniak listened atthe phone that rang across the dorm hallway. Theyheard the tandems hanging up along the echoing lineas the call cascaded to a close: k-chig-a-chig-a-chig;k-chig-a-chig-a-chig.The lessons continued after they adjourned to Kips,a Berkeley Pizza Parlor. Draper was impressed byWozniak’s blue box: “It never drifted and neverneeded tuning but it sounded a bit tinny.” Draper gaveJobs and Wozniak numbers of other phone phreaks,special telephone numbers, country codes, underseacablecodes, satellite codes, access codes. Hebarraged them with details of toll switching trunks,conference bridges, routing indicators, supervisorysignals, and traffic service position stations. Draperwarned Wozniak and Jobs never to carry a blue boxaround and to make blue-box calls only from payphones. Wozniak thought: “It was the most astounding

meeting we’d ever had.”The same evening on their way back to Los Altos(where Wozniak had left his car) Jobs’s red Fiatbroke down. For the first time they used their blue boxfrom a pay phone near a freeway ramp and tried toreach Draper who was heading in the same direction.They dialed an operator to get an 800 number andstarted to get the jitters when she called back tocheck whether they were still on the line. Jobs tuckedthe blue box away and was dialing a legal call when apolice car pulled up alongside. The policemenordered them out of the booth and started inspectingthe bushes and shrubs. Just before they were orderedagainst a wall with their legs astride to be patteddown, Jobs slipped Wozniak the blue box, which wassoon uncovered.“What’s this?” asked oneof the policemen.“A music synthesizer,”Wozniak replied.“What’s this orangebutton for?”“Oh, that’s for calibration,”Jobs interrupted.“It’s a computer-controlledsynthesizer,” Wozniakelaborated.“Where’s the computerthen?”“That plugs inside,” Jobssaid.Finally, satisfied that the long-haired pair weren’tcarrying any drugs, the policemen gave Jobs andWozniak a ride back along the freeway. One of thepolicemen pivoted in his seat, returned the blue box,and said: “Too bad. A guy named Moog beat you toit.”“Oh, yeah,” Jobs said, “he sent us the schematics.”To cap off the night, Wozniak picked up his FordPinto from the Jobs house and was headed back upthe Nimitz Freeway toward Berkeley when he dozedoff and destroyed the car after ramming it into thecrash barriers.Wozniak and Jobs plumped on suitable names fortheir new pursuit. The first chose the safe soundingBerkeley Blue while the latter decided to call himselfOaf Tobark. By the end of his first quarter at BerkeleyWozniak was fully occupied with blue boxes. Hebegan to collect magazine articles and newspaperstories, pasted the better clips to the wall, and foundthe printed matter most illuminating. He subscribed toa newsletter published by TAP, the TechnologicalAmerican Party, and was aware of other undergroundjournals like TEL, the Telephone Electronics Line,and of cells like “Phone Phreaks International” and“Phone Phreaks of America.” But for the most part heand Jobs floated on the periphery of a circle thatattracted the sort of people who studied computers atMIT, hung around the Artificial Intelligence Laboratoryat Stanford, and knew about computer files thatprovided the latest phreaking tricks.Wozniak and Jobs were much more interested in

practical matters and in expanding their collection ofgadgets than in lingering around a university.Following instructions printed in Abbie Hoffman’sSteal This Book and the left-wing magazineRamparts, Wozniak equipped himself with a blackbox that allowed free incoming calls and a red boxthat simulated the sound of coins dropping into a payphone.But the most lucrative and amusing part of the armscollection was the blue box. Wozniak soon showed itsvirtues to his friends. He displayed its power to AllenBaum at two phone booths near Homestead HighSchool. Wozniak phoned one booth from the otherwhich allowed Baum to say hello into one receiverand scamper around to hear his greeting echothrough the other. Wozniak made some calls to hissister who was working on a kibbutz in Israel. OnJobs’s urging the pair turned a pastime into a smallbusiness and began selling the devices. “He wantedmoney,” Wozniak said of his partner.The pair employed their own marketing techniquesfor uncovering customers and boosting sales. Theycrept along the corridors of male dormitories atBerkeley (convinced that few women would beinterested in their little device), knocking on doors andmeasuring the response to their rehearsed patter. “IsGeorge here?” one of them would ask cagily.“George?” came the surprised response. “Yeah,George. You know the blue-box guy. The guy whodoes the phone tricks. The guy who has the blue boxto make free long-distance phone calls.” Jobs andWozniak watched the expression of their potentialcustomer. If they were greeted with puzzled, timidlooks they apologized for knocking on the wrong doorand padded off down the hallway. If their ployprovoked a curious response, the potential customerwas invited to attend a blue-box demonstration.After a few weeks the dormitory sales pitchesassumed a pattern. Wozniak hooked a tape recorderto the telephone with some alligator clips and he andJobs explained the basic principles of the blue box.Then they followed up with a display of its power.Wozniak, in particular, relished being the center ofattention. “It was a big show-off thing.” They called thehome numbers of friends and relatives of some oftheir audience in the United States. Then they startedphoning overseas and finally they tried to build aglobal link—starting in Berkeley and bouncing throughoperators in several countries—and finishing atanother nearby Berkeley telephone. On one occasionJobs used the box to make room reservations for alarge party at the Ritz Hotel in London and, unable tosuppress his giggles, handed the receiver toWozniak. Another time Wozniak said that hepretended to be Secretary of State Henry Kissingerand phoned the Vatican asking to be connected tothe Pontiff. A Vatican functionary explained that thePope was still asleep but that somebody would bedispatched to wake him. Another official came on theline and tumbled to the ruse.The demonstrations provoked curiosity and Jobsand Wozniak made cassette tapes of tones thatfriends would need to call their favorite long-distance

numbers. The evening shows also produced orders.The pair came to an informal agreement about themanufacture of the blue boxes. Jobs arranged asupply of about $40 worth of parts and Wozniak tookabout four hours to wire a box which was then sold forabout $150. To cut down on the time it took to buildboxes the pair decided to stop wiring the boxes byhand and to have a printed circuit board made.Instead of spending four hours wiring a box, Wozniakcould now finish a box within an hour. He also addedanother feature that turned one button into anautomatic dialer. A small speaker and battery wereattached to the printed circuit board, a keypad gluedto the lid, and when all was finished, a card bearing amessage written in purple felt pen was taped to thebottom. It read “He’s got the whole world in his hand”and it was linked to an informal guarantee. Wozniakpromised that if a faulty box was returned and stillcontained the card he would repair it free of charge.After about a year Jobs, through a combination ofboredom and fear of the possible consequences,bowed out of the business. There were, after all, onlyso many relatives, friends, weather recordings,automatic clocks, and dial-a-jokes to call. There wasalso good reason to be anxious: The telephonecompanies were cracking down hard on the phreaksand employed security agents to snap photographs atphone-phreak conventions, placed houses undersurveillance, installed tracing equipment at switchingstations, rewarded informants, paid double agentsand launched occasional raids. Sinister aspects anddisquieting rumors accompanied the pastime. Somephone phreaks even placed tarantulas in the mailboxes of security agents and there was talk oforganized crime taking an unseemly interest in thelucrative nature of the business.Jobs was also suspicious of Captain Crunch.Draper’s frantic tone, his habit of interrupting phoneconversations with emergency calls, his hystericalbehavior when cigarettes were lit, and his invitationsto physical exercise sessions made Jobs wary. “Hewas spaced out and weird.” Jobs thought that thelegend, portrayed in the Esquire article, ran ahead ofthe facts. Even the bootleg 65-watt FM radio stationSan Jose Free Radio that Draper broadcast mostweekends from the back of a van parked in the hillsnear the Lick Observatory didn’t compensate for hisquirks. Jobs’s judgment was borne out. Though Jobsdidn’t know it at the time, General Telephone hadplaced a trace on Draper’s telephone to tape hisoutgoing calls. Among the names and telephonenumbers eventually handed over to the FBI was that ofthe Jobs household. In 1972 Draper was convicted ofa wire-fraud charge but escaped with a $1,000 fineand five years of probation. The hobby also proveddangerous in another way. Preparing to sell a box oneevening in a parking lot outside a Sunnyvale pizzaparlor, Jobs suddenly found himself staring at acustomer with a gun. “There were eighteen hundredthings I could do but every one had some probabilitythat he would shoot me in the stomach.” Jobs handed

over the blue box.For a while Wozniak ran the business by himself.He discovered other tricks, such as how to make freecalls from the telephones that hotels and car-rentalfirms leave at airports. On occasion he also tappedthe housemother’s phone at Berkeley and listened inon conversations at the FBI office in San Francisco.For about a year before their interest petered out andthe phone company started to refine its switchingequipment, Jobs and Wozniak switched roles. Theformer kept his distance while Wozniak took orders athis parents’ house and casually minded the operation.Nevertheless he split with Jobs the $6,000 or so thathe earned from the sale of about two hundred blueboxes: “It was my business and Steve got half of it.”A couple of Wozniak’s friends distributed the boxesaround Berkeley while a high-school student whomasqueraded under the name Johnny Bagel helpedarrange sales in Beverly Hills. Some of Wozniak’sblue boxes wound up in the hands of internationalswindler Bernie Cornfeld and rock singer Ike Turner.At times the distributors harassed Wozniak whobecame bored with the repetitive assembly work. Hetook to ordering parts from electronics distributorsunder an assumed name and sometimes flew to LosAngeles to deliver blue boxes, checking his smallsuitcase as baggage to avoid the airport X-raydetector. On one occasion his attempts at subterfugeended in confused embarrassment. He booked aplane ticket to Los Angeles under the name PeteRose, oblivious to the fact that it belonged to one ofthe best-known major-league baseball players.Wozniak arrived at the airport, told the ticketing agenthe was picking up a ticket for Pete Rose, and thendiscovered that he didn’t have enough cash for theticket but also didn’t want to pay with a check thatcarried his real name.Wozniak had proved himself a master of thehardware terminal, the blue box. It was built from anoriginal design and was capable of competing withthe smartest around. He gave further evidence of hisprowess by concealing a blue box inside the case ofa Hewlett-Packard calculator. His command ofsoftware was more questionable. He didn’t devote thetime needed to master the telephone system asthoroughly as some of the other phreaks, and thoughhe eluded capture, many of his customers weren’t solucky. In the informal hierarchy of phreaks, Wozniakfell more into the realm of hacker than phreak.He didn’t even experiment with placing calls onAUTOVON, a telephone system used for militarycommunications that was a playground for thehardened phreaks. One AUTOVON habitué, BurrellSmith, felt Wozniak “didn’t understand the networkwhich takes devotion and a full-time passion.” Therewas another penalty: his college work. ThoughWozniak had arranged a dream timetable of twocourses that were taught one after another in thesame lecture room on four afternoons a week, hefound telephones more entertaining. By the summerof 1972, he had again fallen foul of a college deanand was receiving letters scolding him for his pooracademic performance.

“We’ve yet to see diddly squat,”Carter said.Bottles of apple juice, packets of potato chips, andplates of turkey, chicken, and salami sandwiches layat one end of a long conference table. At the otherend Steve Jobs, rigged out in shirt, tie, and corduroys,was tapping his feet on the rug and drumming hisfingers against the tabletop. He was waiting to start aweekly lunch meeting with the managers of differentdepartments in the Mac division. Bob Belleville, thehead of engineering, Matt Carter, the head ofmanufacturing, Mike Murray, the marketing manager,Debi Coleman, the financial controller, Pat Sharp,Jobs’s personal assistant, and Vicki Milledge fromthe human resources department strolled into theroom.“C’mon! We’ve got a lot of shit to get throughtoday,” Jobs said to the six managers as they chattedand sauntered around the table. He began to quizBob Belleville, the bespectacled engineer, about adispute between two of his staff.“What are you going to do about Georgeeventually?” Jobs asked.“Eventually,” Belleville replied in a mild tone, “I’ll bedead.”“The only way we’ll keep George,” said Jobsignoring the quip, “is to give him all the analogelectronics. Unless he feels responsible for all analogelectronics he’ll go somewhere else. He’ll get a greatjob offer to run engineering in some start-up.”Belleville predicted that any such promotion wouldupset Hap Horn, another engineer who was workingon a troublesome disk drive.“If Hap blackmails you and says he’ll quit,” Jobssaid, “you go by him. Once Hap gets off the criticalpath you ought to do it.”“We need to finish this discussion off line,” Bellevillesaid demurely.Turning his attention to the long agenda, Jobsfretted about the production of instruction manuals.Activity in the publications department served as arough barometer of progress since it monitoredconditions between two fronts. One was formed bythe gusty tinkering of the lab bench while the otherloomed in the shape of the implacable introductiondate.“I see this stuff slipping and slipping out of pubs,”Jobs said turning to Michael Murray, the marketingmanager. “They’re doing a great job but they’re notgetting anything done. Get on top of it.” Murraynodded.Jobs worked his way farther around the table andaddressed Matt Carter, who was responsible formanufacturing the computer and monitoring progressat Apple’s factory near Dallas. “Can I suggestsomething?” Jobs said. He didn’t wait for a reply andhis supplicatory tone evaporated. “Your group doesn’tinteract with marketing or engineering. They’re not

ack in the lab. They’ve got to get into the spirit ofMac. Introduce them to everyone. You’ve got to push’em into interaction.”“I’m taking a party to Dallas,” Carter grinned. “Sothat they can interact the shit out of each other.”Jobs abruptly changed the discussion to the growthof the division. Recruiting new people was a perennialfeature of life at Mac and gobbled up much of the timeof its senior managers. Jobs glanced at a sheet ofpaper and said: “We had forty-six people last month.”“We’ve got sixty today,” corrected Vicki Milledge,the woman from human resources.“God! Wow! We’re really cracking,” said Jobs.“There’s been a whole trail of people through here,”Michael Murray observed and mentioned a candidatefrom Xerox. “She’s in the process of resigning fromXerox which takes much longer than interviewing atApple.”“When’s Rizzo going to let you know?” asked Jobs,referring to a candidate for the same position.“He’s procrastinating,” said Murray.“I’d pick Rizzo,” said Jobs. “He’ll get into thetrenches faster. Get clear in your mind who you want.”Murray dropped the name of a woman who wasworking for a venture-capital firm but had indicatedshe would take a $40,000 drop in salary to work atApple.“Is she beautiful and single?” Jobs inquired.“She’s not single,” Murray chuckled.“Are we interviewing for the Barbizon School ofmodeling?” Debi Coleman asked.Jobs latched onto another name.“He’s doing planning,” said Murray.“He’s a venture capitalist,” retorted Jobs. “Soundslike a bullshit job to me.”“What about Steve Capps?” asked Jobs.“He works at Lisa,” Belleville remarked as thoughhe wasn’t about to embark on a raiding mission atanother division of the company.“I heard through the grapevine he wants to workover here,” Jobs replied.Matt Carter asked what his colleagues thoughtabout a possible recruit for the manufacturing team,provoking Debi Coleman to venture, “He talked agood line. He asked the right questions.”“His batteries are too low. I didn’t trust the guy,”Jobs said and immediately suggested an alternative.“They’ll like Duke a lot more. He’s awake. He’s moreconservative, drives a two-eighty-Z and wearsglasses.”Vicki Milledge chipped in that she wasn’t allowed tohave a secretary, or what at Apple was known as an“area associate.”“Why not?” Jobs demanded.“Because of the budget,” Milledge said.“Screw ‘em,” Jobs retorted.Pat Sharp, a woman with curly hair and spectacles,broached the subject of moving the division lock,stock, and barrel to a larger building. The Mac groupwas squeezed into one half of a single-story, red-tiledbuilding, and some of its members worked in anannex. It was poised to move into another building on

the opposite side of Cupertino’s Bandley Drive, aroad Apple had turned into a corporate alley. Apple’spresence along the road was so pronounced that thebuildings were known by the order in which thecompany had occupied them rather than by streetnumbers. “I was wondering about the layout,” Sharpventured.“I’m willing to spend a million bucks to fix upBandley Three,” Jobs announced. “We’ll fix it up realnice and that’s it. That’s our final resting place. Putyour energy into it. It’s going to be laid out for onehundred people. I don’t have any interest in running adivision of more than a hundred and you’re notinterested in working with more than a hundred. Therewill be no trailers, no outhouses, no nothing. If Bobwants a new software guy, someone else will have togo.”“Can we put a weight room in or an exerciseclinic?” asked Murray.“No,” Jobs said. “We’ll have a few showers andthat’ll be it. Think about what you want,” Jobs urged. “Ifthe software or pubs people want private offices,now’s the time to think about it.”He turned to a more immediate concern, a pilotbuild of two hundred Mac printed circuit boards thatwould be used for testing. Matt Carter reported theprogress. “The kits are almost in. We’re going to stuff’em next week.”“Why don’t we order another twenty-five boards?”Jobs asked.Debi Coleman agreed. “Is there any logic behindthe two hundred? Last time we built fifty and then wewanted seventy-five.”That reminder prompted Jobs to worry aloud thatsome of the existing printed circuit boards would fallinto the hands of a competitor or one of the offshorefirms that specialized in churning out low-priced,copycat computers. “I want to pull the first fifty and Iwant to trash them and have them compressed into agiant garbage compactor.“When do we start building?”He heard the date for the pilot-build start and wasstruck by another thought.“What about beer busts?” he asked, referring to arecent party. “Do you want any more like that?” Hepaused briefly: “When’s our next party?”“Christmas,” said Murray.“That’s in January because everybody’s so busy,”said Jobs. “What about early November? What abouta rock ‘n’ roll party? We’ve just had a square dance.Rock ‘n’ roll. Square dance. That’s the universe. We’llhave a Halloween rock ‘n’ roll dance.”Carter told his colleagues that he was about todepart on a trip to the Far East to inspect possibleparts suppliers and had already begun to placeorders. Jobs exhaled at the news.“This is like a train starting up that takes a quarterof a mile to stop and we haven’t even got the tracklaid.” He paused and turned to Carter and Belleville.“We’ve got to really test the main logic board. We’vegot to test hot and cold.” He slapped the table.

“Details. Details. Details. There’s a lot more money inthe digital board than the analog board. If we’re goingto have a fuck-up let’s have it in the digital board.”“We’re really in trouble with the analog board,”Carter countered. “Right now we’re being told it’ll beready in forty-five days but we’ve yet to see diddlysquat. We kicked ’em in the butt and they said theywant ninety days. They’re going to have to bust asseven more than they think.” Carter returned to theneed to place orders for parts and Jobs mentionedtwo suppliers: “I like Samsung better than Aztec. Canwe negotiate with them?”“We cannot take the risk,” said Carter. “We’ve gotto give them both big incentives.”The group moved on to consider the possiblepricing of the computer. For some months the generalaim had been to sell the computer for $1,995. Jobswanted to be assured by the financial controller, that itwould still meet Apple’s profit targets if it was pricedat $1,495. Coleman, who had been considering whateffect changes in price might have on sales volume,started to draw a graph and curves on a blackboard.Jobs watched for a moment, listened to Coleman asshe explained her diagram, and said, “We could pullnumbers out of our ass and do anything. Any curve istotal crap. If you believe it you’re being fooled.”“We could print it out on a blotter in color and itdoesn’t mean a thing,” Murray echoed.Jobs had a mischievous idea about how to test theeffect of a $500 difference in price. “We should dosome test marketing. We should drop the price in L.A.and raise the price in Seattle and hope the dealersdon’t talk to each other.” He started to explain theconclusions of a task force Apple had established toset guidelines for building prices from profit targets:“There were eighteen million marketing and financepeople who didn’t know what the fuck they weredoing. We’re always going to make judgments and alot of it is unknowable. So we just ended up with a ruleof thumb for the rate of return we want.” He turned toColeman and his voice rose half an octave. “Don’tdrive us into the land of assholes with graphs. The lastthing we want is people trying to out-Visicalc oneanother.”Murray began to complain that whatever the price,Apple was not allocating anywhere near enoughmoney to launch Mac. “If we were Kodak or Polaroidwe’d have a giant pot of money to launch products.”Jobs played devil’s advocate and pretended he wasin charge of the division selling Apple IIs and IIIs. “Letme put on another hat and play PCS manager. Theonly way I’m going to sell more Apple IIs is tomerchandise the hell out of it. I don’t have a hotproduct. I don’t get free editorial. I don’t get the coverof Byte.”“I’m trading futures,” Murray said.“I’m paying the light bills,” Jobs said.There was some talk of a sales meeting inAcapulco for Apple’s dealers and of a quarterlygathering of four hundred Apple managers at whichJobs was to give a report on progress with Mac. Theysorted out which members of the Mac division shouldattend the two-day meeting. Then Vicki Milledge

laughed nervously. She surveyed her boss andreported that all the managers, apart from Jobs, hadgiven her performance reviews on their staffs.“I hate doing reviews. I like salary increases,” Jobsexplained.“Into every good life some rain must fall,” MattCarter said consolingly.

HONEY AND NUTSWhen Steven Jobs started to sift through universitybrochures he showed that he was capable of bothoriginality and obstinacy. He approached the taskwith all the stubbornness he had previously used topersuade his parents to move to Los Altos. Jobs hadspent enough time hanging around the colleges thathis older friends attended to conclude they wereunsuitable. He thought that Berkeley, with itsenormous lecture theaters, was a degree mill and heconsidered Stanford too staid. Eventually, aftervisiting a friend who was attending Reed College, asmall, liberal, and expensive university in Portland,Oregon, Jobs decided he wanted to try life in thePacific Northwest.He returned from a tour of inspection and broke thenews at home. Paul Jobs, horrified by the prospect ofenormous tuition bills, remembered the gist of thediscussion: “We tried to talk him out of it.” Clara Jobshad a blunter recollection: “Steve said that was theonly college he wanted to go to and if he couldn’t gothere he didn’t want to go anywhere.” So the seniorJobses buckled to some emotional blackmail, tuckedtheir son into the back of their car, drove him to Reed,and said their farewells on a deserted campus a fewdays before the start of the 1972 school year. Theparting was etched on Steven Jobs’s memory. “Itwasn’t real cordial. I sort of said ‘Well, thanks, ’bye.’ Ididn’t even want the buildings to see that my parentswere there. I didn’t even want parents at that time. Ijust wanted to be like an orphan from Kentucky whohad bummed around the country hopping freight trainsfor years. I just wanted to find out what life was allabout.”Portland’s natural setting provided enoughdistractions to give some sense of life’s sensations.The weather was more melancholy than along thesouthern reaches of the San Francisco Peninsula butthere were other consolations. There was the remotesplendor of Mount Hood for backpacking, thethunderous vigor of the Columbia River Gorge forhitchhiking, and desolate beaches along the Oregoncoastline where redwoods perched on the edge ofcliffs. For students contemplating their newsurroundings Reed College presented a deceptiveface. Its Victorian Gothic buildings—complete withslate roofs, ivy, copper gutters, and window boxes—had bay windows that overlooked spacious gardens.It seemed like a drizzly home for Portland’s cafesociety, a movable stage for poets, filmmakers,artists, and free spirits.Some former Reed students had started TheRainbow Farm, which became one of the regionalkeystones of the hippie movement, and ripples fromthe psychedelic tone of the late sixties flowed throughthe campus. Reed was a regular stopping point for acaravan of lecturers like author Ken Kesey, poet AllenGinsberg and the very guru of “Turn on, tune in, dropout,” Timothy Leary. But behind the graceful air anddreamy throwback to Parisian life in the twenties was

an ironclad curriculum with long, compulsory readinglists. The three hundred or so students who enrolled ineach class found the large flock of professors kept aclose watch on their progress and the collegetolerated their quirks only if they coped with strenuousacademic standards. During the early seventiesabout a third of each class failed to return for theirjunior or senior years after discovering that, at Reed,liberal was spelled with a capital L.Jobs found an eclectic collection of students and,for the first time in his life, started to bump into peoplefrom other parts of the country. Since Reed gavescholarships to a goodly sprinkling of minorities, Jobshad his first taste of cosmopolitan flavors. One of hisclassmates, Elizabeth Holmes, commented, “In theearly seventies Reed was a campus of loners andfreaks.” Even against that colorful backdrop Jobsmanaged to stand out and his picture was missingfrom the booklet of freshman profiles distributed to thenew arrivals. Among the other members of thefreshman class was Daniel Kottke. A bony, beardedteenager with a gentle way of speaking and softbrown hair, Kottke had grown up in an affluent NewYork suburb, won a National Merit Scholarship andturned to Reed after being rejected by Harvard. Hewas quiet, slightly lethargic, had a disdain for materialpossessions, and liked to play the piano. Within a fewmonths he began to consider Jobs his closest malecompanion. “It didn’t seem like he had too many otherfriends.”Another of Jobs’s friends was one of the mostvisible students on campus. Robert Friedland, whowas several years older than Jobs, paraded about thecampus dressed in Indian robes while campaigningfor the student presidency. His campaign theme wasblunt. He was running for the post to help erase thestigma of a two-year jail sentence for what was, at thetime, the largest LSD bust east of the Mississippi.Friedland, a slight smooth talker, had rubbed upagainst the Nixon administration’s determination toclean LSD off the tongue of America and made themistake of informing the judge at his trial that heshouldn’t pass sentence without trying the drug. Thejudge decided he didn’t need to enhance his mind tosettle on a punishment and gave Friedland a two-yearsentence for manufacturing and distributing thirtythousand tablets of LSD. Eventually Friedland wasparoled and enrolled at Reed.Jobs, who was trying to raise some money byselling his IBM electric typewriter, first met Friedlandin potentially embarrassing circumstances. He arrivedwith his typewriter in Friedland’s room to discover thatthe chief occupant was busy making love to his girlfriend. Friedland wasn’t flustered and invited Jobs tosit down and wait. Jobs sat and watched. “He wasn’tintimidated at all. I thought, ‘This is kind of far out. Mymother and father would never do this.’”For Jobs, Friedland quickly became an importantfigure, a mentor and surrogate elder brother. “Robertwas the first person I met who was really very firmlyconvinced that the phenomenon of enlightenmentexisted. I was very impressed by that and very curiousabout it.” For his part Friedland recalled that Jobs

was one of the youngest students at Reed. “He wasalways walking about barefoot. He was one of thefreaks on the campus. The thing that struck me washis intensity. Whatever he was interested in he wouldgenerally carry to an irrational extreme. He wasn’t arapper. One of his numbers was to stare at the personhe was talking to. He would stare into their fuckingeyeballs, ask some question, and would want aresponse without the other person averting theireyes.”Jobs’s sense of the romantic prompted him toenroll in a dance class where he hoped, like so manycollege students, that he would find true love. Instead,he began to discover that despite the attractions ofballet, his ideas about education certainly didn’tcoincide with a curriculum that for the first semesterprescribed heavy doses of The Iliad and ThePeloponnesian Wars. By the end of 1972, Jobs haddiscovered plenty of other diversions. There were theemotional calls of college life such as the time herushed a pal who tried to commit suicide to the localhospital, the startling, unpredictable tastes of women,and pressure from his parents who were upset at theidea they were underwriting a bohemian life. Jobs’sacademic work suffered and at the end of his firstsemester he dropped out in spirit if not in body. Forthe following six months he stayed in the dormitory,shuffling among the rooms deserted by othermalcontents.At Reed the interest in political activism that wastypical of the late sixties had been softened into aspiritual activism slightly reminiscent of movementsthat had flourished around Aldous Huxley in the1920s. Some of the students were interested in purephilosophy and the disconcerting questions that areunanswerable—about the meaning of life and the truthof existence: What are we? Why are we here? Whatare we doing? What are the real values of human life?The appeals to a higher consciousness, to “workingon yourself,” struck a chord. There was talk of karmaand trips and the intellectual excursions fueledexperiments with diets and drugs. Jack Dudman,Reed’s dean of students, spent hours talking withJobs. “He had a very inquiring mind that wasenormously attractive. You wouldn’t get away withbland statements. He refused to accept automaticallyreceived truths and he wanted to examine everythinghimself.”Jobs and Kottke suggested books to one anotherand gradually read their way through the standardworks of the time: Autobiography of a Yogi, CosmicConsciousness, Cutting Through SpiritualMaterialism, Meditation in Action. The mostinfluential, however, was Zen Mind,Beginner’s Mind.Jobs took to spending time in the college libraryreading Buddhist literature and became attracted byZen Buddhism. “It placed value on experience versusintellectual understanding. I saw a lot of peoplecontemplating things but it didn’t seem to lead toomany places. I got very interested in people who haddiscovered something more significant than anintellectual, abstract understanding.” He also startedto believe that intuition formed a higher state of

intellect and meditated in a crawl space aboveKottke’s bedroom, which was furnished with incenseand a dhurrie rug.The pair also hitchhiked to the Hare Krishna templein Portland for free Sunday night vegetable-currydinners. On one occasion Kottke and Jobs decidedto stay overnight at the Krishna house and wereawakened in the early morning and sent out into asuburban Portland neighborhood to pick flowers fromprivate gardens to decorate the shrine of LordKrishna.After moving out of the dorms at the end of his firstyear, Jobs rented an upgraded coachhouse fortwenty-five dollars a month in a well-upholsteredPortland suburb that rubbed up against Reed. He wassecretive about aspects of his life, and even hisclosest college friends had no idea that Wozniak, whomade occasional visits, sold blue boxes to a coupleof Reed students who were caught using the device ina telephone booth.Strapped for cash, Jobs borrowed some moneyfrom a fund the college kept for just suchcontingencies and found a job maintaining electronicequipment used by the psychology department foranimal-behavior experiments. Ron Fial, an assistantprofessor who looked after the lab and tinkered withelectronics, was impressed by Jobs and theknowledge he brought from California. “He was verygood. He often didn’t want to just fix something. Heoften ended up bringing in something that wascompletely redesigned.”Though he fixed fish tanks and helped design bettermousetraps, Jobs was still pressed for money. Hisrented room was unheated and when he sat therethrowing I Ching he was always dressed in a thickdown jacket. For several weeks he lived on a thricedailydiet of a porridge made from Roman Mealcereal and milk that he lifted from the collegecafeteria. Jobs reckoned that one box of the cerealwould sustain him for a week. “After three months ofRoman Meal I was just going out of my gourd.”To keep some flesh on his friend, Kottke and hisgirl friend provided Jobs with his only substantialmeals. The trio jointly labeled cafeteria food Meat byMonsanto and became vegetarians. They paradedthrough the infinite varieties of brown rice, bananabread, and oatmeal bread suggested by vegetarianand macrobiotic cookbooks. Through a combinationof circumstance and curiosity, Jobs and his friendslinked their intellectual wandering and interests inmysticism with physical experiments. They wereinterested in stimulating fresh areas of the mind andrejuvenating the body and experimented with differentdrugs and diets. Drugs were used more formetaphysical reasons than for recreational purposesand they linked diets with other aspects of life.Jobs became interested in the writings of ArnoldEhret, a nineteenth-century Prussian who attached hisname to such books as The Mucusless Diet HealingSystem and Rational Fasting. Jobs was intrigued byEhret’s assertion that diet was the cornerstone of

physical, mental, and spiritual rejuvenation and that anaccumulation of mucus and other body wastes weresure to be ruinous. Ehret asserted, with all theconfidence of an Archimedes, that V = P - O, which inlayman’s language meant vitality equals power minusobstruction. He taught that mental illness was causedby “gas pressure on the brain,” which could be curedby fasting, and that meat, alcohol, fat, bread,potatoes, rice, and milk were to be avoided at allcosts. He even prescribed special “mucuseliminators” like combinations of figs, nuts and greenonions, or grated horseradish and honey.Jobs started to examine the diets of the higherprimates and even investigated their bone structure.Years afterward he still clung to his convictions. “Ibelieve that man is a fruitarian. I got into it in mytypically nutso way.” For a time Jobs lectured hisfriends on the dangers of bagels, insisting they werefilled with mucus, and started to lunch on carrotsalads. Friedland recalled, “The whole world revolvedaround the elimination of mucus.” Like Ehret, whoboasted that he once lived off a fruit diet for two years,Jobs experimented with fasts. He carefully worked hisway from fasts that lasted a couple of days to onesthat stretched for a couple of weeks. He watched hisskin turn different colors as a result of the fasting,learned how to break fasts with plenty of roughageand water, became convinced that man was afruitarian and was enthusiastic about the results ofthese experiments: “After a few days you start to feelgreat. After a week you start to feel fantastic. You geta ton of vitality from not having to digest all this food. Iwas in great shape. I felt I could get up and walk toSan Francisco anytime I wanted.” His friend ElizabethHolmes noticed the extent of Jobs’s devotion. “Whenhe started crusading about something he could beoverbearing.”Others led their own crusades, and RobertFriedland became the disciple of one that tied diet,drugs, and philosophy together. When he and Jobsmeditated they were accompanied by the customarysitar music, surrounded by incense, and overlookedby a photograph of a tubby man with jug ears andgray bristles who was wrapped in a plaid blanket. Thepudgy figure was Neem Karolie Baba, an Indian guru,celebrated in Be Here Now, Richard Alpert’s popularaccount of the changes he encountered while hejourneyed from an American academic life to quietcontemplation in a remote part of India. Friedlandfound the lure irresistible and spent the summer of1973 in India listening to Neem Karolie Baba, andreturned with a chattering knapsack of tales for hisyounger friends. He regaled them with tales ofmeditation sessions inside rings of fires and baths inice-cold rivers, and described “an electric chargedatmosphere of love.”At the beginning of 1974 Jobs decided that anelectronics company might supply the means to reachthe electric-charged atmosphere of love. He brokeaway from the fringes of Reed College, returned to hisparents’ home in Los Altos, and began to look for a

job. He wasn’t seeking anything grand or permanentbut just something that would allow him to stash awayenough money for a trip to India. One morning,browsing through the classified advertisements in theSan Jose Mercury, he spotted an opening for avideo-game designer at Atari. He knew nothing aboutthe young company but had spent many quarters onPong, the monotonic simulation of table tennis thatAtari was operating in pool halls, bars, pinballarcades, and bowling alleys.Jobs’s arrival in Atari’s Sunnyvale lobby wasmonitored by an observant receptionist. According toAl Alcorn, the chief engineer, “The receptionist said,‘We’ve got this kid in the lobby. He’s either a crackpotor he’s got something.’ He looked pretty grubby. Hewas talking a mile a minute and claimed to beworking on the HP thirty-five calculator. He said hecould turn the HP forty-five into a stopwatch. Heimplied he was working for HP. I was impressed, said‘Hey, fine,’ and didn’t bother to check.” Alcorn, ajovial, rotund man, offered Jobs a position as atechnician for five dollars an hour. Jobs, for whomstock options and some of the other benefits offeredby Silicon Valley companies were mysteries,accepted. Some of his friends were surprised that hemanaged to get on the payroll. Bill Fernandez, forone, thought Jobs lacked the qualifications. “He musthave been a good salesman. I didn’t really think thatJobs was that hot.”Jobs became one of Atari’s first fifty employeesand had his first prolonged taste of corporate life in acompany where a succession of novel ideasmanaged to withstand any number of managerialtorpedoes. The company was started and dominatedby Nolan Bushnell, son of a Utah cement contractorwhose first business coup took place at the Universityof Utah where he sold ink blotters framed byadvertisements. In 1972, at age twenty-nine, Bushnellintroduced his first video game. Computer Spaceappealed to engineers but was too complicated forthe general public.As the game failed Bushnell decided to start hisown business to make video games and operatepinball machines. He called the company, which hebased in a rented garage space, Syzygy, for no betterreason than it was the last word in the dictionary thatbegan with the letter S. Within weeks Bushnelldiscovered that Syzygy had been used by anotherfirm and so he changed the name to Atari (taken fromthe Japanese game Go and roughly equivalent inmeaning to check) but early advertisements readFROM ATARI INC., SYZYGY ENGINEERED.Bushnell viewed business as “a type of war” andemployed pinches of diplomacy and charm, cunningand force to cajole his employees and bamboozle thecompetition. Dressed in sharp suits, flowery shirts,and polka-dot ties, he became Atari’s six-foot-fourinchjuju man. “It was life in the fast lane with Nolan,”one of the founders recalled. “He always wantedeverything at once.” To persuade Chief EngineerAlcorn to design Pong, Bushnell pretended it had

een ordered by General Electric. “I’d never even hadany negotiations with General Electric,” Bushnellrecalled, “but I wanted to test out Al’s skills.” Nobody,let alone Bushnell, placed any great hopes in Pong. “Ididn’t perceive it as a big marketable item.”The first game, with a coin box bolted to theoutside, was placed in Andy Capp’s Cavern, apopular Sunnyvale pool parlor. Almost immediately itbecame clear that the electronic game was makingmore than the bar’s pinball machines. A few daysafter it was installed, the rush of quarters backed upand jammed the coin box and within weeks peoplewanting to play Pong lined up outside the bar.While Pong came to enjoy popular success, thepeople who mattered treated the company withsuspicion. Some bankers thought it was an offshootof the Mafia. Suppliers were leery about extendingcredit to a firm that looked as if it might take to the airany day. To quell complaints, Bushnell started anoffshoot, Kee Games, which he furnished withdesigners, managers, and plans from Atari.According to Bushnell, the new company was formedto produce a parallel line of games and to sop up themoney that might have flowed to potentialcompetitors. A series of contrived press releasescharted the formation of Kee Games, and Bushnelllater chortled, with something bordering on contempt,“There are just so many ways you can use the pressfor strategic advantage.” When Kee Games began toprosper and there were rumors that it wanted to shrugoff ties with Atari, Bushnell issued a bland statementthat read “We are happy that the people at Kee andAtari have been able to resolve the problems that ledto the original split.”Bushnell’s control of the press was more refinedthan his control of the company. Many of his earlyemployees were eager to dispense with routinecorporate drudgery like memos and staff meetings.Attracted by the unconventional, Bushnell fueledbrainstorming sessions with marijuana and made nosecret of his belief that drugs and alcohol helpedspark ideas. Recruitment was equally unpredictable.One candidate was startled when Bushnell strolledinto the room, posed one question—“Are you a spyfor Bally?”—and then disappeared, satisfied hewasn’t about to hire a quisling. Easily bored by dailychores, Bushnell hired his brother-in-law, apsychiatrist, to manage the company. Financialcontrols were so lax that a three-month supply of onegame, Trak Ten, was virtually given away before anaccountant discovered that it was being sold for $100less than it cost to build. Bushnell admitted that “wewrote contracts guys were able to weasel out of.” Healso was reluctant to cede control to a strong board ofdirectors and made sure he always owned more thanhalf the outstanding shares.Nevertheless, during its first three years Atarimanaged to sell $13 million worth of video gamesand capitalized on the popularity of Pong by sellingvariants that included Dr. Pong, a wood-grainedversion aimed at physicians, dentists, and hospitals,and Puppy Pong, which was clad in a Formicadoghouse. On the rush of its early success Atari built

a large factory only to find there weren’t enoughorders to keep it busy. More money disappearedwhen Bushnell attempted to start a manufacturingoffshoot in Japan. Life wasn’t made any easier byseasonal swings, the nationwide recession, ashortage of venture capital or the popular perceptionthat a leisure business was a frivolous enterprise.On several occasions, especially between thespring and fall of 1974, when Atari’s future rested onthe success of Gran Trak, a driving game, thecompany came within seven days of bankruptcy. Atlunch during one savage week Bushnell broke downin tears thinking all was lost. Suppliers refused todeliver parts and creditors camped out in the hallway.The tempestuous backdrop didn’t escape Atari’semployees. Ron Wayne, a one-time employee, said,“Working at Atari was like driving with a rubbersteering wheel.” Steve Jobs formed his ownimpressions of a company that was hardly a model forthe business textbooks. “It was always chaos. It wasnot a well-run company.”But for all the thrills and spills, most of the Atariemployees were conservative and Jobs wasconsidered peculiar. He poked his nose into otherengineers’ business and made no secret of hisdisdain. Bushnell recalled that Jobs “regularly told alot of the other guys they were dumb shits,” and Jobshimself said, “Some of their engineers were not verygood and I was better than most of them. The onlyreason I shone was that everyone else was so bad. Iwasn’t really an engineer at all.” Yet Jobs’sappearance, his lunches of yogurt, his strictadherence to the mucusless diet, and his belief that afruit diet meant that he could go without showers,were considered nonconformist. By his ownadmission Jobs was oblivious to the animosity hestirred up. Finally, to keep peace in the lab, Alcornarranged for Jobs to work after hours and late atnight. “The engineers didn’t like him. He smelledfunny.”Despite his lack of formal electronic training, Jobsquickly bridged the gap between being a technicianand being an engineer. One of his early tasks was toadd refinements to a game called Touch Me, whichsported bulbous rubber suckers. Working within thediscipline of specified boundaries Jobs tailored theperformance of the chips to what was wanted on thescreen. He understood the chips’ subtleties, plottedout a new design, and made substantialimprovements to the game. Wozniak admired Jobs’swork. “He did the creative stuff. He realized how hecould build the same thing a lot simpler and better. Itwas engineering.”When Jobs decided to accompany his collegefriend Dan Kottke to India and see the topographyand intellectual scenery for some of RobertFriedland’s elaborate tales, he asked Alcorn to supplythe air fare. Alcorn gave the request a blunt reception.“Bullshit, I’m not giving you any money to go see theguru.” The pair arrived at a convenient compromise.

Some games Atari had shipped to West Germanywere causing interference on television sets, and theGerman engineers were unable to solve the problem.Alcorn gave Jobs a crash course in ground loops andagreed to pay his air fare to Europe, ordering him to“say hi to the guru for me.”Jobs’s arrival in Europe caused someconsternation among the Germans, who cabledAlcorn wondering what he had dispatched. For hispart Jobs (distressed that he couldn’t find the Germanword for vegetarian) adroitly applied the curative toAtari’s troublesome machines.In the telling, Jobs and Kottke’s trip to India seemscrammed with the snapshots of young innocentsabroad, faintly credulous Westerners caught in theblank light of ashrams, swamis, and sadhus. Kottkefelt “the trip was a kind of ascetic pilgrimage exceptwe didn’t know where we were going.” Before Kottkearrived, Jobs spent a few weeks by himself, and insucceeding years, they were cloaked in surrealisticimages. He attended the Kumbhmela, a largereligious festival that takes place every twelfth year inHardwar in north central India. “Seven million people,”Jobs observed, “in a town the size of Los Gatos.” Hesaw priests emerge from the river, watched theflames of funeral pyres and dead bodies floatingdown the Ganges. He met a Parisian fashiondesigner at an ashram, and a guru who, impressed bythe smoothness of his skin, dragged him up a hillsideand shaved his head. He also spent a nervous night inan abandoned temple sitting near a fire whichflickered around a trident. His only companion was aShivite, with matted hair and a body covered inashes, who puffed on a chillum until dawn.Dressed in light, white cotton pants and vests,Kottke and Jobs used New Delhi as their base.Nightly walks took them through shantytowns ofcorrugated iron and cracked packing cases, pastcows eating garbage and people sleeping on cots onthe sidewalks. Their sorties from Delhi were made onbuses with worn shock absorbers and small metalseats, and they spent several days trekking to see anumber of yogis. They hiked along dried riverbeds,carrying water bottles, their feet rubbed raw bysandals. Enticed by the promise of Tibet theyjourneyed into the foothills of the Himalayas but woundup at the old spa town of Menali, where they bothcontracted scabies from greasy bedsheets.Though Neem Kardie Baba and his plaid blankethad been consumed by a spectacular funeral pyre,Jobs and Kottke dutifully trooped to Kainchi. Theystrolled among the gaudy icons and plastic Krishnasand found the ashram perverted by musicians whowere being paid to perform devotional chants.Despite the changes, the pair stayed in Kainchi forabout a month and rented a one-room cement hutfrom a family who ran a potato farm. It was convenientenough, allowed them to read in peace and quiet, andhad one other advantage: It was close to a field ofmarijuana plants which they dried and smoked. Theyalso had rudimentary room service supplied by thewife of the potato farmer who sold them water-buffalomilk which she heated and stirred with sugar. On one

occasion Jobs took issue with the way she watereddown the milk. Gestures bridged the language barrierand the woman wound up denouncing Jobs as acriminal. At the Kainchi market where merchants soldvegetables from donkey carts, Jobs also drove a hardbargain, Kottke recalled. “He looked at priceselsewhere, found out the real price, and haggled. Hedidn’t want to get ripped off.”The hot, uncomfortable summer made Jobsquestion many of the illusions he had nursed aboutIndia. He found India far poorer than he had imaginedand was struck by the incongruity between thecountry’s condition and its airs of holiness. He spotteda crucial lesson wrapped up in the blur of yogis andyellow health cards, darshan and pranas, sadhus andpuja tables. “We weren’t going to find a place wherewe could go for a month to be enlightened. It was oneof the first times I started thinking that maybe ThomasEdison did a lot more to improve the world than KarlMarx and Neem Karolie Baba put together.”By the time Jobs returned to California he wasthinner, thanks to a bout of dysentery, had closelycropped hair, and was dressed in an Indian attire thatwas a millennium away from Pong and oscilloscopes.Nancy Rogers remembered: “He was so weird whenhe got back. He was trying to live more detached andspiritually. He would look at me with his eyes wideapart and stare and wouldn’t blink. He would invite meover to eat and then play guru. He would come overand look at all the little gifts he had given me and ask,‘Where did you get this?’ It was as if he was breakingall ties.”Jobs’s return from India in the fall of 1974 alsomarked the start of an eighteen-month period duringwhich he played hopscotch. He flitted between Atariand the crumbling edges of consumer electronics anda three-hundred acre Oregon farm that RobertFriedland was managing for a wealthy relative. Butfirst he headed north to an old hotel in Eugene,Oregon, that a student of the California psychiatristArthur Janov had converted into the Oregon FeelingCenter. Jobs, who had read Janov’s best sellerPrimal Scream, paid a thousand dollars and enrolledin a twelve-week course of therapy that wassupposed to provide solutions to deeply rootedproblems. Janov and his students at the OregonFeeling Center seemed to be offering an emotionalspring cleaning. “Feeling is what this therapy is allabout. . . . We are after the feelings which say ‘Daddy,be nice. Mama, I need you.’” Jobs’s curiosity waspiqued. “It seemed like such an interesting thing. Youcould gain some insight into your life and experiencesome new realm of feeling. This was not something tothink about. This was something to actually go do: toclose your eyes, hold your breath, jump in and comeout the other end more insightful.”For Jobs Janov’s writings appeared to hold the keyfor an immensely personal quest. As he turned twenty,the question of his adoption and the whereabouts ofhis natural parents came to assume moreprominence. Nancy Rogers recalled: “He was

sometimes in tears to see his mother.” RobertFriedland had his own interpretation: “Steve had avery profound desire to know his physical parents sohe could better know himself.” Questions about hisnatural parents spawned hours of private speculation.His friends gently teased him that he was probablyArmenian or Syrian. Jobs began an extensive searchfor his natural parents and learned a little about them.“Both were teaching at a university. My father was avisiting maths professor.” Jobs reckoned that hisadoption had at least one effect: “It made me feel alittle bit more independent.” After about three monthsin Eugene, Jobs’s infatuation with Janov’s work andmethods dulled. “He offered a ready-made, buttondownanswer which turned out to be far too oversimplistic.It became obvious that it wasn’t going toyield any great insight.”Disappointed by the ministrations of the OregonFeeling Center, Jobs drifted back to California,rented a room in a house in Los Gatos, took tomeditating for an hour at dawn, and started to workagain at Atari. There he continued to ruffle feathers.Bushnell noticed the tensions Jobs created in theengineering laboratory and wound up appointing himto a casual position as a consultant. “It was a rescueof a would-be fire. I said, ‘Hey, if you guys don’t wanthim, I want him.’” Bushnell appreciated Jobs’s senseof urgency. “When he wanted to do something, he’dgive a schedule in terms of days and weeks, notmonths and years.” Jobs again worked in the smallhours and spent his time on a variety of differentprojects. Wozniak, meantime, had discovered videogames and was a frequent visitor at Atari where hespent hours playing the video games that stood on theassembly line. He even spent several weeksdesigning and building his own version of Pong andfor the first time drew up a design that displayedimages on a television screen.Wozniak also helped Jobs after Bushnell decidedhe wanted a game that would let players destroy awall of bricks with a bouncing ball. Bushnell offeredJobs a bonus plan, tying payment to the number ofchips that were used in the design. With fewer chips,games were not only cheaper to manufacture but alsousually more reliable. Jobs recruited help fromWozniak who thought “Steve was not quite capable ofdesigning something that complex.” The pair spentfour consecutive nights working on the game withWozniak designing and Jobs wiring the prototype.Bushnell was impressed by the finished game andoffered Wozniak a job at Atari anytime he wanted.However, Al Alcorn, who didn’t discover that Wozniakhad been involved with the game until years later,thought, “It was a brilliant design but it wasn’tproduceable because the technicians couldn’t figureout how to make it work.” The game was entirelyredesigned before it was eventually released asBreakout.Meanwhile, Jobs, who was anxious to flee toOregon, discovered that it would take two weeksbefore he and Wozniak would receive the sevenhundred dollars they had been promised. Jobspersisted and was given the cash on the same day

and disappeared to Friedland’s farm leaving thestraitlaced Wozniak to nurse furtive thoughts. “I had noidea what they were doing.” There was one otherresult of the press to complete Breakout: BothWozniak and Jobs came down with mononucleosis.Jobs first started to feel the symptoms when hearrived at the farm. Friedland had applied dollops ofmysticism and evoked the notions of universaloneness and the highest concept of being when henamed his spread All One Farm. He also gave hisnewborn son a Hindu name and took one for himself.(“He was calling himself Sita Ram Das but we calledhim Robert,” Kottke said.) The farm’s location waspublished in “The Spritual Community Guide” and itattracted a variety of drifters, psychedelic beggars,members of nearby Hare Krishna temples, and onone occasion, some patients from a mental hospital.For the caravan of a dozen or so regular visitors thatincluded Jobs, the farm became the setting for dailydramas and crises. They converted chicken coopsinto crude flophouses and funneled well water towarda wood-burning sauna. When Jobs installed electricityin a barn so that it could be used as a wood-stovedealership, Friedland was surprised by his alacritywith conduits and wiring diagrams.For the visitors to All One Farm the lure of the Eastgripped tight. They held meditation classes, hadprotracted debates about banning marijuana andother drugs and about the possibility of adopting thepurest form of life. Insecticides and herbicides werebanished from the pastures and vegetable patcheswhere they built beehives, planted winter wheat, andtouted the virtues of organic farming. They also usedchain saws to trim and prune an apple orchard thatwas full of badly neglected Gravensteins. “Steve,”said Friedland, “became one of the apple people.”The fruit was pressed into cider and left out overnighton the stone porch where it turned into applejack.Jobs was so deeply wound up with his dietaryexperiments that, on occasion, he ate dinners that heforced himself to throw up. Years later he consideredthat the farm provided “a real lesson in communalliving. I spent one night sleeping under a table in thekitchen and in the middle of the night everybody camein an ripped off each other’s food from the fridge.”Jobs felt that he was becoming a cog in a ruralconglomerate and was a trifle disillusioned with hisfriend. “Robert walks a very fine line between being acharismatic leader and a con man.” Jobs was alsoupset with the general drift of life on All One Farm. “Itstarted to get very materialistic. Everybody got theidea they were working very hard for Robert’s farmand one by one started to leave. I got pretty sick of itand left.”

BUCKETS OF NOISEThe end of the Menlo Park cul-de-sac looked like asad used-car lot. Dented Volkswagen Beetles, sunbleachedvans and sagging Ford Pintos straddled theshoulders of the rough gravel road. The cars wereparked at angles, squeezed up against a wall of ivy,drawn alongside a driveway where a couple ofengines squatted on blocks, or left in front of anunpainted picket fence. Most of the drivers andpassengers had either heard about or spotted aninconspicuous handbill pinned to notice boards at theStanford University Computer Center, the BerkeleyComputer Science Department, and the Whole EarthTruck Store in Menlo Park. The poster, which carriedtwo headings: AMATEUR COMPUTER USERSGROUP AND HOMEBREW COMPUTER CLUB,fought for attention among appeals for roommatesand lost cats. But the questions printed belowprovided some clues: “Are you building your owncomputer? Terminal? TV Typewriter? I/O device? Orsome other digital black-magic box? Or are youbuying time on a time-sharing service?”Stephen Wozniak, Allen Baum, and thirty otherhardware engineers, computer programmers,technicians, and parts suppliers were sufficientlyintrigued by the notice to drive from Palo Alto, LosAltos, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, and San Jose upInterstates 280 and 101, or from Oakland andBerkeley across the Bay Bridge and through SanFrancisco, toward the shingled ranchhouse thatbelonged to Gordon French.In the mouse-gray twilight of March 5, 1975, Frenchand his friend Fred Moore were bustling about thegarage. A computer programmer in his late thirtieswith a speckled beard and strong spectacles, Frenchspent his days devising a record-keeping system forthe Social Security department in Sunnyvale. Moorehad a look of monkish austerity, with strands of thinbrown hair tied into a ponytail, a pinched nose, andplastic front teeth. The two carted some chairs fromthe house and arranged them in a semicircle, coveredthe oil drips on the concrete floor with newspapers,and set a tape recorder, a couple of plates ofcookies, and jugs of lemonade on a picnic tablebeside a door that led to a utility room.French and Moore were casualties ofdisappointment. Both had belonged to the People’sComputer Company, which was in the mid-seventiesone of the more prominent outposts for computerhobbyists along the San Francisco Peninsula. It hadbeen started by Robert Albrecht, an early apostle ofthe power of small computers, who wanted to helppeople, especially children, learn about computersand how to program in BASIC. The author of bookssuch as My Computer Likes Me and What to DoAfter You Hit Return, Albrecht’s main reason forstarting the People’s Computer Company (PCC) wasto publish a tabloid newspaper. The paper wascovered in doodles and drawings, poked fun atcomputers, and tried to remove the veils of mystery

that surrounded the subject.During the early seventies a small group of staffwriters gathered at the PCC offices for weekly potluckdinners where they chatted about technology andcomputers. When, toward the end of 1974, Albrechtdecided to stop the dinners and concentrate on hisnewspaper, Moore and French were left without thecompany of soulmates. To top things off, Moore felthe had been cheated out of the editor’s job at PCC;he complained that “Bob Albrecht wanted to be theChief Dragon of all alternative computer users” andsuggested to his friend that they call a meeting foranybody interested in small computers.For Moore the Homebrew Club was anotheralternative to add to the list of alternatives that he hadbeen advocating for most of his adult life. A Berkeleystudent at the end of the fifties, he had helped abolishcompulsory membership of the ROTC. In the midsixtieshe had gone on speaking tours for theCommittee for Nonviolent Action, visiting collegecampuses and criss-crossing America in a carloaded with placards and brochures. He had served atwo-year prison sentence for violating the selectiveservice law and had been a single parent at a timewhen the term was an oddity. After Vietnam hestarted delving into alternative economics. He thoughtof work as a gift and preached against conventionaleconomics, the value of money, the ownership of land,and toying with nature. He tried to build an InformationNetwork centered around Menlo Park’s Whole EarthTruck Store and stretching into the Peninsula towns.His byword was “Put your trust in people, not money,”and he insisted on using slogans like “Wealth is thesynergy of multi-interdependent relationships.”He maintained card catalogs listing people with anunusual reach of common interests. Along withconventional pastimes like auto repair, camping,theater, swimming, photography, and fishing, Moorealso listed beads, biofeedback, burial, domes,garbage, hardware conspiracies, plumbing,massage, looms, venereal disease, and yurts. Hisindex system listed phone numbers of peopleinterested in electronics and computers and Moorehimself had become familiar with the IBM 360 at theStanford Medical Center where some terminals weremade available to students and outsiders. For Moorethe makers of large computers—most notably IBM—were as worthy of suspicion as New York banks,government agencies, monetarists, and oil drillers. Sothe idea for a Homebrew Club was one expression ofbroader interests: “There was no reason forcomputers to be as expensive as IBM’s machines. Iwas just trying to promote the exchange of informationon microcomputers.”Moore’s kindly and woolly outlook was shared byothers who strolled into Gordon French’s garage. Onewas Lee Felsenstein who had grown up inPhiladelphia and dropped out of Berkeley during thesixties to work as a reporter on fringe broadsheetslike the Berkeley Barb and the Berkeley Tribe.Armed with a silvery tongue and quick mindFelsenstein had worked as an engineer at Ampex,had been rejected by Al Alcorn at Atari, and lived at

Resource One, a commune squatting in a resolutebuilding in San Francisco’s warehouse district. There,surrounded by loaves of banana bread and blockedsinks, he nursed an SDS 940, one of the moreadmired mainframe computers of the sixties.Felsenstein and others hoped that the obsoletecomputer, which had been inherited from the StanfordResearch Institute, would come to form the keystoneof what was called the Community Memory Project.He had written articles in periodicals like CoevolutionQuarterly explaining how computers were “convivialtools” that could furnish “secondary information” andlink people with common interests. By hookingterminals onto one large computer, Felsenstein andhis cohorts hoped they could start an electronicbulletin board. Felsenstein had a fissiparous vision: “Itcould be a grass-roots network. It could beeverywhere and nowhere.”Reality was far less grand and the electronicboundaries of Resource One extended only toTeletype machines installed at Leopold’s Recordsand the Whole Earth Access Store in Berkeley. At therecord store, musicians and others swappedinformation about concerts and trades. From time totime the Teletypes carried memorable questions like“Where could we find good bagels in the Bay Area?”which prompted the answer “An ex-bagel maker willteach you how to make bagels.” At one time the list ofitems for sale even included a pair of Nubian goats.Amusement aside, democratic impulses wererestrained by the limitations of the technology. It waseasier to make a telephone call, scan a notice boardor place a classified ad in a newspaper than it was touse the slow, clattering Teletypes. The CommunityMemory Project was one of those well-meaning ideasthat foundered because it was ahead of its time. Sofor Felsenstein, as for Fred Moore, computers were arefinement for some aspects of the undergroundpolitics of the sixties.Around the time of the first Homebrew Clubmeeting, Felsenstein was talking about capitalizingon some of the advances in electronics to help makelife easier for the sort of people who wanted to findNubian goats. He wanted to design a small machinethat he called The Tom Swift Terminal to replace thecumbersome Teletype machines. It was that preciseissue—the world being opened by enormousadvances in electronics—that formed the main topicof conversation in Gordon French’s garage.The scale of change was made apparent when onemember demonstrated a new computer called theAltair 8800. Hailed on the cover of the January 1975issue of Popular Electronics (“The World’s LargestSelling Electronics Magazine”) as a “ProjectBreakthrough” and the “World’s First MinicomputerKit to Rival Commercial Models,” the Altair kit sold for$375, was about the size of an orange crate, and hadsome switches and lights on a metal front panel. Thecomputer was made by MITS, a small companyheadquartered in Albuquerque whose initials, whichstood for Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry

Systems, revealed something of its original purpose.It had been started in 1969 to make and sell guidanceequipment for model rockets.The remarkable feature of the Altair was not themetal case, or the rows of switches and lights on thefront panel, or the enthusiasm of Popular Electronics,or that it came from Albuquerque. Rather, it was oneelectronic component that lay inside: a semiconductorchip mounted on a piece of inch-long black plasticand marked in tiny lettering INTEL 8080. The chip,which was no larger than the numbers 8080 as theyappear on this page, contained the centralprocessing unit of a computer and was the mostnotable example of what the semiconductorcompanies had taken to calling a microprocessor.The conceptual framework for the microprocessorcorresponded with the ideas that lay behind all digitalelectronic computers produced after World War II.The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer,IBM’s 1130, Varian’s 620i, Digital Equipment’s PDP-8 and Data General’s Nova all used the sameprinciples as the Intel 8080. The only difference wassize. The thirty-ton ENIAC with its eighteen thousandvacuum tubes was less powerful than the Intel 8080which, with its five thousand transistors, could beswallowed. The central processing units of computerslike the Data General Nova had been composed ofdozens of chips, each of which was designed toperform a limited task. Chips like the 8080approached the power of some of the earlyminicomputers but freed engineers from the tiresometask of ensuring solid connections along the hundredsof solder traces that ran between the chips.The 8080 was the third microprocessor producedby Intel, a semiconductor company founded in SantaClara in 1969, whose name was a contraction ofIntegrated Electronics. Intel’s first microprocessor, the4004, was part of a set of chips designed to control adesk-top calculator. Though the company hadadvertised the 4004 as introducing “a new era ofintegrated electronics,” its portentous content hadbeen difficult to appreciate. Under a microscope thepatterns on the 4004 looked like a busy suburbanroad map. Yet the microprocessor, dozens of whichwere etched on a single wafer of silicon, were a moresignificant advance in the techniques of massproduction than Henry Ford’s moving assembly line.The infinite flexibility of the microprocessor, whichcould be programmed to perform any number oftasks, had been accompanied by similarly prodigiousadvances in another area of semiconductortechnology—memory chips. Computer programs,composed of millions of 1s and 0s that had, until thelate sixties, been stored in bulky core memories couldnow be stored on chips. This made it cheaper andeasier to write programs. Microprocessors could beconnected to two sorts of memory chip. They couldread programs stored on chips called ROMs and theycould read and change programs written on a morecomplicated chip called a RAM. Because themicroprocessor could be programmed to performdozens of tasks, it reduced the cost of anything thatrequired mechanical parts while simultaneously

increasing its value.The Homebrew Club members were,understandably, more interested in the practicalapplications of microprocessors than in the history ofmass production. Most of them knew about a smallcomputer kit, the Mark 8, that had been built aroundIntel’s second microprocessor, the 8008. Thatmicroprocessor had prompted a Southern Californiaschoolteacher to publish the “Micro-8 Newsletter”whose primary purpose was to keep hobbyistsabreast of programs written for the 8008. But by thespring of 1975 the 8080 had become the center ofinterest. It was twenty times as powerful as the 4004and could handle eight bits (rather than four bits) at atime. Unlike the 8008 which needed about twentyother chips to make it useful, the 8080 could managewith six peripheral chips. It could also be hooked to65K bytes of memory compared to the 4K bytes ofthe 4004.One of the Homebrew members revealed that hehad driven all the way from California to New Mexicojust to take delivery of his Altair. But the computer thatwas eyed with curiosity in French’s garage didn’t domuch: It sat on the table with its lights flashing. Evenfor diehard tinkerers and hobbyists the Altair was adaunting proposition. The basic computer neededattachments like a Teletype machine or a televisionscreen, extra boards of memory chips, and programsbefore it would do anything dimly amusing. Thoseattachments pushed the price toward $3,000.Meanwhile, the owner needed enough patience andskill to plow through pages of arcane instructions, sortcomponents from plastic bags, test the chips, wield asoldering iron, and deal with problems like a chunkypower supply that was prone to overheat.At the first Homebrew meeting the members spentsome time speculating on what microcomputersmight be used for. They seemed to recognize—albeitby instinct rather than science—the implications ofgiving computing power to individuals. Someventured that microcomputers would be used for textediting and by businesses. Others thought they couldbe used to control heating systems, automobileengines, burglar alarms and lawn sprinklers, playgames, make music, control small robots and, ofcourse, form neighborhood memory networks. Theircloudy crystal balls revealed more spirited visionsthan those of the semiconductor companies. There,most of the professional marketing men believed thatmicrocomputers would be used to control machineslike engines, elevators, and domestic appliances.When he compiled the first Homebrew newsletter,Fred Moore had to resort to the implacable foe.Typed on an IBM composer during the middle of thenight at the Whole Earth Truck Store, the two-pageletter contained a summary of the first meeting whichMoore believed revealed “a spontaneous spirit ofsharing.” Moore also included the addresses andinterests of the club’s first members. The newsletterdisclosed that Stephen Wozniak liked “video games,pay movies for hotels, scientific calculator design, TVterminal design.”

Whether because of Moore’s newsletter, the arrivalof the Altair, or the huge advances in semiconductordesign, the Homebrew Club grew like a chain letter ora pyramid club. Within eight months the membershiphad risen to about three hundred, and for a time, theHomebrew members became a band of vagrantsholding their fortnightly meetings in schoolrooms or atStanford’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.As the club grew it attracted all sorts from all thetowns up and down the Peninsula. Most werehobbyists and tinkerers like Wozniak or the phonephreak John Draper. Some, like Adam Osborne, atall, dark-haired man with a British accent, hadcommercial reasons for attending: From a cardboardbox, Osborne fished copies of his book aboutmicrocomputers and sold them to club members.Others came from the electronics companies, theStanford Research Institute, the Stanford UniversityArtificial Intelligence Laboratory, and the FreeUniversity of Palo Alto, an institution that offeredcourses in astrology, Zen, and nonviolence. However,many of the faculty from nearby universities andcolleges and most of the engineers at thesemiconductor and electronics companies viewedmicrocomputers as playthings. The Homebrew Clubhad an appeal for those with a shallow pocket and apractical rather than a theoretical bent, which leftmembers like Allen Baum disappointed. “I got realbored pretty soon.”When it became clear that there was a swollen,permanent band of fellow travelers, the HomebrewClub’s meetings were held in a large, steeply slopingauditorium at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.Though some members suggested the club be calledEight-Bit Byte Bangers, Midget Brains, or the SteamBeer Computer Group, the name Homebrew stuck.The tone of the meetings was heavily influenced bythe first evening in Gordon French’s garage. Therewere no quorums, formal dues, or wrangling overelections of officers. The Homebrew Club developedits own ritual and, like a bazaar, became a fulcrum fordisplay, barter, and rumor. The meetings weredivided into “random access periods” and “mappingperiods” where people with common interests couldget together. The fortnightly gatherings providedincentive, deadlines, criticism, village-pump gossip,and for Wozniak, “the Homebrew meetings were themost important thing in my life.”New parts selling at bargain prices also had a wayof appearing at the Homebrew Club. StanfordUniversity, anxious to preserve its reputation, bannedany trading on the campus, but that only mademembers like Marty Spergel seek other spots.Spergel became the most notorious hub for sales andalways drove an automobile whose trunk wascrammed with electronic parts. He had a thickBrooklyn accent, wore three-piece suits, had a throatylaugh and sharp eyes, and lived in a Sunnyvalemobile-home park earning money by assembling kitsfor microcomputers built around the Intel 8008. Hedarted about in a gray realm where a busy telephone

provided connections to distributors, salesrepresentatives, and offshore manufacturers, and hetook pride in what he called “global logistics.” He toldclub members that he would be able to find, within fivebusiness days, any semiconductor, connector, cable,or whatever obscure electronic device they mightneed.Some of the parts imported from the Orient ranbeneath the eyes of curious Customs inspectors. Onecarton, described on the accompanying bill of ladingas “joysticks,” was held until Spergel could prove thatthey were game paddles and not sex devices.Spergel and others traded in the Stanford parking lotsuntil the security guards got wind of what washappening. Eventually they retired to the shadows andsafety of an empty parking lot at a nearby Shell gasstation.Between meetings the club’s newsletter, whichwithin a year had a circulation of six hundred, keptmembers abreast of affairs. It included a summary ofthe previous meeting, applauded the appearance ofinteresting devices, published a calendar of electronictrade shows, announced the publication of usefularticles, and also provided a steady stream ofpractical advice. It explained, for example, howtypewriter keyboards could be built from plasticswitches which could then be sprayed with Krylonpaint (“Enamel takes longer to dry”) and decoratedwith lettering from a stationery store. It consistentlypublished pleas for more software and its guides tothe stock at local electronics stores was given in ashorthand that only the enthusiast could unravel:“Socket kit, IC kit, transistor kit, diode kit, baud rategenerator, trim pots, 2.4576 crystal, tantalumcapacitors.”The newsletter also contained hints of widerinterest and almost from the start showed signs thatMoore’s lifelong dreams about grass-roots networkshad at last come true. Just as that happened, Moorewas forced to leave the club because of maritaltroubles. When similar clubs started in Boston or SanDiego or even in British Columbia, word soonappeared in the fortnightly bulletin. The Homebrewletter even carried lonely pleas from overseas.Salvatore di Franco wrote from Biccari, Italy: “Since inItaly there are no magazines, no books, no datawhere I could get the information and the know-how Ineed, that is the main reason for joining your club.”And F. J. Pretorious sent a letter from Sasolburg,South Africa, noting the local state of affairs: “It isquite discouraging that no circuits are available on8008 or 8080 microprocessors.”But most of all the Homebrew Club provided anaudience for a group of lonely hearts like Wozniakwhose primary interest in life was something thatmost people couldn’t understand. And though, in lateryears, the club was fondly remembered as a movablescience fair where like-minded souls gathered toshare their secrets, display their machines, anddistribute schematics—rather like older versions ofschool science fairs—it was also a skeptical, criticalforum where sloppy designs would be savaged as “abucket of noise.” Despite Fred Moore’s milky

intentions, the brightest members of the HomebrewClub liked to work by themselves and Lee Felsensteinrecalled the dominant tone: “We were all watching tosee if someone else was infringing on our specialty orour little twist. It was difficult to get people together towork on the same thing. We all just had great planswith no one else to listen to but other people with theirown great plans.”“Johnny Carson wouldn’t be bad,”Jobs said.In the Valley of Superlatives dreaming up a freshslogan for a new computer was a tricky business. Formonths the marketing managers at Mac had beenscratching their heads trying to come up with amemorable phrase or line that would capture theircomputer’s virtues. At one time or another, dependingon the shape, mood, and ingenuity of the speaker,Mac had been referred to as The Next Apple II, TheInterface for the Eighties, The Crankless Computer,The Crankless Volkswagen, or The CranklessMercedes. As a company, Apple had exhaustedvariations on the theme of the personal computer. Ithad annexed the definite article to describe the AppleII as The Personal Computer and shortly afterwardannounced (mustering a magnificently straight face)that it had actually invented the personal computer.Competitors had countered with similarbraggadocio. Digital Equipment Corporation’sadvertisements read “We change the way the worldthinks,” Radio Shack was calling itself “The biggestname in little computers” and the founder of OsborneComputer Corporation, before his company wentbankrupt, compared himself to Henry Ford. As theslogan race escalated, Apple had launched multipleadjectives describing its best-selling machine as “themost personal computer,” a slogan that had spawneda mordant joke that Mac would simply become “themost most personal computer.”Partly to avoid lame tag lines, Marcia Klein, head ofthe Apple account at the Regis McKenna PublicRelations Agency, arrived at the Mac building onemorning to have a chat with Mike Murray. She wantedto bat around some ideas for a slogan but alsowanted to start preparing for encounters with thepress. Dressed in an olive suit and firehouse-redlipstick, Klein brought a touch of plate-glass fashion tothe Mac conference room where Murray waited inslacks, a blue sports shirt, and boating shoes.After they had disposed of the amenities, Murraysaid, “Down the road we want people to think thatwhen they’re hired in a new job they find pencils, awastepaper basket, and a Mac. But that’s impossibleto do off the bat. I’m trying to make a case that there’sa giant need for an appliance in the office. I’m prettyadamant about the appliance notion.”Klein listened and asked how Mac would fit inamong Apple’s other computers. “When somebodyasks us about the Apple II or the Apple III, what are we

going to say?”“We don’t know what we’re going to say about theApple III,” Murray admitted. “It’s something that justhasn’t been worked out. It’s a cop-out. We’ve got tobe crystal clear about the future of the products. Wecannot be really milquetoasty. People are hoping thatmaybe the Apple III will just go away.”Klein summed up her aim: “We’re trying to conveythe impression that the company has a generalmarketing plan, that there’s overall corporatepositioning and that what we say when we introduceLisa will be consistent with what we say when weintroduce Mac.”Murray sighed. “A lot of people tend to ignore usbecause it’s a real messy problem. Other peopledon’t realize the gravity of the problem.”Klein began to explain to Murray how to cope withjournalists. “The press prefer to have you talk to them.They prefer not to have a sales pitch with lights andmirrors. You don’t need anything as polished asslides. You just don’t need to be slick.”“It’s hard to say Mac is warm and cuddly,” Murraysaid. “They’ll have to put their arms around it and sayit’s warm and cuddly.”“We’d like to come up with a phrase for all ofsociety,” Klein said.“Like desk appliance,” Murray said hopefully.“We’ve got to come up with new language,” Kleinsaid. “An appliance is old language. An appliance issomething you buy at K-Mart. An appliance is boringand functional. It loses personality.”“I don’t want to call it a desk-tool,” Murray said.Klein fiddled with a pen. “You need something likethat for ads but you have the luxury when you’redealing with the press of being able to talk inparagraphs. You don’t have to use just two words. Thepress is increasingly sophisticated but the audienceisn’t necessarily so. The whole point of talking to thepress is to educate them so they can educate theirreaders. For each publication you change a little bit ofwhat you’ve got to say. Each publication looks a bitdifferent and will ask different things. Business Weekwill want something different from Time.”’The door opened and Steve Jobs, lookingdisheveled and grumpy, strolled in, flopped into achair, and slung his feet onto the table. He wasdressed in jeans, argyle socks, a navy shirt, andloafers. Somebody had just told him that an MITprofessor had been describing the features of Lisaand Mac on a Cable News Network program. Jobswas annoyed and turned to Klein. “I bet it was MarvinMinsky. That’s the only person it could be. Get a tapeand if it was Minsky I want to string him up by histoenails.”Murray and Klein continued to debate variousapproaches for the press until Jobs cut them short.“We ought to decide what we want and then start tocultivate something because I’ve got a feeling we’llget what we want.” He continued, “What we need is acover of Time or Newsweek. I can see the cover as ashot of the whole Mac team. We’ve got a better shotat Newsweek than Time,” he predicted. “We had lunchwith the president of Newsweek and a bunch of

editors in some room at the top of the building andthey stayed and talked for a couple of hours afterlunch. It just went on and on. Technology.Reindustrialization. All that stuff.” He nodded tohimself. “They’ll really go for that. ‘New computersfrom hi-tech kids’ and all that.”“I can see the story now,” Murray said. “It will have adozen pictures inside with little bios underneath.”“Then we could do with an hour long TV special withCavett interviewing Burrell and Andy,” Jobs said.“We need something more popular than that,” Kleinobjected.“Johnny Carson or something like that,” Murraysuggested.“Johnny Carson wouldn’t be bad,” Jobs said.“What about that British guy who did the Nixoninterviews?” Murray asked.“Once it starts to happen, it snowballs,” Jobs said. “Ican see People magazine coming down and puttingAndy Hertzfeld on the cover. We can create a minifamefor each of these people. It’ll be a gas. We’llhave stories that say ‘Here’s the guy that designed it,’‘Here’s the factory that built it.’ People will just keephearing all about it. We’ve got to get a lot of freeeditorial.”Jobs spotted a dummy advert lying on the table.“Ooooh, I like that,” he said in a softer voice. “Ooooh,that would be hot.” He read the slogan: “APPLECOMPUTER DOES IT AGAIN. I like that. That’s reallyhot.”“It’d be a nice cover for Newsweek” Murrayvolunteered.“It would be nice for Byte” Jobs countered as hismood improved. “It’s look so different from IBM.”“Its too classy for Byte,” Klein objected.“It’d be great for Newsweek,” Jobs agreed. “They’dsell millions of them.”The conversation returned to the problems ofcreating an image for a computer. Jobs sighed, “Youknow the closest thing has been Charlie Chaplin. IBMhas really given their computer personality.” Hepaused. “I’ve got this idea for an ad. We’ll have a sortof spastic Charlie Chaplin but he’s constructed sohe’s not real funny and we could do it because IBMcannot trademark Charlie Chaplin. Then Mac Mandrifts in and scrunches Chaplin, or walks all over him,or comes out in front of him and shoots arrows at himfrom inside his coat.” He paused for dramatic effect.“Then it says, ‘Charlie Chaplin meets Mr. Mac.’”Murray and Klein smiled and said nothing. Jobscontinued, “We need ads that hit you in the face.They’ve got to have visually high bandwidth. We havean opportunity to do an ad that doesn’t talk aboutproduct. It’s like we’re so good we don’t have to showphotographs of computers.”“In advertising,” Murray said as Jobs finished, “wesay it goes without saying and then we go ahead andsay it.”“We don’t stand a chance advertising with featuresand benefits and with RAMs and with charts andcomparisons,” Jobs said. “The only chance we haveof communicating is with a feeling.”

“It’s got to be like a Sony Walkman or a Cuisinart.It’s got to be a cult product,” Murray said.Jobs frowned. “Yeah, we say, ‘It’s a cult,’ and thenwe say, ‘Hey, drink this Kool-Aid.’” He strolled towardthe door and said, “We want to create an imagepeople will never forget. We’ve got to build it andwe’ve got to build it early.”Murray was struck by a thought, looked at Jobs,and said hopefully, “The personal computer that givesyou personality.”Jobs ignored the suggestion, stopped andexamined some photographs hanging on the wall thatshowed children and students using Mac computers.“Maybe if we give these photographs to the pressthey’d print them.” He turned to Klein. “Don’t you thinkthey’d run something like this?”“The San Jose Mercury might,” Klein said.

STANLEY ZEBER ZENSKANITSKYAlex Kamradt was one of life’s eternal optimists.He was tall, broad but not stout, and had a round faceand a head of thick, black, curly hair. He often lookedbeleaguered or earnestly confused and was thePickwickian founder of Call Computer, a house-sizedcompany, that he ran from a higgledly-piggedly officein Mountain View. The corporate epicenter was awooden, rolltop desk piled with papers, magazines,computer printouts, calling cards, pens, and pencils.The desk was surrounded by Teletypes, grubby limewalls, a dining table, some stern, straight-backedchairs, and bookshelves stacked with hefty, looseleafbinders.A one-time physicist at Lockheed, Kamradt hadbecome interested in computers while trying to writeprograms to solve scientific calculations. He sold ahome, bought a minicomputer with part of theproceeds, and planned to use it to keep tabs on localreal-estate deals. Instead he found himself renting outtime on the computer to small companies along theSan Francisco Peninsula. Together with a few highschoolstudents he started to write programs thathelped small businesses manage their accountspayable, accounts receivable, and inventories. Hisclients hooked into the computer by Teletype in thesame way that Berkeley’s barterers linked up withResource One’s Community Memory Project.But Kamradt sensed that the arrival of themicroprocessor could change the scope of CallComputer. He wanted to rent or sell his customers amore convenient terminal with a typewriter keyboardthat could be connected to a television. He began toattend meetings of the Homebrew Club with thespecific intention of finding someone to design histerminal. “I started asking people who was thesharpest engineer and they said Wozniak.”In mid-1975 Kamradt and Wozniak formed asubsidiary of Call Computer that they namedComputer Conversor. Kamradt provided around$12,000 in start-up money and took 70 percent of thecompany while Wozniak was given 30 percent and afree account on the minicomputer. Though thearrangement was casual, Wozniak promised toproduce a design for a terminal that would, as thecompany’s name implied, converse with anothercomputer. Kamradt saw the terminal as part of agrander scheme. “I wanted to have a computerterminal to sell and to rent. I knew that the first stagewas to make a terminal and then gradually add morememory and turn it into a computer. Wozniak and Ihad an agreement that we were going to build aterminal then a computer.”Wozniak had a practical reason for designing theterminal. He had enviously eyed a similar machinethat phone phreak John Draper had installed in thebasement of his Los Altos home. It added an extradimension to phone phreaking. Hooked to atelephone, the terminal let Draper delve in and out ofARPANET, a computer network financed by the

federal government to link universities and researchestablishments. Armed with a few telephone numbersand the proper access codes, outsiders like Drapercould connect to computers all over the United States,and some of these provided gateways to computersat European universities. Students and computerhobbyists nosed about the ARPANET files, leftelectronic messages for one another on informalbulletin boards, and sometimes devised ways oferasing records on distant computers.Wozniak used the machine he had built to playPong as a basis for the Computer Conversorterminal. Both he and Kamradt felt thatmicroprocessors were too expensive, and so from theoutset the terminal was not supposed to be muchmore than a television-typewriter. The finishedterminal allowed a user to type text on a televisionscreen and ran slightly faster than an ordinaryTeletype. It also had a couple of rubber muffs whichslipped around a telephone receiver and allowedinformation to travel between the terminal andKamradt’s minicomputer.Wozniak managed to tame the quirks in hisprototype and found it reliable enough to use onARPANET. “It was pretty easy to figure out how tojump around from computer to computer.” Though theterminal was satisfactory for Wozniak, the prototypepresented Kamradt with a problem. “It was useful toWozniak so he considered it finished. He could fixwhat was wrong. Nobody else could. The genius isnothing unless you can get it out of him. I couldn’t. Hewas hard to reach and didn’t want to build acompany.”Wozniak felt that his primary responsibility lay withhis full-time work. After a year of phone phreaking atBerkeley, he had left the university and had spent sixmonths working on the assembly line at Electroglass,a company that supplied equipment to semiconductormanufacturers. He never considered going to work forhis father’s employer, Lockheed, which had lost therighteous glow it had acquired during the late fifties. Inpart Lockheed was a victim of fashion, and at the endof the sixties much of its work was seen in a sinisterlight rather than in the patriotic glow that had shonearound any company working to protect Americansagainst scores of Sputniks. Lockheed was closelylinked to the imbroglio in Southeast Asia, wassuffering from the winding down of the spaceprogram, was tangled in bribery scandals, was thetarget of congressional committees investigating costoverruns on government contracts, and had receiveda federal bailout.Life at Lockheed had acquired an antique ring. Thecorporate vocabulary was studded with the lingo ofthe industrial crescent and there was much talk of“mandates,” “mass meetings,” and “thornynoneconomic issues.” More important, the generationthat had grown up in the curve of Lockheed’s satellitedishes was now dubious about the technicalcompetence of the people who left their cars in theherringbone parking lots. They thought Lockheedscientists were more like civil servants than electricalengineers. Al Alcorn at Atari formed his impressions.

“Lockheed engineers were notorious for having nobreadth. They could design an aileron on a missile butthey couldn’t change a light bulb.” Stephen Wozniakaccepted all the stereotypes and, like so many others,looked for work in the dozens of smaller electroniccompanies that had flourished while Lockheed aged.“I didn’t want to drink a lot. The standard picture of theLockheed engineer was that he drank or beat hiswife.”One of the companies that had grown whileLockheed had been covered in odium was Hewlett-Packard, and its engineers had gained their ownreputation. They were younger than the Lockheedmen, many had doctorates, and they had theadvantage of working for a company that had its rootsin the area rather than in some distant city. Hewlett-Packard had been started by some Stanford studentsin the Palo Alto garage just before World War II, andthough the founders had become wealthy (and one ofthem Deputy Secretary of Defense), their underlingsstill called them Bill and Dave. In the late sixties andearly seventies Hewlett-Packard was a steadycorporate pillar on the Peninsula and had gained aformidable reputation for producing reliable laboratoryinstruments, computers, and calculators. It wascertainly as respectable as Lockheed had been adecade before but, because of its youth, stockoptions, and size, Hewlett-Packard had a sprightlieredge.Allen Baum was one of the bright young universitygraduates snared by Hewlett-Packard recruiters, andhe immediately suggested that the company interviewan older friend who designed computers, StephenWozniak. So when, in 1973, Hewlett-Packard offeredWozniak a job as an associate engineer in itsAdvanced Products Division, he jumped at thechance. The division made pocket calculators, whichfor Hewlett-Packard—with its traditional affinity forhigh-quality, low-volume electronic equipment—was abold departure. The success brought by the arrival in1972 of the HP 35, the first desk-top calculator topack the punch of a slide rule, brought a blush to theentire division. For a time it was a whizzy place towork, and as competitors slashed the prices of theircalculators, Hewlett-Packard concentrated on addingfeatures to the HP 35 and giving them model numberslike HP 45 and HP 60. Six months after joining thecompany Wozniak was given his epaulettes andbecame a full-blown engineer. He, in turn, managed topersuade HP to hire his neighborhood chum BillFernandez as a lab technician.Wozniak found the world of calculators and theproblems they presented far removed from hisexploits with minicomputers. He was assigned towork on a project to make refinements to the HP 35and suffered the fate of many engineers who work forlarge companies when, after eighteen months ofeffort, the project was canceled. Myron Tuttle, anengineer who worked with Wozniak on the project thatwas code-named Road Runner, recalled, “I don’t thinkanyone in the lab was thought of as exceptional.Wozniak was one of the few people without degrees.

He didn’t stand out. He was nothing out of theordinary. He was a competent engineer.” Wozniakwas intrigued by rumors of a hand-held terminal forthe handicapped that was being designed in thecompany’s research laboratories; he applied for atransfer but was turned down. “They decided I didn’thave enough education.”Aside from the repeated comments about his thinformal training, Wozniak enjoyed the way Hewlett-Packard allowed his mind to wander. He liked thedoughnuts and coffee trundled around on a cart everymorning, the regular paychecks, the attention paid toengineers (which included leave to appeal to thepresident if faced with dismissal), the manner in whichthe company enforced across-the-board salary cutsrather than resorting to layoffs, and the stock roomsthat were open territory for engineers working on theirown projects. From stock-room parts, Wozniak builtAllen Baum an HP 45, converted Elmer Baum’s HP35 into an HP 45 (and attached a company label thatgave warranty information in Japanese), worked out away of solving square roots on the less powerful HP35, and also challenged Fernandez to see who was“the fastest square root in the West.”While he worked at Hewlett-Packard Wozniak tooklunchtime jaunts in light aircraft that belonged to hisworkmates. He conducted an eccentric private lifefrom an apartment in Cupertino that resembled abachelor’s version of the Bronx Zoo. Pet miceroamed around the calculator and computer manuals,and there were boxes filled with videotape playersthat a group of HP engineers had bought in bulk. Theone substantial piece of furniture was a sofa thatcould be converted into a pool table, while thebedroom was furnished with a mattress and the sinkwas usually piled with dirty dishes. Apart from a fancystereo system the center of Wozniak’s existence wasstill the telephone. He appropriated a used phonenumber for what he boasted was the Bay Area’s firstdial-a-joke. Each day he recorded a new message onhis answering machine selecting most of them from abook of two thousand Polish jokes along the lines of“When did the Polack die drinking milk? When thecow sat down.” Sometimes, after returning from work,Wozniak answered the phone, introduced himself asStanley Zeber Zenskanitsky, and read jokes. Afterreceiving angry letters from the Polish AmericanCongress, he switched countries and made Italiansthe butt of his humor, though he still used the sameaccent and continued to introduce himself as Stanley.When Pacific Telephone’s answering machinebroke under the strain, Wozniak rigged up his ownand asked callers to ring the phone company andcomplain about the tardy service. The phonecompany, monitoring the heavy traffic and pesteredby a local store that had the misfortune of having anumber similar to Wozniak’s finally gave him one ofthe lines from “the radio station bank” that werereserved for heavy use. One of the callers was AliceRobertson, a plump San Jose high-school studentwith long hair, wide eyes and a hefty laugh. Wozniakanswered her call, chatted for a couple of minutes,abruptly announced, “I can hang up faster than you

can,” and slammed down the receiver. That peculiarexchange marked the start of a nervous series of callsthat eventually culminated in a date.As he embarked on his first major amorousadventure, Wozniak also had to contend with naggingobligations to Alex Kamradt and ComputerConversor. Kamradt had engaged several otherengineers who spent months trying to unravelWozniak’s design. To help turn a prototype and someschematics into a product, Kamradt looked to theperson who had accompanied Wozniak on several ofhis trips to Computer Conversor, Steven Jobs.According to Kamradt, Jobs promised to takecharge of guiding production on the terminal in returnfor salary and stock. Kamradt recalled, “He resentedme having money. He was somewhat unscrupulousand he wanted to get as much as he could, but I likedhis assertiveness.” Wozniak, who scarcely visited CallComputer’s one-room headquarters, was unaware ofthe scope of Jobs’s interest. “Steve listened to Alex.He was very attentive. He listened to what Alex said aterminal could do for his business.”For several months Jobs worked with Robert Way,the head of a small engineering company thatprovided design services for electronic companies.Jobs monitored the layout of the printed circuit boardand the design of a vacu-form case. Together withWay he drew up a bill of materials and a partsnumbering system and also acquired a license fromAtari for a video circuit that would hook the terminal toa television. Way found Jobs a hard taskmaster.“Nothing was ever good enough for him. He was therejector.” Way also observed the division ofresponsibilities. “Every check I ever received wassigned by Kamradt. The responsibility for seeing thedesign got done was Jobs’s.” After some monthsWay, bemused by Kamradt’s perennial optimism,threw up his hands and ducked out of the project.“They were the weirdest group of people I ever met inmy life.”While Kamradt worried whether he would ever getthe terminal to work, Wozniak, stimulated by theHomebrew meetings, was working on his owncomputer. He subjected some of the newmicroprocessors to minute inspection and quicklyfound out that they hadn’t changed the essence of acomputer. “I was surprised that they were like theminicomputers I had been used to.” Thoughmicroprocessors hadn’t changed the nature of theenterprise, diehards still looked to the earlymainframes, when computer design was attacked bylarge teams, and hailed them as the grand old dayswhen men were men. Yet even in the forties and fiftiesthe challenge facing engineers was one of minimaldesign—though they were trying to limit the size of acomputer to a room.For microcomputer designers like Wozniak, thechallenge was still to squeeze the maximumperformance out of the minimum number of parts. Acompact machine not only kept the cost down but wasalso the source of substantial pride. The size of thenew components, the fact that a computer could be

squeezed into a case the size of a bread box ratherthan manhandled into an office building, also made itpossible for one person to exercise control over anentire machine. “In microcomputer design,” one of theHomebrew regulars remarked, “you could expressyourself in a way that hadn’t been possible in theentire history of electronic computing.”Microprocessors did, however, bring a change offocus. With a computer’s central processing unitreduced to a chip, engineers like Wozniak and Baumfelt that some of the broader issues of computerdesign had evaporated. Instead, they were forced tofocus on the best ways of linking the computer on achip to a board of memory chips, to a televisionscreen or printer, and to a typewriter keyboard. Thedata sheets accompanying the microprocessorsprescribed the rules that bounded the microcomputerdesigner and left some of the purists feelinghamstrung. Allen Baum complained, “You’re stuckwith what you have and you’ve got to make it workright. If something doesn’t work right, you cannotredesign it. It’s a lot less fun.”If the problems of size had been eliminated, costwas still an issue for threadbare engineers. In 1975microprocessors like Intel’s 8080 were selling for$179 and Wozniak couldn’t afford them. Baum heardthat Hewlett-Packard’s Colorado division wasexperimenting with the Motorola 6800, amicroprocessor introduced about a year after the Intel8080, which along with a few accessory chips wasbeing offered to employees at a steep discount.Wozniak placed his order while his workmate MyronTuttle scampered out to buy a technical manual thatexplained the intricacies of the chip. The choice ofmicroprocessor was the most important decision thata computer hobbyist could make. It became thecause of frustration and exasperation, the source ofpleasure and satisfaction, and also shaped the slantof his entire machine. Wozniak’s choice ofmicroprocessor ran counter to fashion in the summerof 1975.That summer at the Homebrew Club the Intel 8080formed the center of the universe. The Altair was builtaround the 8080 and its early popularity spawned acottage industry of small companies that either mademachines that would run programs written for theAltair or made attachments that would plug into thecomputer. The private peculiarities ofmicroprocessors meant that a program or devicedesigned for one would not work on another. Thejunction of these peripheral devices for the Altair wasknown as the S-100 bus because it used one hundredsignal lines. Disciples of the 8080 formed religiousattachments to the 8080 and S-100 even though theyreadily admitted that the latter was poorly designed.The people who wrote programs or built peripheralsfor 8080 computers thought that later, competingmicroprocessors were doomed. The sheer weight ofthe programs and the choice of peripherals, so theargument went, would make it more useful to moreusers and more profitable for more companies. The

most popular language on the Altair and the 8080microprocessor. “At the club all we talked wasBASIC. I had a chance to have the first BASIC for the6502. I wanted to demo the machine quickly.”Wozniak made every technical decision to satisfyhis own interests and made an art of the homily“Adequacy is sufficient.” The deadlines, pressure, andspur were imposed by the fortnightly Homebrewmeetings and also by the prospect of his wedding toAlice Robertson. After some weeks of dithering,Wozniak had finally decided to get engaged aftertossing three dimes in the air and waiting until they alllanded heads up. As he started on the software healso developed asthma and wheezed loud enough forthe neighbors to hear through the flimsy plasterboardwalls. Frightened that fluid would fill his lungs while heslept, Wozniak took to writing programming code untilthe small hours.Wozniak found writing software a more arduousexercise than designing hardware. The shape andstyle of his first major piece of software were dictatedby necessity. He spent several weeks studying thegrammatical rules for BASIC and found they weresimilar to the rules for FORTRAN with which he wasfamiliar. Faced with a choice between two versions ofBASIC, Wozniak chose the simpler. He wrote theprograms in pencil on paper and a colleague atHewlett-Packard wrote a program that simulated thebehavior of the 6502 and which ran on a Hewlett-Packard minicomputer. The Hewlett-Packardcomputer was used to test some of Wozniak’sprograms. Wozniak conceded, “Fortunately I’d spenta lot of time in my math classes not doing math buttrying to write compilers in assembly language when Ididn’t have a machine. I had gone off in directionswhich I had no way of knowing whether they weregood or bad.”After he completed the code, he set aboutdesigning a computer and reverted to the schematicshe had drawn for Motorola’s 6800 microprocessor.He compared the features of the 6800 with the MOSTechnology 6502 and its slightly cheaper brother, the6501. Wozniak found that with a couple of alterationsto some of the electronic signals that affected thechips’ timing, his previous design needed noalteration—“I didn’t have to change a single wire orpin on my design.”He used some of the techniques he had used indesigning the Computer Conversor terminal to makesignificant advances over earlier designs like theCream Soda Computer. The most significantdifference was, of course, the inclusion of themicroprocessor. But there were other advances thatalso helped to make the computer easier to use.Instead of using switches to toggle instructions to thecomputer, Wozniak attached a typewriter keyboard.He also used some chips called PROMS(programmable read only memories), which storedinstructions that previously had to be entered into thecomputer every time it was switched on.He was precise about the way in which the chips forhis computer should be laid out on the bread board.

He spent hours working out where the chips should beplaced before plugging the sockets, the cradles forthe semiconductors, into the board. Wozniak wasmore meticulous than most engineers when it came tomaking the wire connections between thesemiconductor pins. He disliked the popular “wirewrapping,”which tended to wreath boards in aspaghetti jungle of wires, and favored “point-to-point”wiring, which required laboriously snipping andsoldering lengths of wire between pins. The fastidiousapproach paid off when it came to troubleshootingand made it far easier to find troublesome pins andspot faulty connections.Wozniak’s private interests consumed more andmore of his time. He carted his prototype to work andspent much of his time at the lab bench making furtherrefinements. Especially after Hewlett-Packardannounced that the calculator division would bemoved to Oregon, Tuttle said, “We spent half our timeworking on our pet projects.” Tuttle had also bought a6502 and was also burning the midnight oil, taking hisprototype home and trying another approach. Withtheir prototypes built, Tuttle, Wozniak, and anothercolleague approached their lab manager to suggestthat Hewlett-Packard consider makingmicrocomputers. Tuttle recalled, “It was one of thoseinformal meetings. It wasn’t a big deal. We just sort ofasked for five minutes and showed Woz’s board. Wewere told, ‘HP doesn’t want to be in that kind of amarket.’”When Wozniak took his unnamed computer to theHomebrew Club it received another cool reception.That wasn’t surprising since a poll at one of the club’smeetings in October 1975 showed that of the thirtyeightcomputers belonging to members, twenty-fivewere either Altairs or used an 8080 while only oneused a 6502. Wozniak hooked his computer to ablack-and-white television, connected a board of 4Kbytes of memory chips that Myron Tuttle had lent him,and patiently typed in the BASIC. There was a certainamount of surprise that BASIC would run on amachine with so few chips, but most of the clubmembers didn’t even bother to inspect the computer.Wozniak passed out schematics to the few who wereinterested and later put his new machine inperspective. “It wasn’t as difficult as some of the othercomputers I had designed.”“The time to completion is aconstant,” Andy Hertzfeld said.The warm Sunday afternoon gloom pushed againstthe glass doors at the rear of the Mac laboratory. Theair conditioning, which vibrated through the speckledceiling tiles on weekdays, was turned off. The stuffydarkness was sliced in two places. A gentle lightballooned out of Andy Hertzfeld’s programmingcubicle and a cube of cold neon lit an engineer’sbench where Burrell Smith was gnawing the skin ofhis knuckles. Hertzfeld slipped out of his cubicle and

walked to the bench where Smith slid off his lab stool.Both stood lower than the head-light partitions thatseparated all the offices. They stared at a printedcircuit board which, festooned with probes and wires,looked like a stomach pried apart with sutures,retractors, and hemostats. The probes were hookedto a logic analyzer and the rows of lines on its greenscreen monitored the signals emerging from themicroprocessor.Smith hadn’t gone home the previous day until11:30 P.M. and then had stayed up until 3 A.M.thinking about why the Mac’s memory chips were notbeing recharged properly. Neither he nor Hertzfeldhad worked on one project for quite as long before.The fatigue of designing a computer was printed onthe pair and both were working harder than they hadever worked. Smith was twenty-six and Hertzfeldtwenty-nine though both looked older. Behind hisspectacles, Hertzfeld’s eyelids looked like swollenleeches while his cheeks were unshaven and pale.The pallid circles around Smith’s eyes bore the marksof late evenings. The same slack belts of fast foodwere strapped to their waists. Hertzfeld had found thatdeveloping a computer distorted time. “I used to thinksix months was a long time. But it’s not. It seems likean instant.”Smith, his auburn hair tucked tight behind one earand hanging in a thin curl beneath the other, trippedover his words in a frothy rush: “It’s so weird,” hecomplained to Hertzfeld. In a languid tone Hertzfeldasked, “How do you know that you’ve fixed it whenyou don’t know how it occurs?” Smith replied, “It’s sofrustrating because I haven’t proved that I cannot solvethe problem and I haven’t proved that I can solve iteither.” Hertzfeld sighed. “We’re going to be gettinginto superstitions. We’re going to see that it works butwe won’t be sure that it works.”Smith had been trying to solve the puzzle for acouple of days. He had first noticed the computerwasn’t behaving properly while the rest of theengineers were celebrating what they thought was thecompletion of the first Mac prototype. Smith hadignored the champagne, which at Apple (and at theMac group in particular) had a habit of appearingfrom behind even the thinnest milestone, and sat byhimself looking at the computer. He had used a heatgun, which looked like a hairdryer, and a spray to heatand cool particular chips to temperatures wherequirks were liable to appear more frequently. Smithhad decided that the problem lay with the largest chipon the board, the Motorola 68000 microprocessor.The 68000 and the other chips on the board were atribute to the continuing advances in semiconductortechnology. The 68000 was a sixteen-bitmicroprocessor, and consequently the Mac had aboutten times as much computing power as the Apple II,though it used half as many chips. Smith comparedthe difference in complexity to watching an ordinarybaseball game and then trying to follow the action in agame where eight batters hit simultaneously to fiftyfouroutfielders. He was perspiring and kept flickingframes onto the logic analyzer to inspect anotherframe showing the electronic signals from the clocks.

He said, “You thrash around the design space longenough and you learn the idiosyncrasies.”Some at Apple thought the entire Mac projectreflected a parade of personal idiosyncrasies ratherthan any grand design. There was no plan ofNapoleonic proportions. False starts, diversions,mistakes, experiments, rebellion, and competitionformed the stuff of the machine. The Mac, like otherproducts that rely on technological advances, theuncertain swings of a fast-growing company, and theproclivities of different managers, was something thatApple had been groping toward for several years. Foralmost two years it was one of those projects thatcould have foundered with the departure of aprogrammer or the appearance of a faulty prototype.Hertzfeld, who had watched the ups and downs, thedelays in announcement, had formed his ownconclusion about how to measure progress: “The timeto completion,” he had decided, “is a constant.”The starting point turned into the only sure point ofreference. In the middle of 1979 the manager ofApple’s publications department, Jef Raskin, wasasked to take charge of a small group that would builda computer to sell for $500, work through a televisionset, contain a built-in modem, and be able to run boththe Pascal and BASIC languages. Raskin,misspelling the name of his favorite apple, codenamedthe project Macintosh and dreamed up hisown idea for a computer. “I thought it was moreimportant to give people a choice of case color than achoice between the number of bytes of memory. Iwanted it to become an indispensable part of ahouse. I wanted something that people would becomeaddicted to.” Raskin suggested that Apple produce abattery-powered portable home computer that wouldsell for under $1,000. He built a cardboard mock-upand decided that the computer should have a built-inscreen, should not contain any expansion slots, andshould be accompanied by a thin manual. A year orso after starting work on the project he noted, “Apple IIis a system. Macintosh is an appliance.”Raskin, a chunky, bearded man with a soft spot formodel airplanes and music, set up shop in late 1979and shuffled among several buildings, includingApple’s original office suite near the Good EarthRestaurant. In early 1981 Raskin, as Hertzfeld recalled,ran afoul of Apple politics. “The Lisa team ingeneral told Steve to fuck off. Steve said, ‘I’ll get thisteam that’ll make a cheap computer and that will blowthem off the face of the earth.’ Then Steve saw thatRaskin had critical mass: He had a hardwareengineer and a software engineer. Since Steve was abigger kid than Raskin, he said, ‘I like that toy!’ andtook it.”Raskin quickly fell victim to Jobs, who wanted toimpose his own imprimatur on the project. Jobsadded veterans from the early days of Apple toRaskin’s team. He tried to change the code-name ofthe project from Mac to Bicycle after reading aScientific American article that described thepersonal computer as the bicycle of the twenty-first

century. But he backed off when his group protested.After taking control of Mac, Jobs made his intentionsclear. He bet John Couch, the head of the Lisadivision, $5,000 that Mac would ship first.At first, Smith and Hertzfeld eyed Jobs withsuspicion. The former had been raised in upstateNew York where he had studied literature at juniorcollege and become interested in a UNIVACcomputer and phone phreaking. The first electronicdevice he had ever built was a blue box, which heconstructed on his mother’s kitchen table. “I reckonedit was impossible to find it on the street and I wantedthe satisfaction of building my own.” For phonephreaking he adopted the name Marty, and when hefirst visited California he stayed with John Draper. Heattended some Homebrew meetings and, on movingpermanently to California, built an office controlsystem for doctors and dentists and bought aCommodore Pet because he couldn’t afford anApple. Out of work, he helped a friend build a wall andwas touring companies in a borrowed truck when hewas offered a job as a technician in Apple’s servicedepartment. He repaired Apple IIs by day and studiedthe schematics at night. “I wanted to find out how theboard worked by myself. I had almost subconsciousdreams that I’d be dealing with logical elements insome way. I was always driven down to the lowestlevel of the system. I don’t like working on things if Idon’t know how they work.”Smith was fished from the service department by aprogrammer who recognized his talent andrecommended him to Raskin. By the spring of 1980Smith had designed a prototype based on an eightbitmicroprocessor. For about six months, thecomputer languished with no software. A programmerhired to write some of the software placedunshakable faith in the computer languages used inartificial intelligence work and had little sympathy forthe demands of microcomputers. Then Smith startedworking with the Motorola 68000 and by Christmas of1980 had developed a second Mac. Hertzfeld, whowas working on software for the Apple II, watchedthese changes with mounting envy. One night hestayed late and wrote a small program that produceda picture of Mr. Scrooge and the greeting: HIBURRELL.Hertzfeld had grown up in Philadelphia and startedprogramming when he was fifteen. “I was amazed youcould get this typewriter to do such-neat things.” Hestudied science and mathematics at Rhode Island’sBrown University and moved to Berkeley because hewanted to live in California and preferred the prospectof graduate studies to corporate life. He bought anApple II six months after it appeared and nursed animpatience with some of his fellow students. “Theywere people who didn’t like programming. They likedtalking about programming.” He wrote an I Chinggame and took it to a local computer club, designed aperipheral for the Apple II and was startled when hefound out how much some of the computercompanies were paying. “I didn’t think it was the sortof thing you did for money. Now I’ve been corrupted

y money and by thinking how much I can make.”Smith and Hertzfeld had gradually learned to livewith Jobs and he with them. It was a delicate set ofrelationships glued together by the fact that they allneeded each other. Hertzfeld and Smith workedaround Jobs’s unpredictable nature. Hertzfeldexplained, “He’d stop by and say, ‘This is a pile ofshit’ or ‘This is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.’ Thescary thing was that he’d say it about the same thing.”The pair floated in the uncertainty of whether Jobsliked them or whether he just liked them for the jobsthey were performing. And Hertzfeld, three years afterthe start of the project, admitted, “I like working forSteve because of Mac but I don’t know if I like him.”Yet Jobs had instilled an urgency into the Macproject and his influence within the company hadgiven it increasing prominence. One of theprogrammers who worked on the early stages of Machad nicknamed Jobs “the reality distortion field” andthe sci-fi moniker had stuck. Jobs had many of hisgroup believing they were building another Apple IIand his faith was almost strong enough to persuadethem that they were working in a garage when all thetangible evidence suggested otherwise.Like all employees, Smith and Hertzfeld hadgrumbled about their boss. They complained thatJobs forbade them to show Mac to their friends whilehe paraded visitors, including his one-time flame, folksinger Joan Baez, through the lab. Their irritationmounted when it took Jobs months to concede thatthe Mac screen and 64K bytes of memory were toosmall before he ordered a redesign. They mumbledsome more when Jobs refused to give thempermission to sell a mouse interface for the Apple II.When Jobs arranged for the programmer developingthe word processor for the Mac to receive a royalty of$1 for every copy sold, tempers rose. It had not takenHertzfeld and Smith long to figure that, given Apple’sambitions for the computer, the word processor wouldleave its author with larger tax problems than theywere contemplating. Smith worried that Jobs wasn’tthinking boldly enough about future computers and, onhearing that the Mac group would move into a buildingoccupied by personal computer systems division,muttered, “It says, ‘Thanks guys,’ but now you’re justlike all the rest. You’re just ordinary guys. Mac willbecome another PCS and we’ll be just another bigcompany.” On several occasions Hertzfeld hadthreatened to quit but each time Jobs had persuadedhim to stay.Yet Jobs exercised many paternal touches. He hadpresented Hertzfeld and Smith and other members ofthe Mac group with medals and helped make a ritualout of outings to sushi bars. When a programmer fellill, he called the hospital frequently. He dropped by theMac lab over the weekends and took evidentpleasure in personally delivering envelopescontaining stock options. He had contemplatedinviting actress Brooke Shields to attend a Christmasparty and chuckled at how her appearance wouldmake Hertzfeld and Smith blush. Jobs was shrewd

enough to know that he could tantalize both Hertzfeldand Smith. “Andy,” Jobs concluded, “is struggling withhimself. He wants to make some money and he wantsto be famous.”Fame and the notoriety that had come to surroundJobs and Wozniak and the programmers featured inTracy Kidder’s best-selling book The Soul of a NewMachine worked as powerful stimulants. Smith’sbusiness card read HARDWARE WIZARD andHertzfeld’s SOFTWARE ARTIST and the twospeckled their speech with the engineer’s equivalentof fighter pilots’ muscle talk such as kludge, glitch,and hairy edge. Hertzfeld, like Wozniak, talked abouthis audience and said, “The energy of all the peoplewho will use Mac reverberates into the programming.”To help ensure his prize duo and forty-five othermembers of the Mac group an encounter withposterity, Jobs had their signatures embossed on theinside of the mold for the case.One result of this emotional fandango, the gruelingwork and the daliance with fame, was that Hertzfeldand Smith had become close friends. They enjoyedwhat Smith, with his tendency to reduce everything toinitials, called a BFR: a Best Friend Relationship.Sometimes they daydreamed about leaving Appleand starting their own company. Yet every time Jobsasked for something, they worked day and night untilit was completed. Smith had embarked on a sixmonthdiversion to squeeze a lot of circuits onto onecustom-designed chip. When the effort failed, he hadto re-design Mac all over again. On one Fridayevening Jobs had threatened to remove some chipsthat controlled the computer’s sound unless theyworked by the following Monday. Hertzfeld and Smithhad straightened with alarm and worked through theweekend, and by the Monday morning the soundworked. These were the sort of management tactics(coupled with the difficulty of finding rewards to topriches and fame) that were calculated to burn outengineers.Hertzfeld and Smith had suspended the rest of theirlives until they completed Macintosh. They had nogirlfriends, and they spent their Sundays hunched overa printed circuit board or behind a computer terminal.And on this one Sunday, Smith, as he had on dozensof previous occasions, had decided to abandon sleepuntil he had solved the problem. “Having friends,” hesaid, “is orthogonal to designing computers. Whenthey call, I find myself hanging up on them.”

HALF RIGHTWhile Wozniak completed the design of hiscomputer, Jobs fluttered in the background, flitting inand out of Call Computer and continuing to work atAtari where he was asked to produce a device thatwould generate horoscopes from tidbits ofinformation about dates and places of birth. Thecomputing power needed to chart the progress of anindividual with the course of the planets proved toomuch and the project fizzled. Jobs was uncertainabout what he wanted to do and was unhappy aboutone obvious path. “I didn’t see myself growing up tobe an engineer.” Though he nursed secret dreams ofbuying a BMW 320i he was uneasy about theprospect of being pulled into an orbit of cars andhouses. Instead he fell back on his naturalinquisitiveness and spent two semesters auditing aphysics course offered by Stanford for giftedfreshmen. Jobs left his mark on Mel Schwartz, theprofessor who taught the class. “Very few people turnup who say they want to learn something. I wasimpressed by Steve’s enthusiasm. He was reallyinterested and curious.”Unlike Wozniak, Jobs found the nitpicking technicaldebates of the Homebrew Club unappealing. Heattended a few meetings but was bored by thechitchat about timing cycles, direct memory access,and synchronous clocks. Yet he kept close tabs onWozniak’s battles with his computer. When the twotalked on the telephone, they almost always chattedabout developments or problems with the machine.When they met, or when Jobs visited Wozniak’shome, it was always the computer that formed thecentral topic of conversation. Jobs analyzed thereason why he and Wozniak, the proverbial oddcouple who were separated by age, temperament,and inclination, could stay friends, and observed, “Iwas a little bit more mature for my age and he was alittle less mature for his.”During January and February 1976 Jobs started tobadger Wozniak about the possibility of making andselling some printed circuit boards so that otherscould build their own versions of the computer.Wozniak had not contemplated doing anything apartfrom handing out schematics of the machine to anyHomebrew members who were interested. “It wasSteve’s idea to hold them in the air and sell a few.”Jobs entertained the notion of a fleeting, informalventure that would be more of a partnership betweenfriends than a proper company. There was no talk ofWozniak leaving Hewlett-Packard or of Jobs severinghis casual arrangement with Atari. Jobs’s thoughtsabout the possible market were limited to a fewfriends, members of the Homebrew Club, and one ortwo stores. The pair didn’t consider permits, licenses,insurance contracts, and other legal demandsbecause their idea of a company extended as far asthe bylaw that required new partnerships to place asmall formal advertisement in a local newspaper.The two tossed around names for their company.

One afternoon, driving along Highway 85, betweenPalo Alto and Los Altos, Jobs, summoning theshades of his dietary regime and his rural life inOregon, suggested they call the company AppleComputer. Try as he might Wozniak couldn’t improveon the suggestion. “We kept trying to think of a bettername but every name we came up with wasn’t anybetter.” They played with the sound of names likeExecutek and Matrix Electronics but the simplicity ofApple always seemed more appealing. For a fewdays the two wondered whether their choice wouldland them in a legal wrangle with Apple Records, theBeatles’ recording company, and Jobs worried thatApple Computer was altogether too whimsical foranything that even pretended to be a company.Eventually, anxious to place the partnershipadvertisement in the San Jose Mercury Jobs issuedan ultimatum. “I said, ‘Unless we come up withsomething better by five P.M. tomorrow, we’ll go withApple.’”Jobs reckoned that it would cost about $25 tomake each printed circuit board and that if all wentwell they might be able to sell a hundred for $50apiece. They agreed that each would contribute halftoward the $1,300 or so that Jobs reckoned theprinted circuit board would cost. Neither had muchmoney. Wozniak was earning $24,000 a year atHewlett-Packard but was spending most of it on hisstereo system, records, and the computer that had away of gobbling up parts. His checking account at aCupertino bank oscillated between black and red andhis landlord, fed up with receiving checks thatbounced, was insisting the rent be paid in cash. Jobs,meanwhile, was carefully guarding the $5,000 he hadsaved from his work at Atari.To provide most of his share, Wozniak decided tosell his HP 65 calculator for $500. He knew thatHewlett-Packard was about to announce anenhanced version, the HP 67, that would be availableto employees for $370. “I figured I had a profit and abetter calculator.” The buyer, however, paid Wozniakonly half the agreed price. Jobs had a similar problemwhen he decided to use some of the $1,500 he madefrom selling a red and white Volkswagen bus. Thisparticular piece of foreign machinery had never beengiven the parental seal of approval. Paul Jobs hadaccompanied his son on the original purchasemission, taken one look at the Volkswagen, andconcluded, “It was a tired, gutless thing that wouldn’tgo anywhere.” He told his son that Volkswagen vanstended to have problems with wheel bearings and thereduction-gear mechanism but his advice wasn’theeded. The younger Jobs planned to fix anyproblems and bought a book called How To KeepYour Volkswagen Alive! A Manual of Step-by-StepProcedures for the Compleat Idiot. Eventually, whenthe van proved too troublesome he buckled to hisfather’s advice and sold the van after it passed somechecks at an automotive diagnostic center. Paul Jobschuckled quietly when “two weeks later the guy cameback with the engine in a bucket.” Steve Jobspromptly offered to share the cost of repairs and his$1,500 nest egg dwindled.

Jobs, never coy about offering his opinion, watchedWozniak make some modifications to the computer.Rather than rely on somebody else’s board ofmemory chips, Wozniak decided to build his own. Forthe hobbyists the design of a reliable memory boardwas a persistent bugbear and the memory frequentlycame to mean the difference between a reliable anderratic machine. The memory chips were just ascomplicated to manage as the microprocessor andmarrying the two—the most important parts of themachine—brought no end of trouble. A defectivememory chip could blow out the computer and thequirks lurking in the rows of memory chips werenotoriously tough to pinpoint. Wozniak was choosinghis memory chips at a time when all the leadingsemiconductor companies were fighting to establishan industry standard for them. There werepronounced differences in technology, performance,and price among the chips, so picking the right chipwas a bit like betting on a poker game. Wozniakplumped for a chip that he had spotted at theHomebrew Club, one that was made by AmericanMicrosystems Inc., a Santa Clara company. Jobs wasappalled by the choice, thought Wozniak could dobetter, and embarked on a search for a brand-newIntel chip that hadn’t filtered through to the electronicssupplystores.Both the chips were dynamic RAMs and farsuperior to the static RAMs that were the standby ofmost hobbyists. Dynamic RAMs consumed lesspower than static RAMs and, in the long run, werealso cheaper. However, they were far morecomplicated and most computer hobbyists clung tothe adage, “Static memory works; dynamic memorydoesn’t.” The crucial difference between the two partswas that information stored on dynamic chips woulddisappear unless it was refreshed with bursts ofelectricity every two thousandths of a second while thestatic RAMs didn’t require regular shock therapy. TheIntel chip was also compatible with the logic used bymicroprocessors, had fewer pins than the AMI chip,eventually became the industry standard—and Jobs’sinstinctive choice turned into a considerable triumph.Wozniak recalled long debates about the propermemory chip—“Steve was pushing to use the rightpart. We were lucky to be on the right track. It was oneof the luckiest technology steps on the wholedevelopment. All the other hobby computers wereusing 2102 1K static RAMs.”While Jobs was pushing from one direction,Wozniak found that Alex Kamradt was tugging fromanother. In the spring of 1976 Kamradt and his smallteam were still trying to convert the terminal Wozniakhad designed during the summer of 1975 into areliable product for Computer Conversor. Kamradttelephoned Wozniak at work and at home andbuttonholed him at the Homebrew meetings. But hefound that Wozniak was more interested in addingfeatures to his new computer than in completing anold design. Kamradt also had to contend with the fullpersuasive power of Jobs who was imploring

Wozniak to place his faith in Apple rather than in theuncertain prospects of Call Computer. To addconviction to his argument, Jobs introduced Wozniakto Ron Wayne, a field sales engineer at Atariresponsible for making sure that prospective videogamedistributors were up to snuff. Wayne hadcasually agreed to help Jobs come up with a motif forApple and to draw schematics to accompany theprinted circuit board. Jobs argued that Wozniak’scomputer was doomed if he placed it in Kamradt’shands. He insisted that the prospects for the machinewere far brighter if it was produced by an alliance ofWozniak, Jobs, and Wayne.Wayne was in his early forties, a portly man withboyish curly hair that was turning gray. At the end ofthe sixties he had started a company in Nevada todesign and build slot machines, but it had failedduring the business recession in the early seventies.Strapped for money, Wayne had borrowed $600 tofinance a trip to California and eventually earnedenough to pay off his debts. By the time that Jobsapproached him for advice about Apple, Waynebelieved he’d “had enough failures to be a very smartfellow.” He was also a strong believer in thepermanent mark that engineers could leave on theworld and liked to talk about “multifaceted, holisticengineering.” A bachelor, Wayne lived alone inMountain View where he was reading books abouteconomic disasters and debasement of currencies.He had become convinced that the global economicsystem was on the brink of collapse and had startedto protect himself from imminent doom by collectingrare stamps, old coins, and gold. He was alsobuilding an eight-foot-long replica of a Jules Vernenautical clock from carefully carved slices ofcardboard. Though he found semiconductors andintegrated circuits objects of complete mystery,Wayne was lassoed into helping Jobs musterarguments to prevent Wozniak from falling intoKamradt’s grasp. Wayne consoled Wozniak andexplained that the skilled engineer would always beremembered if he teamed up with the right marketer.He pointed to the way Eiffel had left his name on atower, and Colt his name on a gun.Wozniak was not easily swayed. The trio sat up lateinto the night arguing about the form of the proposedpartnership. Wayne suggested they should balancethe equity of their investments with the merit ofinvention. It was an idea that appealed to Jobs, butWozniak had problems coming to grips withtwentieth-century notions of property. He wantedcomplete freedom to use his design tricks and wasworried that Hewlett-Packard would assign him to aproject where he would need to rely on some of theploys he had used in the Apple. Wayne thought, “Itwas almost as if Wozniak would condescend to allowApple to use these principles but he wanted toreserve the right to sell them to other people.”Eventually Jobs prevailed and Wayne drew up aten-paragraph partnership agreement liberallysprinkled with “therefores,” “herewiths,” and “thereins.”The agreement stated that none of the trio couldspend more than $100 without the consent of another.

It also laid down that Wozniak would “assume bothgeneral and major responsibility for the conduct ofElectrical Engineering; Jobs would assume generalresponsibility for Electrical Engineering andMarketing, and Wayne would assume majorresponsibility for Mechanical Engineering andDocumentation.” Once Wozniak had been persuadedto agree to the venture, he had no qualms aboutgiving Wayne 10 percent of the company and dividingthe remainder with Jobs. He was convinced that ifJobs performed all the commercial donkeywork thesplit was equitable. What the agreement didn’t say,but what they all understood, was that Wayne wouldact as tie breaker if Wozniak and Jobs couldn’t agreeon something. On the evening of April Fool’s Day,1976, at Wayne’s Mountain View apartment, withWozniak’s friend Randy Wigginton looking on, thethree signed the agreement forming Apple ComputerCompany. Jobs signed the document in a wide, faintlychildish hand with all the letters in lower case.Wozniak scribbled a cursive signature, and Wayne’spen left his name illegible.While they were sorting out formalities, Jobs hadpressed ahead. He had used the $1,300 that he andWozniak had pooled to commission the artwork forthe printed circuit board. He visited Howard Cantin,who had prepared the artwork for Atari’s gameboards (and had laid out the original Pong board) andasked him to prepare the board for the Applecomputer. Cantin complied—“I did it as a favor forSteve.” Once Wozniak had loaded the first printedcircuit board with chips and completed the wiring, heand Jobs made a formal introduction of the Applecomputer at the Homebrew Club in April 1976. Theirremarks revealed the division of labor. Wozniakdescribed the technical features of the machine: suchthings as the size of the memory, the BASIC that wasavailable, and the clock speed of the memory. Jobsasked the members how much they were prepared topay for a computer that, unlike the Altair, had all theessential features lodged onto a single printed circuitboard. The overall reaction was muted. The majorityof other engineers at the Homebrew Club didn’t evenbother to inspect the Apple. A few, like LeeFelsenstein, looked at the black-and-white computerwith its 8K bytes of memory and concluded that“Wozniak might very well be heading for a fall. Ithought if he was going to fail he was going to fail bigand I wasn’t going to step in the way.”Jobs, who by the spring of 1976 had taken toreligiously attending meetings of the Homebrew Club,was busy sorting out people with a commercial bentfrom the engineers. That wasn’t difficult sincemembers were allowed to advertise their interestsduring the meetings. Paul Terrell was one of the moreprominent salesmen and had become an influentialfigure in the murky world of distributors and kitsuppliers. He had been selling peripherals forminicomputers until he had seen a demonstration ofthe Altair—after which he had quickly arranged torepresent MITS in Northern California. At Homebrewmeetings Terrell had pushed the Altair machines and

an afoul of the delicate sensitivities of the Homebrewmembers when he tried to charge $500 for a versionof BASIC on paper tape.Like others, Terrell had underestimated theenthusiasm of the hobbyists and when word of theAltair spread, he found engineers waiting outside hisoffice door at the start of business while his regularcustomers started to complain that they couldn’tnegotiate his jammed switchboard. So Terrellbuckled. “I decided we should go up on El Camino,open a store, hang out a shingle, and get all the guyswho were sitting in traffic jams at four P.M.” InDecember 1975 he transferred $12,700 worth ofMITS inventory from his sales company to a computerstore in Mountain View which he called the ByteShop.But Terrell’s ambitions stretched far beyond theparish. He examined and planned to emulate RadioShack’s enormous chain of distributors and hopedsomeday to stock his stores with computers that hewould manufacture. In private he chatted about anationwide chain of Byte Shops like an enthusiasticgoose breeder. He talked of “force-feeding thepipeline” and “pumping the product out” but he had tostart somewhere and El Camino was a longer, if notbetter, strip than most. So El Camino, where almostevery idea in search of a market was sure to find atemporary home, housed yet another. By the earlysummer of 1976 there were three Byte storesscattered along El Camino among the hot-tubemporiums, hi-fi stores, automobile dealers, and fastfoodoutlets. For the hobbyists, and for anybodyhoping to sell a microcomputer, the imprimatur of theByte Shop had become a seal worth having.Terrell was one of the few Homebrew memberswith the means to buy more than one computer, soJobs, hoping to obtain deposits before placing a firmorder for one hundred printed circuit boards, visitedthe Byte Shop. Terrell had been wary of Jobs atHomebrew meetings. “You can always tell the guyswho are going to give you a hard time. I was alwayscautious of him.” Nevertheless, when Jobs sloppedinto the store, Terrell made time for him. Jobs showedTerrell a prototype of the Apple and explained hisplans. Terrell told Jobs that he had no interest inselling plain, printed circuit boards and said that hiscustomers didn’t have any interest in scouring supplystores for semiconductors and other parts. Terrellsaid he was interested in buying only fully assembledand fully tested computers. Jobs asked how muchTerrell would be prepared to pay for a fully assembledcomputer and was told anywhere between $489 and$589. The Emperor of the Byte Shops told Jobs thathe would be prepared to place an order for fifty fullyassembled Apple computers and would pay cash ondelivery.Jobs could not believe either his ears or his eyes—“I just saw dollar signs”—and rushed to telephoneWozniak at Hewlett-Packard. Wozniak, equallydumbfounded, told his colleagues around the lab whogreeted the news with disbelief. Wozniak placedTerrell’s order in perspective—“That was the biggestsingle episode in all of the company’s history. Nothing

in subsequent years was so great and sounexpected.” Terrell’s order entirely changed thescale and scope of the enterprise. The size of thebusiness had expanded tenfold and instead ofcontemplating costs of around $2,500 for onehundred printed circuit boards, Jobs and Wozniakwere looking at a bill of around $25,000 to cover thecosts of one hundred fully assembled machines. Fiftywould go to Terrell and the Byte Shop while Jobs andWozniak would try to sell the other fifty to friends andmembers of the Homebrew Club. Wozniak recalled,“It was not what we had intended to do,” and Terrell’sorder touched off a scramble for parts and a searchfor money.Some ports of call were hopeless. Jobs strolledinto a Los Altos bank, found the manager, asked for aloan, and was given a predictable rebuff. “I could tellthat I’d get the same replies at other banks.” He wentto Halted and asked Hal Elzig whether he would takea share of Apple in exchange for some parts. Elzigdeclined the offer, recalling, “I didn’t have any faith inthese kids. They were running about barefoot.” Jobsapproached Al Alcorn and asked whether he couldpurchase parts from Atari. Alcorn agreed butdemanded cash up front. Jobs turned to MelSchwartz, the Stanford physics professor, who hadformed a small electronics company in Palo Alto andhad an established line of credit at an electronicsdistributor, and Schwartz agreed to buy some partsfor Jobs.Jobs then approached three electronics partshouses where he asked for credit arrangements thatwould allow them to assemble and deliver thecomputers to the Byte Shops, before paying for theparts. He was granted receptions that ranged fromamusement to outright skepticism. At one shop Jobspersuaded the controller of the company to conduct abackground check. Paul Terrell was surprised to findhimself paged during a seminar at an electronicsconference and summoned to the telephone where heassured the controller that the two characters sittingacross his desk were not spinning fairy tales. Apple’sbiggest break came when Bob Newton, the divisionmanager of Kierulff Electronics in Palo Alto, met Jobsand examined both him and the prototype. “He wasjust an aggressive little kid who didn’t present himselfvery professionally.” Nevertheless, Newton agreed tosell Jobs $20,000 worth of parts and explained that ifthe bill was paid within thirty days Jobs would not becharged interest. Jobs, unfamiliar with accountingrubric, recalled, “We didn’t know what ‘net thirty days’was.”Assured of a supply of parts, Jobs and Wozniakturned their attention to assembling and testing thecomputers. They were reluctant to rent a space in oneof the parks of concrete and steel garages that dottedSunnyvale and Santa Clara. Wozniak’s apartment,ballooning from the early months of marriage, was toosmall to take the strain of a miniature assembly line.Wozniak’s young wife, Alice, recalled, “The Applewas consuming all his time. I saw very little of him.He’d go off to HP and eat something at McDonald’son the way home. He wouldn’t get home usually until

after midnight. I was going nuts coming home fromwork and having things on the dining-room table that Icouldn’t touch.” So with Alice resenting theirpresence, the founders of Apple resorted to the mostpractical spot which was the Jobs family home in LosAltos. Jobs, who was back living with his parents,commandeered the one unoccupied room in thethree-bedroom house which had belonged, until shemarried, to his younger sister, Patty. The room wasfurnished with a single bed and a small chest ofdrawers and was fine for storing the plastic bags fullof parts that arrived from the electronics distributors.The parts were assembled into Apple computers inthat room and in Jobs’s own bedroom, wheredripping soldering irons left scorch marks on a narrowdesk.The incoming parts weren’t subjected to exhaustivescrutiny. Jobs recalled, “We didn’t evaluate them toomuch. We just found out they worked.” The printedcircuit boards were a great simplification over handwiringeach computer. They sliced the assembly timefor each machine from about sixty hours to about six.The boards also brought a new chore, knowncontemptuously in the electronics industry as “boardstuffing,” which required that semiconductors and allthe other parts be inserted into specially numberedholes on the lime-colored board. Jobs delegated thetask to his sister, who was expecting her first child. Heoffered to pay her one dollar for every board shestuffed, and after some practice, she found that shecould finish four boards in an hour. She sat on theliving-room couch, boards and parts spread out infront of her on a Formica-topped coffee table, with theJobses’ large color television providing backgroundentertainment. The distractions of soap operas andprograms like The Gong Show, along with telephonecalls from her friends, meant that chips got plugged inthe wrong way and some of their delicate gold pinswound up bent.While the boards were being assembled, Jobs andWozniak chewed over ideas for a retail price.Wozniak was prepared to sell the computers to hisHomebrew chums for slightly more than the cost of theparts or for around $300. Jobs had larger thoughtsand did some rough-and-ready reckoning. Hedecided that Apple should sell the boards for twicethe cost of the parts and allow dealers a 33 percentmarkup. The arithmetic was close to Paul Terrell’soffer and also happened to coincide with a retail pricethat had a euphonious ring: $666.66.When Jobs turned up at the Byte Shop in MountainView carrying twelve bulging printed circuit boardspacked in thin gray cardboard boxes, Terrell wasdismayed. “There was nothing. Steve was half right.”The fully assembled computers turned out to be fullyassembled printed circuit boards. There was quite adifference. Some energetic intevention was requiredbefore the boards could be made to do anything.Terrell couldn’t even test the board without buying twotransformers to power the computer and the memory.Since the Apple didn’t have a keyboard or atelevision, no data could be funneled in or out of thecomputer. Once a keyboard had been hooked to the

machine it still couldn’t be programmed withoutsomebody laboriously typing in the code for BASICsince Wozniak and Jobs hadn’t provided thelanguage on a cassette tape or in a ROM chip.Though Wozniak could type in 4K bytes of code in anhour, that was hardly a practical arrangement for eventhe most zealous hobbyist. Finally, the computer wasnaked. It had no case. Despite all the shortcomingsand all his reservations, Terrell took delivery of themachines and paid Jobs, as he had promised, incash.Jobs was trying to balance everything, relying oninstincts and common sense to cope with the dailyrush of surprises. Aware of the importance of imagehe arranged for a polished corporate address byrenting a mail-drop box in Palo Alto. He hired ananswering service to help give the impression thatApple was a steady enterprise and not a fly-by-nightoperation. He also started to recruit some help andlooked to familiar faces for support.The steady, dependable Bill Fernandez had notbeen invited by Hewlett-Packard to transfer with therest of the calculator division to its new base inOregon and was looking around for work. Still living athome in Sunnyvale, Fernandez thought that Applemight someday offer him the chance to become anengineer. Jobs went through the pretense of aninterview, asked some cursory questions about digitallogic, and made his first job offer. Fernandez askedfor a formal written contract and became Apple’s firstfulltime employee. “I was the only legitimate Indian.The rest were chiefs. . . . I was basically the gofer.”To keep track of the money Jobs asked his collegefriend, Elizabeth Holmes, who was working as a gemcutter in San Francisco, to monitor the Applecheckbook and keep a journal recording cashexpenses. Holmes, who dropped by the Jobshousehold once a week and was paid the standardfour dollars an hour, noticed that “Steve was workingvery, very hard. He was very directed and not verysentimental.” Meanwhile, Jobs also kept Dan Kottkeabreast of progress, invited him to Los Altos for thesummer, and promised some work. When Kottkearrived, Clara Jobs turned the family couch into a bed.As work started on the second batch of fiftycomputers, Paul Jobs buckled to reality andsuggested Apple continue its business in the garage.“It was easier to empty out the garage than try andfight it out in the house. My cars could sit outside.Their stuff couldn’t.” Jobs temporarily retired fromrenovating cars, which in the summer of 1976 wereNash Metropolitans, and set about altering thegarage. He cleared a long brown workbench that hehad salvaged, years before, from an office in SanFrancisco. Loose parts were tucked into smalldrawers carefully labeled, MACHINE SCREWS,WASHERS, TOOTH-WASHERS, COTTER PINS,and RUBBER INSULATED CLIPS. Bulkier itemswere stored in a small loft above the garage alongwith items like dismantled lasers. Jobs lined thegarage with plasterboard, rigged up extra lights,installed an extra telephone, and rehung a framed

certificate that commemorated his first crossing of theequator in October 1944. He refused to move oneitem: a sparkling, firehouse-red trolley crammed withwrenches, pliers, spanners, and screwdrivers.Gradually the garage started to fill. A largeschematic of the computer hung on one wall. PaulJobs built a “burn-in box” the shape of a long, plywoodcoffin to test the computers. It was large enough tohouse twelve boards which could run all night longunder the uncompromising gaze of some heat lamps.The younger Jobs bought a metal workbench with aneon light from the firm that supplied Hewlett-Packard, a dispenser for three-inch-wide filamenttape for the packing cartons, and a top-of-the-linepostage meter. Bill Fernandez examined thepurchases. “Steve was always very, very tight withmoney. He always wanted to get the best value for theleast amount of money. Steve always wanted to makethings of high quality and have high-quality equipment.He always wanted to do it right.”Clara Jobs, who scooted into the garage to use thewashing machine, clothesdryer and sink, wasrecovering from a gallbladder operation. When herson occupied the kitchen table and turned it into aminiature office, she worked around him. When theanswering service called with messages, she tooknotes or relayed them. When the doorbell rang sheacted as receptionist, serving coffee to partssalesmen and prospective customers. She toleratedher son’s infatuation with carrots and cleared upWozniak’s McDonald’s hamburger wrappers andsoft-drink cartons after some of the frequent all-nightvigils spent chasing elusive bugs in the computer.When Wozniak’s wife of six months called in tears, itwas Clara Jobs who provided consolation. And whentempers flared in the garage Paul Jobs invariablyprovided some perspective. “What’s the matter?” hewould ask. “You got a feather up your ass?” EventuallyPaul and Clara Jobs started joking to their friends thatthey were paying the mortgage in exchange forkitchen, bathroom, and bedroom privileges.Steve Jobs asked Ron Wayne to draw schematicsof the computer that would be suitable for a smallmanual and also to produce a logo for the company.In his apartment Wayne balanced a light table on aliving-room table and produced a whimsical pen-andinkdrawing that had the tones of a monochromeengraving for a nineteenth-century college calendar. Itwas a portrait of Isaac Newton, quill in hand, restingagainst the trunk of a tree bearing one applewreathed in an ethereal glow. Wrapped around theedge of the picture was a scroll that carried a linefrom Wordsworth’s “The Prelude”: NEWTON—AMIND FOREVER VOYAGING THROUGH STRANGESEAS OF THOUGHT, ALONE. Wayne also startedwork on a four-page manual using an IBM electrictypewriter which, with careful reckoning, could justifytext at both margins. This spawned an argument overthe use of background tones, with Jobs insisting thata gray shade be used for parts of the schematic.When the gray obliterated some of the detail, Waynesaid, “We’re both to blame. You for suggesting it. Mefor listening to you.”

Jobs displayed a similar concern for appearancewhen Kottke and he drafted Apple’s firstadvertisement. The pair sat at the kitchen table withJobs spitting out ideas while Kottke cleaned up thegrammar. When the advertisement was set in type,Kottke recalled that Jobs was “meticulous about thetypeface.” Kottke meanwhile tried to immerse himselfin electronics, reading manuals about the 6502microprocessor and trying to catch up on what he’dmissed during his adolescence. On one occasion heand Jobs tried to convert one of the computers into amakeshift clock. Unable to keep his friend in full-timeemployment, Jobs found him some extra work at CallComputer where Kamradt was still cursing the hiddenquirks of Wozniak’s Computer Conversor.The prodding from the Byte Shop’s Paul Terrellforced Jobs to pressure Wozniak to come up with aninterface that could load BASIC into the computerfrom a cassette tape recorder. Wozniak, fullyoccupied with the computer, arranged for anotherengineer at Hewlett-Packard to design the interface inreturn for a royalty on sales. The design wasunsatisfactory; it couldn’t read the data properly fromthe tape and the duo had to buy out the engineer for$1,000. Wozniak flinched. “We weren’t going to goahead with our design and then pay him for each onewe sold.” Wozniak, who had no experience designinginterfaces and had never dealt with data stored oncassette tapes, rigged up the simplest possibledesign: “It worked.” Mounted on a small two-inch-highprinted circuit board, the interface plugged into themain board.As a sales incentive a cassette tape of BASIC wasincluded with the $75 interface card and the Appleadvertising copy stated: “Our philosophy is to providesoftware for our machines free or at minimal cost.”The one-page advert carried the slogan: BYTE INTOAN APPLE and boasted about “A Little CassetteBoard That Works,” though it could be relied on tocope only with cassettes running on expensive taperecorders. There was a tentative tone about the adthat was reflected in the line “The Apple Computer isin stock at almost all major computer stores.”It was certainly in stock at the Byte Shops. It wasalmost always in stock. Despite the koa-wood casesthat were supplied by a local cabinetmaker, PaulTerrell and his cast of refugee engineers andprogrammers found that the Apple computers weren’tselling as quickly as the Altair or the IMSAI 8080, acomputer that would run software written for the Altairand was sold by IMS Associates, another smallcompany on the San Francisco Peninsula. Terrell,who was in the middle of a frantic eleven monthsduring which he masterminded the opening ofseventy-four Byte stores across North America,couldn’t afford to stock $10,000 worth of slow-movingcomputers in shops that had monthly sales of only$20,000. At his headquarters he spent much of histime asking skeptical outsiders—who muttered abouthis precarious balance sheet and poked at theFormica counters—whether they could rememberwhat the first one hundred McDonald’s looked like. As

for the Apples he recalled, “We had problemsunloading them.”For a few weeks Jobs and Kottke tooled along ElCamino, delivering the computers and encounteringteenagers in the stores. Some, too young to drive,had discovered that if they timed it right they couldcatch the No. 21 and No. 22 buses of the Santa ClaraTransit District and visit every Byte store in anafternoon. The teenagers formed a permanent part ofthe decor, playing with the computers laid out on thetable, feeding paper-tape programs into thecomputers, and performing small programmingchores in return for free magazines.On these weekly rounds. Jobs typed into the Applea demonstration program that paraded the messageTHIS IS AN APPLE COMPUTER across a televisionscreen. Some of the Byte Shop managers found Jobstough to handle. One, Bob Moody, said, “It wasdifficult at best. Steve wasn’t the guy to deal with. Hewas very fidgety and very abrupt.” Terrell was a bitmore patient and reassured Jobs about the name ofApple Computer. “He came flying into the Byte Shop,buzzing at a hundred miles per hour. ‘It’s the goddamnlogo. People think it’s horseshit. We’ve got to changethe name. Nobody is going to take it seriously.”Terrell, who had endured similar taunts after he gavehis store a name most people mistook for a sandwichbar, passed on a piece of homespun wisdom: “Oncepeople understand what the name means, they willnever forget you. If it’s difficult, people will rememberit.” The Apple price tags of $666.66 also broughttrouble. They prompted a stream of angry telephonecalls from a group of Sikhs who were convinced thatthe price had evil significance. When the horror movieThe Omen, which also contained frighteningreferences to strings of sixes, started playing in localtheaters, the calls increased. After repeatedlyexplaining that there was no mystical reference in theprice, Jobs utterly exasperated, finally told one iratecaller, “I took the two most spiritual numbers I couldthink of: 777.77 and 111.11 and subtracted one fromthe other.”Ron Wayne was worried about more temporalmatters. The size of the contract with the Byte Shops,which had gained a reputation for not alwaysmanaging to pay bills on time, and the prospect ofhaving to underwrite one tenth of any loss that Applemight incur, proved too much. Wayne left thepartnership in the summer of 1976 and typed out aformal letter which he hoped absolved him of allresponsibility. “I had already learned what gave meindigestion and I was beginning to feel the monthsrunning by. If Apple had failed, I would have hadbruises on top of bruises. Steve Jobs was anabsolute whirlwind and I had lost the energy you needto ride whirlwinds.”Though they had lost Wayne, by the time theydecided to build a second batch of a hundredcomputers Jobs and Wozniak had established somecredit. The local bank managers still refused to placeany faith in Apple but there were others who would.

Wozniak had an informal credit line with his pal AllenBaum who had bailed him out of previous scrapes.Jobs and Wozniak explained their predicament andasked for a $5,000 loan which they promised to repayas soon as the computers were sold. Baum and hisfather, Elmer, stumped up the money and wrote up aloan agreement for a year with the provision that itcould be renewed quarterly. Allen Baum consideredhis money safe. “I had no doubt that it would berepaid. Steve Jobs had this silver tongue that couldtalk anyone into anything.” Elmer Baum wasn’t quiteso sure. “I did it because he was Allen’s friend. I wasin pretty bad shape financially but Steve gave me apitch. If I hadn’t known him, I would have thought hewas really good.”Most of the people connected with Apple werecautious, and contrary to the usual picture of smallbusinesses, they were all wary of loss. Each had hisown method for absorbing any risk that might crop up.Wozniak was supported by the regular paycheck fromHewlett-Packard. Ron Wayne decided he couldn’tafford to take any chances while the Baums insuredtheir gamble by charging a hefty interest on their loan.Bill Fernandez made sure that he received a contract.Steve Jobs risked something else—devoting years ofhis life to the business and becoming consumed byApple.The tension between mysticism and the business ofassembling computers was caught in a gentlysardonic correspondence with Dan Kottke who hadreturned to school in the East. On one occasionKottke mailed Jobs a mystical photograph andenclosed a note which read in part: “After performingan extensive prana to the lotus feet of suchness, gazelovingly upon picture with cosmic thoughts of cosmicrelevance and profundity until phone rings. Answerphone, haggle furiously and refuse to sell for less than2.3 million.”But there were some aspects of Apple that Jobsenjoyed. “I was getting a chance to do some thingsthe way I thought they should be done. I felt I hadnothing to lose by leaving Atari because I couldalways go back.” For Jobs corporations were largeand ugly and like Lockheed. They bribed senators.They arranged kickbacks. They paid for three-martinilunches. Jobs recalled, “I didn’t want to be abusinessman because all the businessmen I knew Ididn’t want to be like. I thought that living in amonastery had to be different from being abusinessman.” The private turmoil was the center oflong discussions with those around him. BillFernandez padded along on midnight walks aroundLos Altos and Cupertino and provided a soundingboard. Ron Wayne noticed that “Steve was searching.He seriously questioned whether he should pursueApple.” Wayne, for one, did not provide muchreassurance, telling Jobs that he ran the risks ofFrankenstein and predicted he would get swallowedin the maw of the company he was creating.There was an older, wiser fountain of advice. KobinChino was a Zen monk whom Jobs met after hereturned from India. Chino had been active in the SanFrancisco Zen Center as a student of Suzuki Roshi,

author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, a reflectivehandbook for followers of Zen. Chino lived at a smallZen center in Los Altos and Nancy Rogers, who hadfollowed Jobs and Kottke to India, was living in a tentnear the ranch, taking meditation courses. Jobsvisited her frequently and talked both to her and toChino about abandoning Apple and heading for a Zenmonastery in Japan. Both Chino and Rogers listened.The former was amused at the dilemma and, inbroken English, advised Jobs to pursue the business,telling him that he would find business to be the sameas sitting in a monastery. Jobs did some more soulsearching. “I had a sense that Apple would beconsuming. It was a real hard decision not to go toJapan. Part of me was a little concerned because Iwas afraid if I went I wouldn’t come back.” NancyRogers felt “Steve was afraid of Apple. He thoughthe’d turn into a monster.”In the late summer of 1976 the managers andengineers at other computer, semiconductor, andvideo-game companies did not think that Appleposed a monstrous threat. At Atari, according toNolan Bushnell, “We were up to our asses inalligators,” so the hobby computer market would havebeen a peripheral distraction for a company whosecentral line of business revolved around entertainmentand video games. At the semiconductor houses likeNational Semiconductor and Intel Corporation, someenthusiasts formed small task forces, pored overmagazines like Byte and Interface Age, clippedadvertisements of some of the small companies thatwere advertising single-board computers, and paidvisits at predictable and appropriate ports of call.They knocked on the doors of companies like MITS.They were given demonstrations of the Alto Computerwhich was being developed at Xerox’s Palo AltoResearch Center. They talked to the editors of thePeople’s Computer Company. They read industrysurveys drawn up by research companies—which, inmost cases, were little more than a man, a computer,and a cloudy crystal ball. They talked to someinvestment analysts at New York banks and werealtogether thorough and dutiful. Then they retreated totheir homes and offices to draw up arguments andmarketing plans to convince their superiors of thebright future of microcomputers. They told them of thelarge number of hobbyists, of the puny competition,and of how semiconductors made up at least half thecost of a microcomputer.Most of the chiefs were unimpressed. They thoughtthe market for assembled microcomputers would belimited to hobbyists and most still bore the scars ofearlier attempts to sell consumer items. Some yearsbefore, other young men had mustered similararguments and had persuaded them to build digitalwatches and calculators. The results had been painful.The chiefs had discovered that expertise in one areawasn’t something that could be transferred to anotherand that technical superiority wasn’t enough to swaythe consumer. Rapid price cutting and competitionfrom the Orient had left some semiconductor

companies with warehouses full of unsold calculatorsand watches.The semiconductor houses were also faced withtheir own demands. William Davidow, a vicepresidentat Intel, remembered, “We had enoughtrouble keeping the wheels glued on our own machinewithout worrying about something else.” Meanwhile,the minicomputer companies decided it made moresense to shrink their machines rather than to try tobuild microcomputers. Both Digital EquipmentCorporation, which introduced the DEC LS1-11, andData General with its microNova started to sellmachines with switches on the front panels thatlooked like little sisters of the larger machines.So small microcomputer companies were left intheir anonymity. Most of the others had never evenheard of Apple which was too small, too fragile, andtoo eccentric to be taken seriously. Those with aprophetic bent decided that the company wasdoomed by Wozniak’s nonconformist decision tochoose the 6502 microprocessor while most othercompanies built their computers around the 8080.Distributors and retailers like Paul Terrell haddecided that the future lay with the 8080, the S-100bus, and industry standards and were planning todiscontinue stocking 6502 machines. The largeadvertisements in magazines like Byte were forcompanies like Southwest Technical Products,Processor Technology, and IMSAI. The Applecomputer was an unconventional local curiosity.Shortly before Labor Day, 1976, Wozniak and Jobsheaded to the East Coast for a computer show thatwas being staged in a rundown hotel in Atlantic City.They packed a suitcase with Apple computers and abundle of one-page advertisements. Along with theApple computers, Wozniak carried another machinemounted in a case known to hobbyists as a cigar box.Like the engineers and salesmen of other Californiacomputer companies, Jobs and Wozniak took TWA’sFlight 67 from San Francisco to Philadelphia. Much ofthe flight was consumed with the buzz of technicalconversation, shop talk, gossip, and surreptitiouspeeks at new computers. The salesmen fromProcessor Technology were carrying a new machinenamed the Sol Terminal Computer, after LesSolomon, the editor of Popular Electronics. Dressedin a sheet-metal case with a built-in keyboard, it madethe other computers look dated and amateurish. Itsproponents were confident that their computer wouldsavage the competition. They talked disparagingly ofblankies—computers that had nothing but a switch ona front panel—and of blinkies, like the Altair, with justlights on the front panel. In their minds the Sol formedan entirely new category. Lee Felsenstein, who was aconsultant to Processor Technology, leaned overWozniak’s headrest, glanced at the prototype of thenew computer that rested on the fold-down tray, andformed his own conclusion, “It was thoroughlyunimpressive. These two guys just had a cigar box.What the hell did they know?”

A LOT OF POOPThe cigar box that Wozniak and Jobs took toAtlantic City in the dog days of 1976 contained asavagely deformed Apple computer. The printedcircuit board screwed to the wooden base wasfestooned with fresh wires that sneaked between thechips. Despite its forlorn appearance, Wozniak andJobs guarded the machine carefully. During thedaytime, while they tried to sell some Applecomputers from a card table on the convention floor, itwas locked in their seedy hotel room. In the evenings,after the crowds had disappeared from the fair,Wozniak, Jobs, and Dan Kottke (who had journeyedfrom New York to help his friends) slipped into a roomdominated by a large television screen. Wozniak rana cable across the carpet, typed some commandsinto the computer, and made it fling startling sprays ofcolor across the television screen.Wozniak had been working on enhancements tothe Apple since its introduction at the HomebrewClub. In the give-and-take following the originalannouncement some members had asked whatadditional features were being contemplated.Wozniak mentioned that he was working on a circuitwith a few chips that would convert the black-andwhitemachine into a color computer. It was anextravagant claim since at the time designers thoughta color circuit would take at least forty chips.Wozniak’s determination to add color to the Applesprang from a demonstration at the Homebrew Clubof a minicomputer that was capable of displayingcolor graphics. The Dazzler, a machine produced byCromemco, a small company whose foundersattended Homebrew meetings, also created colordisplays that left their mark on Wozniak. “It was soimpressive to see colors whirling around. I knew Iwanted to do color.” So his announcement that heintended to design some color circuitry was virtually amasochistic challenge and completion amounted to avirility test. Wozniak’s chief reason for adding colorcircuitry was practical. He wanted a computer thatwould play Breakout, the game that he and Jobs haddesigned for Atari.Wozniak returned to his lab bench at Hewlett-Packard and started to attack two entirely differentproblems. One centered on devising a circuit thatwould display color. The other was devoted toreducing the number of chips on the board bysimplifying the memory. The Apple computer had twosets of memory. One—an 8K-byte board of chips—served the microprocessor. Another—composed ofshift registers (an older, slower form of memory)—served the black-and-white display. In an effort toreduce the number of chips, Wozniak wanted to find away to let one memory serve both the computer andthe display. He investigated the way a picture isdisplayed on a television and found that a raster scanspends two thirds of its time moving across thescreen spraying the phosphor with electrons from leftto right, and one third of its time whipping back from

ight to left. Armed with that knowledge Wozniakdecided to force the microprocessor and the displayto share the same memory. While the raster movedacross the screen, taking bits from the memory, themicroprocessor was barred. And while the rasterwhipped back, the microprocessor plunged in. It wasthe sort of approach that had been the subject ofdebate at the Homebrew and a writer in thenewsletter had wondered in August 1975 whether thetiming for a display might be solved for members if “acircuit could be published which read from amicrocomputer memory while the computer isn’t usingit.” To make the allocation work, Wozniak had to slowdown the speed of the microprocessor. “All thecomputer was supposed to do was play games, sonobody would ever know. It was funny. Just by thinkingof a couple of unrelated issues, out came a simplerdesign.” Wozniak had virtually added color for freeand designed a computer which, though it had abouthalf the number of chips of the first machine, wasmore powerful.Wozniak also wanted to expand the capacity of theApple. Much of the power of minicomputers hadsprung from slots in the motherboard that housedsmaller printed circuit boards. The slots were a crucialpart of the design because it meant that thecomputers could be expanded to perform a largevariety of tasks. smaller printed circuit boards thatplugged into the slots might contain more memorychips, a connection to a printer or to a telephone.Some of the most successful minicomputercompanies had encouraged smaller firms to makeperipherals that would work with the computer. So theslots tended to bring benefits to everybody: to thecomputer manufacturer who could boast about themachine’s many attributes and the subindustry that itcreated; to peripheral manufacturers who would makea new product; and to the customer who came to owna machine that could do more than one job. Part ofthe reason the Altair made such an impression on thehobbyists was that it mimicked a minicomputer withslots. Wozniak liked the notion of slots—“I was usedto computers with twenty slots that were always filledup with boards”—and decided that his color computershould have eight slots. Jobs disagreed, and thedifference of opinion turned into one of their mostprotracted arguments. Wozniak recalled, “All Stevesaw was a computer that could do a couple of things—write basic programs and play games. He thoughtyou might add a printer and maybe a modem but youwould never need more than two slots. I refused to letit go with two slots.While Jobs and Wozniak wrangled about thenumber of slots, they made regular appearances atthe Homebrew Club whose meetings ran like a motifthrough the development of the color computer. At thehobbyist sessions Wozniak collected a couple ofteenage camp followers: Randy Wigginton who in thesummer of 1976 was sixteen and fifteen-year-oldChris Espinosa. Wigginton had written some smallprograms for Call Computer and had encounteredWozniak and his dumb terminal, being more

impressed by the latter than the former. Wigginton’sfather was a Lockheed engineer and the family homewas in Sunnyvale. With a tongue that could be roughbut with sunny, ice-cream looks, Wigginton had hisshare of growing pains. “I was strung out on drugs atjunior high school.” He watched while one of hisacquaintances, a drug pusher, was arrested formurdering a slow-paying client who had been stuffeddown a sewer. Wigginton was thirteen when he founda less dangerous diversion after encounteringcomputers at a Homestead High School summerclass where a Teletype terminal was linked to acomputer at Hewlett-Packard. “Once I hit computersthat was the end.” Transferred by his parents to aprivate high school in San Jose, he becameengrossed by computers. In his freshman year heorganized a computer class and in his sophomoreyear taught BASIC to students two years his senior.He was nicknamed Computer Randy and when,embarrassed at having no date for the junior prom hetried to escape the clutches of a ticket seller, he wastold to invite a computer. Wigginton found thatWozniak, who had endured similar taunts, was farmore sympathetic. Wozniak provided parts andguidance and helped Wigginton, whose chunkysoldering iron was giving him trouble, build his firstpiece of hardware, an Apple.The Homestead summer computer course provedas infectious for Chris Espinosa as it had forWigginton. “Once we were armed with elementaryknowledge we knew more than the teacher.”Espinosa had been raised in Los Angeles where heattended nine different schools in eight years but wascaught in the Cupertino mill when his father startedattending law classes at the University of Santa Clara.“Cupertino was a completely different atmosphere. InLos Angeles most of my friends grew up to bethieves, musicians, or drug addicts. In Cupertino I hadnew friends who were intelligent, academicallyinclined, middle-class and fairly progressive.” Duringjunior high school Espinosa was a studentspokesman at town meetings that were convened todiscuss plans to turn an orchard into a shopping mall.Thanks to an interest in public transportation, he alsobecame a thorn in the side of the Santa Clara TransitDistrict, arguing at public meetings in favor of anexpansion of the local bus service and touting themerits of light railways. He took to riding buses forhours—“To me, the bus service was a large, intricatesystem”—and used them to visit Byte Shops wherehe learned how to program an Apple. Yet likeWigginton, who introduced him to Wozniak, Espinosawas too young to drive to Homebrew meetings. Sinceneither the tentacles of the bus system nor theinclination of their parents extended to the darkerfringes of Palo Alto on Wednesday evenings,Wigginton and Espinosa were chauffeured toHomebrew meetings by Wozniak.The two teenagers became Wozniak’s acolytes.Espinosa persuaded Wozniak to give a computer toHomestead High School and displayed his bright,jaunty sense of humor by installing it in a box labeledIBM. On trips to Homebrew, they piled into Wozniak’s

car, making space on a backseat covered withmagazines, newspapers, and hamburger wrappersand joking that the fungus growing on the upholsterywas known, in botanical circles, as the Woz Effect.Espinosa, being of slighter build, carted books andmanuals into meetings while Wigginton had theunenviable task of carrying Wozniak’s nineteen-inchSears color television. Wozniak carried the newcomputer in a wooden case designed and built byWigginton’s brother. After the meetings the trioadjourned to a local Denny’s for more shoptalk. Atone of the Homebrew sessions Jobs quizzedEspinosa, who was displaying his prowess bydemonstrating the color, and offered him a job inexchange for a row of 4K memory chips which werethe most sought-after parts for the Apple. Espinosaaccepted but recalled, “Jobs never came through withthe promise.”At every Homebrew meeting the Apple was set upon a card table alongside other hobby computersnear the entrance to the SLAC auditorium. In thesteeply raked hall, almost every major development inmicrocomputers surfaced while the club newsletterdutifully reported on the appearance of new products,the dates of fairs, the opening of the first computerstore in Santa Monica, and the start of retailcomputer-kit companies like Kentucky FriedComputers. The newsletter’s editors also taught thetinkerers some of the cruel facts of life. WhenProcessor Technology’s video display failed toappear as promised, the newsletter noted: “It wouldappear that patience is a necessary attribute of thecomputer hobbyist.” There were frequent appeals formore software and an announcement of a journalwhose editors intended to publish computerlanguages and programs and who gave it thewhimsical title Dr. Dobbs’ Journal of ComputerCalisthenics and Orthodontia.While Wozniak busied himself developing someprograms for the Apple, the issue of software spurreda vigorous debate at the club. Most computerhobbyists considered software, if not a birthright,certainly something that should be provided free ofcharge to anyone who displayed the derring-do andmoxie to build his own computer. The programmerswho wrote software disagreed. In an open letter tohobbyists, published in the Homebrew newsletter, BillGates, one of the developers of the original BASIC forthe Altair, complained that though most of MITScustomers possessed a copy of BASIC, only aboutone tenth had actually bought the program. “Withoutgood software,” Gates wrote, “and an owner whounderstands programming a hobby computer iswasted. . . . As the majority of hobbyists must beaware, most of you steal your software.” Gates’sspirited defense of programmers’ rights fell on deafears though one club member did respond: “Calling

all your potential future customers thieves is perhaps‘uncool’ marketing strategy.”Marketing was another thing that Wozniak couldn’tbe bothered with. Most of the features he graduallyadded to the Apple conformed to his personalwishes. He added circuits for game paddles andsound so that Breakout could be presented in its fullglory. Letters appeared on the screen in upper casebecause most of the keyboards used by Homebrewmembers could only cope with capital letters.Wozniak even wrote a routine to convert lower case toupper case. “We weren’t thinking very far ahead. Wewere going to put on a lower-case keyboard but wedidn’t have time to get to it.” Similarly, the computerwas designed to display only forty characters in a linebecause television screens couldn’t cope with anymore.Wozniak was not even certain that he wanted Jobsto sell his color computer. At the time Apple wasformed, Wozniak had reached a verbal arrangementwith Jobs and Ron Wayne that he would own all therights to improvements in the Apple. For a time heentertained the idea of selling his enhanced version tothe manufacturer of the Sol Terminal, ProcessorTechnology. “I wasn’t sure that it was an Appleproduct.” The entire Wozniak household wasskeptical about Jobs. Leslie Wozniak heard abouthim as “this schlunky looking guy with bare feet anddirty hair,” while her parents harbored more seriousdoubts about their older son’s business partner. JerryWozniak encouraged his son to think about otherallies and offered to put him in contact with some ofhis own acquaintances. “We wondered about SteveJobs,” Jerry Wozniak recalled. “We thought he wasthe type of person who felt he should always start rightat the top and didn’t care to work his way up.”These domestic clashes came to a head when, inthe fall of 1976, two representatives fromCommodore Business Machines arrived at Jobs’sgarage and offered to buy Apple lock, stock, andprototype. The prospective purchasers were familiarfaces. Both Chuck Peddle and Andre Sousan hadpreviously dealt with Apple, and the former had ledthe team that designed the MOS Technology 6502.(Wozniak had bought his first 6502 from Peddle’swife at the San Francisco trade fair.) While Wozniakmade modifications to the Apple, Peddle had calledat Jobs’s garage and had demonstrated the KIM-1, asingle-board microcomputer developed by MOSTechnology to help train engineers who would use the6502 in elevators and household appliances. In theinterim MOS Technology had been acquired byCommodore Business Machines, where AndreSousan was vice-president of engineering. BothSousan and Peddle were convinced that a computerlike a modified Apple would allow their new employerto jump into the microcomputer field. Jobs also hadhis price. He wanted $100,000 for Apple, someCommodore stock, and salaries of $36,000 a year forhimself and Wozniak.In fact, a sale would have brought more money thaneither had ever contemplated and also relief from a

year of fourteen-hour workdays. But the moreinquiries Jobs made about Commodore, the moresuspicious he became. He asked about JackTramiel, Commodore’s founder, who in the earlyseventies had been roundly cursed by the electroniccalculatorindustry for leading a savage price war andoperating a chain of stores called Mr. Calculator.Jobs soon learned that when Tramiel started tobargain, he often fell back on a favorite saying:“There’s one thing closer to me than my shirt andthat’s my skin.” Jobs was unimpressed. “The more Ilooked into Commodore the sleazier they were. Icouldn’t find one person who had made a deal withthem and was happy. Everyone felt they had beencheated.” For their part, Tramiel and CommodoreChairman Irving Gould decided they did not want toacquire Apple. Sousan recalled: “They thought it wasridiculous to acquire two guys working out of agarage.”Yet Commodore’s approaches were the subject oflong discussions between Jobs and Wozniak andthere were bitter disagreements about how anyproceeds should be divided. Jerry Wozniak enteredthe arguments and made his feelings quite clear.Mark Wozniak recalled the strength of his father’sopinions. “Dad got Jobs to cry a couple of times. Hesaid he was going to make the little sonuvabitch cryand that’d be the end. He told him, ‘You don’t deserveshit. You haven’t produced anything. You haven’t doneanything.’ It came close to the end.” Jobs feltmiserable, was convinced that Jerry Wozniak sorelyunderestimated his contributions and told the youngerWozniak, “Woz, if we’re not fifty-fifty you can have thewhole thing.” Eventually Jobs’s instincts prevailed andCommodore and Apple went their separate ways.While the founders of Apple were fending offsuitors, they were also busying themselves with furthermodifications to the computer. Jobs thought a quietmachine without a fan would sell better than some ofthe noisier computers that used fans to cool powersupplies that were as hot as toasters. Wozniak hadnever been that interested in power supplies: Whenhe and Fernandez developed the Cream SodaComputer it was the power supply that failed. Whenhe and Baum designed the Data General Nova, theyhadn’t even bothered to design a power supply. Thepower supplies for the Apple were afterthoughts.Power supplies were something to be plugged in atthe last moment, something that could always befished off a shelf at Haltek. The only time it wasnecessary to worry about a power supply was when itthreatened to send a bolt of volts streaking throughthe computer—and blow out every sweetly tunedpiece of digital electronics.Power supplies belonged to an older, stodgierbranch of electronics whose basic rules hadn’tchanged that much since the early days of radio.Power supplies, like regulators and transformers,were analog devices, and there was an emotionaland intellectual division between analog and digitalelectronics. Youngsters like Wozniak were much

more interested in digital electronics, where changewas more rapid. Their conceptual world was framedin terms of highs and lows and 1s and 0s and theirlives circulated around handling solutions that werepresented to them by the semiconductormanufacturers.General-purpose engineers tended to be moreadept at analog electronics, which drew from a widerange of scientific disciplines and required a morethorough grounding in mathematics and physics.Analog designers worried more about completeness,aware that the addition of a screw or the placing of awire might affect the performance of their design.They fretted about current losses and were altogethera more circumspect, patient breed. Unlike digitaldesigners who would exclaim “It works,” the analogdesigners would be more cautious, explaining, “Itworks within the bounds of the specs.”So Jobs drove to Atari and asked Al Alcorn torecommend somebody who could help design apower supply that wouldn’t need a fan. He returned tothe garage exploding with optimism, telling Wozniakand Wigginton that he had met the greatest analogdesigner in the history of the universe, an engineerwho could design a power supply that would light upNew York but still run off a six-volt battery. The subjectof the excitement, Frederick Rodney Holt, was lessconfident about Apple. He met Jobs, surveyed all thatwas visible between hair and toe, and wonderedwhether Apple could afford to pay his consultancy fee.“I told him I was expensive. He said, That’s noproblem.’ He just conned me into working.”Holt started spending evenings and weekends atApple, and Jobs and Wozniak discovered, onceagain, that appearances were deceptive. Holt lookedas if he might have been the chief designer of a sci-fimachine that fired bolts of swizzle sticks. His facewas creased with pleats; he had jade-colored eyes, athatch of hair, and a bony frame that was usuallydecked in a turtleneck shirt, slacks, and wafflestompershoes. Thin fingers almost always held aCamel cigarette and were stained with the nicotinethat gave him a raspy cough. But he was no dried-out,middle-aged engineer. Though old enough to be thefather of both Wozniak and Jobs, Holt had firstbecome a parent at the age of eighteen, a year afterhe had left home to marry the first of several wives.As a youth he had inherited the complete works ofLenin from his grandfather, a Revolutionary Socialistwho ran for governor of the State of Maine on theEugene Debs ticket. And though Lenin came to sharehis teenage bookshelf with the works of Darwin, Holtdecided that the triumph of the proletariat wasinfinitely preferable to the survival of the fittest. Hefound graduate work in mathematics at Ohio Statelonely—“It was like playing chess with yourself”—edited a free-speech newspaper, and explored theprivate jealousies of radical-left splinter groups. Hebecame national treasurer for the student portion ofthe National Coalition Against the War in Vietnamand was invited by a small New York publisher towrite a book about the Logic of Marxism. But he wasdiverted by the call of politics and in 1965, when John

Lindsay ran for mayor of New York City, Holtmanaged the rival campaign of a black taxi driver whostood as a Revolutionary Socialist. The duosucceeded in drawing far more attention from the FBIthan from the New York electorate.Alongside his political forays Holt developed aninterest in both electronics and motorcycles. Hedeveloped, built, and installed some low-distortion hifisets “with a lot of poop” and for almost ten yearsworked at an electronics company in the Midwestwhere he helped to design a low-cost oscilloscope.During evenings and weekends Holt graduated fromriding motor scooters to Harley Davidsons andTriumphs, and from flat-track to illegal road racing. Asthe years passed and racers bought the latestmotorcycles, Holt’s edge, which depended on hismechanical ability to modify stock machinery, beganto evaporate. Nevertheless, when he moved to theWest Coast from Ohio in the early seventies heinstalled his three motorcycles on a trailer and towedthem across the country. In the spring of 1976 heabandoned racing because muscle-nerve damage inhis thumbs prevented him from keeping a tight grip onthe handlebars. The language of the motorcycle circuitstill speckled his speech but his forced retirement anda bitter quarrel with a longtime friend at Atari nudgedhim toward Apple. “If I had still been racingmotorcycles when Jobs came along, I probably wouldhave told him to get lost.”Holt found that Jobs and the unruly Apple computerpresented intriguing problems: “It was a challenge todo something on a commercial scale that had neverbeen done before. It was the kind of problem that hasa certain intrinsic appeal to me.” However, Holt wasnot about to let any part-time consulting, no matterhow interesting, interfere with his weekly game ofpool. And Jobs and Wozniak soon discovered it wasimpossible to talk to Holt about any subject withoutfinding that he was armed with something more thanrudimentary knowledge. An off-the-cuff remark aboutthe glaze on a piece of pottery was liable to provoke adiscourse on chemical treatments. An admiringcomment about a snapshot would prompt a discourseon photogravure techniques. Grumbles about theprice of memory chips would spark a lecture on theevils of the capitalist system while a casual mention ofpoker was almost certain to produce a spirited cardgame. Holt, the youngsters at Apple soon noticed,was the sort of person who would want to be onspeaking terms with an electron and was quite likelyto sit down in a restaurant and, on the back of anapkin, prove that he didn’t exist.“It costs a helluva lot to have arevolution,” Goldman said.Beyond the windows a long maroon steel beamhung carelessly from a crane. From the ground somelaborers flashed earthy semaphore signals at thecrane driver. The white crowns of their construction

hats made bouncing mirrors of the sun. For the twodozen people seated around a U-shaped table in ananemic ground-floor office the noise of the work onApple’s new corporate headquarters was sealed offby tinted windows. The drooping beam and the whitehats were like a scene torn from a silent film onconstruction safety.A few of the people at the meeting doodled andstared through the windows. About half weremarketing managers from different divisions at Applewhile the others came from the Chiat-Day advertisingagency. John Couch, the head of the division makingLisa, sat anxiously on the edge of his seat. Fred Hoar,Apple’s vice-president of communications, smoothedhis carefully combed auburn hair and Henry Whitfieldstood beside an overhead projector. Othersconcentrated on Fred Goldberg as he made someremarks about the campaign that he and hiscolleagues at the advertising agency had preparedfor Apple. Goldberg described some of thepreparations for advertisements that would appearsimultaneously with the company shareholders’meeting where Lisa and the Apple IIes were to beformally introduced. He then started to outline a planfor advertising all of Apple’s computers.“We’ve got a job to cut through the confusion andmake a brand a brand,” Goldberg said. “We’ve got tobuild confidence among new users about whichcomputers to use and when. Most people don’t justbuy the computer. They buy the company, its size andthe confidence it inspires.” He expressed some faithin the effect of the advertisements. “The running ofaround an announcement offers much less chance ofbackfiring than PR. When you run advertising youknow what you’re going to get. Spending corporatemoney demonstrates corporate confidence in theproduct. It makes a statement when you spend yourown money.”Goldberg introduced the agency’s creative director,Lee Clow. A tall man with a faint stoop and a beard,Clow inhaled deeply on a cigarette and proppedsome poster-sized advertisements on a table. Hepointed at the posters and said, “The second comingis the tenor of what we think this piece should be.” Heread a chunk of the copy: “Evolution. Revolution.” Hepaused. “It’s very delicate to say that everythingeveryone else makes is obsolete, but that’s what weare trying to say. It’s very important that the Lisaintroduction show that everyone else is an also-ran.”Clow finished reading the ad copy and some of thepeople from Apple voiced their concerns.“We don’t want the ads to step on the editorial,”Fred Hoar said. He pointed out that news reportswould appear for a few days following theintroductions of Lisa and the Apple IIe. “This is goingto be a skyrocket. I want to give the PR some impact.”Alan Oppenheimer, an Apple marketing managerwith a generous smile and steel-framed spectacles,touched on a running sore. Though Mac and Lisa bothrelied on a mouse and on visual symbols, programswritten for one wouldn’t work on another. So themarketers had their hands full trying to conceal thefact that Lisa and Mac might have been designed by

different companies. “Maybe the master plan is notquite appropriate,” Oppenheimer said. “Mac and Lisaaren’t compatible. The technical press can seethrough it. They could take us apart.”“The master-plan harmonic wouldn’t be somethingwe’d ram home,” Hoar said, “but we’d like to dispelthe idea that Apple is opportunistic, haphazard, anduncoordinated.”John Couch rocked on the edge of his chair andcommented sharply, “What we really want to say is‘Here’s a personal office system. There’s been ahardware revolution in the seventies and there will bea software revolution in the eighties.’ That’s themessage.”A few seats down the table, Linda Goffen, whoworked for Couch, nodded vigorously and added,“We have to preempt that terminology and make it ourown.”As the debate subsided Clow described theadvertising agency’s proposal for linkingadvertisements for Lisa and Mac. He recited the tagline: “Introducing computers you don’t have to beafraid of even if you have to hold a mouse in yourhand.”“I think that’s almost technical suicide,” said PaulDali, the tousle-haired head of marketing for theApple II and Apple III. “Apart from the mouse interfacethey’re not similar. We shouldn’t be trying to create afamily.”“The only people that’ll beat us up on compatibilitywill be the Fortune 500,” Couch said in a soothingmanner. ‘They’ll say, ‘Why can’t I take my wordprocessor home from Lisa and plug it into Mac?’They’ll think we’re a bunch of dummies.”“It’s an issue.” Henry Whitfield sighed. “Thesethings are incompatible. People are going to find outsooner or later that they’re not going to talk to eachother. Most of the Fortune 1000 companies think weshould have more compatibility. We’ll say we’ve triedto keep the price down to get back into more of aconsumer marketplace.”John Couch returned to the central theme of themeeting: how Apple could persuade people in largecompanies to buy Lisas and Macs. He started tocomplain about the data-processing managers whowere used to controlling the computer power at largecompanies. “They’re more concerned about puttingbarriers up to prevent computers from getting to therest of the world. They didn’t like Apple IIs running allover the place and now they’ve got IBM calling onthem. We cannot compete with IBM from a sales andservice standpoint so we’ve got to rely on technology.We’ve got to say, ‘It’s new technology. There’s arevolution out there. If the technology doesn’t meetyour needs, still buy Apple because they’re way out infront of everybody.’”“We’ve got to plant the flag right,” Paul Daliemphasized.“There just isn’t enough money,” Fred Goldbergsaid, spreading his hands in a resigned way.“We’ve been banging our heads against the wall toget more money,” Henry Whitfield observed. “We’resignificantly underspending. We just don’t have

enough money.”“You cannot have a revolution and approach it withquarter-page ads,” the advertising agency’s MauriceGoldman agreed. “It costs a helluva lot to have arevolution.”

MERCEDES AND A CORVETTEApple Computer was caught in a thin, flimsy worldof amateurs. It was a comfortable place that manymicrocomputer companies were content to occupy.The engineers could argue into the small hours aboutcircuits and clever pieces of code. The founders couldrevel in their newfound authority, snipe at the staidways of large companies, place large advertisementsin small publications, lick their lips at the sight ofseveral thousand dollars, and generally conductthemselves like tinpot emperors of banana republics.Many of these people never understood what theydidn’t know and were either too wary, or too cocksure,to seek advice from others more experienced in theways of the world.These receptacles of wisdom sat in dozens of lowslungbuildings with steel frames, concrete walls, andblank panes of glass. By the mid-seventies thesemonotonous industrial barns had largely replaced themosaic of fields and orchards that had once stretchedover the plain alongside the western fringes of SanFrancisco Bay. They were home for the dozens ofcompanies that had been founded during the sixtiesand seventies as the center of electronic noveltydrifted south from Sunnyvale toward San Jose. Therewas a clinical frailty to these buildings that weresometimes called “tilt-ups” because the walls weremade from prefabricated blocks of poured concretewhich were tilted into position. The buildings lookedas if they had been supplied by a builder with aflorist’s yard. There were fresh curbstones, gleamingblack asphalt, and cropped grass that had all thesmoothness and allure of Astroturf. It was an industrialLevittown.A quick drive around Santa Clara or Mountain Viewbrought a blur of logos and signs that seemed to becontractions or combinations of about five words:Advanced-Digi-Integrated-Micro-Technologies. Thesimilar sounding names that stood by the drivewayswere familiar to any regular reader of ElectronicsNews,but to say the companies were all the samewas about as perceptive as observing that most shirtscome with collars, sleeves, and buttons. Life behindthe walls had a transitory flavor and the old seasonalrhythms of rural life had given way to a patternassociated with young companies that was almostbiological. It tended to run through a cycle of ambition,enthusiasm, exhilaration, complication, disillusion,and frustration. An electronics association had takento publishing a corporate genealogical chart, andchroniclers of the electronics industry would patientlyexplain to newcomers how Fairchild Semiconductorbegat Intel Corporation and National Semiconductorand how they, in turn, spawned other companies. Thechart, which grew longer and more entwined over theyears, had its share of corporate divorces, secondmarriages, stepsons, and illegitimate offspring, andthe breeding patterns were so incestuous that inhumans they would have led to birth defects.The founders and managers of these companies

were fond of saying that there was nothing they mightneed that wasn’t within an hour’s drive. There werelawyers to draw up incorporation papers, venturecapitalists to provide money, contractors to layfoundations, interior designers to decorate offices,accountants to check the books, distributors whostocked parts, job shops to perform tedious chores,public-relations agencies to court the press, andunderwriters to prepare stock offerings. Many of thesemen had grown up in the semiconductor industry.They hopped between companies, left to form theirown, and kept loose track of one another. They weremobile reservoirs of experience who knew whom totrust and steered business toward one another. It wasa small place where word and rumor traveled fast,where people frequently wound up working forsomeone they had once hired and where allegianceswere to people rather than to companies. All thesemen worked or invested in the companies whoseproducts eventually trickled down to Haltek and Haltedand to the likes of Wozniak and Jobs. But for all thephysical proximity, there was still a considerabledistance between the professionals and theamateurs.Jobs, with his keen internal gyrocompass, began tobridge the gap and called the marketing departmentat Intel to find out who was responsible for theirdistinctive advertisements. To the irritation of manyIntel engineers, these weren’t cluttered with dull chartsor black-and-white technical drawings and didn’t dwellon the esoteric strengths of a new chip. They usedcolor and wraparound type and relied heavily onsymbols to explain the potential power of theelectronics. Poker chips meant profits, race cars,speed, cleavers, cost cutting, while hamburgersshowed that chips could be made to order. Jobsdiscovered that the ideas and look came from anadvertising and public-relations agency in Palo Altothat bore the name of its founder, Regis McKenna.Jobs rang the agency and was funneled toward FrankBurge who took informal responsibility for screeningnew businesses. Burge wasn’t about to be harried bysome youngster who announced that he wanted toprepare a color brochure and said, “You guys dogood stuff; I’d like you to do my mine.” Burge listenedand told Jobs he would speak to him within the week.Jobs called Burge several more times. “There werealways a pile of messages on my desk and Stevewouldn’t let his get to the bottom of the pile. I didn’twant to be rude to him so I finally said, ‘Yeah, I’ll cometake a look.’ As I was driving over to the garage I wasthinking, ‘Holy Christ, this guy is going to besomething else. What’s the least amount of time I canspend with this clown without being rude and then getback to something more profitable.’”After Burge saw Jobs emerge from the kitchen withhis jeans, sandals, unwashed dank hair, and thinbeard, his discomfort grew. “I forgot about being rude.For about two minutes I was just thinking of escaping.In about three minutes two things hit me. First, he wasan incredibly smart young man. Second, I didn’tunderstand a fiftieth of what he was talking about.”

Impressed, Burge checked Jobs’s credentials withanother agency client, Paul Terrell of the Byte Shops.Terrell told Burge, “They have overextendedthemselves and need some organization. Jobs isn’tvery comfortable in a marketing role.” A couple ofweeks later, another of the McKenna executives metJobs and suggested that the agency might beprepared to handle Apple’s entire marketingcampaign for a share of the company’s salesrevenue. He added that they should all await the resultof Apple’s first advertisement and also subject thecomputer to some closer scrutiny. An agency memonoted the extent of Jobs’s progress: “Though hemoved a quantity into retail distribution, there is as yetno evidence that the retailer(s) are successful infinding customers.” The memo concluded that “Steveis young and inexperienced,” but the final linecautioned: “Bushnell was young when he started Atari.And he claims to be worth $10,000,000 now.”Eventually Jobs and Wozniak were introduced tothe head of the agency, Regis McKenna. Hisbusiness card, which carried the impish line REGISMCKENNA, HIMSELF, sounded sturdier than thebearer whose fragile appearance offered a clue to hischronic diabetes. McKenna had careful eyes, thinningfair hair, and a soft manner of speaking thatconcealed some tough bones. But the business carddid reveal his stock-in-trade, which was to makecompanies appear larger, more stable, and moreimposing than they were. As one of seven sons,McKenna had grown up in the blue-collar shadows ofthe Pittsburgh steel barons, hadn’t bothered tograduate from college, and had moved to Californiaat the start of the sixties as an advertising salesmanfor a family-run magazine company. He moved to thePeninsula during its hush-hush, super-super secretdays, slipped into the electronics industry, and woundup at Fairchild. When National Semiconductor wastaken over in the late sixties by some disenchantedFairchild employees, McKenna also defected. Hehelped build National’s image by using ploys thatincluded the distribution of pictures and profiles of theexecutives on baseball cards.When McKenna started his own company in 1970he won the business of Intel which had been foundedby yet more refugees from Fairchild. For some timeMcKenna looked after the account by himself, wrotethe advertising copy, and arranged for interviews withjournalists. He suffered all the pains of starting andbuilding a business and won some clients by keepingan eye on activity at new buildings around theindustrial parks. Every now and again when herewarded himself with a pay raise, he wound upputting the money back into his business. McKenna’sown taste was often reflected in his clients’advertisements. His cashmere jackets came fromWilkes Bashford, a swank outfitter in San Francisco,while he paid for a work by the French surrealist JoanMiró by mortgaging his home in Palo Alto.Yet the image of Intel, which formed the keystone ofMcKenna’s business, was probably shaped more bypublic relations than advertising. McKenna had takenpains to step beyond the electronics trade journals

and cultivate reporters and editors at magazines likeBusiness Week, Fortune, and Forbes. He had thecunning to make most journalists believe he wasconfiding secrets, and he was far more patient withjournalists than the electronics executives who wouldinvariably find some reason to complain and grumbleabout reporters and press coverage. Andrew Grove,then the executive vice-president of Intel, said, “Hetaught us to build relationships with the press ratherthan firing off press releases and hoping for wonderfulthings to happen.” McKenna had earned a reputationwith reporters for being straightforward and notresorting to subterfuge. He liked to share industrygossip, made no secret of his pet likes and dislikes,and always practiced his wife’s advice: “Don’t pick afight with anyone who buys ink by the barrel.” Heseemed to gain more satisfaction from seeing apage-long story about one of his clients than anadvertisement, but would occasionally sound like aMadison Avenue account executive—as in “We rolledout the Byte Shops with a full page in BusinessWeek.”By 1976 McKenna already had some experiencewith marketing microcomputers. His agency wasresponsible for the general image of the Byte Shopsand had also designed some advertisements forIntel’s single-board computers, which featured ayoung boy with a sunny, all-American look. So whenJobs and Wozniak appeared in his office McKennawas heading an agency that, like some of its clients,had built a reputation far beyond its size. The meetingwas uncomfortable. McKenna asked to take a look atan article about the Apple computer that Wozniak waswriting for a trade magazine and stressed that itshould not be too technical. Wozniak, with all anengineer’s ruffled pride, retorted: “I don’t want any PRman touching my copy.” To which, with a stubbornrush of Irish blood to the face, McKenna replied, “Well,you better both get out.” Jobs played peacemakerand negotiated an uneasy truce.Apple’s encounter with McKenna revealed a hint ofgrander plans. But those plans were useless withoutmoney. The rest of the microcomputer industry wasgrowing more quickly than Apple, and Jobs didn’thave enough money to match his expandingambitions. Apple was not in the same league asProcessor Technology which was regularly buying fivepages of color advertising in magazines like Byte.Jobs returned to Atari and asked Nolan Bushnell foradvice about where he should turn for more money.Bushnell gave him a tutorial on the world of venturecapitalists, men who would supply money in return fora stake in the company, and told Jobs, “The longeryou can go without having to go to those guys thebetter off you are.” But Bushnell also suggested hecall Don Valentine, an investor in Atari.When he drove his Mercedes Benz from his officein Menlo Park to the Jobses’ garage, Valentine wasembarking on one of those inspection trips thatusually didn’t pay off. But it was a tribute to hiscuriosity—as well as to his nose for profit—that

Valentine even bothered to make the drive. Valentinewas the son of a New York truck driver and a venturecapitalist who looked like a weathered version of thefrat brother who organized the weekend football pool.He had worked during the sixties as the marketinghead of Fairchild, helping sell the virtues of integratedcircuits first to the military and then, when the pricesstarted to drop, to commercial customers with militaryconnections like General Dynamics, Hughes Aircraft,and Raytheon. He had run the marketing departmentat National, was frustrated by the growth of acorporate bureaucracy, and left to start a venturecapitalfirm which he named Sequoia Capital. Hespecialized in maintaining an impassive,impenetrable exterior, leaving even his friend RegisMcKenna with the impression, “He can be a hardnosedrug merchant if he’s trying to buy or sell fromyou.” All in all, Valentine wasn’t likely to be softenedby sentimental appeals. He frequently took refuge inone of his favorite aphorisms: “If a man comes into myoffice and says he wants to be a millionaire, I’m boredto death. If he says he wants a net worth of fifty to ahundred million dollars, I’m interested. If he says hewants to make a billion dollars, I say, ‘Tell me aboutit,’ because if he comes close we’re all going to cleanup.”Valentine had brushed up against Jobs while hewas considering investing in Atari and also knew thatthe McKenna Agency, where he was a member of theboard, was dallying with Apple. Valentine worebutton-down shirts and regimental ties and thoughtJobs looked like “a renegade from the human race”and his meeting with the Apple duo was not asuccess. The younger pair explained, in a stumblingmanner, that if the market for single-board computerswas going to be as large as some people werepredicting, they would be more than content to nibbleat the edges and make a couple of thousand boardsa year. That was not a line guaranteed to winValentine’s heart; he thought, “Neither one knewanything about marketing. Neither one had any senseof the size of the potential market. They weren’tthinking anywhere near big enough.” Valentineresorted to yet another of his pet sayings: “Bigthinkers often do big things. Small thinkers never dobig things,” and told the younger pair that he was notprepared to invest since nobody connected withApple had any marketing experience. Jobsimmediately asked Valentine to suggest somecandidates who might fill the bill. Valentine returned tohis office, riffled through his Rolodex, selected threenames he knew from his days in the semiconductorindustry, and checked their progress with people hetrusted. One, Mike Markkula (who became irritatedwhen addressed by either of his given names, Armasor Clifford), had worked for Valentine in the midsixtiesat Fairchild.On Valentine’s urging, Markkula (whose last namewas Finnish) arranged to meet Wozniak and Jobs.Markkula was thirty-three years old and lived inyouthful retirement in Cupertino. He was one ofdozens of men who had made money from a young

company’s public stock issue only to decide that therewas more to life than becoming a corporate vicepresident.In Markkula’s case the company had beenIntel where he had worked for four years after leavingFairchild. He had made no secret of the fact that oneof his goals in life was to become a millionaire by thetime he was thirty, and when he managed to do so, healso didn’t bother to conceal his satisfaction.Markkula was, in the words of one of his wealthierIntel colleagues, “a multimillionaire but a smallmultimillionaire”. He had been raised in SouthernCalifornia, had earned both a bachelor’s and amaster’s degree in electrical engineering from theUniversity of Southern California, and aftergraduating, had joined Hughes Aircraft Companywhere he worked in a research and developmentlaboratory.After leaving Fairchild and joining Intel Markkulawas buried deep in the ritual of the semiconductorindustry. He worked on the pricing strategy for newchips, composed data sheets, helped solvecustomers’ problems, and was considered steadyand reliable but not a rising star. His main claim tofame was guiding the development of Intel’s computersystem for processing customer orders, where heimmersed himself in the nitty-gritty details of theprogramming. He watched the growth of Intel’s line ofmemory chips and realized the importance of goodfinancial contacts and the need for reliabledistributors and dealers. Intel’s technical edge, thestrong demand for its chips, and keen attention topromotion and public relations helped make themarketing department’s task easier.In an industry where salesmen like to boast of, andif the opportunity presents itself practice,cocksmanship, Markkula was Mister Squeaky Clean.He preferred to curl into the lap of his own family, wasuncomfortable with small talk, was punctilious andlevel-headed, and played his cards close to his chest.He managed his financial affairs quietly and borrowedmoney to buy stock before Intel went public. One ofhis colleagues, Richard Melmon, said, “He wasn’t oneof the boys. A lot of people couldn’t stand him. Hewasn’t a hell raiser. He was a fussy fellow who alwayshad to know the answer even when he didn’t.” Peevedwhen a vice-president of marketing was appointedover him, Markkula surprised his workmates and leftIntel. He retired to the warmth of Cupertino, muddledabout his house, watched his two young childrengrow, splashed about in his swimming pool, installedgarden sprinklers, built cabinets for his stereo system,strummed a guitar, and learned the ins and outs of oiland gas shelters. His body still had the trim look of thehigh-school gymnast and he openly admired JerrySanders, the flashy founder of Advanced MicroDevices, who, unlike most semiconductor executives,said he liked the expensive things of life. Markkula’staste leaned toward the conspicuous, like theprominent watch he wore on his wrist and the goldcoloredChevrolet Corvette he drove to Jobs’sgarage.Markkula talked to Jobs and Wozniak, inspectedthe computer, and was enthralled by the gadgetry. “It

was what I had wanted since I left high school.” Healso sought Don Valentine’s counsel in a two-storywooden office building in Menlo Park set around acourtyard and studded with the discreet brassnameplates and thin lettering that were sure signs ofthe presence of several venture-capital firms.Valentine and Markkula chatted about Apple’sprospects in an office brimming with advertisements,prospectuses, and Lucite blocks that commemoratedsome of the venture capitalist’s more visible coups. Itwas also decorated with sepia photographs of theSundance Kid and a sign that read ANYBODYCAUGHT SMOKING ON THE PREMISES WILL BEHUNG BY THE TOENAILS AND PUMMELLED INTOUNCONSCIOUSNESS WITH ORGANIC CARROTS.Bolstered by his chat with Valentine, Markkulaoffered to give Jobs and Wozniak advice about howto organize Apple. They got together in the eveningsand over weekends and Markkula gradually becamemore enchanted with the business. He talked mattersover with his wife, promised that he would give Appleonly four years of his life, and eventually told Jobs thatto help pay for the development and introduction ofthe Apple II, he would underwrite a $250,000 bankloan: an amount less than one tenth of his net worth.Markkula called McKenna, said he was about toinvest in Apple, and asked him to tolerate Jobs andWozniak. Jobs, Wozniak, and Holt all trooped toMarkkula’s house and in a cabana alongside theswimming pool spent several evenings mulling overApple’s future shape and prospects. In return forinvesting in Apple, Markkula wanted to own a third ofthe business, though distributing the shares causedsome ill-feeling when Wozniak questioned whetherany company would be prepared to pay Jobs what hehimself was earning at Hewlett-Packard. Markkularose to Jobs’s defense and Wozniak was takenaback. “He had a lot of confidence in Steve. He sawhim as a future executive, as a future Mike Markkula.”Holt listened to the conversations and, with thepractical bent of a Revolutionary Socialist, decided hewould fare well if he wound up with one tenth of theshares Jobs received. Holt also harbored somedoubts about Markkula. “He had a certain arrogantbearing and the subtle self-confidence of thosepeople who have a lot of money and believe thatsomehow or other they have a birthright to it. I wassuspicious.” Holt was also suspicious that Markkulawould help draw up a business plan and then leavethe company. The suspicion was mutual. Markkulachecked all of Holt’s references back to high school.Wozniak considered Markkula’s confidence entirelymisplaced and predicted to his parents with steadfastassurance that Apple’s bigtime investor would loseevery penny. Wozniak did not share Markkula’senthusiasm and was wondering whether to acceptHewlett-Packard’s invitation to transfer to Oregon.Nor was his wife, Alice, very enthusiastic about thebusiness that consumed so much time and hadn’tproduced much money. She said, “I liked security andthe paycheck coming in.” When Markkula made it acondition of his investment that Wozniak join Apple full

time, matters came to a head. Markkula, Jobs, andHolt discussed whether they could muddle throughwithout Wozniak and issued all sorts of threats. Holtrecalled, “We told him if he didn’t come to work fulltime for Apple Computer he was out. Even then hedidn’t come waltzing through the door. He moanedand groaned and puttered around for a couple ofweeks.” Jobs staged a fierce campaign to persuadeWozniak to join Apple. He called Wozniak’s friends,moaned that he was at his wits’ end and asked themto place persuasive telephone calls. He went aroundto Wozniak’s parents’ house, broke into tears, andbegged for their help. Markkula provided a quieterpressure, patiently explaining to Wozniak, “You go toa company when you want to turn an idea into money.”Wozniak said, “Once I decided I was doing it to makemoney, it made the rest of the decisions easy.”There were a few practical considerations. TheApple Computer Company was officially formed onJanuary 3, 1977, and in March 1977, bought out thepartnership for $5,308.96. To avoid any possiblecomplication Markkula insisted that the companypurchase Ron Wayne’s share of the partnership.Wayne was delighted when he received a check anddiscovered that it was worth $1,700 more than thepaper it was printed on. There were also some largermatters. Since Markkula had never expressed anydesire to run the business, there was also a pressingneed to find somebody who would look after the nutsand chips. Wozniak recalled, “Mike said if he wasputting money in, he wanted someone to mind thepennies.”Markkula’s idea of a penny minder was MichaelScott whose career had been interwoven with hisown. When both started work at Fairchild on the sameSeptember day in 1967, they were given adjoiningoffices. For a short time Markkula worked for Scottwho was a year his junior. They did the sorts of thingscontemporaries did. They joshed about companychitchat and predicted to each other the speed withwhich prices for semiconductors would fall. After theydiscovered that they shared the same birth date,February 11, they made it a point to have an annualcelebratory lunch. It was at their ritual meal in 1977that Markkula asked Scott whether he would beinterested in becoming president of Apple.Scott, like Markkula, was an engineer at heart. Hehad grown up in Gainesville, Florida, and in his teenshad spent afternoons and weekends playing aroundin a university data-processing department with anIBM 650—which, in the late fifties, had been the mostpopular computer in the world. He chose theCalifornia Institute of Technology over MIT becausehe preferred sun to snow, and he specialized inphysics. After graduating he spent a couple of yearsas an engineer at Beckman Instruments SystemsDivision in Southern California which was buildingground instruments for checking Saturn rockets.Beckman happened to be a regular port of call forFairchild salesmen anxious to meet quotas andtargets set by Don Valentine. Scott joined Fairchild

(where he was lured partly by the promise of a $100reward for leads to other recruits). He stayed a coupleof years, was disillusioned by corporate politicking,and left to join National Semiconductor.On his thirty-second birthday Scott was running a$30 million a year manufacturing line which madechips that combined analog and digital electronics. Itwas not the most glamorous place to be at Nationalbut Scott’s position as a director of a line was one ofthe keystones in the company’s system ofmanagement, and he was, in effect, running abusiness that employed eight hundred people. Heprospered, endured table-pounding sessions with thecompany’s president where coffee cups were knownto bounce, turned down an offer to run a plant in theFar East, and decided he wanted to stay in California.By the time he lunched with Markkula, Scott said, “Iwas bored. I had been doing the same job for fouryears.” He saw the formation of a company inengineer’s terms: “It’s like a chess game except themoves continue to happen. The challenge is to puttogether a whole system that works without beingminded and that has its own checks and balances. Iwanted to see if I could build a system from scratch.”He was a tubby man who walked with his fistsclenched. He wore spectacles, had short hair that hewould curl with his fingers, usually wore T-shirts thatbulged over his belt, and on a good day looked likethe benevolent proprietor of an automobile wreckingyard. There was about him more than just a hint thathe would have been happy running an automatedfactory from a seat behind a computer terminal, with acan of Budweiser at his side while “The Ride of theValkyries” thundered in the background.Markkula, who was diplomatic and dislikedimposing demands on others, asked Jobs andWozniak to consider Scott as a possible president forApple. Wozniak, anxious not to be burdened with anycorporate drudgery, was impressed by Scott andflattered by his obvious infatuation with computers. “Ifelt very comfortable knowing that somebody elsebesides Steve would be around to manageproduction.” Jobs, however, was far less sure aboutthis tumbling man who didn’t seem to care aboutEastern philosophy and who preferred pizza to salad.He spent hours at a Bob’s Big Boy with Holt andWozniak, ruminating about Scott. Holt recalled, “Jobsdidn’t know whether he wanted to run the show or not.He didn’t have much confidence that Woz had muchbusiness acumen and was going to speak with himand help, if push came to shove, to keep the companyon the right course. He was left in the uncertainposition of not knowing how much power he wasgiving up.” If Scott proved unsatisfactory, Jobs alsowanted to be free to repurchase his share of thestock. Markkula once again exercised his persuasiveinfluence and explained to Jobs that it was not aquestion of power but whether Apple would be bettermanaged.Jobs listened. He balanced the promise of futurecontributions against the tangible loss of power. Hewas strong enough to admit what he didn’t know andpugnacious enough not to get bowled over by men

who were many years older. He was prepared torelinquish the sweat of a year, but was also consoledby simple arithmetic. Since any combination ofWozniak, Jobs, and Markkula controlled the majorityof the company’s shares, they could unseat Scott atany time. It was a peculiar arrangement and Scott,who had become a guardian of other people’sinvestments, recognized reality. “I wondered whether Icould really get anything done or whether we wouldargue all the time. My biggest concern was whetherJobs and I could get along. He was concerned that Iwasn’t doing consumer stuff. I was concerned that hedidn’t know what he was doing.” Since Scott was thenominal boss, he was paid $20,001 for the first year,one dollar more than the members of the triumvirate.An Apple II, an Apple III, a Lisa, and a Macintoshwere lined up in battle order on a pair of steel tables.Two Mac marketing managers, Michael Murray andMichael Boich, were sitting in front of the computers,putting the finishing touches to a presentation theywere about to give to the Belgian-born artist Jean-Michel Folon. Some months before, Steve Jobs, inhis role as Apple aesthete, had been impressed bythe bridge between romance and surrealism formedby Folon’s work. He had decided to marry theEuropean artist with the California computer and, fora time, wanted Apple’s advertising to reflect Folon’simage of Mac. Jobs had contacted Folon, attendedone of his shows in New York, and invited him toThough, to one degree or another, they were alltekkies, Jobs, Wozniak, Holt, Markkula, and Scott hadvirtually nothing in common. They differed in age,appearance, background, and ambition. They wereattracted to different sorts of lovers and had varyingattitudes toward fidelity, pleasure, aesthetics, religion,money, and politics. A couple speckled their speechwith obscenities while others almost blushed at thesound of a four-letter word. They were so different thata biologist presented with five chromosomespecimens would probably have been surprised tolearn the donors were all male and bipedal.There was Jobs who, though he certainly likedmoney and relished power, virtually fell into Apple forwant of anything else to do; Wozniak, for whom thebinary difference between one thousand and onemillion was far clearer than the monetary, derived hischief delight from displaying the power of hismachine; Holt, who had never owned thirty thousanddollars in his life, was attracted by the prospect ofmaking a quarter of a million dollars in five years;Markkula, who could not conceal his interest in thecomputer or his desire to bolster a personal portfolio;and Scott who, more than anything else, wanted to bethe president of a company that would leap over themoon.“In China it could be marvelous,”Paola Ghiringelli exclaimed.

Cupertino. For Jobs the triple combination of art, NewYork, and Europe was irresistible. Folon, in turn, hadsent some sketches of his ideas, which Jobs hadbeen keeping on a chest of drawers in his bedroom.So it was no accident that Murray and Boichinhabited a Folonesque world. The gray felt walls ofthe conference room were draped with mock-ups ofadvertising posters, instruction manuals, and diskettesleeves devised by Apple’s graphics departmentfrom the slants, shades, and recurring figures ofFolon’s work. A five-foot-high cardboard cutout of aFolon character with a melancholy demeanor, frumpyhat, and angular overcoat was propped against onewall.Murray had decided to offer Folon a royalty of adollar for each Mac sold which, given that Appleeventually hoped to sell over a million Macs a year,was a lucrative contract. Boich was playing with theLisa when the screen suddenly became a jumble ofscrambled letters and numbers. He took a look andsaid, “I’m going to see if we can do something aboutthis; otherwise we’re going to end up with a dead Lisawhen Folon arrives.” Murray glanced at the mess andmuttered, “We have a history of messing uppresentations at Apple. We want to get this one right.”He returned to the Mac where he finished drawing aminiature version of one of Folon’s characters with acartoon bubble enclosing the greeting BONJOURMONSIEUR.When Folon arrived he brought a Parisian paletteto Cupertino. A tall, rumpled man, he wore creasedroyal-blue painter’s pants, narrow crimsonsuspenders, a checkered Viyella shirt, a scuffedcotton jacket, and round, horn-rimmed spectacles. Hewas accompanied by Paola Ghiringelli, who wasdressed in an orange corduroy waistcoat and fawntrousers, and Marek Millek, who worked as a graphicartist for Apple in Paris and was acting as Sherpaand interpreter. Folon immediately upset the carefullylaid plans when he decided to investigate thecomputers.“Oh, regardez!” said Folon as he spotted Murray’sdrawing.He was drawn to the machine and sat down for ademonstration of Macintosh and, as it turned out, aquick lesson in how computers worked, with Murrayexplaining things in short, clipped Pidgin Englishwhich Millek, in a Cockney accent, then translated intoFrench. Murray started sketching some more.“Go to his eyes and put some eyeballs in,” Boichurged.“We can put freckles on his face,” Murrayexplained.Folon sat down and started to draw with the mouse.He looked at the picture that appeared on the screenand winced. “Ah. He doesn’t know how to draw now,”Ghiringelli exclaimed in a husky Italian accent. Sheturned to Murray and asked, “This will only be fordrawing?”“No, no, no,” Murray said earnestly. “For writing, fortyping as well.”They gathered around the long conference tablewith Murray standing by a flip chart covered with five

asic questions about Macintosh.“Celles sont des bonnes questions,” Folon said ashe slid a small tape recorder onto the table.“Macintosh,” explained Murray, “is a code name.But it has taken on a personality of its own. It is morethan a fruit. Mac means the machine. The man. ThePersonality. The Character.”“What is a Macintosh?” asked Ghiringelli.“It’s an apple,” answered Murray.“An apple?” Paola Ghiringelli asked again.“Yes,” said Murray. “There are Golden Delicious,Pippins; there are probably ten kinds of apple.”“Ah! Macintosh is a kind of apple,” Ghiringelliexclaimed.Folon spoke with his hands. “In Europe,” Millektranslated, “the word mac makes people think ofmachine. He thinks of speed. He thinks of a big guy.He thinks of macho.”“I think it’s a nice name,” Folon said quietly, “but inEurope it’s far from apple.”Murray explained the differences among all Apple’scomputers and said, “We do not want to sell it as atechnology machine. We want the product to have apersonality and we want people to buy it because ofits personality. We want to make it a cult product. Wewant people to buy it for its image as well as its utility.”He pointed to another question on the chart andasked rhetorically, “Who will use it? It will be used ondesks. The desks are in offices. The desks are in bigoffices . . . little offices . . . big cities . . . little cities . . .in colleges . . . . in the U.S. . . . in Europe . . . all overthe world.”Millek exhaled and turned to Murray. “Wait aminute,” he said. “This is getting a bit complicated. InFrench when you say bureau it means ‘desk’ and‘office.’ When you start saying desk in an office, itgets complicated.”“Is it secret?” asked Ghiringelli.“Very,” said Murray.“We have many friends at Olivetti and IBM,”Ghiringelli added.“It’s very, very secret,” Murray repeated.“Don’t talk to me about it,” Folon shivered.Suddenly Murray paused. “I don’t know how to saythis.”“What?” asked Millek.“User interface,” said Murray.“Don’t say that, for God’s sake,” Millek said.“I want to say it’s easy to use,” Murray continued.“That’s better.” Millek sighed.Murray continued with a brief history of Apple,annotated with sales numbers and employee count.He and Folon talked about the possibility of Folon’sdesigning posters and a series of post-cards andworking alongside one of the programmers toproduce a game to accompany the computer. Hedescribed what he thought would be the eventualworld market for personal computers. He thenchecked off the countries where he thought Applewouldn’t find buyers for Macs and concluded, “NotChina, not Russia, not India. Well, maybe one or twopeople in India.”“In China it could be marvelous,” Ghiringelli said

with assurance. “They are very lazy. They count withan abacus. They will like it very much.”

WHAT A MOTHERBOARDThe push to complete the successor to the Applecomputer was given greater urgency by theimmovable threat of the First West Coast ComputerFaire. There was an indignant tone to earlyadvertisements for the fair. It was almost as if theSilicon Valley hobbyists felt their rightful place in theworld of microcomputers had been usurped by astring of exhibitions held during 1976 in godforsakenspots where people weren’t supposed to be able totell the difference between a microprocessor and ashift register. There were glum faces at HomebrewClub meetings as fairs took place in cities that werethousands of miles away from microcomputer’sBethlehem—Detroit, Michigan, Trenton, New Jersey.So there was some relief when, shortly after Jobs andWozniak had taken their cigar box to Atlantic City,word began to spread that a large fair was plannedfor San Francisco’s Civic Auditorium in the spring of1977.The chief organizers of the fair were bothHomebrew Club members and had originallyenvisaged a swap meet at Stanford but were turneddown by the university authorities. Forced to lookelsewhere and encouraged by the crowds that theAtlantic City show had attracted, they scrimpedenough money to pay for the rental deposit on a largeconvention hall in San Francisco. Advertisementspromising a large attendance and plenty of exhibitorshad appeared in the Homebrew Club newsletter andJobs, in September 1976, was one of the first tomake a commitment to have a display. With grandpromises about the size of the show, the number ofexhibitors, and the conference panel, it was a naturalforum to introduce a new computer. And for Wozniak,Jobs, and their newly acquired professionalcollaborators, the months leading up to the ComputerFaire were a hectic scramble.Jobs thought the cigar boxes that sat on the SLACdesk tops during Homebrew meetings were aselegant as fly traps. The angular, blue and blacksheet-metal case that housed ProcessorTechnology’s Sol struck him as clumsy and industrial,“I got a bug up my rear that I wanted the computer in aplastic case.” No other microcomputer company hadchosen that course. A plastic case was generallyconsidered a needless expense compared to thecheaper and more pliable sheet metal. Hobbyists, sothe arguments went, didn’t care as much forappearance as they did for substance. Jobs wantedto model the case for the Apple after those Hewlett-Packard used for its calculators. He admired theirsleek, fresh lines, their hardy finish, and the way theylooked at home on a table or desk. He drove toMacy’s department store in San Francisco andlingered in the kitchen and stereo departmentslooking at the design of household appliances. Hewas a very careful observer with a sensuous tastewho knew what he liked and was determined to getwhat he wanted.

Jobs approached a former workmate at Atari andthe original Apple tie breaker, Ron Wayne, and askedthem to come up with sketches for a case. His Atarichum produced some water-wash drawings full ofangles, swoops, and compound curves. Ron Wayne’sdesign might have come from Rube Goldberg’sgarage. The case had a removable Plexiglas top thatwas fastened to wooden sides by metal straps. Toprotect the computer against strands of hair, drops ofcoffee, and flecks of dust, Wayne incorporated atambour door that slid down over the keyboard likethe hood of a rolltop desk. As the door moved ittripped a switch concealed in a runner that turned thecomputer on and off. Jobs had little time for either ofthe designs and started a search for a moresophisticated approach.Jerry Mannock was recommended as a possiblesavior by one of Wozniak’s colleagues at Hewlett-Packard. At the beginning of January 1977 Jobscalled Mannock, explained his dilemma, andsuggested he attend a meeting of the HomebrewClub. Mannock had once wanted to be an electricalengineer, discovered that he preferred the concrete tothe abstract, and for several years worked as aproduct designer at Hewlett-Packard. Bored withdesigning cases calculated to appeal to electricalengineers and alarmed by the sound of young mentalking about retirement, he quit, joined a companythat made devices for the handicapped, and almostimmediately started to feel that he was being treatedas a draftsman. “My stomach was in a knot going towork.” He quit once more, sold his cars, traveledaround Europe with his wife, and when he returned toCalifornia, started his own firm. At the time Jobscalled, Mannock was trying to build a clientele out ofhis home. A firmly built man with dark hair, Mannocktook any project he could land. During his first year inbusiness he had designed a solar home in NewMexico, accepted some small contracts forpackaging, and scraped a $100 profit.Mannock found Jobs in the SLAC lobby standingbeside a card table that carried the computer andtalking to some other people. “He was time-sharing aconversation with three other people and he wasdoing a good job keeping up with all threeconversations. I’d never run into anybody who didthis.” Mannock discovered that Jobs wanted severalplastic cases within twelve weeks in time for theformal introduction of the Apple II at the First WestCoast Computer Faire. Mannock wasn’t discouragedby the tight deadlines. “I hadn’t done this before so Ididn’t know any better.” When Jobs offered to pay$1,500 for mechanical drawings of a case, Mannockagreed but wanted to be paid in advance. “Thesewere flaky-looking customers and I didn’t know if theywere going to be around when the case was finished.”Jobs convinced him that Apple would be around topay its bills and was virtually as safe as the Bank ofAmerica.Much of the design of the case was dictated by thecomputer. It had to have a removable lid, be highenough to house the cards that would slot into themotherboard, and be large enough to let some of the

heat from the power supply dissipate. Mannockcompleted the drawings within three weeks. “I did avery conservative design that would blend in withother things. I wanted a good, honest statement inplastic and the minimum amount of visual clutter.”Once the general shape was settled there were only afew changes. A pair of indented handles on the sidewere eliminated because the whole case was slimenough to be gripped between thumb and pinkie.While Jobs was enthusiastic about the drawingsMannock presented for the case, he steadfastlyrefused to pay for a $300 foam-core mock-upproduced for an advertisement.Just as Ron Wayne’s design for the case was setto one side, so was his original logo with itsacademic overtones. At the Regis McKenna AgencyRob Janov, a young art director, was assigned to theApple account and set about designing a corporatelogo. Armed with the idea that the computers wouldbe sold to consumers and that their machine was oneof the few to offer color, Janov set about drawing stilllifes from a bowl of apples. “I wanted to simplify theshape of an apple.” He gouged a rounded chunk fromone side of the Apple, seeing this as a playfulcomment on the world of bits and bytes but also as anovel design. To Janov the missing portion“prevented the apple from looking like a cherrytomato.” He ran six colorful stripes across the Apple,starting with a jaunty sprig of green, and the mixturehad a slightly psychedelic tint. The overall result wasenticing and warm. Janov recalled Jobs’s demands:“Steve always wanted a very high-quality look. Hewanted something that looked expensive and didn’tlook like some chunky model airplane.” Jobs wasmeticulous about the style and appearance of thelogo, buzzing to the agency and fretting at RegisMcKenna’s home in the evening. When Janovsuggested that the six colors be separated by thinstrips to make the reproduction easier, Jobs refused.To manufacture name plates for Apple’scomputers, he hunted down the company that madeHewlett-Packard’s labels and came away withembossed logos on strips of thin aluminum. Herejected the first set of labels because the bands ofcolor bled into each other. Most of the other computercompanies settled for a plainer look: stamping theirnames onto sheet metal and refusing to pay the fewextra cents to go first class.Meanwhile, Holt was busy taming the computer. Hefelt, from the moment Jobs had enticed him to workfor Apple, that the only way to produce a reliable,lightweight power supply that would stay cool was toresort to an approach that hadn’t been used by any ofthe other microcomputer companies. Instead ofsettling for a conventional linear power supply thathadn’t changed much since the twenties, Holt decidedto take a more elaborate tack and adapt a switchingpower supply he had previously designed for anoscilloscope. A switching power supply wassubstantially lighter and considerably morecomplicated than a linear power supply. It took anordinary household current, switched it on and off with

dizzying rapidity, and produced a steady current thatwouldn’t blow out any of the expensive memory chips.For computer hobbyists who cursed the heat of thechunky linear power supplies, a switching powersupply was something to admire from a distance.“Beware of switchers,” they warned one another.Wozniak admitted, “I only knew vaguely what aswitching power supply was.” Holt’s final design waseminently reliable and smaller than a quart carton ofmilk.As Holt completed his work and the final size of thecomputer became clearer, Jobs returned to hisformer Atari workmate Howard Cantin, who hadproduced the artwork for the Apple I printed circuitboard, and asked him to do the same for the Apple II.This time Jobs had more strenuous demands. Herejected Cantin’s first layout and insisted that on thesecond the lines linking chips be soldier straight.Cantin recalled the tussle. “He just drove me up thewall. I tried to tell him that there was a point at which adrive for perfection is nonproductive. He irritated meso bad I swore I’d never work for him again.” Jobsrelented only when Cantin reduced the layout of theprinted circuit board to the size of a lawyer’s scratchpad. Instead of taking the taped artwork directly to theprinted-circuit-board manufacturers, Jobs insistedthat the layout be fine-tuned, or digitized, by computereven though that caused a delay.As the West Coast Computer Faire drew closer,there were other humdrum concerns. The businesscards weren’t returned from the printer until two daysbefore the fair opened. A few printed circuit boardswere stuffed with chips before they had been coatedwith their glossy silk screens. Jobs meanwhile hadplumped for a brown keyboard after gauging thereaction of people like his parents to a variety ofcolors. Though the computers were working, thekeyboards went dead every twenty minutes becauseof a chip that was sensitive to static electricity.Meanwhile, Wozniak was busy trying to squeeze theprogramming code for an abbreviated form of theBASIC language into a ROM chip. He had hoped touse a new chip from AMI but when the part failed toappear on time he had to revert to a chip made bySynertek. He, Espinosa, Wigginton, and Holt wrotesome small demonstration programs that highlightedthe computer’s way with color and sound. Thedemonstration programs were duplicated hurriedlyonto cassette recorders and every time the supply oftapes was exhausted, Espinosa was dispatched tothe nearby Gemco discount store to buy some more.More important, there was uncertainty aboutwhether the case would be ready for the opening ofthe fair. After the mechanical drawings had passedmuster, Mannock and Jobs had been presented witha choice between two molding processes: reactioninjection or structural foam. In the former, a chemicalreaction forces polyurethane to fill a mold but leavesbubbles in the finish. The latter is more elaborate,requiring pressurized foam to be injected and heated,but it also leaves a more polished result. Since

nobody expected that Apple would sell more than fivethousand of its second computer, Jobs and Mannockchose the reaction injection method which used epoxytools rather than the more durable, and far moreexpensive, metal used for long production runs.The first cases that were extracted from the moldswere rickety. The surfaces were uneven, the lids werebowed, and the edges lapped over the keyboard. AtApple half a dozen people used trimming knives,sandpaper, and putty to camouflage the worstblemishes and sprayed the cases with a beige paintwhich gave a light look. They decided to muddlethough the fair without air vents on the sides of thecases that weren’t cut cleanly. With most of thepreparations over they adjourned on the eveningbefore the fair to the St. Francis Hotel on SanFrancisco’s Union Square. Scott and Markkula wereused to large hotels but for the younger members itwas their first taste of the big time. Espinosa, whohad traded his newspaper route for an hourly wage atApple of three dollars, was startled to receive a cashadvance and expense-account privileges.Apple’s color computer was named with the samesort of reflex with which other, larger computercompanies had named their machines. Just as DigitalEquipment Corporation had given each successivePDP computer a progressively higher serial number,so Apple named its machine the Apple II. Thecomputer that appeared at the West Coast ComputerFaire was not one person’s machine. It was theproduct of collaboration and blended contributions indigital logic design, analog engineering, andaesthetic appeal. The color, the slots, the way inwhich the memory could be expanded from 4K to 48Kbytes, the control of the keyboard and hookup to thecassette recorder, and the BASIC that was stored inthe ROM chip—in effect the motherboard—wasWozniak’s contribution. Holt had contributed theextremely significant power supply, and JerryMannock the case. The engineering advances wereofficially recognized when, some months later,Wozniak was awarded U.S. Patent #4,136,359 for amicrocomputer for use with video display, and Holtwas given Patent #4,130,862 for direct current powersupply. But behind them all Jobs was poking,prodding, and pushing and it was he, with hisseemingly inexhaustible supply of energy, whobecame the chief arbiter and rejector.In January 1977 when the Homebrew Clubnewsletter had reached a circulation of fifteenhundred, a survey of membership revealed 181computers of which 43 were IMSAIS, 33 Altair 8080s,and 6 Apple 6502s. Apple was in eighth place with ashare that one hobbyist calculated, using a speciallywritten computer program, of 3.2967 percent. Even ifthey didn’t talk about it in quite this way, the men atApple knew that the West Coast Computer Fairecould help change that pecking order. They alsounderstood the power of first impressions. Thecombination of Markkula, Jobs, and the McKennaAgency turned Apple’s public bow into a coup.Because Jobs had made one of the first

commitments to appear at the show, Apple had prideof place in the front of the hall. Markkula organized thedesign of the booth—ordering a smoky, backlit, largeand illuminated Plexiglas sign carrying the newcompany’s logo and a large television screen todisplay the computer’s capacity. Three computers layon two counters. These gave the impression ofsubstance and bulk even though they were Apple’sonly fully assembled machines. Meanwhile, Markkulaand McKenna paid attention to sartorial graces,guiding Jobs to a San Francisco tailor andpersuading him to buy the first suit of his life. “We allagreed to dress nicely,” said Wozniak. So at the startof the fair they all looked vaguely respectable even ifJobs found his three-piece suit and tie lesscomfortable than jeans and Birkenstock sandals.The harried preparations were worthwhile for theFirst West Coast Computer Faire was a giant hybrid—an enthusiastic Homebrew Club meeting crossedwith some of the professional aspects of mainframecomputer shows. A hundred or so speakerspresented seminars and papers on subjects like theshirt-pocket computer, robots, computer-controlledmusic, computers for the disabled, high-levellanguages, networks, graphic speech-recognitiondevices, electronic mail. Some of the wheeling anddealing and back-room handshakes typical of largerfairs took place and at some of these Markkulacourted potential dealers and distributors.There was also some critical scrutiny of thecompetition. A prototype of another personalcomputer, the Commodore PET, was shown though itwas displayed at a booth under the name of Mr.Calculator. John Roach, a vice-president of TandyElectronics, best known for selling electronic deviceslike CB radios under the Radio Shack label, wastouring the fair and subjecting both the Apple and thePET to close inspection. There was also anotherundercurrent. Small notices were pinned up on bulletinboards and word was passed about surreptitiousmeetings where phone phreaks pored over the latestissue of the TAP newsletter and whispered to oneanother about some new advance in telephoneswitching equipment.For the thirteen thousand who teemed through thedoors and who strolled the floor with plastic tote bagsstuffed with advertisements and promises, the Appledisplay, opposite the main entrance doors, wasinescapable. Yet it was only half the size of theProcessor Technology booth, smaller than theCromemco booth and far less popular than the IMSAIstand. But Apple dwarfed other booths which had theunmistakable look of hobbyists. Little booths soldplug-in boards, flimsy magazines, and T-shirts.Companies no larger than Apple had rented sad cardtables and written corporate names in felt-tip pens onpaper signs. Stacked up by the flimsy yellowbackcloths were half-opened cardboard boxes. Theylooked like what they were: exiles from the HomebrewClub trying to sell a few single-board microcomputers.One of these modest booths belonged to ComputerConversor Corporation where Alex Kamradt was stilltrying to sell the terminal Wozniak had designed and

was advertising the Conversor 4000 as “an affordablealternative to high-priced computer terminals.”Apple’s booth, with its counters draped in darkcloth and piled with stacks of brochures, had thedesired effect. The dozen or so people who mannedthe booth and distributed brochures were surprisedby the interest in the computer. Some prospectivecustomers refused to believe that a computer washoused in the plastic case and were only madebelievers when they were shown that the spacehidden by the tablecloths was empty. A few engineerswere impressed that a printed circuit board with sofew chips could include color circuitry. LeeFelsenstein admired the approach. “It was highlysimplistic and bold in its crudeness but it worked.”The display prompted about three hundred ordersover the following few weeks, surpassing by ahundred the total number of Apple Is sold.Nevertheless, despite the folklore that built up insucceeding years, Apple didn’t take the fair by storm.Jim Warren, the show’s chief organizer, said, “I didn’tfeel Apple was the strongest exhibitor,” while theissue of Byte that later carried a report of the eventfailed even to mention Apple.Wozniak, staggered to learn that the booth cost$5,000, was preoccupied with a more entertainingdiversion. Along with Wigginton he was putting thefinishing touches to a spoof which they had beenplanning for several weeks. Wozniak had composedan advert promoting a new computer called theZaltair: a hybrid play on a new microprocessor, the Z-80, and the Altair computer. The copy described thecomputer in effusive terms and offered trade-in termsfor owners of existing Altairs. To avoid troubleWozniak arranged with a friend to have the leafletsprinted in Los Angeles. The morning of the show,while everybody else was hovering about the booth,Wozniak surreptitiously distributed cartons ofbrochures around the hall. The lime-coloredadvertisement described the computer in extravagantand convincing terms.The advert left no misunderstanding about the idealmicro-computer:Imagine a dream machine. Imagine the computersurprise of the century here today. Imagine Z-80performance plus. Imagine BAZIC in ROM, the mostcomplete and powerful language ever developed.Imagine raw video, plenty of it. Imagine auto-scrolltext, a full 16 lines of 64 characters. Imagine eyedazzlingcolor graphics. Imagine a blitz-fast 1200-baud cassette port. Imagine an unparalleled I/Osystem with full Altair-100 and Zaltair-150 buscompatibility. Imagine an exquisitely designedcabinet that will add to the decor of any living room.Imagine the fun you’ll have. Imagine Zaltair, availablenow from MITS, the company where microcomputertechnology was born.Wozniak described the computer’s softwareBAZIC: “Without software a computer is no more thana racing car without wheels, a turntable withoutrecords, or a banjo without strings. The best thing ofall about BAZIC is the ability to define your own

language. . . a feature we call perZonality. TM.” Andthere was a glowing portrait of the hardware: “Wereally thought this baby out before we built it. Twoyears of dedicated research and development at thenumber ONE microcomputer company had to pay off,and it did. A computer engineer’s dream, allelectronics are on a single PC card, even the 18-slotmotherboard. And what a motherboard.”With its corporate logo on the spoof and a couponoffering prospective customers trade-in allowanceson their Altairs, the MITS management was notamused. It frantically stamped FRAUD and NOTREAL on all the brochures it could find. Finally,despite the $400 he had sunk into the prank, Wozniakbegan to get nervous, and worried that thousands ofcomputers would be returned to MITS, he and hisaccomplices dumped cartons of dummy ads downstairwells.Jobs picked up one of the advertisements andstarted to examine the details of the surprising newcompetitor—which Wozniak had plotted in a chartagainst machines like the Sol, IMSAI, and Applebeneath the line: “The mark of a microcomputerchamp is performance.” Wozniak and Wigginton, whocouldn’t smother their giggles, slid out through a sidedoor, leaving Jobs inside gasping, “Oh, my God! Thisthing sounds great.” Jobs looked at the detailedrankings given in a performance chart on the back,discovered that the Apple II ranked third behind theZaltair and the Altair 8800-b, and with an air ofintense relief, sighed, “Hey, look! We didn’t come outtoo bad.”

UP TO SPECThe spray of a public splash is made of facades,gestures, and illusions. At the West Coast ComputerFaire in 1977 Apple Computer, Inc., appeared a lotlarger than the actual little business that moved out ofthe Jobses’ garage into a shingled office building at20863 Stevens Creek Boulevard in Cupertino. Theoffice, Suite E-3, was smaller than a tract home andwas barely a mile from the homes of Jobs’s andWozniak’s parents. It was separated from HomesteadHigh School by Interstate 280 and was a stone’sthrow from the crossroads where the Cali Brothers’muddy-colored silos were corralled by stores andsubdivisións. Apple’s neighbors were a Sony salesoffice, an employment agency, a weight-loss clinicand a teachers’ organization. A plasterboard wall wasrun down the center of Apple’s rented quarters toseparate half a dozen desks from the lab andassembly area. It was in these cramped surroundings,two hundred feet from the Good Earth Restaurant, thatApple’s founders and their hired hands turned theirattention from the cosmic to the parochial.For almost a year the men in Cupertinoconcentrated on controlling Apple’s bodily functions.They were building everything from scratch and had tosettle on details and procedures which they had eithernever encountered or had always taken for granted.To provide some sort of framework, Markkula, for thefirst three months of 1977, concentrated on Apple’sbusiness plan.He turned for guidance to John Hall, a groupcontroller at Syntex, a Palo Alto pharmaceuticalcompany. Markkula and Hall were casualacquaintances. They had met at a couple of parties,shared some common friends, and bumped into eachother on ski slopes in the California Sierras. Markkulaknew that Hall had helped other young companieswith their business plans and he asked him to do thesame for Apple. Hall took a two-week vacation fromSyntex and holed up with Apple’s principals for hoursof meetings at the local eateries: the Good EarthRestaurant and Mike’s Hero Sandwiches. Scotthelped Hall cost out a bill of materials and projectmanufacturing costs. Jobs provided details ofcontracts with parts suppliers and Wozniak and Holtwere consulted for advice on engineering matters.For grander marketing strategy Hall and Markkularubbed a hazy crystal ball and decided that the AppleII would launch a three-pronged assault. They thoughtthe machine would be sold to home-computerhobbyists and to professionals like dentists anddoctors who had previously shown a weakness forgadgets like programmable calculators. They alsoplanned to develop the Apple as a control center forthe home, linked to comforts like automatic garagedoors and lawn sprinklers. Hall recalled, “We felt thatwe needed three tenets for a business plan. But Ididn’t believe the business plan and Mike Markkuladidn’t believe it. I felt it was a weak plan strategically.”Hall’s skepticism was so great that when Markkula

asked him to become Apple’s vice-president offinance, he declined. “I couldn’t afford the risk ofjoining a screwy company like Apple.” However, hedid ask Markkula whether Apple would pay in stockfor his consulting work. When Markkula demurred,Hall accepted a check for $4,000.As the business plan took shape, Scott turned tofamiliar faces for help. Apple’s first receptionist,secretary, and general factotum was SherryLivingston, a perky, bright woman who had worked forhim at National Semiconductor. Uncertain aboutApple’s prospects, Livingston was only convinced ofits staying power after Markkula tugged open adrawer stuffed with orders. Gene Carter, who hadbeen Scott’s boss for a while at Fairchild, was lookingfor a job and became head of Apple’s sales anddistribution. When Scott wanted somebody to mindthe books he turned to Gary Martin, a cheerful,gossipy accountant who had also worked for him atNational. Martin took a look at the Apple II andthought, “Who the hell is going to want this thing? I feltso sorry for Scott I tried to buy him lunch.” Eventually,Martin decided to try Apple for a month, knowing thathis boss at National had promised not to turn in hissecurity badge.Others came of their own accord. Wendell Sander,a shy engineer-cum-sleuth at Fairchild, had becomeintrigued by Apple after adding some memory chipsof his own design to the Apple I. He wrote a Star Trekprogram to amuse his children, demonstrated it toJobs while Apple was still in the garage, andeventually, after thirteen years with Fairchild, decidedto let his passion guide his star. “If they had folded Icould have got a job the next day. There wasn’t muchpersonal risk apart from the chance of getting abruised ego. My career would not have vanished.” JimMartindale, a colleague of Jobs’s at Atari, was hiredto look after production while Don Bruener, a highschoolpal of Randy Wigginton’s, became a part-timetechnician. Jobs’s college friend Dan Kottkegraduated from college and became Apple’s twelfthemployee, and Elmer Baum started working in thefinal assembly area. Scarcely anybody consideredthat the decision to join Apple was risky. Instead theyall seemed to feel that the greatest risk was to stayput and do nothing.As the newcomers arrived, through the late springand summer of 1977, they found themselves in asmall business that had bound itself to some visiblepublic promises. An advertisement in the February16, 1977, issue of the Homebrew newsletterpromised delivery of the Apple II no later than April 30,1977. Markkula had also decided that Apple couldsave itself a lot of bother by offering Apple I owners achoice between a full refund or replacement with anApple II. The arrival of age, or at least what passed forage in Silicon Valley, brought a sense of rigor toApple. Blending experience with exuberance provedto be a troublesome task, but it was also a fortunatecombination. Experience helped temper impulse andinstill a sense of discipline while innocence inevitably

questioned convention and authority.Wozniak, Jobs, Holt, Markkula, and Scott were allalert to technical matters and tended to understandthe size and implications of electrical problems thatcropped up. But they also had serious differencesand had to work through the clashes that occurredbetween men whom a Hollywood screenwriter mighthave labeled The Hobbyist, The Rejector, The Fixer,The Pacifier, and The Enforcer. At the outset, theyshared none of the experience that comes fromsurviving mistakes and weathering trouble. Holt felt,“There wasn’t much trust at all. The question was notof trusting each other’s honesty but each other’sjudgment. You might score seventy percent all round.It was a business not a family affair.”Almost from the start Scott and Jobs irritated eachother. Scott, in his curious position as corporatecaretaker and the guardian of Apple’s internal affairs,became Jobs’s first encounter with an unbendingauthority. Before Scott’s arrival Jobs had doneanything he wanted. After Scott became president,Jobs found his boundaries were prescribed. The pairapproached life from different angles. Scott thoughtexperience was more valuable than native wit whileJobs was convinced that most problems could besolved with a proper application of intelligence. Scottadmired Jobs’s optimism, his exuberance and energyand gradually learned to appreciate his sense of style.But he also decided, “Jobs cannot run anything. Hedoesn’t know how to manage people. After you getsomething started he causes lots of waves. He likesto fly around like a hummingbird at ninety miles perhour. He needs to be sat on.” Scott squelched Jobs atevery turn and one of the earliest mechanical choresprovoked a clash. Scott handed out official employeenumbers to go along with some laminated-plasticsecurity badges. Since, in Scott’s mind, the computergave birth to the business he assigned Wozniaknumber one, Jobs number two, Markkula numberthree, Fernandez number four, Holt number five, andWigginton number six, reserved number seven forhimself, and gave Espinosa number eight. Everybody,apart from Jobs, was satisfied with the order.“Am I number one?” he asked Scott.“No. Woz is number one. You’re number two.”“I want to be number one,” Jobs insisted. “Can I benumber zero? Woz can be number one. I want to benumber zero.”Number Zero and Number Seven also found muchto differ about in the diurnal flow. Wigginton watchedfrom the sidelines. “Jobs had strong ideas about theway things should be done, and Scotty had the rightway, which didn’t happen to be Jobs’s and there wasthe inevitable fight.” They differed over the waymaterials should be moved from one section toanother, how the desks should be positioned, andwhat color laboratory benches should be ordered.Jobs wanted white because he felt it would be betterfor the technicians and engineers. Scott wanted graybecause he knew those benches would be cheaperand easier to get. Gary Martin, the accountant,watched another spat shortly after he joined Apple.“They got into a roaring argument over who should

sign some purchase orders. Jobs said, I got herequicker than you. I’ll sign them.’ Then Scotty said, I’vegot to sign them,’ and then he threatened to quit.”In the quieter moments following Scott’s arrivalJobs looked after purchasing and some of the fixturesand continued to press for quality. When an IBMsalesman delivered a blue Selectric typewriterinstead of the neutral color he had specified, Jobserupted. When the phone company failed to install theivory-colored telephones Jobs had ordered, hecomplained until they were changed. As he arrangeddelivery schedules and payment terms, Jobshumiliated a lot of suppliers. Gary Martin watched.“He was very obnoxious to them. He had to get thelowest price they had. He’d call them on the phoneand say, That’s not good enough. You better sharpenyour pencil.’ We were all asking. ‘How can you treatanother human being like that?’”Elsewhere a natural division occurred between theolder engineers with experience of some of theheadaches of manufacturing and the younger oneswho were eager to get a prototype running andcontent to leave the duller polishing and finishing toothers. One programmer recalled, “There wasn’t anysense of fear. Anybody could call anybody anasshole. It wasn’t assumed we were doing the rightthing. We had to prove we were doing the right thing.”Wozniak never had much of a reputation for finishingthe last part of anything. For him and some of hisyounger accomplices the difference between aprototype dangling cords and trailing wires and acompleted machine verged on the academic. Anyoneworth his salt, they argued, would obviously becapable of fixing a computer that was a little bit flaky.Holt, on the other hand, was like a mother hen,pecking and scratching until he was convincedeverything worked and he knew what it would cost tobuild. It was Holt who insisted everything be “up tospec.” It was Holt who accompanied Jobs to Atari tofind some modulators, little devices that connected acomputer to a television set. It was Holt who clippedan oscilloscope to the computer to check the signalsrunning from the microprocessor to the memory chipsand the cassette recorder. It was Holt who insisted,after Wozniak had dreamed up some new approach,that he explain, demonstrate, and draw diagrams ofthe design. Holt said, “I hardly ever trusted Woz’sjudgment.” Holt also discovered the way to Wozniak’sheart. “The only real trick to get Woz working onsomething was to become his audience or get him anaudience.”Meanwhile, Markkula and Scott had exerted hisown pressure on the engineers and programmers.When the young programmers were more interestedin cobbling together short demonstration programs toillustrate the power of the computer, Markkula insistedthat they start work on programs people could use. Toshow the depth of his concern, Markkula did much ofthe tedious work on a program that would let peoplebalance their checkbooks. He also brought a quieterstyle. When Wozniak was compiling a scoring systemfor Breakout and wanted to include BULLSHIT as a

comment for low scores, Markkula persuaded himthat there was a call for something more refined.When the first computers were ready to ship, Scottforced the youngsters to tack together an abbreviatedversion of BASIC so that Apple could start to shipmachines accompanied by a computer language.Scott had similarly unsentimental ideas about bothproduction and finance. He had a strong dislike forautomated manufacturing and expensive testmachinery. He was also determined that outsidersshould help pay for Apple’s growth and that theyshould suffer the discomforts of swings in business.His ideas about the growth of the company were theequivalent of Wozniak’s ideas about the chips in acomputer. Both were talking about productivity. Scottwanted to design a company that did the mostamount of work with the least number of workers. “Ourbusiness,” he said, “was designing, educating, andmarketing. I thought that Apple should do the leastamount of work that it could and that it should leteveryone else grow faster. Let the subcontractorshave the problems.” Scott had an undyingcommitment to letting outside manufacturers makeanything that Apple couldn’t produce more cheaply.He also felt that a fast-growing business had no timeto master some of the rudimentary skills needed toproduce reliable components. It was easier, forexample, to expand the quality tests for printed circuitboards stuffed by outside suppliers than tocontemplate expanding the work force and masteringall the techniques needed for production of decentboards.So for help with board stuffing Scott relied partly onHildy Licht, a Los Altos mother and the wife of one ofWozniak’s acquaintances from the Homebrew Club.Licht operated a cottage industry. Parts weredelivered to her home and she distributed them tohand-picked assemblers scattered around theneighborhood, tested the finished work, and returnedit to Apple in the back of her brown Plymouth stationwagon. She was flexible, could make revisions onboards, and offered overnight service. Scott alsoturned for help to a larger company that specialized inturning out larger quantities of printed circuit boards.Both were the sort of services designed to relievesmall companies of time-consuming chores.Scott also kept a close eye on Apple’s cashbox. Hearranged for Bank of America to provide a payrollsystem to relieve Apple of the chores of withholdingtax, deducting Social Security payments, and issuingpaychecks. Along with Gary Martin, who acted as hisfiscal fist, Scott monitored the most expensivecomponents like the 16K memory chips. The pairarranged to buy the chips on forty-five days’ creditand the keyboards on sixty days’ credit. Meanwhile,they tried to collect money from customers within thirtydays of all sales. Martin paid close attention. “My jobwas to collect money from customers before we paidour vendors. We kept our customers on a very shortleash.” Martin, who had once worked for a freightcompany that went bankrupt after turning its accountsreceivables from fact to fiction, also tended to veertoward the conservative. His natural impulses and the

need to give Apple a respectable seal helped himselect auditors from one of the country’s largestaccounting firms. Like other accountants in SiliconValley, the people from Arthur Young offered adiscount on the cost of their first year’s work. Appleand its accountants also took full advantage of UncleSam. By deciding to end Apple’s first fiscal year onSeptember 30, 1977, they effectively received afifteen-month interest-free loan from the governmentfor the tax owed in the final calendar quarter, whichwas always the consumer industry’s largest quarter.Wigginton watched Apple’s president at work anddecided “Scott’s motto was let’s make some money.Let’s get something out the door.” Scott didn’t mindgetting his hands dirty. He would happily muck aboutin the manufacturing area helping pack computersinto shipping cases. After the computers werepacked, he often took them in the back of his car tothe local UPS office. When cassettes had to beduplicated, Scott operated the tape recorders.Whenever production outran orders, Scott stackedpiles of printed circuit boards behind Markkula’s deskto make his point.When it became clear that Jobs’s plan to ship apolished manual with the computers would cause along delay, Scott started to assemble his own. Allalong he had favored distributing plain data sheets,so Apple’s first manual contained listings of codesand instructions for hooking up the computer. It wascopied by a duplicating service in a local shoppingmall. The instructions were then slipped betweenreport covers purchased at McWhirter’s stationerystore in Cupertino and packed with the computer.Some months later Scott cobbled together a slightlymore elaborate manual which Sherry Livingstontyped. Wozniak recalled, “We just decided to includeas much as we could because we didn’t have much.”Devotees who couldn’t find the answer in eithermanual and made inquiries were sent a bulkypackage of routines and listings known as TheWozpack, which sprang from Wozniak’s insistencethat the sort of information he had been sent when heinvestigated minicomputers should be available toApple owners. The rush to ship was evident in theopaque explanation that accompanied ademonstration Star Trek program. It contained thesingle line of instruction cOO. FFR. LOAD. RUN.Gradually, as 1977 progressed, a sense ofcommunity began to develop. It was certainly helpedby the fear that acted as a strong social glue when,five months after the formal introduction of the Apple II,the business came close to folding. The subcontractorwho had turned out unsatisfactory cases for the WestCoast Computer Faire continued to do so. Part of thefault lay with Jobs’s decision to rely on soft tooling, butmost of the trouble was caused by the men whomanufactured the cases and who were, in Holt’sacerbic view, “a bunch of plumbers.” The lidscontinued to sag and the lid from one case wouldn’t fitanother. The paint refused to stick.In September 1977 the main tooling broke, and

customers who had placed orders were beginning toget impatient. Apple was within inches of earning areputation for being unable to meet its commitments.Dozens of printed circuit boards started to pile up,suppliers demanded normal payment, and Apple’sthin cushion of cash was running low. Without toolsApple would have been stuck without any revenue forabout three months. There were a few rumors thatApple would close and Holt even delayed hiring Cliffand Dick Huston, a fraternal combination of engineerand programmer, until he was certain that Applewould be able to issue paychecks. “It was life anddeath for us,” Scott recalled. “We’d have had a goodproduct and not been able to ship it.” Jobs scurried offto a Tempress firm in the Pacific Northwest thatspecialized in producing molds for clients likeHewlett-Packard. He explained Apple’s predicamentto Bob Reutimann, a Tempress vice-president, whorecalled, “I thought to myself ‘Does he know what theheck he’s doing?’ I was a little afraid of going aheadwith the project. I thought, ‘Here comes another guywith big ideas.’” Jobs’s exuberance paid off as didhis offer of a bonus of $1,000 for every week that thenew mold was brought in ahead of schedule. The newtooling was delivered toward the end of 1977.As Apple’s founders and managers made fumblesand learned to sense each other’s weaknesses, theygradually built a mutual trust. The trust was derivedfrom a sense of their colleagues’ frailties as much asfrom their complementary strengths. Markkula’s earlysales forecasts were quickly shown to be pessimistic,but it also became clear that he wouldn’t scuttle backinto retirement. Jobs’s choice of technique for themanufacture of the case, Wozniak’s unwillingness tofinish a design, Scott’s refusal to fret aboutaesthetics, and Holt’s habit of nitpicking all revealedprivate weaknesses.The mixture of pedigrees came to the fore indiscussions over important details like the systemused for numbering parts in engineering. They all hadtheir own ideas for a system which, if poorlydesigned, could cause horrible complications. Scottobserved, “When you’re working on big topics whichyou don’t know all the answers to, it’s easy to switchto something else really teeny that everyone can gettheir teeth into.” Jobs, for example, dreamed up hisown phonetic system in which an item like a 632Phillips head screw would be labeled “PH 632.” It wasa charming notion but didn’t have the flexibility to copewith oddities like different lengths and distinctionsbetween black-oxide, nylon, and stainless-steelscrews.Jerry Mannock, the case designer, suggestedadopting a system like the one used at Hewlett-Packard. Somebody else wanted to copy Atari’sprocedures. Others wanted parts to be numberedfrom the outside of the computer toward the inside. Afew considered it more natural to work from the insidetoward the outside. Finally Holt wrote a five-pagepaper detailing a formula based on seven digitswhich divided parts into categories like nuts, washers,and custom semiconductors. It became the object ofreligious attachment. “If there wasn’t an engineering

print and a specification associated with a partnumber, then it wasn’t an engineering part number.Then they could go to hell.”They began to tolerate quirks and idiosyncrasiesand solved some of the small pieces of mechanicalconfusion. After telephone callers kept asking forMike—not making clear whether they wanted tospeak to Markkula or Scott—the former kept hisname while the latter became known as Scotty. Whena cranky line printer broke down they all knew whoguarded the jar of Vaseline that was used to greasethe roller. They all learned to endure Holt’s chainsmokingand Bill Fernandez’s piping bird whistlesand occasional departures for Bahai holidays. Theyworked around Jobs’s temperamental car and hiscomplaints that Apple’s first Christmas party couldn’tbe catered with vegetarian food. Scott was alsodelighted to learn about Jobs’s personal cure forrelieving fatigue: massaging his feet in the flush of atoilet bowl.The fishbowl existence brought immediategratification. Most of the employees tended to hear orsee what was going on. When somebody strolled inoff Stevens Creek Boulevard and counted out $1,200for a new computer, Apple’s teenagers could scarcelybelieve their eyes. Sherry Livingston felt that it waslike “a big octopus. Everybody did a bit of everything. Ididn’t feel as though there were presidents and vicepresidents.I felt as though we were all peers.”Workdays often started before 8 A.M. and lasted untillate into the evening, with breaks for sandwiches.Many of the two dozen or so employees worked part,or all, of weekends. Gary Martin, for example,dropped by over the weekends to sift through the mailfor checks. Don Bruener, who helped troubleshoot theprinted circuit boards, enjoyed the unpredictablenature of the work. “Each day there was somethingdifferent to do. Since everything was new there wereno real routines.” When a demonstration program wascompleted or some quirk in the computer had beenpinned down, the entire entourage would inspect theprogress. Wigginton recalled, “There would be a bigbrouhaha and everybody would get excited.” Scott,who took special delight in the absence of a formalbureaucracy, explained, “There was no time forpaperwork. We were so busy running just trying tokeep up.” Apple’s anonymity also tended tostrengthen ties and provoked blushes for the likes ofDon Bruener. “I told my friends I worked at this littlecompany called Apple and they laughed.”There were also the amusing peculiarities ofregular visitors. One of the most frequent callers wasJohn Draper who had emerged from a minimumsecurityprison in Lompoc, California, after beingconvicted for phone phreaking. At Apple he soonarrived at a casual arrangement with Wozniak todesign a printed circuit board that could be pluggedinto one of the slots of the Apple and turn thecomputer into a grand, automatic telephone dialer. Itwas nicknamed The Charlie Board, was capable ofproducing dial tones, and could be left overnight toscan banks of toll-free telephone numbers and match

them with customer code numbers. The codes couldthen be used to charge calls. The results of theselaborious tests were typed out on a printer. Wozniakthought “it would have been one of the great productsof all time” and programmed an Apple toremorselessly dial a friend’s house. Though Wozniakhelped modify the design, Markkula, Scott, and Jobsdidn’t want anything to do with Draper who concluded,“They were chickenshit and paranoid about havingme on the premises.” There was good reason.Draper took an Apple and a plug-in board toPennsylvania and was arrested. He eventuallypleaded guilty to stealing over $50,000 worth oftelephone calls and was jailed again.The utilitarian setting formed a backdrop for abusiness that filled some emotional need for many ofthe employees. For the teenagers, the computer heldthe main allure. Wigginton, who spent most of his timeworking on software with Wozniak, kept the nocturnalhours of a youthful engineer. He worked between 3A.M. and 7 A.M., disappeared for school and a sleep,and returned to Apple late in the evening. “My parentsweren’t super-crazy about it but they were starting tosplit up. Apple definitely replaced my family.” When hegraduated from high school a year early, in June1977, almost the entire company took the afternoonoff to attend his graduation and present him with afifty-dollar gift voucher.Chris Espinosa, meanwhile, started to cutHomestead classes and graduated with a gradepointaverage barely adequate for entrance to adecent university. He abandoned his paper-deliveryroute, which paid one cent a paper, in favor of threedollar-an-hourpart-time work at Apple. After one ofhis first all-night sessions working on some softwarewith Wozniak, his mother (who herself later joinedApple) forbade him to work for a while. Espinosasoon returned, helping Markkula demonstrate thecomputer at nearby stores and deciding that when heneeded a new pair of spectacles, they would berimless like Markkula’s.For Wozniak and Jobs, Apple also was a refugefrom private turmoil. Wozniak, who was either workingon his computer in the office or on another at home,saw little of his wife. The pair went through a couple oftrial separations and Wozniak took to sleeping on acouch at the office. Eventually talk of separationturned to talk of a permanent split, and Wozniak, forwhom divorce was a miserable blot, found himselfunable to work until he resolved some critical matters.“I didn’t want my wife to have stock. I just wanted tobuy it out.” He turned for guidance to Markkula, whosteered him toward a lawyer who drew up aseparation agreement giving Wozniak’s wife ofseventeen months 15 percent of his Apple stock.Alice felt ostracized. “Steve was told not to bring meto Mike Markkula’s home in case they discussedcompany business.”Jobs had his own troubles. In the summer of 1977he, Dan Kottke, and his high-school flame, NancyRogers, toured Cupertino, inspecting houses and

giggling at the types they called Rancho Suburbio.Eventually they found a four-bedroom housebelonging to a Lockheed engineer, which wasscarcely a fifteen-minute walk from Apple. It was aRancho Suburbio Special with wall-to-wall beige shagcarpeting, aluminum windows, and an all-electrickitchen. Jobs moved his belongings, which consistedof a mattress and meditation cushion, into the masterbedroom while Kottke slept in the living room on afoam pad next to an old piano. It wasn’t an entirelyconventional existence. Kottke filled a small bedroomthigh-deep in fist-size chunks of foam packingmaterial and let the neighborhood children romp in thestuff.Nancy Rogers was unsettled. “I was really insecureand young men in their early twenties are not verygood with women. They need to prove themselves. Iwas afraid to go out. I didn’t have enough money. Ididn’t paint.” Rogers took to calling Jobs at the office,asking him to return and help fix broken light sockets.She hurled plates at Kottke and Jobs, toppled booksoff shelves, scrawled obscenities with a charcoalbriquette on Jobs’s bedroom walls, and slammed adoor so hard it punctured a hole in a wall. Shebecame pregnant, took a job at Apple helping withassembly, spurned an offer from Holt to learn drafting,and finally left Apple and moved out of the house.“Steve didn’t care that I was pregnant. I had to getaway from Steve, Apple, and people’s opinions.”For Jobs it was a difficult time and Holt reacted tothe emotional whirlgig. “Sometimes I felt like hisfather; sometimes I felt like his brother.” Jobs, whohad always tried to mimic a surrogate elder brother,was also starting to understand that he didn’t have topattern his behavior on another person. “I saw MikeScott and I saw Mike Markkula and I didn’t want to belike either one and yet there were parts of them that Iadmired a lot.” He was coming to grips with thedifference in pace that exists between a garageoperation and even a small business. Thediscomfiting fact was that the output of a dozenpeople (let alone one hundred) wasn’t predictable andsuch imperfection, for somebody who alwaysdemanded the best, was enormously difficult totolerate.Jobs was also adjusting to the idea that computersand software could not be completed in a few weeksand that progress was not something that could beeasily measured. Like managers in other companieswhose future revolved around taming technology, hefound that progress was invisible until it could bemade to work on a tabletop. When Wozniak startedwriting a floating-point version of BASIC, he felt thetension. “Steve had no idea what it takes to write thatsort of code. If something seemed wrong, he’d quicklygo and make a change. He would always want tohave an influence and change whatever came up.”Yet Jobs contributed much. He was always thecompany dynamo and the house personality. Hestarted adding zeroes to Apple’s gross sales beforesome of the others were even thinking in hundreds,and started to talk about millions before hiscolleagues had contemplated thousands. When

Markkula thought that color logos on the cassetteswere too expensive, Jobs won the day. When Scottthrew up his hands in horror at the notion of offering aone-year warranty on the computer when the industrystandard was ninety days, Jobs burst into tears, hadto be cooled off with what became a standard ritual (awalk around the parking lot), but eventually won hisway. When Gary Martin discovered a $27,000 checkthat had been forgotten, Scott wanted to use it to buya new mold, Markkula wanted to spend it on anadvertisement in Scientific American, and Jobswanted to do both. Apple bought a mold and anadvertisement.Jobs’s and Scott’s squabbles and arguments weresuch a constant in Apple’s life that they becameknown as The Scotty Wars. But the quarrels also tookwhimsical turns. On Jobs’s twenty-third birthday hewas startled to find a funeral wreath decorated withwhite roses propped up in his office. It carried anunsigned card with the message R.I.P. THINKING OFYOU. Jobs didn’t discover for some time that theperpetrator was Scott who took to using a white roseas his personal seal.Markkula stood between the twin volcanos. Hedealt with Jobs much as an uncle would nurture afavorite nephew but he allowed Scott to handle him.Scott and Jobs found it far easier to make toughdecisions than did the milder-mannered Markkula.Perhaps helped by the quiet of a family life Markkulawas more cordial, punctual, and polite. He avoidedtying his fate as closely to the company as Scott andJobs did. As Apple grew he was prepared todelegate. “If it doesn’t work,” he kept repeating, “fix it.”he was also ready to let people fail. Jean Richardson,who joined Apple in 1978, said, “He didn’t want tocome down and beat the heavy hand. He wantedpeople to work it out among themselves. He wouldalways say, ‘You two go and work it out.’” Aprogrammer said, “He seemed to have a strongdesire for people to like him. He was so subtle in theway he worked that it was impossible to pin any baddeed on him.” Others found him imperturbable and aperennial optimist, important qualities in a positionwhere managers usually spent most of their timecoping with problems. Trip Hawkins, an Applemarketing manager, recalled, “Markkula absorbedstuff like a sponge. He could also make you see aunicorn in a field.”As individual characteristics started to becomeclear, work proceeded on a project that melded all thestrains in the business. It was a mini-reprise of thedevelopment of the Apple II computer and blendeddevelopments in technology with an inventive bentand uncompromising pressure: It was an interfacethat connected the computer to a disk drive ratherthan to a cassette recorder.Disk drives were not new. Mainframe computershad used them since 1956. But as the evolution ofelectronics led to the microprocessor, so disk drivesalso got progressively smaller. When they were firstused on mainframes the disk had a diameter of about

two feet and were stacked inside cabinets the size ofdressers. The disk drives were linked to the computerby a device enclosed in a large box known as thecontroller. Even so, disk drives offered enormousadvantages over the reels of magnetic tape that hadpreviously stored information. Instead of waiting forhundreds of yards of tape to pass by a fixed point,information could now be plucked by a little “head”that floated above a rapidly spinning disk. In 1972IBM announced a further advance in disk-drivetechnology when it displayed a pliable disk that wasno larger than a birthday card and which quicklybecame known as a floppy disk. The disk drives wereboiled down into boxes no larger than a concisedictionary and the controller from a cabinet onto asingle-printed circuit board. The floppy disk was anadvance that IBM publicists didn’t hesitate tocompare to a jumbo jet flying one tenth of an inchabove the ground for several miles without scorchingits tires.Cassette tapes hooked to microcomputers had thesame sort of deficiencies as the magnetic tapesconnected to mainframe machines. They were soslow that loading a language like BASIC could taketen minutes and finding data was a hit-or-missproposition. By comparison, a disk drive could finddata in seconds. Gary Kildall, the founder of DigitalResearch, a software company, had written to Jobsand complained about Wozniak’s cassette interface.“The cassette subsystem is particularly frustrating. Iused two different recorders and found them bothequally unreliable. . . . I must consider the backupstorage subsystem as low-end hobbyist grade.”At Apple there was a united push to hook a diskdrive to the computer. Jobs paid weekly visits toShugart, a Silicon Valley company that was one of thefirst to make disk drives, and implored its executivesto supply Apple. Meanwhile, Wozniak studied thecircuitry used by IBM engineers who had developed adisk controller and also the approach employed by aBerkeley start-up, Northstar. But Wozniak only startedwork in earnest shortly before Christmas, 1977. Histendency to procrastinate made life uncomfortable forScott who, anxious to ship, said, “Woz would take aproduct right up to the crisis point and do it. It wasalmost as if he needed the adrenaline spike of almostbeing late in order to really create.” But once Wozniakstarted working on the disk controller he didn’t stopuntil it was complete. Holt, who again playedtaskmaster, thought, “It was close to insanity for him toget his mind so close to the machine.” JeanRichardson also kept a maternal eye on him. “He wasa ghost that came and went at odd hours. He workedthrough the night. I would meet him going out as Icame in in the morning. Eating and sleeping didn’tseem to matter.” Wozniak worked furiously for acouple of weeks, accompanied by Wigginton whowrote programs to test the drive and Holt whobadgered him until he was convinced that the devicewould really work.When the drive was announced at the ConsumerElectronics Show in early 1978 and subjected tomore careful scrutiny some weeks later at the Second

West Coast Computer Faire, the reaction wasuniform. The disk-controller card used far fewer chipsthan any competing device and Wozniak consideredit “the favorite design of my life.” Fellow engineersalso applauded. Lee Felsenstein, who a year beforehad been so skeptical about Jobs and Wozniak andthe computer in a cigar box, took a look at thecontroller and recalled, “I nearly dropped my pants. Itwas so clever. I thought, ‘We better keep out of theway of these guys.’” At Commodore Chuck Peddlewas guiding a design team that was also working ona disk drive but was beaten to the finish line. Hethought about Wozniak’s design in geopolitical termsand said, “It absolutely changed the industry.” Until thedrive was announced, Apple, Commodore, andRadio Shack had all been working out teethingproblems with their manufacturing and nothing muchseparated the companies. Apple also always hadcomputers in stock and when suppliers visitedCupertino they weren’t taken into the part of thebuilding where the inventory was piled up. Once thedrive was announced matters changed.After the design was completed and Apple coaxedthe disk drives to life, Scott brought his remorselesspressure to bear. The drives that arrived from Apple’sonly supplier, Shugart, which was a XeroxCorporation subsidiary, were unreliable. So theengineers and technicians in the laboratorycannibalized parts to produce working drives andbuckled to Scott’s implacable demands. He insistedthat Apple start shipping the disk drives even thoughthere hadn’t been enough time to complete acomprehensive manual. The results of Scott’spressure and the quality of the flimsy leaflet thataccompanied the early disk drives were revealed in acomplaint that a Southern California customer mailedto Markkula. “You fucking bastards. I bought an Applewith floppy and nobody, I mean nobody, in L.A. or SanDiego knows how to use the sonuvabitch for randomaccess files. I really feel ‘ripped off.’ Everybody talksabout this great manual in the sky that is coming outsoon??? Shit! Shit! Shit! I need this computer now inmy business not next year. Fuck you. I hope your dogdies.”An oblique comment on the way of life at a largecompany was pinned to a notice board in the Macengineering laboratory. It was one wag’s jaundicedview of the development of a computer and thebureaucracy at Apple. To the rhetorical question “Howmany Apple employees does it take to change a lightbulb?” the anonymous skeptic answered:One to file the user input report for the bad bulb.One to revise the user interface specifications.One to redesign the lightbulb.One to build the prototype.One to approve the project.“The Star is an incredible pig,”Hertzfeld said.

One to leak the news to the press.One area associate to coordinate the project.One project manager.Two product marketing managers.One to write the lightbulb product-revision plan.One to analyze the lightbulb’s profitability.One to negotiate the vendor contract.Seven to alpha-test the lightbulb.One to revise the lightbulb operating system.One to obtain FCC certification.One to write the manual.One to do the foreign translations.One to develop the lightbulb product-training pack.One to design the artwork.One to design the package.One to write the data sheet.One to write the self-running lightbulb demo.One to copy-protect the lightbulb.One to write the ECO.One to forecast use.One to enter the part number in the computer.One to place the order for each lightbulb.One to QC the lightbulb.One to distribute the lightbulb.One to seed vendors with the revision.One to organize the product introduction party.One to make the press announcement.One to explain the lightbulb to the financialcommunity.One to announce the lightbulb to the sales force.One to announce the lightbulb to the dealers.One to train service.And one service technician to swap out thelightbulb.A few of the Mac group were hovering around aLisa prototype. Programmer Andy Hertzfeld provideda commentary as Michael Boich fiddled with featuresof the machine. “I couldn’t work at Lisa,” Hertzfeld saidto no one in particular. “The only thing that gets donethere is by committee and politics. Lisa equalscompetent engineering.”Boich and Hertzfeld eyed the performance of theLisa with the critical air that men once used to inspecttappets and pistons. Boich pressed a button on themouse and Hertzfeld said as he watched a list appearon the screen, “They’ve got a really ugly font for theirmenu. I’ve seen it take five minutes to make a menu.”Boich chuckled. “It thrashes pretty badly.”“It’s a total misuse of the menu,” Hertzfeld insistedwith the air of an offended monk.“It’s in one of those thrash modes,” Boich said ashe waited for a file to appear on the screen. “They’vegot a lot of things to do.”“We’re never going to have these performanceproblems,” Hertzfeld said, “but our programs arenever going to be this big.”Engineering manager Bob Belleville, who waswatching the scene from the entrance to the cubicle,cautioned quietly, “‘Never’ is not a word I feel realcomfortable with.” He said that the commentsreminded him of a time when some former colleaguesat Xerox, who were developing a laser printer, had

greeted the appearance of a machine from acompetitor with the comment, “Our specs are muchbetter than that.”Boich continued to play with the machine, looked atHertzfeld, and mentioned the Xerox computer thatbore some similarities to Lisa. “It’s still as fast as theStar.”“The Star is an incredible pig. It’s a disaster. It’sunusable,” Hertzfeld said. He pointed at the Lisa andadded, “To see how slow it is you should try openinganother application.”“I’m almost afraid to do it.” Boich grinned.“It’s a tribute to three years of programming when itworks,” Hertzfeld said.

THE BEST SALESMENThe custodians of Apple quickly learned the art ofmaking friends and influencing people. Markkula, whoguided Apple’s early contacts with outsiders, usedprecisely the same technique that Scott employed tomanage the internal affairs of the company. Markkulamade others help Apple grow. More than any of hiscolleagues Markkula understood the importance ofappearance. The tone of his strategy was summed upin the way he kept prodding Jobs to spruce up hisdress. “You judge a book,” Markkula kept repeating tohis younger partner, “by its cover.” He recognized thepower of gilt-edged associations. He knew that it wasmore important to lavish attention on a few peoplerather than many. He understood that reputableinvestors lent a sheen to a business that was difficultto acquire in any other way and the Regis McKennaAgency demonstrated that a magazine story wascheaper and far more influential than a splashy,multicolored gatefold.Apple was more a production of the whisperinggrapevine that linked investors and reporters in agossipy circle than any great marketing triumph. In theugly jargon of the trade, Apple concentrated onopinion makers. They sensed that others without thetime, inclination, or wit to investigate the oddassembly that made the Apple II would rely on thejudgment of people who were already wealthy or knewa thing or two about computers. For investors andreporters share at least one trait: Both money menand scribblers usually behave like sheep.Off the bat Markkula knew that alliances with acouple of experienced financiers were worth far morethan the weight of their investments. Though hispersonal investments had been successful enough,Markkula had no direct experience dealing with any ofthe 237 or so firms that made up the venture-capitalindustry and which, in exchange for stock, providedfinancing to young companies. Originally, Markkulahad wanted to wait until Apple had proved that it couldproduce its computer before turning to the venturecapitalists, knowing that he would get a better pricefor the company stock if he could demonstrate thatApple wasn’t in desperate need of money. In the fall of1977, the troubles with the quality of the casethreatened to exhaust Apple’s credit line and leftMarkkula with no choice. Even the profit from sales ofthe computer were barely sufficient to keep Apple inbusiness. The company’s needs were so dire thatMarkkula and Scott supplied an injection of almosttwo hundred thousand dollars to bind things over untilnegotiations for more money could be formallyconcluded.Once again Apple turned to familiar faces. HankSmith had been one of Markkula’s colleagues at bothFairchild and Intel. He was an exuberant man withbouncy ginger hair who had left Intel and moved toNew York to become a general partner of Venrock theventure-capital arm of the Rockefeller family. In theinformal hierarchy of venture funds, Venrock, ranked

among the best, and there was the additionaladvantage that it had not yet financed anymicrocomputer companies. Markkula firstapproached Smith in the spring of 1977 and forseveral months Venrock monitored Apple’s progress.John Hall, who had helped write the business plan,called on Venrock and discussed Apple’s prospectswith two of the partners. When Smith was on the WestCoast, visiting other Venrock investments, he made apoint of dropping by Apple’s Cupertino office. Theventure-capital firm made about seven investments ayear, but there was nothing apart from a personalrelationship that drew its people toward Apple. HankSmith said, “We probably wouldn’t have looked atApple had I not known Mike Markkula.” Eventually, inthe fall of 1977, Markkula was invited, along with Jobsand Scott, to meet Venrock’s other partners andpresent their projections for Apple.Though the earlier plan had been consideredaggressive, Apple, despite all the problems with thequality of the case, had been beating its projections.The presentation concealed much of the rush that hadpreceded it. Though Markkula had written aprospectus and based much of his forecast onfinancial projections supplied by Gary Martin, touchrather than science carried the day. Sherry Livingstonwatched while the forecasts were made. “It was a jokethe way they came up with projections. There were somany projections they’d almost flip a coin.”Nevertheless, the business plan reflected thesemblance of order and sense of focus that Markkulaand Scott brought to Apple. The night before thepresentation to the Venrock partners in New York,Scott remained in Cupertino with most of the rest ofthe company munching slices of pizza and helping tocopy, staple, collate, and bind the prospectus.Clutching a dozen copies he caught a red-eye flight toNew York, took an early morning nap at the Hilton,and then accompanied Hank Smith, Markkula, andJobs to the Venrock offices. With the arrangementtentatively closed, the trio made for the airport. Scottsaw some former colleagues from NationalSemiconductor queuing for standby tickets anddecided to treat himself and his companions to firstclassseats.While dealing with the Venrock partners, Markkulahad also been talking to Andrew Grove, executivevice-president of Intel. Grove, a wiry Hungarianrefugee with an expressive face and curly hair, hadearned a reputation for being as noisy andremorseless as a steam hammer. (At Intel he hadinsisted that all late arrivals enter their names in asign-up book and was notorious for dispatching“Grove-Grams”—bullet-sized reprimands.) Markkulahoped that Grove would lend Apple some of theexperience he had acquired building Intel’s factories.Grove swallowed the bait and bought fifteen thousandof the twenty-five thousand shares that Markkulaoffered but decided not to become a director, feelingthat he had enough to worry about at Intel withoutbecoming involved with another young company. Inlater months Scott recalled, “Grove kept calling. He’dsay, ‘I’d like you to stop stealing my people,’ and then

he’d say, ‘Do you want to sell some Apple stock?”Another member of Intel’s board of directors, ArthurRock, happened to see a demonstration of the AppleII given by Markkula. As a result, a few days beforeApple was due to sign its agreement with Venrock,Rock telephoned Hank Smith at Venrock and MikeScott at Apple expressing his interest in the offering.In the mid-seventies a telephone call from Arthur Rockwas viewed by other venture capitalists, underwriters,commercial bankers, and stockbrokers as thefinancial equivalent of white smoke emerging from aVatican chimney. Rock, who was in his early fifties,had made investments in companies that bridged theyears between the disappearance of the vacuum tubeand the arrival of the integrated circuit. As a New Yorkfinancier, he had helped arrange the financing for thestart of Fairchild Semiconductor. Along with a partner,he participated in the rise of the minicomputerindustry by investing in Scientific Data Systems whichwas sold to Xerox Corporation in a 1969 exchange ofstock for $918 million. Rock’s stake was worth $60million. In 1968 when a couple of senior managers leftFairchild to form Intel, they turned to Arthur Rock foradvice and money. Rock invested $300,000 of hisown money, arranged for another $2.2 million andbecame the company’s first chairman. He had offeredcritical advice at several points, and when Intel’smanagement was dithering about whether to try todevelop markets for its first microprocessor, Rock’sadvice proved decisive.Rock shunned publicity, had never been the subjectof a long newspaper or magazine profile, hardly everappeared at meetings of venture-capitalassociations, was formidably discreet about hisinvestments, and conducted most of his businesseither from an office on San Francisco’s MontgomeryStreet or from a $450,000 three-story condominium inAspen. He had an austere look and the neat physiqueof a man who spent an hour exercising every morning.He was an avid baseball fan and frequently bravedthe winds of San Francisco’s Candlestick Park wherehe had a front-row seat seventy feet from home plate.He was also an enthusiastic supporter of SanFrancisco’s ballet and opera and a collector of worksby, among others, the modernists Robert Motherwelland Hans Hoffman. He was quite old-fashioned,believing that television was the curse of modernsociety, that marijuana addled the mind, and thatthere had been no significant developments inliterature or art for a couple of decades. A fellowventure capitalist said, “He can be charming andendearing and a cold sonuvabitch.”Provided they could lure Rock away from his officein San Francisco or his ski lodge in Aspen, themanagers of young companies took great pains withtheir presentations to him. Like most experiencedventure capitalists, Arthur Rock was not a gambler.He usually made only three or four investments a yearand generally supplied only a small amount of moneyuntil he was convinced that the company wouldsucceed or that he would get along with themanagement. He had a reputation for being easilybored, had little patience with corporate contributions

to charities like the United Way, and was also knownfor saying little during board meetings. He wouldfrequently cut short suggestions with the question:“What purpose would it serve?” Tommy Davis, Rock’sinvestment partner for much of the sixties, said, “Heonly wants the right answer.” Andrew Grove thoughtRock was “like the pilot of a plane who sees thegeography far better than the people who are drivingaround in it.” So when Rock called Apple he gainedadmission on the strength of a gilt-lined reputation.The investment of Don Valentine, the venturecapitalist who first allied Markkula with Apple, waspartially a result of coincidence. When Valentinespotted Markkula, Jobs, and Hank Smith diningtogether one evening at Monterey’s Chez FeliceRestaurant, he sensed what was being discussed. Hedispatched a bottle of wine to the trio with a notereading “Don’t lose sight of the fact that I’m planningon investing in Apple.”When the financing was eventually completed inJanaury 1978, and all the papers signed andnotarized and share certificates swapped, Apple wasvalued at $3 million. The financing brought Apple$517,500 of which Venrock invested $288,000,Valentine, $150,000 Arthur Rock, $57,600. In returnMarkkula and Scott asked for an informal agreementfrom their investors that their financial commitmentslast at least five years.Within six months word of Apple had begun to seepout and when Michael Scott and the others appearedat the Consumer Electronics show in the summer of1978, they were buttonholed by investors fromChicago’s Continental Illinois Bank who wanted toinvest $500,000 in Apple. The price of the shares wasabout three times what it had been six months earlier.The Venrock partners grumbled about the increase inthe price of the stock but eventually made anadditional investment and wound up owning 7.9percent of the company while Valentine complainedthe price was far too steep and refused to add to hisoriginal stake.Some months after the initial financing Scott tookanother call but this time from a close friend ofRock’s, Henry Singleton, chairman of Teledyne Inc.,one of the companies that had helped makeconglomerate a fashionable word during the sixties.Rock had helped start Teledyne and served on thecompany’s six-member board of directors. Scott wasastonished that the chairman of a two-billion-dollarcompany which sold life insurance, made tankengines, shower massages, oil drilling equipment,and an ill-starred electronic device for measuring adieter’s bites was calling Apple Computer to find outabout the internal quirks of the Apple II.Like Rock, Singleton had not gained a reputationfor sentimentality. He was reputed to manageTeledyne’s subsidiaries as if they were items in hispersonal stock portfolio, was said to have a head fordetail, a devotion to cash, and no problem withordering summary closures. Scott patiently answeredSingleton’s questions and later asked Rock whether

he thought that his investment partner would beinterested in becoming an Apple director. Rockthought it impossible, saying that Singleton served ononly one other board and was trying to rid himself ofthat obligation. He told Scott, “If I ask, the answer willonly be no.”Scott persisted and when Apple announced its diskdrive he arranged to hand deliver one at Singleton’sCentury City office. He found that Singleton not onlyhad an Apple in his office but also had one at homeand was busy programming in assembly language.The appointment turned from half an hour into thewhole day, with a lunch at the Beverly Hills CountryClub where Singleton impressed Scott by paying incash rather than resorting to credit cards. When Rockdiscovered that Scott had been invited to Singleton’shome, he knew the knot was tied: “You’ve got himnailed.” Singleton bought $100,800 worth of Applestock and in October 1978 became a director.As Venrock, Arthur Rock, and Henry Singletonwere recruited, Markkula showed that he wasn’tsqueamish about selling parts of the company toproperly qualified people. Unlike some of the othermicrocomputer companies who were wary thatinvestors or directors would grab control or turn intobullies, the men at Apple recognized the help theycould offer. More important than the injections of cashwere the intangible benefits of the financier’sexperience and reputation. They had monitored thegrowth of other small companies, had lived throughdark days, were aware of some of the likely pitfalls,and could lend some weathered perspective to thepellmell pace of life in a start-up. They could offeradvice about limiting the company’s tax liability, helpsort out a distribution strategy, provide connections topeople who could be helpful and help lureexperienced managers. Recognizing this, Apple wascareful to make life easy for its investors. It arrangedboard meetings to coincide with the day Rocktraveled down the Peninsula to attend Intel’s boardmeetings while Scott often chauffeured HenrySingleton to and from the San Jose airport.Though Apple’s early stock sales were wreathed inanonymity, the reputations of the early investors weretoo large to hide. Their interest in Apple was preciselythe sort of thing that provided snippets of gossip forventure capitalists. It was just the stuff that wouldmake the rounds at the monthly lunches of theWestern Association of Venture Capitalists, or beshared among bankers in the first-class section of thewide-bodied jets plying between San Francisco andNew York, or for others who would breakfast atRickey’s Hyatt House on EI Camino Real in Palo Alto.The more industrious could ferret out the informationby sorting through the files in the meanly furnishedlobby of the California Department of Corporationsoffice in San Francisco.Investors who laid their money on the table wereone sign of confidence. Stock analysts who put theiropinions on paper were another. In the late seventiesone of the most influential Wall Street electronicsanalysts was Ben Rosen. Rosen had followed the

electronics industry for years. He was fond ofgadgets. He spent several weeks a year industriouslytraipsing around trade shows, kept an eye on newproducts, wasn’t swept away by the accounts ofsenior managers, and would patiently solicit opinionsof middle and junior managers.Markkula and Scott were just two of the youngermanagers Rosen had run across. He had known themboth while they were still at Fairchild and on one of hisinspection tours of Intel had taught Markkula how tooperate a programmable calculator. Apple’smanagers took care of Rosen, who started using anApple in April 1978. Rosen was given the sort ofcustomer service reserved for sheikhs and princes.When he didn’t understand some feature of the Appleand couldn’t find an adequate explanation in themanual, he called Jobs or Markkula at home.Markkula even offered to sell Rosen some Applestock but was politely rebuffed. However, he wouldvisit Apple and was almost always given straightanswers to straight questions. Scott said,“Ben alwayshad the data two or three years in advance of whatwas actually going on.” The attention paid off.Many of the journalists who followed the early yearsof the microcomputer industry were the people whohad monitored the semiconductor industry and theyhad learned to trust Rosen. Among a crowd of menwho made it their business to boost companies andtout stocks, Rosen they considered impartial. Healways returned telephone calls, offeredcomprehensive reports on companies, and wouldprovide pithy quotes based on shrewd observationswhich often wound up in The Wall Street Journal, TheNew York Times, Business Week, Fortune,Forbes,and the news-weeklies. The reporters whotrooped through Rosen’s New York office found thathe was using an Apple. So Rosen became, in someways, Apple’s most influential sponsor. RegisMcKenna, Apple’s publicist, who was given anintroduction to Time at a luncheon organized byRosen, thought “Ben gave Apple real credibility,”while the venture-capitalist Hank Smith felt he was“one of Apple’s best salesmen.”Apple’s select financial following was important andstarted to feed off itself. When Rosen and anotherMorgan Stanley analyst, Barton Biggs, lunched withArthur Rock in San Francisco, their conversation wassummarized in a two-page memo circulated aroundthe New York banking house. Written by Biggs, it hada breathless tone: “Arthur Rock is a Legend with acapital ‘L’ like Ted Williams or Fran Tarkenton,Leonard Bernstein and Nureyev. . . . In his line ofbusiness he is a player who is several orders ofmagnitude better than anyone else who has everbeen in the game.” Biggs dutifully reported Rock’scomments about Apple to his colleagues at MorganStanley. “The people running this company . . . arevery bright, very creative and very driven.” Words likethose were guaranteed to make readers (andinvestors) froth at the mouth.The early descriptions of Apple’s marketingcampaign were hardly guaranteed to have the same

effect as tips from one of the country’s mostexperienced venture capitalists. In set speeches andformal presentations, Markkula was given todescribing Apple’s grand plan in three words:“Empathy. Focus. Impute.” The muddle of nouns andverbs provoked giggles among the advertisingaccount executives but Markkula was expressing, in apeculiarly modern way, an old idea. In the 1940s, forexample, IBM had used a similar strategy when itopened a lavish showroom on New York’s FifthAvenue, and the company founder, Tom Watson, hadlater explained. “We were carrying the corporateimage far out in front of the size and reputation of thecorporation.”At the start, Apple’s marketing strategy was not theresult of any clearheaded vision. Notions of productlife cycles resembled the sort of patterns that werecommon in the semiconductor industry where chipswere liable to be superseded within twelve months ofintroduction. The early gaffes were concealed by theforgiving nature of an expanding market. At first therewas great uncertainty at the Regis McKenna Agencyabout Apple’s prospects. The account executive,Frank Burge, explained, “People who knew Markkulaand Apple wondered whether they would make it. Wekept saying ‘These guys are flakes. They’re nevergoing to make it.’ Jobs and Wozniak looked as if theywere on something. It was counter to everything webelieved in.” The agency people looked at Markkula,whom they didn’t consider to have much of areputation for marketing, and Scott with hismanufacturing instincts, and worried that nobody atApple had any experience selling to consumers.To hedge his bets McKenna took on anothercomputer company, Video Brain, which at the start of1978 announced a non-programmable computernamed The Family Computer, with the hope thatpeople would plug cartridges in and use the machineat home. The product was greeted enthusiastically bythe press and by buyers for major department storeswho felt that consumers wouldn’t want to learn how toprogram. Eventually consumers balked at the price,which kept creeping up, aided by the company’sambitious decision to make the semiconductors forthe machine. Video Brain failed.However, for some months McKenna had a toughtime trying to decide whether to dump Apple in favorof Video Brain. Though the agency chose to stand byApple, its caution was reflected in the size of theadvertising budget it proposed for the company’ssecond year. McKenna proposed that Apple spend$300,000. Markkula insisted that the budget bedoubled. Markkula was convinced that it was futile forApple to try to eke out a living on a small share of themicrocomputer market and steadfastly insisted thatApple had to look imposing and pretend to be large ifit was ever to become a force in the industry.McKenna explained, “I’m always conservative withvery young companies. I don’t want to be stuck withunpaid bills of one hundred thousand dollars.Markkula kept saying ‘We must develop a positionearly.’ He really pushed for that. It was a veryimportant decision.”

The advertisement that introduced the Apple IIshowed a kitchen with a woman merrily at workbeside a chopping board while her husband sat at thekitchen table using the computer to attend to moreworldly chores. The copy was unequivocal about whatthe computer could be used for: “The home computerthat’s ready to work, play and grow with you . . . You’llbe able to organize, index and store data onhousehold finances, income taxes, recipes, yourbiorhythms, balance your checking account, evencontrol your home environment.” The advertisementalso carried a lot of technical specifications whichwere aimed at the ardent hobbyist but were notcalculated to appeal to the layman. Keen hobbyistswith agile hands and a technical bent were told theycould buy the Apple II in the form of a single printedcircuit board for $598.A large poster which started to appear in computerstores about the same time carried the distinctlyequivocal slogan APPLE II: THE HOME/PERSONALCOMPUTER. Markkula was quoted at the time assaying that Apple would not be an exhibitor at theNational Computer Conference, the traditionalshowcase for manufacturers selling to businesses,but would concentrate its efforts on the ConsumerElectronics show. Apple’s advertising manager, JeanRichardson, admitted, “There was not a lot ofsophisticated strategy. They thought they were sellingto people in a home.”The magazines in which the advertisementsappeared were more important than the copy or thelook. Compared to companies like Compucolor, aGeorgia company that produced a color computer,Apple’s earliest advertisements were wan. As well asbuying space in hobbyist magazines like Byte, Apple,during its first year, also advertised in ScientificAmerican and Playboy. They were expensive placesto advertise but the nature of the magazines helped liftApple above the crowd of other small computercompanies. Apple also placed little adverts, designedto boost the corporate image, that didn’t say muchabout the computer but were bright and perky andwritten by McKenna himself. One of the most popularbegan: “A is for Apple. It’s the first thing you shouldknow about personal computers.”At the end of 1977 Digital Research’s Gary Kildallagain wrote to Jobs and among other subjects politelyrecited his concerns about Apple’s marketing: “Fromour earlier discussions I believe you want to addressthe consumer market. . . . The Apple advertising issomewhat misleading. . . . The Apple II is not aconsumer computer and, even though I have had‘previous computer experience,’ I had somedifficulties getting parts together, and making thesystem operate. . . . Further, commercial appliancemanufacturers do not advertise products which do notexist. . . . Your advertisement implies that softwareexists (or is easily constructed) for stock marketanalysis and home finance handling. Do theseprograms exist? Secondly, a floppy disk subsystem ispromised by the ‘end of 1977.’ Where is it?” Kildall

was right on all scores, and the program that allowedan Apple to connect to the Dow Jones tickerappeared a year after it was first announced. All told,Apple’s early ads reflected Markkula’s own hobbyistbent.Though the line of the early advertisements missedthe mark, there was a change in strategy within sixmonths of the Apple II announcement. It was the sortof luxury given to a tiny, invisible company in anindustry that was too small to be taken very seriously.Apple was able to take advantage of its obscurity andthe forgiving nature of an expanding market andconsequently had much more freedom to maneuverthan a large company whose blunders would bemagnified.A memo to Apple from the McKenna Agency inearly 1978, outlining a marketing strategy,demonstrated a clear understanding that the timewhen consumers would use computers in the homewas far away. It also reflected McKenna’s anxiety thatApple not ruin a consumer market by makingpromises that couldn’t be fulfilled. The agency alsobegan to identify its targets, recognizing thedifferences between the hobbyists, the“programmable calculator market,” and the markets inschools and universities. And within thirty-six monthsof its earliest advertisements, Apple started runningtelevision commercials that tried to remove theimpression that the Apple II was a plaything or homecomputer. The spots featured talk-show host DickCavett posed with housewives who were using theirApples to run a small steel mill or trade in gold futures.Apple’s advertisements were devised for anindustry where small companies drenched theircomputers in superlatives. For skep-tics there wasn’tmuch room to argue. There was no authoritativemarket research. MITS had taken out full-pageadvertisements with the copy shaped in the form of alarge figure 1, boasting that the Altair was the leadingcomputer: “When you buy an Altair, you’re not justbuying a piece of equipment. You’re buying years ofreliable, low-cost computing. You’re buying thesupport of the NUMBER ONE manufacturer in themicro-computer field.” Vector Graphic called itsmachine “the perfect micro-computer”; the IMSAI8080 was dubbed “the finest personal computer”;Radio Shack announced “the first complete, low-costmicro-computer system.” Processor Technologynamed the Sol “The Small Computer.” Appletrumpeted its machine as loudly as the rest.In July 1978, barely a year after the first Apple II wasshipped, a double-page advertisement in the trademagazines carried the banner headline WHY APPLEII IS THE WORLD’S BEST SELLING PERSONALCOMPUTER, a boast that just proved that numberscan be dredged up to support any claim. About thesame time another advertisement, which alsostretched reality, read “No wonder tens of thousandshave already chosen Apple.” Chuck Peddle, whoworked on the Commodore PET, thought “Appleconsistently overstated their position andcontribution.”The corporate image was also reflected on the

counters of computer dealers. Many of the storeswere in a fragile state. They were strapped for cashand managed by hobbyists who sometimes seemedmore interested in the computers than they were intheir customers. Apple had a hunger for dealers.Some prospective independent dealers trooped toCalifornia, were antagonized by officials atCommodore, and found far more affection at Apple.From the start Apple also understood that the attitudeand appearance of its dealers were important. Forinstance, it forced a dealer in San Francisco to switchhis company’s name from Village Discount to VillageElectronics and modeled the dealer agreements onthose used by Sony.When Computerland, a franchise chain of computerstores, started to open outlets around the country,Apple tagged along, Markkula was the linchpin forsetting up the original arrangements withComputerland. He took to attending store openingsand giving computer demonstrations. Ed Faber, thehead of Computerland, said, “It was one of thosemutually advantageous relationships. Apple had aproduct; we had the beginnings of a retail distributionsystem. The more success we had, the more successthey had. The more success they had, the moresucccess we had.” Apple, however, also used itdealers to help a limited amount of money go a longway. It was the first company in the personal-computerbusiness to start a co-op advertising program wherefactory and dealer shared the costs ofadvertisements. Faber said, “It frightened othermanufacturers. They thought we were so closely alliedwith Apple that they wouldn’t get any recognition in ourstores.”Some of Apple’s success could be put down to theadvertising campaigns that were paid for by othercompanies. After Commodore and Radio Shackintroduced their computers, they wasted no timebefore taking out large newspaper advertisements. Atthe beginning of 1978, a memo sent to Apple by theRegis McKenna Agency candidly noted that“Commodore and Tandy . . . have popularized thepersonal computer.” But few of Apple’s competitorsproved to be particularly competent and none of theirmachines reflected the delicate balance of expertiseand exuberance that was being knit together inCupertino—even though almost every company that,at one time or another, announced or was rumored tobe on the verge of announcing a computer was larger,richer, and stronger than Apple. Radio Shack, with itsthousands of stores and a twenty-five-million-namemailing list, was supposed to have an edge indistribution. But Radio Shack’s TRS-80 black-andwhitecomputer was tarnished by a low-quality imageand proved difficult to expand. This allowed Apple’sadverts to play on the Apple II’s expandable nature.Commodore’s PET had a pleasant name, but thecompany was dogged by a lack of funds,management by fiat, a keyboard that looked like anupgraded calculator, and a case made in a Canadianmetal-bending factory because the company chosenot to pay for plastic cases. It was also black and

white, which compared unfavorably with Apple’s color.Atari and Mattel, with their stronger names inconsumer electronics, were slow to produce acomputer, and when they finally did, their machineswere inferior to the Apple II. Smaller companies likeOhio Scientific and Cromemco, despite havingreliable computers, had not sought venture funding.Kentucky Fried Computers was too whimsical aname for a computer company, but by the time it waschanged to Northstar Computers, much of thedamage had already been done. Meanwhile, MITS—the number-one name in microcomputing—wasswallowed by Pertec, a large Chatsworth, California,company that made peripherals and minicomputers.But looming behind the small fry was the massivespecter of Texas Instruments. And in 1978 and 1979,it was Texas Instruments that inspired knee-knockingfear. The company was 327 million times the size ofApple, made its own semiconductors, had gainedexperience selling consumer products with a line ofcalculators that had severely damaged othercompetitors, and along the way, had gained areputation for remorselessly pursuing profit. In hisnewsletter Ben Rosen warned that Texas Instrumentshad a corporate commitment to personal computersand “when TI has a corporate commitment—watchout.”While the prospect (more than the eventualappearance) of a Texas Instruments computer stirredup fear in Cupertino, Apple was quietly working withthe press. Regis McKenna recalled, “We thought theway to beat TI was with the press. TI had always hadan adversarial relationship with the press and Applehad a chance to develop a friendly relationship. Thepress was the equalizer.” McKenna understood howto handle the press better than any of the seniormanagers at Apple did. Scott grumbled that he hadnever been quoted properly; Markkula was not alwayseasy to understand and was likely to rile reporters bypresenting them with Apple button-pins or informingthem that the story they were about to write would bevery important for the company or insisting that buyerswould be able to learn how to use the Apple II withinhalf an hour. Jobs, meanwhile, carried away with hisown enthusiasm, was always liable to blurt out everysecret detail of Apple’s plans. Yet Apple was alsosomething of a dream for a public-relations man. Itwas a cheerful story that, once told, was difficult toforget and revolved around the sort of distinctivepersonalities that, at least for journalists, always helpgive companies a clear image.McKenna was far more patient and didn’t expect aninterview or telephone call to generate a storyimmediately. He told his clients that they had to buildlong-term relationships with the press, preached thevirtues of patience, and took a more dispassionateview of the stories that eventually appeared. WhileApple started to get occasional coverage in trademagazines like Interface Age,it took several years tocrack the skepticism and suspicion at better-knownmagazines where the name of the McKenna Agencywasn’t even recognized. The account executives atthe McKenna Agency spent several years wooing the

press, answering reporters’ calls, providingbackground material, arranging photo sessions thatnever ran, answering questions that never appearedin print, and checking facts. He also coached hisclients—trying to anticipate the questions that wouldbe asked, or rehearsing lines that they wanted to etchon an editor’s mind.McKenna arranged for several busy two- and threedaytrips to New York with Apple and endured plentyof snubs and disappointments. He, Markkula, andJobs visited what they called the “verticals”—magazines that appealed to a narrow audience—and“horizontals”—magazines that had a generalreadership. They carted an Apple about New York,plodding from magazine to magazine, waiting inlobbies, lugging the computer up elevators, snatchingquick breakfasts with journalists from one magazinebefore dashing off to keep morning and lunchappointments. It was exhausting, tiresome, repetitivework that didn’t lead to many immediate payoffs.Apple’s early, favorable press coverage had moreto do with the inescapable elegance of the computerthan with any minutely planned public-relationscampaign. There was no stronger advertisement thansatisfied owners and quietly, almost imperceptibly,whispers and rumors about the performance of theApple II began to spread. Daniel Fylstra, the head ofwhat was then Personal Software, a small softwarecompany in Boston, talked to other hobbyists and wassurprised at what he found. “I began to find peoplewho bought Apple computers and the things actuallyworked. They worked right out of the box!” Somesquibs about the Apple started to appear. In January1978 Penthouse magazine, in a review of personalcomputers, noted, “The Apple II is, in many people’sopinion, the Cadillac of home computers.”Three months later, in the first major review of theApple II, Carl Helmers, writing in the computermagazine Byte, called it “one of the best examples ofthe concept of the complete ‘appliance’ computer.”That amounted to a bold endorsement in a magazinethat treated the arrival of other computers with acertain amount of circumspection. Byte’s review of theCommodore PET, which appeared in the sameissue, concluded: “The Pet is far from the onlyalternative in the marketplace today. But it is a strongcontender.” The reviewer also made the ominousobservation: “For several weeks I was unable to getanyone at Commodore on the phone and was left tofend for myself.” Byte greeted Radio Shack’s TRS 80with what sounded like a familiar refrain: “The TRS 80is not the only alternative for the aspiring personalcomputer user but it is a strong contender.”The importance of blue-chip financial backers andthe way in which business journalists often look tocanny investors for guidance only became apparentwhen stories started to appear in general-interestmagazines. About the time the Apple II disk drive was

introduced, the syndicated financial columnist DanDorfman paid a call in Cupertino. His glowing accounti n Esquire, beneath the headline MOVE OVER,HORATIO ALGER, included this assessment: “Applehas some mighty impressive believers. . . . One isVenrock Associates, the venture capital arm of theRockefeller brothers; another is Arthur Rock, one ofthe country’s premier venture capitalists.”While Apple, two years after it was founded, madethe cover of Inc, a magazine specializing in thecoverage of small businesses, cracking theskepticism at the major magazines proved a muchtougher proposition. Apple was more than three yearsold before it made the pages of Time. Even then,under the headline SHINY APPLE, the firm was givenonly one column.If McKenna was helpful with the mechanicalaspects of dealing with the press, Apple’s ownmanagers looked after other parts of the company’simage. The general look of the company was tied upwith the owner’s instruction manual. Scott was moreeager to ship computers than to fuss over the graphicdesign of a manual and felt that all the companyneeded to distribute was data sheets. Jobs thoughtotherwise. Jef Raskin, who managed the productionof Apple’s first comprehensive manual, said, “Jobswanted good manuals and he fought very hard forthem.” When the manual eventually appeared inAugust 1979, it set a standard that competitors likeCommodore, Radio Shack, and Atari publiclyadmitted they would have to match.It was Markkula who guided the formation ofalliances that Apple used to great purpose. Thecompany allied with larger companies to give adurable sheen to its image. It joined with ITT, forexample, to distribute computers in Europe (thoughthe relationship eventually foundered) and withChicago’s Bell & Howell, which had a strongreputation among teachers, to help place Apples inschools. “Markkula was the driving force who madethese things happen,” Trip Hawkins, an Applemarketing manager, recalled.Markkula was receptive to approaches made in1977 by Andre Sousan, the Commodore official whohad once wanted to buy Apple. Sousan recalled: “Isaid to the two Steves and Markkula, ‘Listen! You’renot going to make it on the scale you want to make itif you don’t go immediately to Europe. I’ll set up theoperations as if they are a part of Apple and I’ll writeup a formula which will allow you to buy it out.’” Apple,stretched to the limits, agreed and Sousan became amember of the Executive Staff.In March 1978 Markkula called Dow Jones’sPrinceton, New Jersey, offices, spoke to TechnicalDirector Carl Valenti, and asked for an appointment.Valenti recalled: “I told him I had a space on mycalendar for nine the next morning. He said, ‘Fine.’ Ididn’t realize he was calling from Cupertino. So nextmorning in walks Mike Markkula with bloodshot eyes,having come on the red-eye.” Markkula showedValenti how he had programmed an Apple II to fish

stocks off the Dow Jones News Retrieval Service andthe pair agreed, on a handshake, that the twocompanies would jointly develop software programs.“The other companies,” Valenti observed, “came inand tried to tie us up ten ways to Sunday. Apple didn’tdo that.”Closer to home Apple was one of the firstmicrocomputer companies to recognize theimportance of users groups. When the company drewup plans to organize its first international users group,a memo stated: “A major element in our strategywould be to draw heavily upon outside resources inplanning and executing this meeting.” It continued:“There is no one who sells as well as a committed,involved user who cares about his vendor and hisproduct.” In San Francisco a group was formed tohelp solve a practical problem. As one of its founders,Bruce Tognazzini, explained, “We couldn’t figure outhow to work the damn computer.” These groups,which gradually started in dozens of cities along withlocal and regional chapters and their ownpublications, not only helped spread the word andpromote software development but also served as away of keeping track of owners, maintaining a pool ofguinea pigs for testing new products and providingbodies to recruit.Markkula recognized better than any of hiscolleagues the way in which appearances could affectbusiness. When, in 1979, Apple rented a large boothat the National Computer Conference in New York, itwas calculated to impress the financial analysts who,sooner or later, would make judgments about whatApple was worth as a public company. OccasionallyMarkkula’s taste for splash got the better of him and aforay into the sponsorship of automobile races whereApple spent more than one hundred thousand dollarsbacking a Southern California team was a flop. “It wasthe worst thing we ever did,” said Jobs. Scott’s farsimpler and cheaper idea of a balloon decorated withthe Apple logo, inspired by some beer commercials,was far more successful. The moral seemed obvious:Relatively small expenditures could bring adisproportionate amount of publicity.As happened with minicomputers, outsidersdeveloped dozens of uses for the Apple II which hadnot even been contemplated in Cupertino. Littlecompanies started to make attachments that pluggedinto the machine. The printed circuit boards that slidinto the expansion slots of the computer would turn itinto a clock or a calendar or allow letters to run acrosseighty columns rather than forty. Rows of extramemory chips were designed to boost the Apple’smemory; other cards allowed the computer to connectwith a telephone. One of the most popular cards,Microsoft’s Softcard, allowed the Apple to runprograms originally written for computers built aroundIntel microprocessors that used the CP/M operatingsystem. There were light-pens and graphic tablets,calculator keypads, fans to cool the machine andsmall devices that protected it from surges in energy.Apple recognized that software would help expandthe market for its computer and gave large discountsto programmers who promised to write programs.

Time and again programmers discovered ways tostretch the limits of the computer. Apple wasreceptive to programmers, particularly since most ofthe programs that were demonstrated did not alwayswork properly. And Apple was also seen by someprogrammers operating off a shoestring as a largecompany that could bankroll their diversions. Whenprograms were completed and Apple chose to buythem, Jobs frequently did seat-of-the-pantscalculations and arrived at a price by counting thelines of code. Exchanging software or copying someinteresting new program became the most importantpart of many Apple user-group meetings. In 1979when Fred Gibbons, who had started SoftwarePublishing Corporation, needed an Apple, he pickedit up at Jobs’s home. Others relied on their ownsteam. Phone phreak John Draper developed aword-processing program, Easywriter, for the Appleand then hawked it to San Francisco Bay Areacomputer stores.Others were attracted by the computer. Bill Budge,then twenty-two, had declined job offers from Intel andwas studying for a doctorate in computer science atthe University of California at Berkeley when he sawan Apple II. He promptly spent $2,000 of his $5,000teaching-assistant salary. “It was the best toy I everhad.” Necessity became the mother of programs andBudge said, “There was no way to get enoughsoftware to keep you occupied.” When Budge, at theend of 1979, took his first game, Penny Arcade (anadaptation of Pong), to Apple he traded it for a$1,000 printer. Within six weeks Budge had writtenanother three programs. In 1979 Apple also publisheda word-processing program dubbed Apple Writer.The program was written by Paul Lutus, a graduate ofSan Francisco’s hippie movement and a one-timepanhandler who had helped design lighting systemsfor the space shuttle Columbia before turning toprogramming. Lutus wrote the first version of hisword-processing program, Applewriter, in a twelveby-sixteen-footlog cabin on Eight Dollar Mountain in aremote part of Oregon.But the one program that did more for Apple thanall the others combined was Visicalc. At a time whennobody at Commodore would take his telephone call,Daniel Fylstra, the head of Personal Software, a pintsizedcompany based in Boston, managed to gain ahearing at Apple. Jobs offered Fylstra an Apple II atdealer price to ensure that Personal Software, whichwas selling a chess game, would develop programsfor Apple. At the time, two acquaintances of Fylstra’swere working on a program to simplify budgetforecasting. Daniel Bricklin, a Harvard MBA student,wanted a program that would eliminate the tediousrecalculating required after revising financial budgetsand enlisted his friend, Robert Frankston, a fellowcomputer programmer, to help make it work. Afinance professor scoffed at the commercialprospects for Bricklin’s idea but did suggest hecontact Fylstra. Bricklin wanted to borrow a computerfrom Fylstra and because the Commodore and RadioShack machines were being used, wound up withPersonal Software’s Apple. Bricklin wrote a prototype

program in BASIC for an Apple with 24K bytes ofmemory and then, said Fylstra, “We all decided hemight as well continue on the machine he had startedon.” Visicalc—the name derives from visiblecalculator—was demonstrated to Markkula and toofficials at Atari in January 1979, Fylstra recalled: “Heinterpreted it as a checkbook program. I don’t thinkMarkkula or the others had an inkling of what it couldbe but they did encourage me.” But the electronicsanalyst Ben Rosen, impressed by the power andspeed of Visicalc and the way in which it gave theuser more control over the computer, was moreimpressed and reported to readers of his newsletter:“So who knows? Visicalc could someday become thesoftware tail that wags (and sells) the personalcomputer dog.”Visicalc did wag. And because it was available, atfirst for $100, solely on the Apple for twelve monthsafter its formal introduction in October 1979, itwagged harder for Apple than for any othermanufacturer. Visicalc was what helped Apple creepinto small and large businesses. It was an electronicspreadsheet which could calculate the effect ofchanging one number in a tabletop of numbers. Itoffered the precision of a good accountant, thesprightly touch of a bright financial planner, and theplodding steadiness of a reliable bookkeeper. It alsoprovided another compelling reason for Apple to shifteven farther away from the home market. Fylstratagged along to dealer training sessions todemonstrate Visicalc on a wide-screen television.Business users were convinced. Fritz Maytag,president of San Francisco’s Anchor BrewingCompany, was ecstatic: “I trust Visicalc more than myown financial statements. It’s just a miracle.” Of the130,000 computers sold by Apple before September1980, Michael Scott estimated that 25,000 were soldon the strength of Visicalc.“You’ve got to play guts ball,”Morris said.Early breakfast meetings were an inescapable factof life for almost everyone at Apple. So one morningat 7:30 sharp the waitress at the Good EarthRestaurant was filling large brown mugs with coffee.The trimmings of the restaurant belied its name.There were plastic menus, vinyl bench seats, veneertables, and the baroque wicker chairs that importerslike to say are made in Thailand. The only trace of thegood earth was a smell of cinnamon that seemed tocome from the wallpaper.Anthony Morris, an Apple dealer from Manhattan,was having breakfast with the Mac marketingmanager, Michael Murray. Morris, in a blue pinstripesuit, starched white button-down shirt, and silk tie, letout an early morning sigh as the waitressdisappeared. “Cleavage this early in the morning.Cupertino is getting decadent.” A Stanford MBA,Morris was considered one of Apple’s better dealers

and was among two hundred invited to Cupertino fora preview of Lisa. There was some industry chatter asMorris passed on scuttlebutt that another computercompany was going to avoid complying with FCCregulations governing new products by introducing anentirely new disk drive but giving it a name belongingto an existing series. “The sales rep was all over townboasting about this. But last year she took a year offto finish her master’s in arts and dance so that tellsyou a lot.”Morris, who sold only Apples, mentioned that hewas about to start carrying computers made by IBMand DEC. “We could not survive selling only Apples,”he explained, “so there’s been a loss of faith or whatsome would call the emergence of sound businesspractices.” He paused. “Apple has to start thinkingabout the business customer. Those buggers aredemanding.”Murray raised his eyes from his breakfast plate andasked, “What would it take to make you cancel IBM?”“I probably won’t,” Morris replied. “First, the Apple IIIwas going pssss. We’ve got twenty-eight people. Icannot feed them when sales are going down. It’sscary how quickly your business goes down. Second,my clients want IBM and nobody has ever got fired forbuying IBM. IBM’s goddamn thorough. They havedone a lot of thinking. They understand the businessuser. The message from IBM is if you take ’em on youcan double your sales in ninety days.” Morrismentioned a fellow dealer in New York City. “He did amillion dollars in a month. He didn’t do that withApple.”Murray countered, “We’re going to hang Mac out infront of the dealers and make them salivate and see ifwe can get some momentum away from IBM. We’vegot so many different kinds of dealers. How do weunderstand our best one hundred dealers? How dowe get you really excited?”Morris argued that many of Apple’s promotionalpieces weren’t suitable for dealers whose customerswere businesses. “The people in Cupertino don’tleave Cupertino enough. They don’t know what theworld is about. We’ve got to systematically reduce thenumber of decisions a customer has to make in orderto get them to make the decision we want. Weshouldn’t be saying, ‘Here’s a candyland. Make yourchoice.’”Murray nodded and reverted to the naggingprospect of IBM. “It’s scary to think how small we areand how slick IBM is.”Morris replied with assurance, “You’ve got to playguts ball. You will fail if you’re only as good as IBM. It’sjust like women in business. You’ve got to work twiceas hard to get half the recognition.”Some mornings later a group of marketingmanagers from all the Apple divisions gathered fortheir monthly meeting. Joe Roebuck, a marketingmanager, placed his Styrofoam coffee cup on thetable near an overhead projector and surveyed hiscompanions. “This place is beginning to look like IBM.Everybody’s got ties. No blue shirts yet. But we’regetting there.” The chief topic of discussion was the

avalanche of magazines, brochures, newsletters,buyers’ guides, flyers, catalogs, and data sheets—the“pieces”—that Apple published to help persuadecustomers to buy its products. Phil Roybal, whoheaded Apple’s marketing publications, showed aseries of slides about the importance of thesepublications and said, “Literature is not an event. It’spart of a process. We have to sell prospects whatthey want”—he paused for effect and added—“whichis a solution.” He associated each of Apple’spublications with customers in varying states ofanticipation and noted, “The average prospect walksinto a store and takes five hours to make theconnection between what he wants and what heshould buy. Most don’t care whether it’s an Apple II orIII or an IBM PC or a sack of walnuts. The dealer willgrab anything that says apple, shove it into theprospect’s hand, and hope he’ll buy. They’re notselling solutions. The literature has to start pulling theproducts together into solutions for people.”Joe Roebuck interrupted. “We’re churning outrequirements for literature like crazy.”“When I look at the business plan for the comingyear,” Roybal responded, “I find I’m running a shortfallof five writers a week. I can kill some projects or I cankill some writers.”

THE BOZO EXPLOSIONApple Computer started life as a business, not acompany. The gradual change from a bloated garageoperation into something resembling a corporationwas arduous and protracted. Once Apple announcedits disk drive in the summer of 1978, ordersincreased, the backlog of unsold computersdisappeared, and the pressure to grow mounted. Theheadquarters was moved to a building fifteen timeslarger than the office Apple had occupied behind theGood Earth Restaurant. It was set among orchards ablock or so from Stevens Creek Boulevard, andApple’s new neighbors were a plant nursery and acouple of wooden frame houses. When the ninety orso employees wandered around their empty newbuilding, most were convinced that it would last, if notfor a lifetime, certainly for several years.Within three months the packing cartons arrivedand again Apple commandeered a couple morebuildings. The second shuffle was made in such ahurry that interior alterations were performed withoutany building permits and equipment was brought inover a weekend from trucks discreetly parked bysome rear doors. Packing cartons, new offices, freshsurroundings, and unfamiliar companions became adisconcerting way of life.Over the course of about two years a sheaf ofprofessionals arrived. For newcomers accustomed tothe struts and underpinnings of a large company, theturmoil of a start-up was entirely foreign. There werefew of the services most companies devise to makelife easier. When a sink or lavatory got clogged, therewas no maintenance department to call. When thetelephones broke, no communications consultantcame tripping down the hallway with a handpiececlipped to his belt. When somebody had to make along business trip there was no travel department tolook after the arrangements. Legal matters werehandled by an outside law firm. Personnel problemswere dealt with on the fly and raises were given at will.There was little time to relax and any sign of a casualair was a complete illusion. Above all, there was arelentless pressure.Jean Richardson, who started as a secretary andeventually became Apple’s advertising director,recalled, “For a couple of years the pace was awful. Itwas twelve hours a day and weekends. I knew if I tooka drink at a water fountain I would miss a beat andslip a schedule. It was almost inhuman. I was at theburnout stage.” As the professionals arrived, Applewas confronted with the problems of reconciling oldand new, coping with the consternation andresentment provoked by the arrivals andaccommodating the habits and influences theybrought with them.For a company growing as fast as Apple, hiringnew employees was its most important task. In thelong run this overshadowed everything else. Peoplerecruited one day frequently wound up hiring otherswithin days or weeks of their arrival, so one early

misjudgment could be amplified and have graveimplications. For relative innocents running a smallbusiness, it was easy to be awed by the reputation ofother companies, the length of a résumé, a string ofadvanced degrees, and the sound of a reputation.There was a conscious effort to hire people who wereoverqualified for the immediate job at hand but whowould be able to cope with larger demands as ordersincreased.Apple, like other companies before it, took toraiding established firms. Every major steal broughtsqueals of delight. Markkula couldn’t conceal his gleewhen he lured somebody from Intel, Scott was just ashappy when he snared a body from NationalSemiconductor, and Jobs interpreted a resignationfrom Hewlett-Packard as something approachingdivine approval. When another company presidentcalled to complain about the way Apple was pinchinghis people, they chuckled some more.Candidates for senior positions were usuallyinterviewed by Markkula, Scott, and Jobs. The visibledifferences among the trio were enough to ring alarmbells in the heads of some who contemplated joiningApple. When, during interviews, Jobs insisted onputting his dirty feet on the table or when, at luncheoninterviews, he returned a plate to a waitress informingher that the food was “garbage,” he wasn’tnecessarily impressive. Though he tended to beswayed by reputations, Jobs distrusted résumés andpreferred to rely on his instincts. He conducted manyscreenings at the Good Earth Restaurant or othernearby eateries, usually plumped for somebody he feltwas right, and trusted his choices to be able to dowhat they said they could do.In the summer of 1978, fifteen months after theannouncement of the Apple II, the manufacturingdepartment was fairly typical of the condition of therest of the firm. Apple was building about thirtycomputers a day and managing to ship about fifteendisk drives a week. Twenty-eight people reported toone supervisor who, each morning, handed outinstructions and doled out assignments. It was still amanual department. Purchase orders, inventorycontrols, and shipment rates were monitored with penand paper. Half the manufacturing area was filled witha three-year supply of plastic that Jobs had managedto buy at a good price.Roy Mollard, a ramrod-straight Liverpudlian, whohad known Scott at National Semiconductor andFairchild Semiconductor, was hired to directmanufacturing. He looked like a lean cotton-millmanager out of some D. H. Lawrence novel, andbrought many of the tricks he had learned at NationalSemiconductor. He hired security guards, installedhidden microphones to trigger burglar alarms, and onthe floor he appointed supervisors, scrapped thecasual lunchtime Ping-Pong games, fired the qualityassurancemanager, and insisted that there be nocupboards or drawers so that he could always see theinventory. His aim, as he put it, was “to hose outcomputers” and he wasn’t prepared to toleratenuisances.

He struggled to make the manufacturing area outof-boundsfor the rest of the company and madewithering comments when people slopped into hisbailiwick without shoes. “Steve Jobs didn’t want tolimit access. I said, ‘Baloney!’ I don’t want my peoplein a goldfish bowl.’” Don Bruener, the high-schoolstudent originally hired to troubleshoot balky boards,observed the new tone. “At the beginning if youthought about a change in production you could talk tosomeone and get it changed. It became more of anassembly line and you had to go through channelsand write up a proposal for change.”The same sort of shift occurred in the engineeringlaboratory. Rod Holt, the unwilling head of thedepartment, found himself trying to guide the affairs ofquality control, service, documentation, mechanicalengineering, industrial design, and the work of thehardware engineers. “I stood up at a staff meeting,”Holt recalled, “and said, ‘If you guys don’t square thisaround, I’m quitting.’” To solve the problem Appleovercompensated by chasing two candidates. One,Tom Whitney, had guided large calculator projects atHewlett-Packard and was a college friend of thehardware engineer, Wendell Sander, and a formerboss of Steve Wozniak. The other, Charles H. PeddleIII, had managed the MOS Technology team that haddesigned the 6502 microprocessor that lay at theheart of the Apple II. When both men agreed to joinApple their decisions were greeted with enthusiasm.Each, however, was surprised to find the otherpresent, and after a few weeks, Peddle left.Whitney, a tall man with a studious air, sought tointroduce some of the practices that had provedeffective at Hewlett-Packard. He assigned projectleaders, scheduled meetings on designspecifications, and tried to sort through the heap oftasks that needed attention. A battery of forms withvarious Hewlett-Packard acronyms became part ofthe Apple vocabulary. ECOS stood for engineeringchange order, ERS for external referencespecification, and IDS for internal designspecification. One of the young engineers, ChuckMauro, said that his colleagues greeted the newregimen with guffaws. “We thought, ‘Here we go. Herecomes red tape and forms to fill out and meetingsevery week.’ Organization was just too hard to take.”The creeping professionalism was also reflected inthe sort of software that was produced. Among theyoungsters there was a strong allegiance to theBASIC programming language which had ruledstrong at the Homebrew Club, was the lingua francaof the hobbyist community, and had proved more thanadequate for games like Breakout—but it wasn’treally suitable for more powerful applications. JefRaskin, who wrote the first proper Apple manual,argued for the merits of the more powerful language,Pascal, and helped convince Jobs that he should atleast give it a try. Bill Atkinson, a programmer who didmuch of the work on Pascal, recalled, “Mike Scottdidn’t believe in software. He thought we should putout hot hardware and people would supply software.Steve Jobs said, ‘Our users only want assemblylanguage and BASIC but I’ll give you three months to

convince me otherwise.”Jobs allowed his skepticism to be overruled by hisnatural inclination to find a better way to do things.Once Pascal was converted to run on the Apple, itgave the company a new language to sell, simplifieddevelopment of new programs, and most important,boosted the company’s reputation amongexperienced programmers who considered it a sealof respectability. Raskin and others continued tocomplain that Apple treated software as hardware’sstepsister. “Software is the glass through which themajority of our users see the Apple. If it doesn’t workright, the Apple isn’t working right.” Gradually hiscomplaints, the arrival of some more graybeards, andthe demands of the market helped nudge Apple awayfrom a devotion to hardware.A drive to introduce the ways and procedures of alarger company wasn’t limited to recruitment orsoftware. It extended to the invisible skein of systemsthat started to streak about the place. Scott found thathis admiration for order and his interest in computersblended in a management-information system thatlinked most aspects of the company. At first Appleleased computers from an outside firm; then, whenthe monthly bills mounted, it bought its ownminicomputers. The Management Information Systemwas not glamorous and, for the most part, it wasinvisible. Yet it became one of the major reasons forthe growth of Apple and was, perhaps, Scott’s mostimportant contribution. The system became Scott’spet delight. Sitting at a terminal he—and other topmanagers—had a birds-eye view of the entirecompany. He could punch in a code and find out howmany resistors were in stock at a warehouse, whichparts were running low, how new orders were pilingup, and which customers weren’t paying their bills.One feature allowed Scott complete control. Hecould throw other users off the system, switch histerminal into lockstep with another to find out howsomeone was coping with the computer, and fire offmessages to the hapless. It was an elaborateelectronic toy calculated to appeal to his sense ofwhimsy and his passion for control. In a companywhere any number of programmers could wreakhavoc with sensitive files, Scott’s master passwordwas changed frequently. His favorite moniker wasadopted from his aptly named cat: Baal.The appearance of managers with fringes of grayhair and business-school graduates with an ambitiousglint raised eyebrows. The old-timers viewed thenewcomers with increasing suspicion. They looked onthem as arrivistes. When rumors started to trickle outabout the stock options and incentive schemes usedas enticements, the bitterness was given a sharperedge. They were classified as corporate parvenuswilling to go wherever they thought they could make akilling. So a gap opened between the newcomers andthose who had been around during the early months. Itwas a difference that amounted to a clash betweennotions of amateurism and professionalism.Some of the fresh faces turned up their noses atmost of the young programmers, dismissing them as

“talented backyard hackers” who wouldn’t bother todocument their software and were only capable ofwriting “spaghetti code.” One manager wrote avitriolic memo dismissing a program written duringthe early months as “riddled with bugs the way an oldlog is full of termites.” Tom Whitney summed up hisattitude: “I wasn’t interested in working for a gamecompany. We needed to become more professional.Compatibility and providing support for the customerwere more important than getting the new, whizziestfeatures into a computer.”Some, usually the engineers and programmers whohad been allied with the Homebrew Club, moanedthat Apple had deserted its aim of making computersfor all people and supplying free software. They foundthat designing the fastest version of Star Wars was nolonger enough to gain a badge of honor and mutteredthat if they had wanted to make business computersthey would have joined IBM. Youngsters like ChrisEspinosa thought that the marketing types with theirbutton-down shirts, ties, and neatly pressed suitsshould have stayed as “extras in Cary Grant movies ofthe sixties.” Another programmer complained, “Westarted getting ad guys who used to sell shoes andthought it would be a good career move to get intopersonal computers.”When work started on computer systems to replacethe Apple II, the young programmers found theyweren’t invited to contribute their ideas and wereexcluded from debates about what they felt was theessence of the company. Disenfranchised, they wereunderstandably hurt and offended. Without degrees ordoctorates they became something of an underclassand were acutely aware of the change. RandyWigginton, one of the more abrasive of the crew,said, “The other guys thought small computers weren’tuseful. They thought, ‘The Apple II isn’t a realcomputer. It’s a joke.’ Their attitude was: ‘You guysreally don’t know how to do a company. We’ll showyou how to do it right.’” A few of the programmerstook to calling one of their new supervisors aSoftware Nazi because he was steadfastly opposedto revealing details about the internal mechanisms ofthe machine. But the complaints weren’t limited to theengineers. When more experienced financialmanagers, lawyers, public-relations specialists, andpersonnel staff began to arrive, even the mildmanneredaccountant Gary Martin was moved tonote, “We started getting people who were trying tomake Apple sound and smell like IBM.”As the employee count lengthened, it becameincreasingly difficult for Apple to tolerate quirks andidiosyncracies, although some of the demands wereextravagant. (One employee, for example, wasgravely upset when Apple failed to fulfill a promise toinstall his eighteen-foot-high, twenty-six-ring pipeorgan in one of the office buildings.) In executive staffmeetings Rod Holt came to be viewed by some as adisruptive influence while Steve Wozniak became themost notable casualty of growth. After he completedthe controller for the disk drive, Wozniak worked onthe design of a lower-cost Apple II but his heart wasn’tin it. He didn’t enjoy the tugs of management, the

meetings, committees, memos, and long discussions.“I was lucky to have two hours a day to myself.”He still indulged in pranks and, at one time oranother, covered other people’s clothes in a solublegreen slime, filled sodas with a fizzing compound, andpinned tablets of Alka Seltzer to the menus at anearby Bob’s Big Boy—accompanied by themessage “For your convenience.” When mice startedto invade the engineering laboratory he showed hiscolleagues how the creatures would always scamperinto paper bags because they mistook the darkopening for the safety of a hole.However, Wozniak’s rebellious side began toemerge and he became a manager’s nightmare. Hisposition in the company and all the kudos and statusthat gradually came to be associated with the Apple IIconverted him into one of the corporate untouchables.Instead of pursuing an assignment he would find amore interesting diversion like computing e to onehundred thousand places. (He calculated that it wouldtake three days to compute and four months to print.)For some weeks he tried to copy diskettes with anelectric hand iron, hoping that the heat would causethe magnetic patterns to shift from one diskette toanother. He also began to take long weekends to gogambling at casinos in Reno. Dick Huston, aprogrammer who had watched Wozniak cope with thedisk drive, formed his own conclusion. “Woz lost thechallenge. People stopped telling him that what hewas doing was bullshit. He acquired the status ofbeing a wizard and after a while he believed it. Heknew better in his heart but he loved the role. So whensomeone got on his case he’d get temperamental.”Randy Wigginton looked at his friend and thought, “Hedidn’t have the same amount of individual importance.He preferred being the Messiah.”The newcomers brought their own strands andstrains. During the first couple of years Applerecruited heavily from Hewlett-Packard, NationalSemiconductor, and Intel, and the habits anddifferences in style among these companies werereflected in Cupertino. There was a general frictionbetween the rough and tough ways of thesemiconductor men (there were few women) and thepeople who had made computers, calculators, andinstruments at Hewlett-Packard. Part of this wassimply due to the different nature of the business. Theprimary drive of the semiconductor men was tomanufacture high volume at low cost. Hewlett-Packard, on the other hand, had not been in a highvolumebusiness until its calculators became popularand even then had steadfastly refrained fromchopping prices to gain market share. The recruitsfrom National Semiconductor were more inclinedtoward sales and opportunism and came from acompany that made a religion out of its disdain forluxury and comfort. The Hewlett-Packard crowdtended to favor planning and believed in serving thecustomer and in some of the statelier aspects ofcorporate life.Some of the Hewlett-Packard men began to see

themselves as civilizing influences and were horrifiedby the uncouth rough-and-tumble practices of thebrutes from the semiconductor industry. They came tobelieve that semiconductor men were hopeless malechauvinists—an impression that wasn’t dispelledwhen Markkula warmed up a managers’ meeting withthe rhetorical question “Why did God invent women?Because he couldn’t teach sheep to cook.” Theknights from Hewlett-Packard muttered that Apple’sdirectors were opposed to contributions to charitieslike the United Way, that the company had nocommitment to affirmative action, underpaid itssecretaries, and was, at least during the first two orthree years, a difficult place for women to gainpromotion. So it was no wonder that cartoons ofMollard, the one-time National Semiconductormanufacturing man, appeared with him outfitted inGestapo regalia and armed with a swagger stick.Those who were either from, or shared thesympathies of the people from, Hewlett-Packard weresurprised at stories that some National managersbounced expense reports. One of the daintiermanagers looked at the pressures to ship that built uptoward the end of every quarter as an effort was madeto meet planned targets, have a “big push,” and“make the number,” and felt that the Nationalmanagers kept their own code. “There was a realsense that they were going to ship this shit one way oranother and they were going to get the dealers to fixit. They more or less said, ‘We’re going to ship thissucker, to hell with the customer.’” Another summedup the approach his National colleagues took towardsuppliers and others who stood in the way, and talkedof them as if they were hoods. “Their style ran like this,‘We’d like to kill those sonuvabitches legally if we can.But if we cannot we’ll still have to kill ‘em.’”Many of the men from National Semiconductor andother stern backgrounds harbored a similar contemptfor the Hewlett-Packard recruits. They came to lookon them as prissy fusspots. They didn’t question theirprofessionalism; they just seemed to feel that theywere too professional. Rod Holt felt, “The Hewlett-Packard types . . . spend more time writing downwhat they are supposed to do and what theirsubordinates are supposed to do than they do doinganything.” Someone else characterized a colleagueas “another one of those country-club H.P. types,” andMichael Scott complained, “They’re not pennypinchers. They gloss over things.”Though the differences were most pronouncedbetween the men from Hewlett-Packard and National,others also brought the practices they had becomeaccustomed to. When Ann Bowers, who had spentsome years working at Intel and was the wife of one ofits founders, was placed in charge of Apple’spersonnel matters, Sherry Livingston observed,“Everything had to be done the Intel way. She wouldn’tgo to the left or the right.” Since Apple tappedcompanies like Hewlett-Packard, National, and Intelfor particular strengths, and since some of thetrailblazers were instrumental in luring others fromtheir old stomping grounds, it was common for themto wind up working in small enclaves. This, combined

with the ferocious pressure and the friction betweenyoung and old, tended to exaggerate the normal sortsof conflicts that spring up between departments of anycompany.The engineers, for example, felt the manufacturingmen were concerned only with eliminating bumps andswings to keep the line running smoothly and to meetproduction schedules. “The manufacturing people,”Rod Holt insisted, “by and large have taken Apple fora ride.” The feeling was mutual and certainly was notimproved when the production people raided theengineering files and removed all the carefully plottedtest procedures and descriptions of final assemblies.The production men tended to think that the engineerswere treated too daintily and should have beendisciplined with rigorous schedules and milestones.They cursed the aesthetes who wouldn’t makecompromises over things that would have made theirlife far easier—like the color of cases.There was also, during the early days, considerabletension between the manufacturing department andthe men who monitored the flow of materials andsupplies. Mollard recalled that the enmity ran so deep“there were people almost coming to blows in theparking lot.” The butt of the company, the publicationsdepartment, couldn’t complete manuals untilengineers and programmers had stopped tinkeringwith a device or piece of software and was alsobattered by pressure from the marketing side whowanted to ship products quickly. For a time, whileApple was still very young, the technical writersdeveloped their own little world. They arranged noontimemadrigal sessions, installed beanbag chairs intheir offices, erected walls of cardboard boxes, andarmed themselves with Ping-Pong-ball guns to fendoff intruders.By September 1980, three and a half years afterthe introduction of the Apple II, 130,000 had beensold. Revenues had risen from $7.8 million for thefiscal year that ended on September 30, 1978, to$117.9 million, and profits had risen from $793,497 to$11.7 million. And that fall, thirty-one months after thethirtieth employee had joined the company, and justtwelve months after the three-hundredth employeearrived, Apple’s payroll topped one thousand. Thecompany occupied fifteen buildings in Silicon Valley,eleven of which were in Cupertino. There was somemanufacturing in Cupertino and San Jose but largescalemanufacturing was conducted at a factory inTexas. Warehouses had been opened in differentparts of the United States and in the Netherlands.Overseas there was a plant in Ireland (which wasopened by an unemployed plumber, the mayor ofCork) and another was about to open in Singapore.The pyramidal structure was bulging and so Applemoved one step closer to convention and formeddivisions.There was nothing very surprising about thedecision. It was one of those penalties of size thatemphasized how fast the company had grown. Thechange in structure also reflected tacit admission thatMichael Scott’s hopes of keeping the company small

had been scuttled. His dream of limiting Apple tobetween fifteen hundred and two thousandemployees, and of running an enterprise that madeonly its latest product (while subcontracting everythingelse), disappeared. Divisions were formed for all theusual reasons: attempts to keep affairs manageable,to pinpoint profit and loss areas, and to delegateauthority.Before the divisions were announced some ofApple’s managers went on inspection tours and triedto do their home-work. They asked senior membersof Hewlett-Packard and Digital EquipmentCorporation how decisions were made in theircompanies and then returned to Cupertino to draw upbattle plans. One division was formed as anexperiment. Its charter was to take care of disk drives.In the fall of 1980 five others were added: thePersonal Computer Systems Division to look after theApple II and Apple III, the Personal Office SystemsDivision to design and nurse the Lisa system,Manufacturing, Sales, and Service.There wasn’t, of course, any particular time whenthe formation of divisions would have beencomfortable. At Apple the formation of divisionsoccurred when there were plenty of other pressingdistractions. The decision was made about the sametime the directors decided that the company shouldmake its first public stock offering and also during theweeks when a successor to the Apple II was beingintroduced.Though most of Apple’s top managers had workedwithin a divisional structure, none had managed acompany that had divisions. There were scarcelyenough middle managers to go around and nowherenear enough people to fill all the empty cubicles. Thecomputer systems weren’t installed and proceduresweren’t drawn out. It was hard to escape theimpression that the creation of divisions was scarcelya masterstroke of planning.The grand change and dislocation helped push intothe background some of the conflicts that had resultedfrom mismatched corporate blood types. A growingfund of common experience tended to do the samething. The divisions presented an entirely new set oftensions. Their physical separation led to a technicalisolation. They created fresh allegiances and newlines of reporting. As the divisions started to flex theirmuscles Apple came to be divided by the pull offashion and the movable squabbles of fiefdoms. Thedivisions were allowed, for example, to hire their owntechnical writers and order their own printed circuitboards, and on occasion, they tried to exercisecontrol over what others were doing. The PeripheralsDivision, to cite just one case, wanted to set thestandard for what should be plugged into peripherals.It didn’t take a translation expert to understand thatthis amounted to an attempt to dictate corporateproduct planning.More important the people working within thedifferent divisions became aware of distinctions. Theglamour of the hot divisions, where work proceeded

on new computers, cast a pall across areas where theprimary task was to support existing machines. Thenature of the work appealed to different emotionaland intellectual interests and attracted different sortsof people. Many of the engineers and programmerswho had been caught up in the success of the Apple IIpreferred to work in the Personal Computer SystemsDivision (PCS). Others, who wanted a brighter future,respectability, and the opportunity to work with newertechnologies, knocked on the door of the PersonalOffice Systems Division (POS), which was formedfrom a core of people developing the Lisa system.The subtleties were subjected to microscopicinspection. Rick Auricchio was a programmer whoworked in PCS. “We felt that the Lisa Division was fullof prima donnas. They wanted a thirty-thousand-dollarlaser printer and they got it. They went out and hiredhigh-powered people. We didn’t. Their workingcubicles were bigger. They had more plants. Eventhough we were paying all the bills and pumping cashacross the street, we were dull and boring and notdoing anything. There was a perception that theywould be nine feet tall, scowl at you, and turn up theirnoses. Without the right color badge and an escort,you couldn’t get into the Lisa building. That was aninsult. People started thinking that they didn’t want tobe cretins for the rest of their lives so they left PCSand joined POS.” The people who worked in the LisaDivision returned the compliment. One said, “We tooka look at the Apple III and didn’t take it very seriously.We just took a look and said, ‘They don’t know whatthey’re doing.’”As the divisions solidified, a corporate bureaucracybegan to emerge. Again, there wasn’t really any wayto escape the stultifying drag of growth. Coping withseveral hundred people (let alone several thousand)requires some codes if only to free managers fromhaving to explain exceptions all day long. Some of thiswas reflected in companywide memos. Occasionalbulletins kept employees posted on budgets “whichreflect efficiency and frugality” and registered alarmwhen the phone bill topped $100,000 a month. Othersprovided information on FICA taxes, profit-sharingplans, stock programs, official company holidays, anew Xerox reproduction center, and insuranceschemes. Performance reviews (scheduled every sixmonths) came complete with a “review informationmatrix.”A memo from the legal department asked peoplenot to abbreviate the name of the company to AppleComputer or Apple and stated: “The legal name of thecorporation is Apple Computer, Inc. (note the comma). . . . Please don’t hamstring our efforts by casuallymisusing the corporate symbols.” Other notices keptpeople abreast of schedules of shuttle buses that ranbetween the Apple buildings, urged them to use upstationery supplies, drop by a corporate engineeringlibrary, or sign up for television classrooms that wereconnected to the Stanford instructional televisionnetwork. There were other announcements thatsought to differentiate among some of interofficememos and in-house publications. “‘Apple Bulletin,’”

eaders were told, “communicates information thathas time value . . . . It is distributed by the mail roomand telecommunications people to all Applelocations.”Even some of Apple’s staunchest boosters, likemarketing manager Phil Roybal, were forced toadmit, after several years, a difference in tone. “Thecharacter has changed because the company hasgrown. There is more overhead, policies have beencreated, administrators have been hired, and thereare rigidities. There is less whimsy. Now thingshappen pretty much as expected. It’s more like anorganized company.” Others were lesscomplimentary. Publications manager Jef Raskin,who eventually had a falling out with Jobs, said, “Atfirst the company was run by a consensus, where agood idea had a chance of success. Afterward it waslike standing beside a freight train and tugging it witha chain. It wouldn’t move off the tracks.” Some, likeRoy Mollard, found that divisions, additional layers ofmanagement, and increased specialization meantthat his influence was circumscribed. “My area ofcontrol was narrowed and the job became lessinteresting.”For outsiders like Regis McKenna, who had playeda crucial part in Apple’s formative stages, the arrivalof a vice-president of communications meant thatresponsibility for public relations and marketingstrategy was split. “You have to go through people toget to the very people you used to deal with one onone. You deal with corporate organization that wantsto control everything.” And for the newcomers, thepresence of men like McKenna with established tiesto the founders did not make life any easier. Theuneasy truce was made clear by the way in whichApple came to handle some of its public relationsinternally while the McKenna Agency dealt with therest.However, the emergence of a bureaucracy was nota dull blanket that brought equality. There was adistinct and pronounced pecking order that wascamouflaged by appearances. The carefully cultivatedsuggestions of equality were, in many ways, a mirage.On the surface Apple didn’t bear much resemblanceto pinstriped America. There were no reservedspaces in the parking lots. Jeans, open collars, andsneakers were an accepted form of dress. (In fact,they almost came to be a uniform.) There were nolavish office suites, just cubicles and shoulder-highpartitions. The offices became a maze of HermanMiller open landscape furniture. Punching clocks wasunheard of even on the assembly lines. Secretarieswere called area associates and the head ofpersonnel was known as the director of humanresources. Business cards carried offbeat titles. Foroutsiders these unconventional appearances weredeceptive. Insiders saw straight through them.Programmer Dick Huston echoed the sentiments ofmany of his colleagues when he remarked, “I havenever thought of Apple as an egalitarian place towork.”

Many of the ways in which employees came to telleach other apart were entirely conventional and boremore similarities to traditional industries and theindustrial crescent than Apple’s leaders wereprepared to admit. Except at its Irish factory, Applewas not a unionized company. Jobs had all the ruffledpride of a founder who felt that the arrival of a unionwould mean that he had failed to care for hisemployees, and he also thought that unions wereresponsible for problems in some older industries. Hepromised to “quit the day we become unionized.” Buteven if walkouts and pickets weren’t part of the Applevocabulary, there was still an enormous differencebetween the shop floor and the executive offices.Don Bruener, who spent some time working inproduction, said, “People in production were afraid todeal with any people outside production. And thepeople outside production didn’t care aboutproduction. It was workers against executives.” After atime most of the executives took offices in onebuilding and the senior officials were known asmembers of the executive staff. Once Apple startedholding public stockholder meetings the sameexecutives shared the front-row seats with thecompany’s directors. Apart from the younger faces inthe audience, there wasn’t that much differencebetween early Apple annual meetings and ones heldby Chrysler or Bank of America.A young company like Apple also developed othersignals of rank. The greatest distinction was based onwealth. For the disparities that existed at Apple,especially after it became a public company, were farlarger than those that separate the chairman from thejanitor in mature companies like General Motors andExxon. The company also made loans to seniorexecutives to help them buy stock or pay largeincome-tax bills, and profit-sharing was allocatedaccording to rank.There was never any mistaking who was the boss.The appearance of Scott or Markkula or Jobs couldprovoke a tightening in the muscles of underlings. Acasual comment, a hint, an upturned eyebrow, askeptical glance, a rise in the voice were all amplifiedand produced what one keen observer delightfullycalled “thunderbolt management.” He explained,“Everybody knows who calls the shots. Somebodysays something in a hallway or makes a passingremark and suddenly twenty levels below, it becomeslaw.”One of the most important signs of status was thenumbers given to employees on the day they joinedthe company—which had caused Jobs such concernat their first appearance. Printed on the plasticidentification badges, these numbers became acorporate version of the big-city social register. AsApple grew, the status of the employees with thelowest numbers rose. Though the badges often didn’tmatch financial standing, they still provoked admiringglances. Some of the earliest employees could rattleoff the names of the first fifty or so of their colleaguesand others took to advertising their positions byhaving their employee numbers stamped on theirautomobile license tags. Another way in which the

old-timers emphasized their difference was the Crosspen decorated with a small Apple that had beendistributed to every employee on Apple’s thirdChristmas. Eventually the pens were made availablein the company store.The social order was also visible in companywidemessages. One sonorously proclaimed the differencebetween a monthly newsletter and a shorter corporatememo: “Recently promoted people deserve applauseand recognition . . . ‘Apple Times’ will list newlypromoted employees . . . ‘Apple Bulletin’ should notbe used to announce promotions and other personnelchanges below the level of division manager.”There was also a debate about the value of thetechnical writers. Jobs had always placed greatimportance on Apple’s manuals, and there was afeeling that they formed an important part of what thecompany was selling. Some argued that if this wasso, the technical writers deserved to be on a payscale similar to that of the top-flight engineers.Eventually, however, Apple buckled to the notion of“replacement value” and paid its writers on the levelsthat existed outside the computer industry. Onepublications manager was not allowed to become aprincipal member of technical staff, according to aformal complaint that he lodged, because “doing anindustry-leading job in publications just did not havethe stature of ‘designing a power supply or softwaresystem.’”So with all these strains and pronounced stripings itwas a dizzying challenge for the old hands, let alonethe newcomers, to sort out where they fitted, whattasks to pursue, and precisely what it was that thecompany stood for. As the divisions were formed inthe fall of 1980 those sorts of questions became evenmore baffling. For in the space of twelve weeks Applewent on a hiring binge and boosted its payroll from sixhundred employees to twelve hundred: a period thatsome came to refer to as The Bozo Explosion. Someemployees were snapped up from temporaryagencies and squads of as many as sixty weregathered for orientation seminars.For everyone the growth was unsettling. The rate ofchange was revealed in odd ways and in littlehousehold items like the corporate telephonedirectories that were kept in looseleaf folders andupdated every few weeks. Managers found theirschedules were slipping and paperwork wasmultiplying though the latter was partly due to aproliferation of Apples which spat out charts andgraphs and reams of numbers. Some of the focus ofthe first few years disappeared, and there was ageneral sense that the company was sliding out ofcontrol. Even Markkula, never the corporatedisciplinarian, was forced to admit, “We had troublekeeping the car on the track.”Layers below there was far less insulation from therush of the new. In an engineering laboratory ChuckMauro was startled by the speed with which freshfaces appeared. “It made your head reel, hearingabout four new guys who were going to start onMonday. It was all you could do to keep up. It was

impossible to even remember all their names.”Apple went to considerable lengths to preservesome sense of continuity, instill a form of community,conceal differences, and give the impression ofstability. A large part of the effort was directed towardproviding pleasant working conditions, a goal thatsprang largely from Jobs and, to a lesser extent,Markkula. Part of the impetus was purely practical, forother companies in the area had gained a reputationfor looking after their employees and Apple’smanagement generally recognized that one way ofkeeping people, in an industry where companieswere sometimes crippled by a sudden exodus, wasnot to skimp on the trimmings. Part sprang from thelong benevolent reputation of Hewlett-Packard. Partwas based on the unshakable conviction that peoplework harder and more efficiently when they aretreated well and given decent surroundings. Butrunning through all of this was more than just agratuitous streak of altruism. Like the founders ofmany companies, Apple’s were determined toimprove on the deficiencies they saw elsewhere.The picnics, parties, and presents that broke up thework week were larger versions of affairs that hadsprinkled every stage of Apple’s development. Afterthe company shipped its first $100,000 worth ofcomputers, the entire fifteen-person work force hadgathered for a pool party at Markkula’s house. Whenthe manufacturing department had been spruced up,the rest of Apple was invited to an open house atwhich children, spouses, and “spouse equivalents”were made welcome. Succeeding milestones hadalmost always been celebrated with a party, a cake,or a bottle of champagne.As the months lengthened into years, the partiesgot grander—extending to marquees and bunting andjazz bands. There were outings to specially arrangedsneak screenings of movies like Star Wars and TheEmpire Strikes Back. A Halloween party that hadbeen held during the first few months (where Jobsarrived as Jesus Christ) developed into an annualritual and more or less turned into an unofficialcompany holiday. The scale of the celebration grewso large that a couple of blocks in Cupertino had tobe cordoned off while employees paraded about infancy dress.Entertainment and the provision of creaturecomforts were taken seriously. Employees could joinbowling leagues and aerobic dance classes. Theycould take out memberships at local health clubs.There were corporate scuba-diving classes and skiweekends in the California Sierras. Offices wereprovided with what many large companies would haveconsidered expensive furniture and consultants werehired to give advice on topics like “Building TrafficPatterns” and the optimum amount of desk space forprogrammers. Employees were always given someform of Christmas present. One year most hadreceived a hundred-dollar bill wrapped around a pen,and later, after an important sales goal was achieved,everybody was given an extra week’s paid vacation.Apple also started a program that gave employees,once they had demonstrated a minimal efficiency,

their own Apple computers. There were computerclasses for family members, and a company storeoffered large discounts on purchases of Appleequipment to relatives and close friends ofemployees. More important the programmers,engineers, and technical writers could work asefficiently at home as in their offices.Despite these efforts Apple’s identity must haveseemed clearer to customers than to employees. By1980 the company was too large and too scatteredfor any one manager to cover in a daily stroll to takethe air and test the waters. So for most employees thecorporate hand was invisible. To combat theuncertainty and provide a corporate manifesto and acoherent ideology, Apple established a committeewhich, with steadfast earnestness, set about trying tomake some sense out of diffuse motives. It tried toreduce the abstract to the concrete and to codify allthe conflicting impulses and intentions, the clashesbetween individual enterprise and teamwork,between autocracy and democracy, that make up acompany. It was little wonder that the result, though fullof good intentions, sounded banal, self-conscious,and hackneyed.The general message of the committee wasreflected in companywide memos that included lineslike “Apple is more than just a company . . . it is anattitude, a process, a point of view and a way of doingthings.” But the committee’s will and testament wasembodied in a statement of corporate values that washeavily influenced by precepts Hewlett-Packard haddistributed as a guide to its own employees. Apple’sgroup fastened on nine commandments and madethe general observation: “Apple values are thequalities, customers, standards and principles that thecompany as a whole regards as desirable. They arethe basis for what we do and how we do it. Takentogether, they identify Apple as a unique company.”As for particulars, the committee fastened on:Empathy for customers/users (We offer superiorproducts that fill real needs and provide lasting value.We deal fairly with competitors, and meet customersand vendors more than halfway . . . )Achievement/Aggressiveness (We set aggressivegoals and drive ourselves hard to achieve them. Werecognize that this is a unique time, when ourproducts will change the way people work and live. It’san adventure, and we’re on it together.)Positive Social Contribution (As a corporate citizen,we wish to be an economic, intellectual and socialasset in communities where we operate . . . .)Innovation/Vision (We accept the risks inherent infollowing our vision, and work to develop leadershipproducts which command the profit margins we strivefor . . . .)Individual Performance (We expect individualcommitment and performance above the standard for

our industry. . . . Each employee can and must makea difference; for in the final analysis, individualsdetermine the character and strength of Apple.)Team Spirit (Teamwork is essential to Apple’ssuccess for the job is too big to be done by any oneperson . . . . It takes all of us to win. We support eachother, and share the victories and rewards together . .. .)Quality/Excellence (We build into Apple products alevel of quality, performance, and value that will earnthe respect and loyalty of our customers.)Individual Reward (We recognize each person’scontribution to Apple’s success, and we share thefinancial rewards that flow from high performance. Werecognize also that rewards must be psychological aswell as financial and strive for an atmosphere whereeach individual can share the adventure andexcitement of working at Apple.)Good Management (The attitudes of managerstoward their people are of primary importance.Employees should be able to trust the motives andintegrity of their supervisors. It is the responsibility ofmanagement to create a productive environmentwhere Apple values flourish.)Apart from issuing statements dripping withgoodwill, the committee also nudged the companytoward specific actions. Apple started holding weeklylunches where employees could meet seniormanagers and vice-presidents. And Markkula made adetermined effort to let people know that they couldcome to him and air their grievances. He more thananyone listened to people far down in the companyargue against managerial decisions. Other doorsstayed closed. Jobs and Scott, some of theircolleagues said in the unholy jargon of Silicon Valley,were not “people persons.”Trying to instill a system of values in a companywhere the spirit of the founders ran so strong wasdifficult if not impossible. Even if Apple was too largefor the founders to be seen in every nook and cranny,it was small enough for rumor of their behavior, wordof their performance, and their general reputation tohave a profound effect on the corporate tone. Theywere mobile billboards. And when their deeds or theirwords failed to match the beatific standards preachedby the culture committee, the entire effort wasstymied.Culture was not to be confused with democracy,and though certainly no one at the company said asmuch, Apple Values contained more than a hint ofcorporate totalitarianism. One of the most vigorousproponents of Apple Culture, Trip Hawkins, aStanford Business School graduate in his latetwenties, chose to explain the importance ofcorporate culture in military terms. “If you have astrong culture you don’t have to supervise people soclosely and you don’t have to have so many rules,regulations, and procedures because everybody

thinks the same way and they all react to situations inthe same way. It helps you delegate more effectively.For example, you can put a bunch of marines on thebeach under fire and they’ll actually run up the beach.Companies that don’t have strong cultures cannot doanything quickly.”Jobs certainly found the theory of a corporateculture alluring but he was more taken by actions thatoffered immediate, tangible results. He certainlywanted to make Apple a pleasant place to work. Hewould enthusiastically describe his plan for anupdated version of a company town, which he called“Supersite,” where offices and houses wouldintermingle. He hoped that it would help Apple hireyoung engineers who wouldn’t be able to affordCalifornia housing prices, allow them to get their feeton the ground, and become familiar with the area. Indreamy moments he would paint a bucolic picture of acorporate park where meetings would be held, andprograms written, in the shade of large trees.Jobs had originally favored flexible hours thatallowed engineers and programmers freedom to workat home or at the office. But when this failed toachieve the necessary results, he fired off a memo toa group he was heading that stated: “When I agreedto totally flexible hours it was with the statedassumption that it was the most efficient way to get avery professional quality of work done. This group hasnot demonstrated that quality in the last 60 days. . . .Effective tomorrow, everyone . . . is required to be inby 10:00 A.M. No exceptions.”Some who worked for Jobs found him difficult totolerate. Publications manager Jef Raskin, whoworked at Apple until April 1981, said, “He’sextraordinarily seductive. He would have made anexcellent king of France.” In a four-page memo sent toMichael Scott and titled “Working for/with SteveJobs,” Raskin suggested that Jobs “get managementtraining before being allowed to manage otherprojects.” Raskin complained: “While Mr. Jobs’sstated positions on management techniques are allquite noble and worthy, in practice he is a dreadfulmanager. It is an unfortunate case of mouthing theright ideas but not believing in or executing themwhen it comes time to do something.” Raskincontinued: “Jobs regularly misses appointments . . . .He does not give credit where due. . . . Jobs also hasfavorites, who can do no wrong—and others who cando no right . . . . He interrupts and doesn’t listen. . . .He doesn’t keep promises . . . . He is a primeexample of a manager who takes the credit for hisoptimistic schedules and then blames the workerswhen deadlines are not met.”Apple Culture and the blanket of corporate goodwillcould not conceal different levels of competence. Afew weeks after the distraction of the public stockissue, problems arose with the Apple III. A generalirritation with the company’s performance bubbled tothe surface and resulted in Apple’s first widespreaddismissals.During the company’s first few years, Apple’sfounders had been proud that they were able to avoid

savage firings though they had certainly asked anumber of employees to leave. The dismissals wereusually cloaked beneath milky phrases like “leave ofabsence” or “vacation” but the artful guise didn’tconceal reality. Some considered that Apple was fartoo willing to forgive incompetence and a few, likeRod Holt, would complain, “If you get an engineer whoengineers everything wrong and doesn’t work and isscrewed up one way or another, then you make amanager out of him. They won’t fire people aroundhere.”When Michael Scott, with the approval of Jobs andMarkkula, decided to fire forty-one people threemonths after Apple went public, the ripples wereimmense. The firings were an expression of immensefrustration and also a cost-cutting move. Above all,they were a public admission that there was adistinction between the competent and theincompetent, and that Apple had managed to hirelaggards. It also brought a pronounced change in toneand some months of nervous fright. “All of a sudden,”said Fred Hoar, vice-president of communications,“Apple values were tanked and in its place we hadruthlessness.”In the weeks leading up to the dank, rainy day thataround the company quickly became known as BlackWednesday, Scott asked each department to providehim with a list of the people that were no longerwanted. He passed the list of eighty names around tosee whether some should be retained. A few peoplewere switched between divisions and the rest weresummoned to Scott’s office, given one month’s pay,and fired. One group singled out for dismissal was thedepartment that reviewed new products. Scott feltthey caused too many delays. But there was a lot ofconfusion about many of the others. Some of thepeople summoned to Scott’s office had slippedbetween the cracks because they had no immediatesupervisor, and they were rehired. Others, just a fewweeks earlier, had been given good performancereviews and bonuses.The afternoon of the dismissals Scott held acompany meeting in the basement of one of thebuildings. Amid the beer and pretzels he made anawkward little speech, fielded some questions, triedto give a pep talk, but his tone only made mattersworse. The effects of the firings went far beyond thedeed. Chris Espinosa buttonholed Jobs and told himthat it was no way to run a company. A glum Jobsasked, “How do you run a company?” Rick Auricchio,who thought he had been fired and later discoveredhe was still employed, felt that “it was like Walt Disneytaking a walk around Disneyland and chopping offMickey Mouse’s head.” Phil Roybal recalled, “A lot ofpeople always assumed that sort of thing couldn’thappen at Apple. This was the first sign of grimreality. People didn’t know what the world was comingto. Their values had been turned upside down.Suddenly we were a company just like any other.”Bruce Tognazzini thought Black Wednesday was likea divorce. “It was the end of a lot of things. It was theend of innocence. It was the end of loyalty. It usheredin an era of incredible fear.”

In the weeks following Black Wednesday ananonymous memo, which many considered toosavage, popped up on various notice boards: “Weare forming the Computer Professionals Union (CPU)so that we can keep Apple’s management in line. Thething they fear most is concerted employee action; thetactics they use are divide and conquer, and threatsof economic reprisal. They can’t get away with it if weunite! Apple was once a good place to work;management preaches to us about the ‘Apple Spirit’;let’s show them what a little bit of real spirit is like andram it down their throats!”For Scott, Black Wednesday brought disaster. Hehad gained a reputation for a ruthlessness that wasalmost physical. But behind his bullying demeanorwas a kind, thoughtful, romantic streak that washidden by a bruising shyness. He was a crossbetween Santa Claus and Spectre. Some of the oldtimersat Apple thought that nobody cared more forthem than Scott. He had a sense of the extravagantand tended to throw a party at the slightest excuse.On a couple of occasions he had rented a movietheater and mailed elegant cards to his friends andApple employees inviting them to see a specialpreview of George Lucas space movies. At thetheater, as his guests turned up, Scott stood by theentrance door handing out white roses. At an AppleChristmas party Scott chose a nautical theme and, tomatch the spirit of the affair, donned a tight-fittingwhite captain’s uniform complete with peaked hat. Onanother occasion he dispatched a memo thatsummoned to the boardroom a couple of dozenpeople who had been working at a trade show andhad missed a movie outing. Most, fearing the worst,arrived at the meeting in trepidation and found thatScott had something else in store. He ushered themto a bus which took them to a movie theater aswaiters in red jackets doled out hors d’oeuvres andchampagne.But Scott’s darker side and a macabre humor weremore apparent. When a Digital EquipmentCorporation computer, which was supposed to formthe cornerstone of Apple’s management-informationsystem, failed to arrive on time, he dispatched afuneral wreath to the president of what was a farlarger company with a card reading “Here’s what Ithink of your delivery commitments.” He had littlepatience with lengthy discussions in executive staffmeetings about whether Apple should offeremployees decaffeinated coffee as well as a regularblend. He was annoyed that salesmen drove full-sizerather than compact cars and irritated that executiveswere allowed to fly first-class. To send a message tounderlings and to show who was boss, Scott alsodelayed signing checks that urgently needed hissignature. Landscaping wasn’t high on his list ofpriorities nor were discussions about how manysquare feet each office should have. He wanted toimpose his own brand of management and evenasked all the vice-presidents to abandon their titles.His memos had an abrupt style. When he wanted toprove that the day of the computer had arrived, he

issued a terse memo banning all typewriters. It washeaded in capital letters: YOU ALL BETTER READTHIS. He posted another memo containing theorders: “No talking in aisleways. No talking standingup.”In the weeks that led up to Black Wednesday, Scottwas working harder than ever. He was also troubledby a serious eye infection that his doctors fearedmight blind him, and his secretary, Sherry Livingston,was forced to read his mail aloud. After askingApple’s executive vice-president of engineering toresign, Scott had taken over responsibility forengineering and was also trying to keep his armsaround the rest of the company. He began to mutterominous threats, talked about “having more funaround here,” and started saying, “I’m not going to putup with things I don’t like.” He strode around thecompany peering over the tops of cubicles andasking, “Are you working your ass off?” He orderedmanagers not to hire anybody else for the rest of theyear and managed to terrify and intimidate mostpeople he came in contact with. Jean Richardsonrecalled, “He was such a cold force. He’d sort oframpage through the halls and not speak to anyone.”And another employee said, “You felt that he’d comedown the aisle any minute and pick a fight.”Some of the executive staff, alarmed by Scott’sbehavior, by his peremptory dismissal of the secondmost-importantoperating manager in the company,and by his ill-timed remark that the Black Wednesdayfirings were “just the first round,” started a whisperingcampaign. Ann Bowers, head of the human resourcesdepartment, muttered her contempt for Scott. Topeople he humiliated in meetings, she dispatchedmock awards from the executive staff headed “Forvalor and courage in the face of fire.” Even one of hiscourt of admirers said Scott enjoyed displaying force“in the way a gorilla enjoys raw, unabated power.”Markkula quietly fielded the petitions of complaintsthat were spearheaded by Bowers and John Couch,both of whom had developed a reputation amongsome of their colleagues for being keen corporatepoliticians. Someone else who complained directly toMarkkula about the difficulties of working for Scottwas told, “Don’t worry about it. You’re going to have agreat career here. I’m going to fix it.”For Markkula, Scott’s frazzled edge was awkward.As the four years he had promised to devote to Appledrew to a close, Markkula was creeping towardhibernation. For the previous year he had beenworking in a staff position, taking longer holidays, andspending more time with his family. He did a lot ofskiing, enjoyed flying in his new plane to places likeSun Valley, and, in his spare time, doodled withdesigns for vacation homes. He was preparing for aluxurious retirement. Apple had even gone so far as topay a headhunting firm $60,000 to search for areplacement. When matters at Apple started tounravel at the beginning of 1980, Scott had askedMarkkula to run half the company. Markkula hadrefused, but Scott’s behavior now left Markkula withno alternative. Jobs wasn’t old enough or experiencedenough to run the company, there was no obvious

outside candidate who could quickly step into thebreach, and nobody else knew Apple as well asMarkkula. So Markkula reluctantly accepted the factthat he would have to head an interregnum untilsomebody suitable to run Apple could be found.Scott had no inkling of the whispering conspiracy.As matters came to a head, he took a long weekendin Hawaii, where he found relief from troublingsinusitis, entirely unaware of developments inCupertino where Markkula had convened a meetingof Apple’s executive staff. It was an odd meeting andsome of the senior managers, including Scott’sstaunchest allies, were not invited. Markkula took avoice vote, working around the table from Scott’sbitterest opponents to his supporters. When Scottreturned from Hawaii he found a message on histelephone answering machine, asking whetherMarkkula could drop by and talk. That conversationended abruptly after Markkula announced, “Scotty, theexecutive staff has voted to ask for your resignation.”As Markkula made his way to the front door, he askedScott to submit his resignation in writing the followingmorning.None of the shrewder hands questioned Scott’scontribution. He had within forty-eight months helpedtransform a garage operation, full of complicatedheadstrong individuals, into a publicly held,divisionalized, multinational corporation that wasrunning at an annualized sales rate of $300 million.Some at Apple thought he was the victim of a rawdeal and a bloody conspiracy. Wendell Sander, thehardware engineer, thought “he couldn’t have done aswell with hindsight as he did with foresight.” Theventure capitalist Don Valentine regarded Scott’smanagement as the most successful of any of theseventy or so companies he had invested in.For his part Markkula explained that Scott’sdismissal was “a matter of management style.Scotty’s management style is very dictatorial and wasreally good for the company in its early developmentand I had hoped he would modify his style with thegrowth of the company.” When Scott departed he tookwith him the thread of discipline that had run throughthe company, what amounted to an eagerness tomake tough decisions, and a rough relish forstrapping Jobs into a corporate straitjacket.A shallow glee spread among the whisperers atApple—who never came close to understanding thescale of Scott’s achievement. The scope of thechange was concealed from outsiders by a vacuousmemo that talked about a reshuffle. Markkulaassumed Scott’s duties as president while Jobs tookMarkkula’s place as chairman. Scott was left withJobs’s vacated title of vice-chairman. “What we havedecided to do,” the memo announced, “is to rotate theresponsibilities of those at the top of the organization,to capitalize in a fresh way on the capabilities andenergies of each.” The memo was so bland and thechange so discreet that the venture capitalist anddirector Arthur Rock even complimented the vicepresidentof communications on the way matters werehandled. After Scott was asked to resign, Jobs and

some others tried to make amends by asking himwhether he would mastermind Apple’s change to alarger management-information system, and for a fewweeks the cosmetic changes remained. Scott evenmade a presentation on the proposals for a newcomputer system, but he finally buckled anddispatched a final angry letter that announced hisdispleasure with “hypocrisy, yes-men, foolhardy plans,a ‘cover your ass’ attitude and empire builders.”But for Scott the parting was devastating. In hisdarkest moments, he contemplated trying to assertthat his authority had been wrongfully usurped anddreamed about returning to Apple and firing everyvice-president. Rod Holt recognized the degree ofScott’s attachment to Apple. “Scotty had his whole lifeassociated with Apple Computer. He didn’t haveanywhere else to go. Scotty was always working. Itdidn’t leave him any margin for emotional distress, adrinking bout, or a hangover.”Even though he owned the fifth largest chunk of thecompany, Scott stayed at his ranch house a fewminutes’ drive from Apple, with the shades drawn. Fora time he didn’t answer his telephone. When peoplecalled he said he felt fine though he didn’t bother toreply to some of the notes of sympathy that arrived.For months afterward when talk turned to AppleScott’s face looked glum and he became morose andlistless. About the only time his spirits perked up waswhen he showed that he could still remember all theparts numbers of the Apple II. But mostly Scott sleptlate, fed his cats, sprawled on an enormous couch,and watched television on a screen that droppeddown from the ceiling of his living room. He played theorgan, listened to Wagner, fielded telephone callsfrom his stockbroker, and made occasional trips to anearby garbage dump to launch model plastic rocketsinto the sky. “Apple,” he kept saying at the time, “wasmy baby.”Among the people who knew Scott well, there wasa mixture of embarrassment, distress, shame, andfury. Markkula took a few people aside and confidedthat firing Scott was the hardest thing he had done inhis life but that Apple couldn’t weather his personalproblems.Jobs probably understood better than anybody elsethe extent of Scott’s humiliation. For months Jobsnursed a bleak, private, guilty fear, “I was alwaysafraid that I’d get a call to say that Scotty hadcommitted suicide.”

THE PLATINUM CREDIT CARDWealth complicates life. At Apple riches arrivedmore quickly, with a greater force, and in largerquantities than anybody had contemplated. The sumsinvolved were so disconcerting and extraordinary thatthey meant nothing when measured againsthamburgers, sodas, walkie-talkie radios, and theother everyday yardsticks of El Camino Real. Oneobvious comparison was with great Americanfortunes but the term itself had become frowzy. In thelast quarter of the twentieth century Apple’s foundersand a few top managers became, in the malleablelingo of Silicon Valley, “zillionaires”—a perversecomment on inflation as much as language—and theirportfolios assumed a distinctly Arabian flavor. Theybecame young tycoons armed with a brute wealththat, at least on paper, was a match for most that hadbeen made in the preceding one hundred years.Theirs were true fortunes which, on the occasionswhen the stock market treated Apple with reverence,came to dwarf the visible assets of the Prince ofWales, shade the tangible riches of the CatholicChurch and make most of the captains of Americanindustry look like paupers.At the beginning of 1977, when Jobs, Wozniak, andMarkkula had tried to place a value on the parts in thegarage and the design of the Apple II, they valued therump of the partnership at $5,309. A year later whenthe three venture-capital firms acquired some stockApple was valued at $3 million. On New Year’s Eve,1980, almost three weeks after its shares were firstpublicly traded, the stock market gave Apple a valueof $1,788 billion which was more than ChaseManhattan Bank, Ford Motor Company, and MerrillLynch Pierce Fenner and Smith, over four times asmuch as Lockheed, and about twice as much as thecombined market value of United Airlines, AmericanAirlines, and Pan American World Airways.During the first eighteen months of Apple’sexistence, monetary issues were obscured, thanks toa combination of circumstance and design. The sheerpressure of work provided enough distractions to fill aday while the financial maneuvers of a small privatecompany offered far less opportunity for prying eyesthan the visible transactions of a public company.Under California law all private stock transactionswere subject to Apple’s seal of approval—aprocedure that ensured some discretion. Newly hiredhands talked with Scott and Markkula about thepossibility of buying stock but the details usuallyremained confidential. Markkula, in particular, kept afirm grip on the stock, politely telling the occasionaloutsider who inquired about the possibility of makingan investment that the shares were for employees.But gradually word of private sales, whispers of anengineer who had taken a second mortgage to buymore shares, rumors of stock splits, talk of changes incapital-gains tax rates, and discussions of theadvantages of trusts crept into daily conversations atApple until they became one of the staples of life.

Rick Auricchio, a programmer who eventually left thecompany, said: “I learned as much about stock andtaxes at Apple as I did about computers.” Money wasan uncomfortable topic that tripped a wide range ofemotion.Distribution of stock, or options to buy stock,became an intractable dilemma that led, in the eyesof Rod Holt, “to a reasonable amount of perfectlyjustified hostility.” During the first couple of years thedistribution of the discreet gray envelopes thatcontained stock options were accompanied by allsorts of warnings that the contents shouldn’t betreated too seriously. In the early days a few of therecepients were disappointed when they were given acouple of hundred options rather than a pay raise. Butthe cold force of arithmetic eventually removed anydisappointment. For after three hefty stock splits,every share distributed before April 1979 wasequivalent to 32 shares on the day that Apple wentpublic, which meant that anybody who owned 1,420 ofwhat were known as “founders’ shares” and kept themuntil the morning of December 12, 1980, was thenworth, on paper, $1 million.Options to buy stock were assigned to most of theweightier newcomers on the basis of their pastaccomplishments and the possibility of what theymight do for Apple. Some of the cannier recruitsturned their job interviews into bargaining sessionsand waited to shake hands until the promise ofoptions had reached what they felt was anappropriate level. Others, more innocent in the waysof the corporate world, took a salary and a cubicle.For Apple the pool of options was a powerfulrecruitment tool and the options that were distributedfrom time to time were enormous incentives. Scotttook particular delight in dangling the prospect ofriches in front of people who weren’t convinced thatApple was a worthwhile proposition. He was hardpressed to squelch his chuckles when he informedwaverers, “We are making a massive change inpeople’s life-styles.”When word of some of the arrangements seepedout, bitterness mounted. Fate and chance imbalancecertainly played a part. Those hired within a few daysof each other, but on opposite sides of a stock split,wound up with substantially different sums. However,some of the differences resulted from carefulcalculation. While Apple’s salaried employees weregiven options to buy stock, the hourly employees werenot. This, predictably enough, caused friction. In thelaboratories, for example, engineers received stockwhile the technicians who worked at their elbowsdidn’t. Some became convinced that they were thevictims of injustice and even those who prospered,like Bruce Tognazzini, were aware of inequities. “Theamount of stock that people were given had nothing todo with their ability to work. It had everything to do withtheir ability to get stock.” Rod Holt was, at times, hardpressed to conceal his anger. “The fact that a turkeywho is worth a million and a half doesn’t deserve tohave an office in the building is a quirk of fate.”Daniel Kottke remained a technician and wasn’tgiven any shares before the company went public.

Holt offered to make some amends by giving Kottkesome of his own shares and proposed to Jobs, “Howabout we each chip in? You give him some stock andI’ll match it.” Jobs replied, “Great! I’ll give him zero.”Jobs, always more emotionally attached to Apple thanKottke, was torn. Part of him mourned the loss of afriendship but he also deeply resented Kottke’s lackof visible appreciation. “Daniel generally tends tooverrate his contributions. He just did a lot of work thatwe could have hired anybody to do and he learned anawful lot.”Bill Fernandez, the first person hired by Apple, wasalso disappointed, and though he later rejoinedApple, he quit in 1978. “I felt I was doing all thedonkeywork and that I was going to be a technicianforever. It didn’t seem that I would get stock. I didn’tthink the company was loyal to me.” Elmer Baum, whohad lent Jobs and Wozniak some money while theywere making the Apple Is, was informed that thecompany couldn’t sell him stock. Chris Espinosa, bythen a student at the University of California atBerkeley, also came up empty-handed. “We missedout on the American dream because we were toonice to grab a part of it. Kottke was too nice.Fernandez was too Buddhist and I was too young.Don Bruener was screwed twice. He was inmanufacturing and also a college student. We allrealized to some degree that we weren’t heavyenough. We weren’t obnoxious enough to makeourselves millionaires.”The size of stock distributions was distorted bygossip and scuttlebutt. A few bragged about the sizeof their holdings while others were embarrassed andtried to exercise their options discreetly. When freshlyrecruited middle managers discovered theirsubordinates were far wealthier, the jealousy wasn’teasily concealed. Similarly Sherry Livingston foundthat other secretaries, who were paid by the hour,made her life increasingly uncomfortable after theydiscovered she owned some shares. One clerk whohandled the paperwork for the stock options becameso distraught at the size of the sums involved that sheleft the company.Though Markkula fended off people who made ittheir business to speculate in private companies, itwas certainly far easier for well-connected outsidersto obtain shares than it was for diligent workers.Knowing the right people, lunching with the propercrowd, placing the appropriate telephone calls, allpaid off. The occasional privately arranged stock salereflected the importance of personal contacts and theclaustrophobic sense of community. The venturecapitalfirms that managed to get their hands on stockhad usually done business together, were used totipping each other off about hot deals, and were atpains to repay past favors.The few individuals who acquired Apple stockbefore the company went public also had the properpals. At the beginning of 1979, for example, Wozniaksold some stock to the Egyptian-born financier FayezSarofim, who had been a friend of Arthur Rock’ssince the early fifties when both had attended the

Harvard Business School. Sarofim managed aportfolio worth well over $1 billion from an unmarkedHouston office suite that was draped in modern art.Wozniak also sold stock to Richard Kramlich, apartner in Rock’s venture-capital firm, and to AnnBowers, the wife of the vice-chairman of Intel whobecame head of Apple’s human resourcesdepartment.In the summer of 1979, when Apple raised$7,273,801 in what the venture capital communitycolloquially calls a mezzanine financing, connectionsonce again paid off. Among the sixteen buyers whobought shares at $10.50 apiece were some of thebest-known venture-capital firms in the country,including New York’s LF Rothschild, Unterberg,Towbin, and the Brentwood Capital Corporationwhich was based in Southern California. One nameon the list stood out: Xerox Corporation bought100,000 shares though the company agreed not tobuy more than 5 percent of Apple. The deal helpedApple gain access to Xerox’s research laboratoriesthough Scott recalled, “We were careful they didn’t geta peek at our advance products,” and, on lateroccasions, the Xerox representative was not invitedto meetings where sensitive topics were discussed.Yet the biggest buyer was Arthur Rock’s friend FayezSarofim, who bought 128,600 shares. Both Markkulaand Jobs sold slightly over $1 million worth of stock.During the following twelve months Arthur Rockkept a close eye on the vagaries of the new issuesmarket and it was he, above all others, whose opinionand advice determined when Apple should brave theperils of a public stock offering.Though most had recognized that Apple wouldeventually go public, the decision to abandon therelative tranquillity afforded private companies wasmade suddenly and unexpectedly. Among Apple’s topmanagers, there was some reluctance to head apublic company. Jobs, for a time, was enchanted withthe notion of emulating the enormous, privately heldSan Francisco construction company Bechtel. Heliked the idea of not releasing information that mighthelp competitors, of running a multinational companywithout having to endure pressure from stockholders,and of avoiding taunts from the gadflies who make apastime of appearing at annual meetings. Along withhis colleagues, Jobs was aware of the distractionscreated by due-diligence procedures, the legal workinvolved in preparing the stock prospectus, and thedrain of lengthy tours to explain the strengths of thecompany to bankers and investors in major Americanand European cities.Michael Scott wanted Apple to grow into a largeenterprise without help from outsiders and roundlycursed his betes noires: lawyers who hampered hisfreedom to maneuver, federal bureaucrats who wouldswamp him with documents, and journalists whowould do nothing but turn his thoughts to pap.Aside from personal preferences, there werecompelling reasons for Apple to go public. Themarket for new stock issues, which had been torpid in

the years following the 1973-1974 recession,regained some of its spirit during 1980. Some of thatreflected the 1978 cut in the maximum long-termcapital-gains tax rate from 49 percent to 28 percentwhich had led to an enormous increase in the amountof money flowing into venture-capital funds. Andthough Apple was in business before the tax cut, othercompanies that were beginning to emerge fromobscurity owed at least part of their existence toventure-capital funds. Inside Apple, surveys alsoprojected that the number of shareholders—thanks tothe distribution of stock options—would soon top fivehundred at which point all companies under the 1934Securities and Exchange Act are required to filepublic reports. But most of all Apple was in thefortunate position of not really needing a largeinjection of money.All Apple’s founders and managers were awarethat a public stock issue was an essential part ofgrowing up. They heard, depending on the inclinationof the speaker, the stock issue compared to a twentyfirstbirthday, the arrival of an heir, the betrothal of adaughter, or a bar mitzvah. So at a board meeting inAugust 1980, when Arthur Rock argued that a publicoffering was an obstacle that would have to benegotiated at some time or another, Apple’s directorsdecided to heed his advice. The timing, rather thanthe news itself, took people by surprise. Apple’sfreshly hired vice-president of communications, FredHoar, had to draft a press statement before he waseven given a desk. Meanwhile, Regis McKenna wasasked to cancel advertisements that were running inThe Wall Street Journal to prevent any accusationsfrom the Securities and Exchange Commission thatthe stock was being touted.The strength of Apple’s bargaining position wasreflected in the number of investment bankers whocame knocking on the door trying to sell the virtues oftheir firms. Apple’s stock offering promised to be oneof the largest in years and the prospect of thecommissions was enough to make even the moststaid investment banker drool. The visitors left thicklypadded brochures boosting the merits of having theirfirms estimate the value of Apple, and there wasplenty of talk about “ongoing relationships,”“aftermarket support,” and “retail networks.”Among the callers were officers from the SanFrancisco investment and underwriting firmHambrecht and Quist, which for about a decade hadspecialized in investing in young companies andunderwriting technology issues. The men fromHambrecht and Quist had to make about ten visitsand give presentations to Apple’s top managers andits financial and legal staffs before finally winning thebusiness. To balance Hambrecht and Quist’sreputation among the freer spirits of the investmentcommunity, Apple arranged for the issue to be cosponsoredby the more stolid New York bankinghouse of Morgan Stanley. When Morgan Stanleydecided to seek the Apple business and, moreimportant, when it accepted equal billing with anupstart investment firm, it gave tacit notice thatlongstanding allegiances had given way to new.

Almost immediately Morgan Stanley dropped itsconnections with IBM and started to be moreaggressive in its quest for business from youngcompanies.An odd sort of relationship developed betweenWest and East and between Apple’s managers andthe financiers. Jobs complained that the bankersweren’t giving Apple enough attention, and MichaelScott, in particular, took every opportunity to goad themen with their monogrammed shirts and tiepins.When Apple’s managers were invited to attend abriefing made to some investors by Genentech, aSouth San Francisco biotechnology firm that was alsopreparing to go public, Scott turned up wearing jeansand a cowboy hat and was sent out to buy a tie. Atanother meeting with the bankers he dressed himselfand a couple of others in baseball caps, blackarmbands, and T-shirts stenciled with the slogan THEAPPLE GANG. For their part some of the bankersfound it hard to believe that Scott was the president ofthe company they had so eagerly embraced.Few stock watchers needed to be reminded thatApple was going public. In the last half of 1980 thenew issues market seemed almost like a throwbackto the late sixties when the hot intersection had beenin Beverly Hills at the corner of Wilshire and SantaMonica boulevards. As fall turned to winter ArthurRock’s hunch came to look better and better. WhenGenentech went public in October 1980, it was thecause of pandemonium. After opening at $35 thestock burst to $89 before retiring for the night at $71.With that display the interest in new issues spreadlike swine flu. Though the SEC forbade companies togive earnings forecasts or promote the stock in theweeks before the public issue, magazines andnewspaper reporters did their own work. The publicitythat Apple received in the weeks leading up to thestock issue was the first widespread national publicitythat the company had received. It was partlygenerated by the prospect of the size of the issue butit was also the belated payoff for the way Apple hadwooed, flirted, and dallied with the press during theprevious years.Apple was touted by investment analysts andportfolio counselors, by mountebanks who made theirliving dispensing tips, by the authors of stock guidesand newsletters, digests and advisory columns.“Every speculator in hot new issues,” The Wall StreetJournal reported, “wants a bite of Apple—AppleComputer Inc.—but most will be lucky even to get abit.” Potential investors came out of the woodwork.The sacks of letters that arrived at Hambrecht andQuist’s office in San Francisco included an appeal forstock from a seven-year-old boy.In the weeks before Apple went public, thetelephones in Cupertino also started to ring withalarming frequency. Callers wanted to know wherethey could buy stock or when it would split again.Strangers lurked in computer stores that Wozniakwas known to frequent, and both he and Jobsreceived calls from people they hadn’t talked to in

years. School friends, distant cousins, and even thecontractors who worked on their homes wonderedwhether they could lay their hands on a couple ofshares. Other major Apple stockholders arrangedprivate sales with British unit trusts and investmenthouses, Caribbean-based technology funds, theHewlett-Packard pension fund, and with people whohad either spotted Apple or maintained tradingaccounts with the underwriters. Some of the mostpersistent callers were professional investors whowanted to add Apple to the list of coups they hadparticipated in over the last couple of decades.Charlie Finley, the controversial owner of the OaklandAthletics baseball team, arranged a sale with fourofficers despite Arthur Rock’s objections, and thensued because he was dissatisfied with the price.Some doctors, dentists, and lawyers who servedApple’s stockholders also managed to get theirhands on a few shares. One Beverly Hills consultantbought shares, explaining that he was familiar withApple because he had conducted “a workshoptraining the top management of the corporation inmore effective communication skills.”At brokerage offices the prospect of the offeringproduced a frenzy. One customer at a San Jose firmoffered to open a $1 million account in exchange for3,000 shares of Apple. Around the country brokerstossed their names into hats to get a couple of sharesfor their favorite clients. One Merrill Lynch analystsaid, “Even my brother who invests in the stockmarket only on Tuesdays in leap years called to askwhat I knew about Apple Computer.” An analyst withthe Detroit Bank and Trust remarked, “It’s safe to saythat everybody is going to be able to find somemoney to buy Apple stock.” Another observed theclamor and the news that a computer store intendedto go public with the dry prediction that some ownersof Apple IIs would soon try to issue shares. Appleemployees found that the mere whisper of thecompany name brought clicks of attention. Oneyoungster found stockbrokers hanging on his everyword even though he still got carded when he entereda bar. Owning Apple stock, he decided, “was likehaving an American Express card made of platinum.”The fever also served to accentuate theresentments and jealousies that had built up withinApple. Wozniak dreamed up his own scheme to try tocorrect the lopsided stock distribution. He decided tosell some of his own holdings to colleagues who hadeither not received what they deserved or werevictims of broken promises. The Wozplan, as itquickly became known, touched off a smallstampede. Almost three dozen people snapped upclose to 80,000 shares which, according todocuments, Wozniak offered at $7.50 apiece. Inanswer to the formal questions posed by theCalifornia Commissioner of Corporations, the buyersexplained their circumstances and how they learnedabout the offer. William Budge, for example,disclosed: “The amount of the proposed investment isin excess of 10 percent of my net worth and annualincome.” Jonathan Eddy revealed that his personalinvestment adviser urged him to buy. “She owns

some herself.” A few, like Timothy Good, resorted tofamiliar jargon: “I have interfaced with several officerson a professional level.” Lewis Infeld said he hadheard about the opportunity “from word of mouthwithin my working environment.” Others, like WayneRosing, were blunt. “I am single, have no debts andmore than sufficient net worth and insurance toprovide for my needs.” Meanwhile, Wozniak also soldanother 25,000 shares to Stephen Vidovich, thedeveloper of the DeAnza Racquet Club where Appleheld a corporate membership: “Due to the fact thatthe founders were friends of mine I had made it knownthat I was interested in purchasing stock if it everbecame available.” Jobs observed the progress ofthe Wozplan and Wozniak’s private sales anddecided that his partner “ended up giving stock to allthe wrong people. Woz couldn’t say no. A lot ofpeople took advantage of him.”Jobs meanwhile was harried by private worries thathad been provoked by the birth of a daughter to hishigh-school flame, Nancy Rogers. The child was bornon Robert Friedland’s farm in May 1978 and Rogerswas convinced that Jobs was the father. Jobs, whoarrived at the farm a couple of days after the birth,helped Rogers settle on a name for the baby girl.They called her Lisa. After the birth Jobs and Rogerswent their separate ways with the latter supportingherself and the child with the proceeds of a variety ofwaitressing and housecleaning jobs. Eventually sheasked Jobs for a $20,000 settlement. Markkula, whothought this was too little, suggested Jobs pay$80,000. Jobs demurred and insisted that he wasn’tLisa’s father. Absolutely convinced that he hadnothing to do with the child, Jobs stopped makingvoluntary child-support payments on three occasions.“Each time we started to get a lawyer involved,” saidRogers’s father, “he started to pay.”In May 1979 Jobs startled the Rogerses byagreeing to submit to blood tests to determinepaternity. The analysis conducted by the departmentof surgery at the University of California, Los Angeles,concluded: “The probability of paternity for Jobs,Steve . . . is 94.41%.” Jobs wasn’t swayed by theevidence and insisted that, thanks to statistical quirks,“twenty-eight percent of the male population of theUnited States could be the father.” Eventually hecame to grips with what was an immensely painfulmatter and agreed to a court-ordered settlement. “Isettled because we were going public and it wasconsuming a ton of emotional energy. I had to get itresolved. I didn’t want to defend a suit for ten milliondollars.” Within a month of Apple’s stock offering,Jobs agreed to start paying Rogers $385 a month inchild support, to cover the cost of the child’s medicaland dental insurance, and also to reimburse thecounty of San Mateo for the $5,856 that it had spenton public assistance to support the baby.As Jobs battled with his own troubles, outsideinterest in Apple continued to climb. The head ofsteam kept pushing up the price of the stock. At

Apple the eventual price became the source of furtivebets and sweaty speculation. The price climbed sosteeply that in Massachusetts the secretary of statefor a time banned citizens of the Bay State frombuying the stock because Apple violated stateregulations that required a company’s book value tobe at least 20 percent of the market value. During thefirst week of August 1980, Hambrecht and Quist (inwhich the Apple director and investor Arthur Rockwas a limited partner) bought 40,000 shares for $5.44each. When Apple’s first stock prospectus waspublished on November 6 it was anticipated that thestock would be priced between $14 and $17. Even onthe morning of December 12, 1980, the day Applefinally went public, when the stock was priced at $22,there were still signs that it had been underpricedbecause at the end of the first day of trading it closedat $29.The day of the stock issue turned into an unofficialcompany holiday. For of the 237 companies thatmade initial offerings in 1980, Apple’s was by far thelargest and became the biggest initial offering sincethe Ford Motor Company went public in 1956.Apple’s switchboard operators found that a fewcallers were complaining that they hadn’t beenwarned about the actual day of the issue.Around the company, computers were connected tothe Dow Jones ticker and programmed to print thestock price every few minutes. There was apremature celebration when a few of the machinesbegan spitting out the quotes for a company with thecall letters APPL rather than Apple’s AAPL. Somepeople wanted to erect a mock thermometer in themiddle of the road that separated Apple’s mainbuildings. Anticipating a surge in the price, theywanted to mark notches up the stem. Cooler headsprevailed.Michael Scott hooked up a speaker phone to theNew York offices of Morgan Stanley and at the end ofthe day carted in a few cases of champagne to helpcelebrate the $82.8 million that had been added toApple’s bucket of cash. Robert Noyce, vice-chairmanof Intel, co-inventor of the integrated circuit, andhusband of Apple’s director of human resources,attended the small party while Jef Raskin surveyedthe other guests and noticed that “all the people in theroom were millionaires. The forceful thing was that theworld had shifted. I hadn’t seen that happen before.”It was natural to be overwhelmed since there wereso few precedents. At the end of December 1980 thepaper worth of a few individuals should have beenetched in uranium. Jobs’s 15 percent share of thecompany was valued at $256.4 million, Markkula’s at$239 million, Wozniak’s at $135.6 million, and Scott’sat $95.5 million. Teledyne’s Henry Singleton had a 2.4percent stake in Apple that was worth $40.8 million.The venture capitalists’ investments had also creptup. Venrock’s initial $300,000 and its two subsequentinvestments had grown to $129.3 million, and ArthurRock’s $57,600 stake had turned into $21.8 million.Meanwhile, Rod Holt found himself sitting on $67million, Gene Carter on $23.1 million, and John

Couch, the head of the Lisa Division, on $13.6 million.The head of engineering, Thomas Whitney, who haddeparted on what was politely called a “two weekvacation” and whom Markkula uncharacteristicallydismissed in private as “a burned-out case,” foundthat his twenty-six months at Apple translated into abarrel of stock worth $48.9 million. Meanwhile, AliceRobertson, Wozniak’s first wife, discovered that hershare of the separation settlement was valued at$42.4 million, though she later complained she hadbeen the victim of a raw deal.After the company went public, there were othercomplications. Some of the executives whose namesand stockholdings were revealed in the officialprospectus and newspaper reports started to worry.They installed extra fences around their houses,bought faster cars, wired up elaborate securitysystems, and fretted about the possibility of kidnapattempts on their children. Leslie Wozniak, who hadbeen given some stock by her brother, retired fromher work as a journeyman printer and wasoverwhelmed. “It was hard to decide what to do withmy life. Anybody who wins a lottery should get ayear’s free therapy.”At Apple people found that they couldn’t sell thestock as soon as they had hoped because of legalrestrictions. Others waited to cash in their three-yearoptions and then retired, while many worried aboutthe best timing for a sale. A sizable group even flew toVancouver, Canada, on the day when 1980 incometax returns were due in order to qualify for anextension. Programmer Bill Atkinson complained,“Some people spent half their waking hours countingtheir stock options. Those who eventually sold theirshares discovered that ownership was interpreted asa matter of loyalty. When Jef Raskin sold his stake,Jobs accused him of betrayal. Raskin countered, “Ididn’t want to have to open the paper each day to findout how much money I had.” As a company Applebegan to find it more difficult to recruit peoplebecause they couldn’t be made wealthy with quite asmuch ease as before the offering. Charts that plottedevery hiccup and lurch in the price were tacked to theoutsides of cubicles and had a discernible effect onmorale. When the stock fell, the charts disappeared.Bruce Tognazzini admitted, “I went through a year ofbeing totally whacko because my mood was entirelytied to the Dow Jones.”For Jobs, Wozniak, and the other chiefbeneficiaries of the wealth created at Apple, thebenefits turned out to be more mechanical thanemotional. They, and others, learned that wealth andthe prospect of leisure didn’t suddenly bringhappiness and, to some extent, confused everything.Jobs and Wozniak began to receive letters thankingthem for what they had done. Occasionally theenvelopes contained photographs of houses whichcarried inscriptions like “This is the house that Applebuilt” and the painted spaces in the company parkinglot began to be sprinkled with Mercedeses andPorsches.Some of the wealthier individuals made largerpurchases. Alice Robertson bought condominiums

and a gold-colored Mercedes which she decoratedwith the vanity license plates 24 CARAT. Rod Holteventually took up ocean-racing, ordered a yacht andhad a large Apple logo stitched to one of the sails.Markkula took to the skies, bought a used Learjet,had it repainted, equipped it with a stereo system,videotape player and Apple II, hangered it at SanJose airport under the company name ACM Aviation,retained a pair of pilots, and used it to gad to aweekend home on the shores of Lake Tahoe.Jobs was at one time going to share the jet withMarkkula but decided that was too ostentatious andsettled for a life of expensive austerity. “You run out ofthings to buy real quick.” He was not sure whether tobe embarrassed or coyly proud of the fact that he andMarkkula had shared a $200 bottle of Sauterne atdinner one evening or that he had the means tocontemplate buying (though he never did) a full-pageadvertisement in Le Monde to help track down awoman he had met fleetingly in Paris but who hadfailed to turn up for a date. He found that the wealth,and the notoriety that trailed in its wake, openeddoors to a wider stage. Invitations started to arrive fordinner parties, politicians began to solicitcontributions, charities with unfamiliar names mailedfund-raising letters, and when he was asked to givetalks or speeches, Jobs became increasinglypolished. As business started to take him about theworld he found large cities like Paris and New Yorkmore diverting than Cupertino or Sunnyvale. Hiswardrobe also took on a worldly air. The jeans beganto be replaced by elegantly cut two-piece suitsfurnished by the San Francisco outfitter’s WilkesBashford.When the San Francisco newspaper columnistHerb Caen, with a characteristic lunge for the jugular,referred to Cupertino as Computertino, Jobs musthave been part of the reason. Before Apple wentpublic, the young master of Computertino bought aquiet home set in the hills of Los Gatos which heshared, for about three years, with a girl friend whohad once worked at the Regis McKenna Agency.There he demanded the same quality of workmanshipfrom his contractors as he did at Apple. But he wastoo busy to bring his full energies to the house thatstayed empty of furniture and full of echoes.After his girl friend moved out, it became the homeof a lonely soul. About the only furnished room was thekitchen, decorated in French peasant style, but withknives by Henckel and a coffee maker by Braun. Themaster bedroom contained an Apple II, a mattress,and a dresser on top of which stood an eclecticcollection of photographs: the guru Neem KarolieBaba, former California governor Jerry Brown, andAlbert Einstein. A half-filled lawyer’s bookcase inanother room stood guard over packets of shirtsreturned from the dry cleaner. Architectural plansstayed scattered on the floor of a downstairs room.There were no easy chairs or sofa.Outside in the driveway a Mercedes replaced thesuccession of beat-up old cars and he would run hishands along the smooth, sleek lines, promisingpeople that someday Apple’s computers would look

equally elegant. He bought a BMW R-60 motorcyclewhich he sometimes rode about the hills and apainting by Maxfield Parrish. Along with RobertFriedland Jobs bought some land in the PacificNorthwest and also helped to finance SEVA, anorganization devoted to eliminating blindness inNepal.But he was much too introspective to find the wealthcomfortable. He worried about some of theconsequences, asked his parents to remove theApple bumper stickers from their cars, wondered howto give them some money without turning their worldtopsyturvy, worried that women might like him justbecause he was wealthy, and knew that his friendsexpected him to use his fortune wisely. He hadbecome—in his middle twenties—a digitized versionof Scott Fitzgerald’s Monroe Stahr.Wozniak, who seemed determined to followSamuel Johnson’s advice that it was better to live richthan to die rich, was always louder, splashier, andmore cavalier about his fortune. As a student and anengineer he had always managed his financial affairshaphazardly and nothing changed as he grew wealthy.He could never keep track of receipts, for monthsdidn’t bother to seek financial advice, and made ahabit of filing his tax returns late. Wozniak turned intoan approachable teddy bear and a soft touch. Whenfriends, acquaintances, or strangers asked him for aloan he often wrote out a check on the spot.Unlike Jobs, who guarded his founder’s stockcarefully, Wozniak distributed some of his. He gavestock worth $4 million to his parents, sister, andbrother and $2 million to friends. He made someinvestments in start-up companies. He bought aPorsche and fastened the license plates APPLE II tothe car. His father found $250,000 worth of uncashedchecks strewn about the car and said of his son, “Aperson like him shouldn’t have that much money.”After Wozniak finally did arrange for some financialadvice, he arrived at Apple one day to announce, “Mylawyer said to diversify so I just bought a movietheater.” Even that turned into a complicated venture.The theater, located among the barrios on the eastside of San Jose, provoked angry community protestsafter it screened a gang movie, The Warriors.Wozniak attended a few community meetings,listened to the concerns of the local leaders,promised that his theater wouldn’t show violent orpornographic movies, and accompanied byWigginton, spent a few afternoons in the empty,darkened theater screening movies and playingcensor.A few months before Apple became a publiccompany, Wozniak took up flying, bought a singleengineBeechcraft Bonanza, and eight weeks afterthe stock offering, came close to fulfilling the last halfof Samuel Johnson’s adage. Wozniak embarked on aweekend flying expedition along with Candi Clark, thedaughter of a California building contractor, whom hehad first met during a water-gun fight at Apple andwho was about to become his second wife. They

were accompanied by another couple and weresupposed to fly to Southern California to pick upWozniak’s wedding rings. Before setting off fromScotts Valley airport, located in the Santa CruzMountains, Wozniak was jittery. He complained aboutinterference on his headsets and his companionswere equally nervous. Their queasiness was justified.When the plane left the runway, it rose about fifty feetin the air, touched down again, bounced a couple oftimes, reared at an angle, barreled through twobarbed-wire fences, careened up an embankment,and tipped on its nose about two hundred and fiftyfeet from a roller-skating rink crammed withteenagers. A San Francisco stockbroker who arrivedon the scene switched off the plane’s ignition andfound Wozniak slumped in his fiancée’s lap.After an investigation the National TransportationSafety Board found no evidence of mechanicalfailure. Meanwhile, doctors examined the four injuredvictims. They found that Wozniak had bitten throughhis upper lip, smashed a tooth, fractured the orbitalsocket around his right eye, had double vision, andwas suffering from amnesia. His fiancée, meanwhile,needed plastic surgery to touch up cuts on her face.Wozniak’s accident prompted dark headlines in thelocal newspapers: COMPUTER EXEC IN PLANECRASH, APPLE EXEC IN GUARDED CONDITION.In the days following the accident, Jobs rented alimousine to ferry Wozniak’s parents to and from ElCamino hospital. There in his bed Wozniak becamefrantic, refused food, and said that the governmentwas plotting to blow up the hospital and take all hismoney. Though his doctors were divided on the issue,seven days after the accident Wozniak was releasedand six months later he ordered a brand-new singleengineBeechcraft Bonanza.“He doesn’t want photographs rightnow,” she said.The Stanford University dormitory lounge lookedlike a poorly lit set for a nineteenth-century Gothicromance. Imitation-marble plinths sagged above theradiators, gilt-edged chandeliers threw yellowshadows across a ceiling painted crème de menthe.Branches of trees, thinned by fall, brushed in a draftydusk against the windowpanes. A hundred or sofreshmen, most of whom seemed to possess anearnest desire to graduate, were folded in variousstates of repose. A couple were fidgeting with smalltape recorders. They had come to listen to SteveJobs. The informality did not extend to the threewomen from the Regis McKenna Public RelationsAgency who perched at the rear of the room. Theyhad helped select the students’ invitation from amongthe two dozen or so requests that Jobs received everyweek. The youngest of the trio had not met Jobsbefore, but monitored him with marital familiarity andclucked to a magazine photographer, “He isn’t in agood mood. He doesn’t want photographs right now.”

For the students the chairman of Apple Computerwas a welcome break from the diet of familiar collegeadministrators and professors they had been fed onprevious occasions. Jobs was dressed with formalindifference in a well-cut cotton sports coat and jeans:chest courtesy of San Francisco clothier WilkesBashford, legs furnished by Levi Strauss. While astudent made some introductory remarks Jobsshucked his jacket, tugged off a pair of worn corduroyboots which revealed a pair of argyle socks, and tookup a lotus position on a coffee table.The students seemed a touch intimidated but theline of questions quickly showed that the subjectunder inspection possessed, in their eyes, the samemolecular structure as Apple Computer. Jobs usedthe questions to give a seductive talk which, withslight variations, served as his standard speech formagazine editors, congressional committees, statecommissions, business school students, electronicsconventions, politicians, and visiting academics. Itexplained part of the reason for Apple’s popularappeal and why Jobs, some months before, hadmade the cover of Time. It was a cross betweentechnological evangelism and corporateadvertisement and Jobs busily juggled the roles ofstandard bearer and corporate promoter.He told how Apple got started. “When we firststarted Apple we really built the first computerbecause we wanted one.” Then he said, “Wedesigned this crazy new computer with color and awhole bunch of other things called the Apple II whichyou have probably heard about.” He added, “We hada passion to do this one simple thing which was get abunch of computers to our friends so they could haveas much fun with them as we were.”Suddenly the magazine photographer’s lightflashed and Jobs asked, “What’s that?” and provokeda barrel of snickers. The photographer crouched neara pillar and raised her camera. Jobs paused andstared into the lens and said, “Hi!” and the questionsstopped. When they resumed a student wanted toknow when the company stock would rise. “I cannottalk about that,” he said demurely. He said that hehoped Apple would someday sell half a millioncomputers a month. “It’s still kind of a pain in the assto use a computer.” He told the students about thecompany’s Lisa computer, disclosed his dream ofputting a computer in a book, and promised, “Wewon’t put garbage in a book because our competitorswill do that.”He proceeded to tell the students about his plan togive a computer away to every high school in thecountry. Cynics said that it was a cold marketing ployto produce generations of Apple users, but at the startit had been a romantic gesture. The plan was formallycalled The Technology Education Act of 1982, but atApple it had become known as the “Kids Can’t Wait”program and reflected Jobs’s impatience to getthings done. On his first serious excursion, he hadspent a couple of months lobbying congressmen,hoping to get a change in the tax law that would givecompanies the same relief for donating computers toschools that they received when they gave them to

universities. Jobs had given senators andcongressmen a standard twenty-minute pitch but theReagan administration had been unwilling to bend thetax laws to help special cases. So when the studentswanted to know what had become of the wellpublicizedplan, Jobs announced that Apple wasn’twilling to support the amended legislation and that“the Senate has screwed it up.”Apple had received a warmer reception at theCalifornia legislature which had amended a local law,and Jobs said that the company would soon startdistributing ten thousand computers throughout thestate. “We’re in the right place at the right time withthe right people to give something back. That’s kindof nice. Computers and society are out on their firstdate so wouldn’t it be great if we could make the datego great and blossom.” He added, “The race is on toimprove the productivity of the knowledge worker. Thepersonal computer can generate—at a crude level—free intellectual energy but the computer will dwarf thepetrochemical revolution.”In answer to some more questions he told thestudents, “The company that will most affect how wedo is not IBM. It’s Apple. If we do what we know howto do well, we’ll leave everyone else in the dust.” Aftera student asked what it was like to run an empireJobs replied, “We don’t think of it as an empire. Wehire people to tell us what to do.” He dismissed theJapanese quest for a new generation of computer ashaving “a very high bullshit content. They don’t reallyknow what they’re talking about.” He complainedabout the Japanese and the evils of protectionism. Healso said it was no longer possible to start acomputer company in a garage but suggested thestudents might still have a shot with a softwarecompany.As the questions died down Jobs conducted hisown informal poll. He asked what part of the countrystudents came from and what they were studying.Most seemed to be enrolled in computer science.“How many of you are virgins?” he asked. There werea few giggles, but no hands were raised. “How manyof you have taken LSD?” There were some flushes ofembarrassment and one or two hands rose slowly.“What do you want to do?” he asked, and a studentblurted, “Make babies.”There wasn’t much hint that Jobs had acted throughthe script dozens of times, or had casually talked withfriends about the possibility of running as anindependent candidate for president. Jobs knew allthe punch lines. It was the work of a corporatesorcerer with an actor’s sense of timing. After Jobs’squestions he was badgered again. A couple ofstudents tugged at his cuffs. One just wanted tointroduce himself as the owner of an Apple II, anotherwanted Jobs’s autograph on one of the Apple annualreports that were spilling out of a couple of cardboardboxes. A tall junior wondered whether he could get atour of an Apple factory. Most of the students seemedpleased with the evening. “Well, at least he’s not ajerk,” one brown-haired coed said as she, in herLacoste shirt, carefully pressed jeans, topsiders, andcompanion made for the door.

WELCOME IBM, SERIOUSLY -The stock market provided the loudest applause forApple Computer but there was plenty from otherquarters. Small newspapers tracked the progress ofApple IIs all across America and greeted theappearance of these personal computers withcharming, goggle-eyed astonishment. This was anupdated version of the gasps that had followed thearrival of automobiles in muddy country lanes and ofradios in quiet living rooms. But now the photographswere not of a family sitting upright in stiff leather seatswith hats poking over the brow of a windshield, orknitting and smoking around a fireplace while earswere tuned to the wireless perched in holy splendoron a mantelpiece. The new trailblazers were picturedin hunched positions around a screen that glowed,their hands perched on a keyboard, and the headsthat tilted toward the camera seemed to be sayingthat the future had arrived.As well as the photographs of the flash-stunnedteenager in the family den, there were snapshots ofApples in libraries and class-rooms, banks andlaboratories, mobile homes and airplanes,houseboats and music studios, and there were evena couple bracketed to electric guitars. Reports ofthese California curiosities slipped into papers liket h e East Aurora Advertiser, the Geneva (Neb.)Signal and the Bristol Herald Courier. The Chaska(Mi nn.) Herald marveled as BOY HANDLESCOMPUTER PROGRAMS while the ColumbiaIndependent in Ohio resorted to an apocalyptic tone:EUCLID JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL ENTERSCOMPUTER AGE. When an Apple arrived inSouthern California, the La Jolla Light announcedCOMPUTER AGE COMES TO COUNTRY DAY andthe Star Press in Blairstown, Iowa, told of a farmerlearning to program an Apple and finding theexperience “not nearly as tough as it is to teach acomputer person how to feed cattle.” Apples helped abelly dancer keep track of her Jezebel brassieres andmonitored the temperature of mud around asemisubmersible oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. AUniversity of Virginia coach used an Apple tocalculate the velocity of a football and a Boeingengineer programmed his to forecast four out of fivewinners at a Washington State racetrack—butadmitted, “The more I refine this handicappingprogram, the worse the results.” In Buffalo Grove,Illinois, a high-school senior organized a tennistournament with an Apple and in Sarasota, Florida, acerebal-palsy victim could communicate more easilyafter an Apple was connected to a speechsynthesizer.In Manhattan, a vice-president at W. R. Grace andCompany programmed an Apple II to estimate howmany sides of beef his company’s restaurant chainshould order, while the poet laureate of Florida wrotepaeans with an Apple hooked to a large-screentelevision. His words sparkled, rotated, and grew onthe screen in line with their importance and he took to

calling himself “a solid-state balladeer.” TheSunnyvale Police Department, working from physicaldescriptions, used an Apple to help search for thenames of suspects. And in Santa Ana, California, aman was arrested for running a major prostitution ringwith the help of an Apple that kept track of his fourthousand clients, their credit history, and proclivities.Overseas, Apples analyzed census data in NorthAfrica, measured factors affecting crop yields inNigeria, provided diagnostic assistance for eyedisorders in Nepal, improved irrigation planning in theSahara, monitored developing bank activities in LatinAmerica, assisted a schoolteacher in Botswana, andin the darker reaches of the world like Cardiff, Wales,The South Wales Echo reported that for a universitylecturer an Apple provided “a hobby that became away of life” though his teenage daughter complainedthe new arrival meant “we don’t really talk to oneanother anymore.”The users groups that sprang up all over the worldadded further testimony to the reach of Apple. Theenvelopes that arrived in Cupertino might have beenaddressed to a collector of exotic postage stamps.There were letters from Grupo Usarios Apple deColumbia, Brazil Apple Clube, Jakarta Apple, AppleClub Zagreb, Hong Kong Apple Dragon, AppleGebruikers Groep Nederland, Catalunya Apple Cluband others from Sweden and the Philippines, NewZealand and Israel, Tasmania and Guam.In the United States new clubs in different citiesinvented names with the gusto that editors ofcookbooks reserve for fresh concoctions. There wereApple Peelers and Crab Apples, Green Apples andApplebutter, Applesiders and Apple Tart,Applepickers and Apple Jacks, Apple Pi and ApplePIE, Appleseed and Applesac, Appleworms andApple Cart, but two with the nicest ring wereAppleholics Anonymous and Little Rock AppleAddicts. Magazines with names like inCider, AppleOrchard, Call Apple and Apple Source werepublished to reach customers and dealers. Exhibitionhalls were rented to stage Appleexpos andApplefests that were undisguised celebrations of thecompany’s computers.Apple’s founders were presented with Apples ofvarious sizes, fashioned from so many materials thatthey must have wondered why they hadn’t called thecompany Matrix Electronics. They were deluged withapples carved from koa, mahogany, cedar, andredwood, fired in porcelain and china, dried in papiermâché,blown from crystal, melted in brass, andstamped in plastic. There was also a proliferation ofmemorabilia supplied by little companies thatspecialized in making corporate trinkets and icons.There were apple belt buckles and apple pens, appledoormats and apple goblets, apple notebooks andapple paper knives, apple calendars and applepaperweights, apple key chains and apple bumperstickers.As Apple became a major computer companythere were less convenient, more oblique

compliments to the size of its success. There was, fora start, the irritating flattery of imitation. On the EastCoast of the United States, Franklin ComputerCorporation manufactured a machine very similar tothe Apple, called it the ACE 100, and inadvertisements shamelessly touted it by placing anapple in a prominent position and declaring that itwas “sweeter than an apple.” (In federal court in 1983Franklin admitted that it had copied Apple’s operatingsystem.) A computer from Commodore was boostedwith a series of commercials saying that it was “theworm that ate the apple.” In Taiwan and Hong Konglocal knock-off artists made copies that weredecorated with names such as Apolo II, OrangeComputers, and Pineapple. A West Germancomputer distributor manufactured still another lookalike,a small Italian firm designed a computer thatbore a lemon logo, while a British firm decorated itsmachine with a rainbow-colored pear.In California Apple was troubled by a local disease,becoming a carcass for headhunters to pick over. Themore persistent got to be so well known that Apple’stelephone operators were ordered not to forward theircalls. Undeterred, the cunning “executive recruiters”simply resorted to false names. Apple was notimmune to job-hopping and in time people started toleave. It was by no means a mass exodus but thedribs and drabs were enough to be irritating. The lureof other start-ups, the sight of the flaws and frailties ofApple’s founders, and the fear of getting boggeddown in a large company all helped to nudge theambitious toward the door. Within two years of thepublic issue, four small companies had been startedby one-time Apple employees, and even if theturnover was nowhere near as high as in somecorners of Silicon Valley, it was also nowhere near aslow as Apple’s managers liked to say.So with all these accolades—some overt and someopaque—the people working in the creamy shadowsof the Cali Brothers grain silos in Cupertino hadample reason for pride. They could be excused if theysometimes dreamed that the world was no longerround but had assumed the shape of their corporatelogo. However, as they started to believe that Applewas a top dog, the company also became intriguedwith the notion of empire, and an aggressive conceitthreatened to unravel much of the earlier success.Outsiders who had followed Apple’s progressspotted the danger signals. Hank Smith, the venturecapitalist, began to warn the officers of other youngcompanies about the penalites of success and heused Apple as his case study. Richard Melmon, whohad worked on the Apple account for the RegisMcKenna Agency and was later connected with asoftware company that sold programs for Apples,agreed: “Everybody at Apple sits around and says,‘We’re the best. We know it.’ They have a culture thatsays it and it starts from Steve Jobs and works ondown.” And Ed Faber, the president of Computerland,summed up Apple’s swaggering demeanor: “Theword that keeps popping up is ‘arrogant.’” Arroganceseeped right through the company and came to affectevery aspect of its business: the style with which it

treated suppliers, software firms, and dealers, itsattitude toward competitors, and the way itapproached the development of new products.From the outset, the shape and style of Apple’scomputers was Jobs’s primary interest. Withinmonths of the introduction of the Apple II, he becamevice president of research and development andthereafter almost always had the final say in majorproduct decisions. As the company grew, and Jobs’sinfluence mounted, so did the force of the tactics hehad used to push, goad, prod, cajole, and coaxWozniak during the development of the Apple II. Hewas always attracted to the latest, and brightestprospect, and in time the more interesting projectscame to be associated with his presence.Jobs had little interest in laborious research. Therewas nothing he believed in more deeply than his ownintuition and his sense and touch for where thetechnology and markets would meet. Long-termproduct planning and a sense of how Apple’s differentcomputers would combine to produce a uniformlineup was a subordinate concern. With the continuedsuccess of the Apple II, Jobs developed whatamounted to a religious faith in the strength of hisinstincts: “You make a lot of decisions based on thefragrance or the odor of where you think things aregoing.” He was unwilling to let product planningbecome burdened with analysis, focus groups,decision trees, the shifts of the bell curve, or any of thepainful drudgery he associated with large companies.He found Apple’s prototype customer in the mirrorand the company came to develop computers thatJobs, at one time or another, decided he would like toown.Inside the company he gained a reputation forpossessing a flair for getting things done, for having agentle touch for the “soft side” of production. “He has,”said Bill Atkinson, “a drive for excellence, simplicity,and beauty.” And Tom Whitney observed, “One ofJobs’s attributes is an infinite patience to makesomething better. It’s never good enough for him. Healways wants more features with less cost. He alwayswants to leapfrog the next natural step. A lot of thesuccess of Apple is due to his damned stubbornnessbut it’s also very difficult to work around because healways wants everything.” Another who watched himclosely was more skeptical. “He would have beenhappier as Walt Disney. One day he could have beenworking on rabbits’ ears, the next day on Disneyland,the day after on movies, and the day after that onEpcot Center. The trouble with the computer businessis that you don’t get to change your mind a whole lot.”Jobs developed computers the way he improvedhimself. He had a knack for adopting other people’sideas when they suited his needs, discarding theaspects he found wanting, making subsequentimprovements, and finally delivering opinions (orcomputers) with such conviction that it was easy tobelieve they were his entirely original contribution. Buthis strengths were also his greatest weaknesses. Anability to listen to convincing arguments provided animmune system against his snap judgments, but

underlings came to be wary about speaking theirminds. His optimism, what one manager called “thedepth of his technical ignorance,” meant that heunderestimated how long computers would take todevelop or what price they would sell for. Graduallythe lineup of Apple’s computers came to reflectJobs’s own temperamental, unpredictable,inconsistent streaks.Yet his audacious, aggressive nature coloredApple’s computers and was the spark that lit thecompany. Two years after the introduction of theApple II, work was either starting or proceeding onfive products which bore the code names Sara, Lisa,Annie, Mac, and Twiggy. Sara, named for thedaughter of its chief hardware designer, eventuallybecame known as the Apple III. Lisa was named afterJobs and Nancy Rogers’s daughter. Annie was a lowcostApple II which never saw the light of day. Macwas one person’s favorite apple. A group working ondeveloping a disk drive called their product Twiggybecause, in its original incarnation, it was supposedto bear a physical similarity to the British model: Itwas going to house two diskettes and thus, oneenlightened engineer decided, would come toresemble the fragile model whose figure was adornedwith two mini-floppies.One of the consequences of visible corporate glorywas reflected in the ambitious schedules establishedfor the Apple III. Those timetables reflected none ofthe perils of developing computers that had beencarefully spelled out in numerous articles and books.“We were terribly optimistic about the schedules onthe Apple III,” said product designer Jerry Mannock.“The Apple II had been so successful that everybodywas walking around thinking they could do anything.”From the start the Apple III was supposed to be astopgap product, a bridge between the time thatApple II sales were expected to drop and the day thatLisa was ready.It also came to be seen as a test of Apple’s abilityto build a computer as a company. Thecircumstances had obviously changed since the dayswhen Wozniak made gross modifications to theApple I, and though Apple’s payroll had lengthened sohad the company’s commitments. There was agrowing band of customers who needed attention andsupport, there were the sundry distractions ofcorporate life, and there was also the need to havelarge numbers of the new computer ready to ship atthe time of introduction rather than the dozens thatwere needed after the announcement of the Apple II.The schedule for the Apple III was the sort of timetablethat might have been set by a hobbyist determined toshow off a design at the Homebrew Club. It called fora computer that would be designed, tested, and readyfor manufacture within ten months of conception.Building a computer as a company, Apple soondiscovered, was far more laborious than knockingtogether a machine in a garage. “The Apple III wasdesigned by committee,” Randy Wiggintoncomplained. “Apple felt that was the way a propercompany should design a computer. Everybody hadcertain ideas about what the Apple III should do and

unfortunately all of them were included.” The generalplan was for a computer that contained all the featuresthat were missing from the Apple II and to stretch thepowers of the 6502 microprocessor since morepowerful processors were not available at low prices.It was to have a larger memory, a built-in disk drive, abetter operating system, a display of eighty columnsthat would be suitable for word processing andspreadsheet calculations, an upper- and lower-casekeyboard, a keypad, improved color, and a fastermicroprocessor. It was also supposed to run all theprograms developed for the Apple II and so becomeinstantly useful in scores of different applications.A fearsome pressure built up inside the companyand helped promote stomach-contracting schedules.Some of this stemmed from marketing projectionsthat repeatedly forecast imminent declines in thesales of Apple IIs. Wendell Sander, the chiefhardware engineer on the Apple III, said, “We keptwondering when the bubble was going to burst on theApple II. We could have done with moreprofessionalism from the marketing side.” Pressurealso sprang from the commitments to ship the AppleIII that were made in the prospectus prepared for thepublic stock offering. None of this was helped by Jobswho, a few months before the computer wasannounced, doled out some glossy posters carryingthe line THE DECISION YOU’RE MAKING NOWHELPED SHIP 50,000 APPLE IIIS IN 1980. Thecombination of pressures was sufficient to squelchthe cries of anguish and dam the stream of franticmemos that circulated among the people under themost strain. “It was the classic story,” said Jef Raskin,“of people at the bottom saying, ‘Things aren’tworking here. We’re in trouble.’ Then the next level upwould say, ‘We’re in some trouble with this,’ and thelevel above would say, ‘We’re getting around thetrouble,’ and the people at the top would say, ‘It will beokay. Let’s ship.’”The rush to ship the computer resulted in an all-outscramble that was reflected most keenly in thepublications department where the technical writerswere again sandwiched between the changes beingmade on the laboratory bench and the implacabledemands of the marketing department. The writersdid not see the Apple III until nine weeks before it wasannounced, and the deadlines offered so little slackthat the procedures for reviewing the manuals and thecomputer were all but ignored. Drafts of thecompleted manuals were sent to the engineering,marketing, and new-product-review departments onthe same day they were delivered to the productiondepartment for paste-up. There the programmersworked two-hour shifts helping the graphic artists layout the pages.Meanwhile, Apple was also learning that there wasnothing like software development to illustrate howquickly a year could slip by. Though the Apple III wassupposed to run all the programs written for the AppleII, the improvements and modifications madeadjustment of the Apple II software a complicated andtiresome venture. The programmers had to

accommodate all the changes in the hardware: Thecomputers started differently, the keyboards and diskdrives were laid out differently, and the memory hadbeen expanded. The programmers were alsosubmerged beneath the sheer weight of theprogramming, which was ten times as much as for theApple II.Though the burden had increased Apple decided totry to develop as much software as possible insidethe company. Little attention was paid to workingclosely with outside software houses, and there was adistinct effort to tighten up on the distribution oftechnical information about the intimate secrets of theApple III. This made it almost impossible forindependent software companies to developprograms for the computer. Two weeks before theannouncement, a prototype machine was delivered toVisicorp accompanied by a request for ademonstration program of Visicalc. It was a year afterthe announcement before Apple’s programmers hadfinished modifying the Pascal language so it wouldwork on the computer and thus give independentsoftware a way to write programs other than withBASIC or assembly language.The Apple III was announced with great fanfare atthe National Computer Conference in Anaheim in thesummer of 1980. Apple rented Disneyland for anevening, distributed twenty thousand free tickets, andhired a fleet of red double-decker buses to ferryguests to the amusement park. The splash didn’tdeceive anybody in Cupertino. Sherry Livingstonrecalled, “They blew the Apple III and they knew itwhen they announced it.” Once the public promiseshad been made, Apple was hoist with its own petard.The pressure to ship started backbiting between thecompeting interests of the engineering, marketing,manufacturing, and corporate sides of the company.Problems with the design, some of which resultedfrom creeping elegance, made it impossible tosqueeze the computer into its case. This resulted in asecond, clumsy board which had to be piggybackedon the main printed circuit board. In addition Appledidn’t pay much attention to testing quality. In thegarage Jobs and Wozniak had performed their owncrude, yet competent, tests, but as Apple grew nodepartment had been formed to monitor the quality ofparts. Wendell Sander said, “We didn’t have any wayof comparing the quality of components. We didn’thave enough component-evaluation engineers to testthe choice of connector. We listened to the salesmenand believed what they said.” A chip from NationalSemiconductor, which was supposed to provide thecomputer with a clock, usually failed after about threehours, and though Jobs savagely berated the chiefexecutive of the semiconductor company, that didn’tsolve the problem.Lines on the printed circuit boards were too closetogether and that led to shorts. “We screamed that itshouldn’t be shipped without new boards,” said RickAuricchio, “but the marketing people said it wouldn’tbe a problem. The engineers said it would be.” The

production team had its own gripes. Screws were sopositioned that they pierced cables inside thecomputer. A heavy metal case was used because ofuncertainty about some FCC regulations, but thismade it unwieldy for many of the smaller womenworking on the assembly line. “It finished up as amechanical nightmare,” said Roy Mollard, theproduction man. “The engineers washed their handsof it and said it was a manufacturing problem.” Theconnector between the two printed circuit boardsdidn’t have enough plating and kept shorting; chipsslipped from sockets and the cables to the keyboardwere too short. As a test and to help fasten the chipsinto the sockets, the engineers suggested that thecomputer be dropped three inches. The shock of thefall, the engineers said, was guaranteed to coax thecomputer to life. The manufacturing men devised amore scientific test to see if everything worked: Theystarted hitting the computer with rubber hammers.By then the damage had been done. The Apple IIIwas bollixed up at almost every stage of itsdevelopment. What was shipped was unreliable andprone to failure. Visicalc was included in the earlyshipments because no other piece of software wasready. The Apple software that accompanied thecomputer was untested. The manuals looked shoddyand were accompanied by twenty pages ofcorrections. Word began to seep out when buyersdiscovered that the computer was full of startlingsurprises, SYSTEM FAILURE flashed in an aberrantmanner across the screen. Damaging newspaperarticles began to appear which wreathed the machinein a funereal cloud. Apple stopped advertising thecomputer, subjected the machines to arduous tests,redesigned the circuit board, readied some software,allowed early customers to swap their machines forones that worked, and reintroduced the machine (withan expanded memory) a year later. What eventuallybecame a sound, reliable workhorse and a capablebusiness computer was ruined by the disastrousintroduction and Jobs’s optimistic poster became anembarrassing reminder of what might have been. Forin the three years following its introduction only sixtyfivethousand Apple IIIs were sold.Jobs, who hopped away from the Apple III once thelook and shape of the computer had been settled,was always more interested in the development ofLisa. Work had started on Lisa before the Apple IIIand from the start it was seen as a bolder, moreambitious project. In October 1978, or almost fiveyears before the computer was shipped in any volume—at a price of around $10,000—Jobs had visualizedwhat he wanted it to look like. He knew he wanted acomputer that incorporated the disk drives andscreen and also had a detachable keyboard. Heknew too that he wanted it built around a sixteen-bitmicroprocessor rather than the eight-bit device thatsat at the center of the Apple II. And he also had aninkling that word processing and a spread-sheetprogram like Visicalc would have to be included. Apreliminary paper drawn up to accommodate most ofthese ideas bore out a colleague’s observation that

Jobs “decided what he wanted Lisa to look likebefore he was sure what technology would be in themachine.” The original estimates for the computercalled for shipment in January 1980, a retail price of$2,000, and a manufacturing cost of $600.A small group formed to work on Lisa wasquartered in Apple’s one-time home—the office suitebehind the Good Earth building—and began to gropetoward a target that was, to say the least, hazy. Forclose to eighteen months the project floundered.Occasionally it was interrupted by hiccups and spurts,by the arrival of new managers or by politicking. Butthere wasn’t all that much contact between theplanners and the laboratory, or even between thesoftware and hardware engineers. The generalquestions of who would use the machine and how itwould blend with Apple’s lines of distribution were, forthe most part, sidestepped. Left to their own devices,the hardware engineers built a prototype around aneight-bit chip, the Intel 8086, that turned out to be slowand disappointing. Others started to investigate thepossibility of using a competing eight-bit chip, theMotorola 68000 (the successor to the eight-bit 6800that Wozniak had used during development of theApple I).Another prototype was developed under theguidance of Ken Rothmueller, a one-time engineer inHewlett-Packard’s Instruments Division. His computerwas calculated to win the hearts of the sort of peoplewho ran data-processing departments in largecompanies and those with a technical bent. It had agreen screen controlled in the same way as thescreens on the Apple II and III, a conventionaltypewriter keyboard, and an overwhelming grayformality—and it by no means matched Jobs’saggressive spirit. The cynics said that it was a dull,solid machine Hewlett-Packard might haveintroduced.Progress wasn’t helped by the carping and clash ofideas that developed between Rothmueller and JohnCouch, then the head of the software department.Each man had, at various times, worked for the otherat Hewlett-Packard, and at Apple they both reportedto the same person. It was a battle for control of thecomputer: a struggle for dominance betweenhardware and software. But the critical importance ofthe software was emphasized by work that wasconducted, not by Apple, but at Xerox Corporation’sPalo Alto Research Center (PARC).Xerox Corporation indelibly altered not only Jobs’spicture of the future but also the tone and nature of thecomputers that he was later to say would last Applethrough the eighties. It enlarged his ideas andprovided the specter of a competitor that, in thelaboratory, was working on ideas that were far moredramatic than those being considered at Apple.Set on a gently rising hill south of StanfordUniversity, the research center had been built byXerox as an incubator where young, bright sparkscould dream up some grand new ideas that wouldhave the spectacular impact of the company’s

copiers. It had opened in 1969, but researchershadn’t hatched any golden egg by the last month ofthe seventies when a group from Apple arrived toinspect the results of their work on personalcomputers. Xerox had spent more than $100 millionat PARC to fund research on computers,semiconductor-chip design, and laser printers. Thatsum was more than double Apple’s total sales in1979 but PARC had managed to demonstrate thewide gap that exists between the laboratory benchand the shop window.Xerox’s substantial financial stake in Applecertainly smoothed the way for the expeditions ofprogrammers and engineers that set out fromCupertino. But the curious didn’t need the mind ofSherlock Holmes to figure out what was going on atPARC. The center was a showcase for Xerox andvisits by outsiders were part and parcel of daily life.Even without knowing the details of how Xerox’sprototype desk-top computers were designed,anybody who kept in touch with the field was certainlyaware of some of the broader trends. A few wellplacedtelephone calls, a piece of cocktail-partychatter, or some interrogation of the bright highschoolstudents Xerox was using as guinea pigscould shed light on the obscurer points. Computerjournals had carried papers that reported on aspectsof the Xerox research. A special 1977 issue ofScientific American contained an article by Alan Kay,an airy spirit and one of Xerox’s principal scientists,that described the work in Palo Alto and amounted toan enthusiastic prescription for personal computersthat were easy to use.More than a decade of research by scientists likeDouglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute,by child psychologists, and at Norwegian universitieshad all, to varying degrees, influenced the work atXerox. Indeed some of the most important principleshad been published in the mid-sixties and had beendisplayed by SRI as early as 1968 with ademonstration of a system called NLS. Its chief thrustwas to find ways to help people with no technicaltraining control computers. In a way it was anacademic extension of the general effort of thehobbyists: to make computers personal and thenremove, or at least conceal, the mysterious andintimidating elements. Xerox’s prototypes bore thetraces of people who believed that computers werean entirely new medium, that they were far more thanstolid, passive devices suitable for crunchingnumbers and editing prose. Some of the PARCresearchers possessed the imaginative vision offlexible machines that would eventually combine thesensory charms of color television, stereophonicmusic, and finger paints. Like others before them,they said their eventual goal was to pop a computerinto a case the size of a notebook or build a machinethat businessmen could slip into their briefcases butuse to communicate with other computers and peopleanywhere in the world.In 1973 the PARC researchers built their firstmachine and called it Alto. Its chief virtues were avisual appeal and far greater flexibility than other

computers of the time. It was supposed to simulatethe sort of sights that people were already familiarwith rather than boggling reels of numbers.The Alto rested on advances in both software andhardware. Xerox developed a language calledSmalltalk, which had similarities to Logo, a languagethat had been designed to help children program bymoving and turning small, familiar objects withouthaving to worry about codes and equations. Forcharts or memos that were too large to be displayedat one time, the Xerox computer simulated sheets ofpapers strewn on a desk and, in the jargon of thetrade, called them “overlapping windows.”The clarity of the images was made possible by aprocess known as bit-mapping. The computercontrolled each tiny dot, or pixel, on the screen. Textcould be displayed in several type-faces and thecomputer could generate music. The Alto also used amouse—originally developed at the StanfordResearch Institute in 1964—to sidestep the codes oftypewritten commands. By the late seventies, ahundred or so Altos were scattered about the WhiteHouse and congressional offices as part of a splashyfield test.At first Jobs resisted the entreaties to visit Xerox,leaving others with the impression that nothing anyother company was working on could possibly topsome of the projects Apple had on the boil. A few ofthe Apple programmers familiar with the Xerox workkept pressing, and eventually he gave in to this owncuriosity. With his impatience for anything but thepractical and a willingness to admire anything withsuperior virtues, Jobs was enchanted by what he saw.He was as impressed as everybody else with theperformance of the Alto and after seeing thecombined effect of the mouse, the graphics, and theoverlapping windows, turned to Bill Atkinson for someexpert guidance. “Steve asked how long it would taketo get the software up on Lisa and I said, ‘Oh, sixmonths.’”The visits to Xerox became one of those few,crucial events that helped bring some clarity to theshape of Apple’s computers. For a small company toeven contemplate trying to match, let alone better, theXerox work required something more than substantialconfidence. But without a dose of audacity and a boltof arrogance it would have been easy for Apple toplay safe and incur the greater risk of doing nothing.The visits to Xerox also coincided with a hardening ofthe idea in Cupertino that Lisa would be thespearhead for Apple’s attack on the office market.Businesses, so the argument went, would be able toafford to pay for machines that someday would becheap enough for the general consumer.The results of this flurry of activity were seen quicklyenough. Within a few weeks Jobs managed to gethold of a mouse while the programmers started todelve into bit-map graphics and worked up somedemonstrations of their power. The displays were soimpressive that they prompted a palace coup. Most ofthe engineers turned against the stubborn bent of thechief hardware engineer, who was eventually

eplaced by the project’s fourth hardware manager. Itwas also tacit recognition of the triumph of software.So Apple’s course was set by Xerox. A group ofXerox programmers and scientists eventually leftPARC and joined Apple to work on Lisa and had agreat influence on how the computer would appear toa user. For the three years following the revelation atXerox, Apple’s engineers and programmers edgedforward. They didn’t contribute any new, sweepingvision but they displayed a determination to improveon the work that had been done elsewhere. Therewere substantial enhancements in the software, andthe grandest part of the enterprise was the way inwhich it was all squeezed into a desk-top system.They also practiced the message of one of Apple’searliest advertisements: SIMPLICITY IS THEULTIMATE SOPHISTICATION and tried to removeany cause of confusion. After weeks of debate, forexample, the buttons on the mouse were reducedfrom three to one. Features that had formed part ofthe original machine, like the “softkeys,” keyboardbuttons that concealed certain functions, alsodisappeared.Jobs’s contribution to the Lisa project oscillatedbetween the inspirational and the destructive. Onemarketing manager recalled, “Pricing after pricingwould come back with an absolute five-thousanddollarminimum price. There were gut-wrenchingdebates with Jobs. He’d say, ‘If I have to I’ll bring Wozin. Woz could do it for less. If you were good enoughyou could do it.’” He also managed to underminemorale. According to one observer, “The engineerswould say, ‘It doesn’t matter if it’s on time. We knowJobs. He’ll change it anyway.’” But for all thecommotion, Jobs also left his aesthetic touch on thecomputer. He left an overall style and shape and alsohelped with small details like the rounded edges onpictures of file folders, which he preferred to squarecorners.The difference between Xerox and Apple wasillustrated at the 1981 National Computer Conferencein Houston. There Xerox announced the Xerox 8010that colloquially was known as the Xerox Star. Thecomputer had not been developed by the PARCgroup but nevertheless displayed some PARChallmarks. It relied on a visual simulation of a desktop, a mouse, and bit-map graphics, but the executionwas poor and the computer worked properly onlywhen it was linked to a range of ancillary Xeroxequipment. The software was excruciatingly slow andthe execution of some novel ideas was generallyconsidered rather clumsy.There was far more patience at Apple. Themiserable results of the Apple III served as a constantreminder of the penalties of rushing the developmentof a computer and releasing something that wasn’tproperly tested. There was also less inclination toforecast the imminent demise of the Apple II, whichthe people in Cupertino started to think possessedsome of the durable virtues of products like theVolkswagen Beetle.

If the scope of the work on Lisa was one exampleof a corporate ambition, so was the development of adisk drive. When Apple decided to start a project tobuild its own disk drives, there were some perfectlysensible reasons. Sales of Apple II systems restedheavily on disk drives and Apple’s one supplier,Shugart—by coincidence a Xerox subsidiary—wasproducing devices that in the opinion of some wereunreliable. There was a distinct fear that Apple’sgrowth was being limited by the scarcity of diskdrives. Apple found another supplier to provide asecond source of drives and then decided to start itsown project. The motives were muddled by a desireshared by Scott and Jobs to humiliate Shugart.Wendell Sander described the scope of the project:“The company didn’t realize it was taking on a projectthat wasn’t really a computer system. There’s a closeraffiliation between disk drives and integrated circuitsthan there is between disk drives and computers.They didn’t realize it was going to be so big. Theydidn’t appreciate the difficulty.” Another observersaid, “Steve really believed that Apple could build afloppy disk faster, for less money, and with moreperformance than anybody else without having anyexperience with products like that.” The drive, codenamedTwiggy, was originally supposed to beincluded in the Apple III but development problemssoon ruled out that possibility.The arrogant disregard for convention that provedso powerful when it came to thinking about newcomputers had less salutary results when it spilledover into the way Apple treated the outside world. Itwas an excruciating balancing act for Apple’smanagers to dally with the impossible inside thecompany and simultaneously cope with mortals on theoutside. They were also confronted with the conflictingneed to guard corporate secrets and maintaincongenial relationships. Yet at times the corporatearrogance seemed to teeter on the brink of whatamounted to a willful effort at self-destruction, andmuch of the goodwill that had been so carefully andlaboriously built up between Apple and outsidersstarted to evaporate.“Apple was uniquely aggressive,” said DanielFylstra, chairman of Visicorp, once known asPersonal Software, “about pursuing its self-interest.”Fylstra had good reason to know, since the Visicalcprogram was instrumental in helping push Apples intooffices. When Visicorp started to mimic Apple byretaining the same law firm, public-relations agency,accountants, and investors the amiable relationshipbegan to sour. It deteriorated further when Visicorpdecided to adapt versions of Visicalc for computersmade by Apple’s competitors and further still when ittried to increase the price of the program when it wasmade available for the Apple III. To keep Visicorp inits place, Apple’s programmers were ordered todevelop a spread-sheet program. The project keptslipping and was never officially released, but therelationship between the two companies became stillsorrier.The same was true of other software companies.

The decision to develop in Cupertino most of theprograms for the Apple III antagonized the smallersoftware companies. Apple wanted to maintain atighter control over some of the programs—like wordprocessingand spread-sheet packages—that werebecoming as important as the computer. But therewas, as the Apple II had demonstrated, so manythings that the computer could be used for that Applehad nowhere near enough programmers and nowherenear enough expertise to exploit all the opportunities.When Apple failed to provide the technicalinformation and languages necessary to writeprograms, more feelings were hurt. Thanks to thepremature introduction, the manuals explaining thesoftware weren’t even written. And when Apple thencharged hefty admission prices to seminarsexplaining the innards of the Apple III, things tookanother turn for the worse. All the problems with theApple III were certainly aggravated by the smallamount of software that was available. When workstarted on Lisa, a similar attitude prevailed andoutside companies weren’t invited to contribute.A tightening proprietary attitude was also displayedtoward Apple engineers who wanted to pursue theirown ideas. When Chuck Mauro decided to leaveApple in 1980 to start a company to make aperipheral that would convert the display of the AppleII from forty columns to eighty columns, Jobs wrotehim a formal letter and wished him the best. Dayslater, as the possible consequences of the decisionbegan to sink in, he changed his mind and arguedvigorously with Mauro that the board had beendeveloped on Apple’s time and was thereforecompany property. “He invited me to lunch,” saidMauro, “and as we were walking over to therestaurant he looked at me and said, ‘You know, if wewanted to we could squash you like a bug.’” However,with the legal position murky, Jobs lifted the corporateheel and didn’t provide any further obstruction andMauro founded his own company.The same sort of antagonism began to comebetween Apple and its dealers. To grow quickly Applerelied on a two-step system of distribution. Apple soldproducts to distributors who in turn resold themachines to dealers. After a time, the distributorsweren’t growing as quickly as orders and wererestraining Apple’s growth. Most of the distributorswere small companies started by inexperiencedbusinessmen who couldn’t raise the local bankmanager on the telephone and arrange for anincrease in credit. As soon as any distributor showeda sign of weakness, Apple moved. When it becameclear, for example, that Byte Industries was havingtrouble developing a nationwide chain of Byte Shops,Apple stopped supplying them. One Apple managerstated simply, “Byte was floundering around so we cutthe strings.” So when in 1980 Apple was largeenough and had enough money, it made a perfectlysensible business decision and decided to buy out itsdistributors and supply dealers directly.

From early days, Apple had cracked down hard onits dealers, and after a while, almost every seniorApple executive managed to upset or ruffle one ofthem. It was the sort of tussle that often existsbetween the factory and the field, with the formerpushing as hard as it can to boost sales and the latterpulling as hard as possible to extract concessionsand incentives. It was a cat-and-mouse game. Jobs,with his graphic sense of reality, explained, “We’vegot each other by the balls.” The head ofComputerland, Ed Faber, explained that Apple had,after a time, tried to “control dealers with muscle.”Apple was quick to offer dealers discounts if theybought in quantity. The strategy was calculated tomake dealers sell more machines by making surethey always had some in stock and weren’t caughtshort. Dealers, who didn’t want to bear the costs offinancing, complained vigorously. One dealerexplained, “There were too many semiconductorindustry salesmen and not enough people with retailexperience. They more or less said, If you don’t wantto do things exactly the way we want to do them, thenscrew you.’”The head of Apple’s sales, Gene Carter, countereddealers’ complaints about pressure by issuing thesort of platitudes that might have come from a Detroitautomobile executive: “Apple Computer, itsdistributors and retailers all want to make money andthe way to make money is by selling the product.” Inthe middle of 1982 he elaborated further: “We are thegolden egg. Every dealer wants the Apple because ithas a high profile. Dealers know if you don’t carry theApple there must be something wrong with yourstore.”In 1982 Apple also stopped supplying mail-orderhouses, cracked down on bootleggers who sold tononauthorized dealers, and dumped Computerlandwhich was once the mainstay of their distributionnetwork and had once been such an object of desirethat Apple had started some tentative discussionsabout a merger. Apple was trying to control whichComputerland stores carried its products so theywouldn’t interfere with other Apple dealers. At the timeEd Faber said, “We cannot say to people, ‘You’re atthe mercy of this manufacturer.’”The press also started to feel the results of the flushof power. When a trade newspaper, Infoworld,published a copyrighted story that was said todescribe Apple’s future product plan, the editorreceived several telephone calls from Jobs in whichhe successively argued that publication wouldseverely damage Apple, called the story only partiallyaccurate, denounced the reporter as “a criminal,”offered a “real nifty two-page ad” if the story was held,and offered to pay the costs of stopping the print run.Apple’s attitude toward the press was made clear in amemo that was circulated within the company. After arun of analytical stories that contained whiffs of

Recently Apple has been the subject of some storiesin the press which cannot be considered “puff” pieces. . . i.e., they do a fairly negative job of reportage. . . . Itis in the scheme of things that bad news makes bettercopy than good news, and also that many, if not most,reporters have trouble conveying subtlety andcomplexity, much less their editors.If journalists were one focus for contempt, so wereApple’s competitors. One by one other companieshad muffed the development and introduction of theirpersonal computers. Large companies like Hewlett-Packard and Xerox had stumbled and belatedlyintroduced machines that didn’t match the Apple II.Firms with a reputation among consumers, like Atariand Mattel, had also missed the boat while theminicomputer makers like Data General and DigitalEquipment were slow to realize the threat posed bymicrocomputers that were getting more powerful bythe month. And Texas Instruments, the company thathad once been the cause of such fear, flubbed itscomputer strategy so badly that Apple looked betterwith every passing day. The TI computer showed littleattention to cosmetic details, gave low performancefor the price, had thin distribution, and was receivedso poorly that within two years the price dropped frommore than $1,000 to $100. So at Apple the arrival of anew competing computer had developed into a ritual.In the months leading up to a major announcement,there was a certain amount of trepidation at Apple.But after the announcements were studied and theUPS delivery trucks pulled up in Cupertino bearingthe latest product, the machines inside the Styrofoamcartons were almost always greeted with derisivehoots.Machines that carried the names of Japanesecompanies were given the same reception asAmerican computers. Some of the statements thatemerged from Cupertino sounded ominously like theconfident claims which had once risen into the air ofDetroit in the mid-sixties. At one time or another theJapanese were not supposed to understand themicrocomputer market, had no experience withcomplicated electronic consumer items, wouldn’t beable to master software, wouldn’t find any room left ondealers’ shelves, and wouldn’t be able to build animage for their brands. “The Japanese,” Jobs liked tosay, “have come flopping up on our shores like deadfish.”This despite the fact that Apple came to depend ona variety of Japanese companies for a steady supplyof semiconductors, monitors, printers, and diskdrives. And while Japanese manufacturers likeHitachi, Fujitsu, and NEC designed and made almostevery part needed in a personal computer, Apple wascriticism appeared in the months following Apple’spublic offering, a memo was distributed by Fred Hoar,the vice-president of communications. It complainedthat journalists often took matters out of context bymisquoting executives and compressing what theyhad to say. The memo read in part:SUBJECT: ADVERSE PUBLICITY

little more than an assembler of other people’s work.The long-term challenge was stark: Apple had noalternative but to become the lowest-cost producer inthe world and simultaneously offer the most value toits customers if it hoped, in the long run, to beat theJapanese. The extent of the Japanese threat wasmade clear not in the United States but in Japan,where within three years conditions had changeddramatically. In 1979 Apple and Commodore owned80 percent of the Japanese market; by 1980 this hadslumped to 40 percent and the November 1981 issueof the Japan Economic Journal reported: “The threeleading American personal computer makers—AppleComputer, Commodore International and Tandy—have witnessed their combined market share inJapan plunge from 80-90 percent in 1979 to less than20 percent at present.”There was, however, one competitor that everyonehad expected to enter the microcomputer marketonce it was large enough to matter. That was thecompany with three of the most imposing initials inAmerican business: IBM. It was easy to dismiss IBMas an old, lumbering, stuffy, East Coast company thatcould offer its engineers or programmers neitherfame nor fortune and insisted that everyone wearwhite shirts and striped ties. In 1981 when IBMintroduced its personal computer, its revenues wereninety times as large as Apple’s. It made satellites,and robots, memory chips and mainframe computers,minicomputers and typewriters, floppy disk drives andword processors. At the Homebrew Club theJuggernaut of Armonk had always been the butt ofjokes and engineers like Wozniak had always beenmore intrigued by the features of machines made byIBM’s competitors.Though the company had sold calculators,tabulators, cards, and accounting machines in thetwenties, it switched direction after World War II whenRemington Rand’s UNIVAC machine was close tobecoming synonymous with computing. In 1952 whenIBM entered the computer business, its total saleswere dwarfed by General Electric and RCA andsmaller fry like Sperry Rand, Control Data, andHoneywell, all of whom thought they could beat IBM.Some of the computers were superior. But for allroundstrength, for profit margins, earnings growth,sales force, reputation for service and reliability,nobody could match IBM. By 1956 IBM owned morethan three quarters of the computer market in theUnited States and one weary competitor exhaled, “Itdoesn’t do much good to build a better mousetrap ifthe other guy selling mousetraps has five times asmany salesmen.”A decade later IBM was virtually rebuilt around afamily of computers given the number 360. In the late1960s, after leasing companies sprang up to serveas middlemen between the factory and customers,IBM helped savage them. At the start of the 1970s

when the so-called plug-compatible manufacturersstarted to chip away at the market for peripherals,IBM responded aggressively. In the mid-1970s whenother mainframe companies introduced powerfulmachines, IBM cut prices and changed the pricestructure of the industry.There were only two conspicuous exceptions. IBMhad failed to match Xerox when it tried to sell copyingmachines and had also played second fiddle in theminicomputer market which was dominated bycompanies like DEC, Data General and Hewlett-Packard. It was those two examples, the exceptionsto IBM’s general ferocity, that offered hope forpersonal-computer makers. But the moral was plain:Anytime the managers of IBM felt that othercompanies were threatening their business theyretaliated savagely and with a ruthlessness that washidden behind a benevolent facade. In every decadeof its history, when IBM had been threatened by othercompanies, it had always eventually competed and ithad almost always won. IBM had made an art ofdefying the past and none of its victims ever accusedit of playing fraternal games.So it was with IBM’s personal computer. It was notnovel but it was impressive. The Apple II, even as afour-year-old computer, was more elegant than theIBM machine. The Apple was cleverer, it occupiedless space on a desk, was nowhere near as heavy,and didn’t need a fan. Thanks to the passage of theyears IBM’s had a better keyboard and morememory. It copied some of the features of the Apple IIlike expansion slots and graphics.The most impressive feature of IBM’s introductionwas not the computer but the nimble way thisenormous company had moved. IBM had establisheda small group to do in thirteen months what Apple hadso conspicuously failed to achieve with the Apple III.IBM relied heavily on outsiders. Outsiders werebrought in to help plan the product and outsiderssupplied software. Microsoft, the company that hadlicensed a version of BASIC to Apple for the Apple II,developed IBM’s operating system. PersonalSoftware adapted Visicalc to run on the IBM, and themen from staid America even dealt with a convictedfelon in the shape of retired phone phreak JohnDraper, who converted his Easywriter wordprocessing which he had originally written for theApple II. Outsiders supplied the microprocessor,which like those in the Apple II and III (despite IBM’sassertions to the contrary) was an eight-bit device.Outsiders supplied the memory chips and printer anddisk drive.IBM, which had always relied on its army ofsalesmen, also announced that it would sell thepersonal computer through stores like Computerlandand Sears Business Machines stores. The computerbase price was between the Apple II and Apple III. Asthe electronics analyst Ben Rosen remarked, “Itseems to be the right system at the right price with theright marketing approach for the right markets.”

Neither precedence nor presence seemed tomatter at Apple. The company greeted the arrival ofthe IBM Personal Computer with a full-pageadvertisement which reeked of earnest goodwill and,some said, condescension: “Welcome IBM.Seriously. Welcome to the most exciting andimportant marketplace since the computer revolutionbegan 35 years ago. . . . We look forward toresponsible competition in the massive effort todistribute this American technology to the world.” (Itwas a politer version of an advertisement that theminicomputer company Data General hadcontemplated running when IBM entered theminicomputer market in 1976. That advertisement—which never saw the light of day—had read: “Thebastards say, welcome.”) Some days later Jobsreceived a letter from IBM chairman John Opel, whichthanked him for the greeting and made an obliquereference to the fact that such friendly gestures mightcause a cocked eye at federal agencies.In Cupertino Markkula and Jobs elaborated on theiradvertisement. Markkula said during the week IBMannounced its computer, “We don’t see anything outof the ordinary. There are no major technologicalbreakthroughs and there isn’t any obvious competitiveedge that we can see.” Even at the time it was clearthat the leaders of Apple were grievouslyunderestimating the power of their new rival. Markkulacould barely contain his irritation when asked howApple planned to respond to IBM. “We’ve beenplanning and waiting for IBM to get into themarketplace for four years. We’re the guys in thedriver’s seat. We’re the guys with one third of a millioninstalled base. We’re the guys with a software library.We’re the guys with distribution. It’s IBM who isreacting and responding to Apple.” He added, “They’llhave to do a lot more reacting and responding. IBMhasn’t the foggiest notion of how to sell to individuals.It took us four years to learn about it. They must learnabout distribution structure and independent dealers.You cannot reduce time by throwing money at it. Shortof World War III nothing is going to knock us out of thebox.” Jobs had his own, clipped appraisal of the IBMannouncement and predicted, “We’re going tooutmarket IBM. We’ve got our shit together.”“Paradise is a cheeseburger,”Jimmy Buffet said.Like a nervous spinning top Apple’s hot-air balloonbobbed alongside an enormous stage. When its gasburnerflared, the balloon tugged at its moorings andthe generous Apple logo, stitched on the side,glowed. The balloon was the most visible sign ofApple Computer in the place where Stephen Wozniakwas promoting what he wanted to be the largest rockconcert ever held. At the end of the summer of 1982Wozniak financed a grotesquely magnified version of

what could have been an outdoor party at his splitlevelhome. His Labor Day weekend rock concertturned into a Disneyland version of Woodstock andhad little to do with either computers or companies. Itdealt with the thin look of fame, the tinny sound oflegend, and with billboard America.Wozniak erected his rollicking, collapsiblemonument in a scrofulous desert bowl at the edge ofthe largest suburb in the world. Here on the doormatof Devore, a little town that nobody noticed apart fromits 372 inhabitants, a colony of nudists and driverswho dropped off the freeway for gas or a hunk ofwatermelon, Wozniak chose to stage his first threedayrock ‘n’ roll festival.From the start the concert was a tribute toWozniak’s generous innocence and his steadfastbelief in the pleasures of the more abundant life. Hehad drifted away from Apple, enrolled again atBerkeley, and remarried. He puttered about theBerkeley campus or his shingled home in the SantaCruz mountains, with its psuedowooden turrets andglorious view of Monterey Bay, that he shared with hissecond wife, four llamas, two donkeys, three Siberianhuskies, four mutts, an Australian shepherd and a redtailedhawk. He equipped the house, which his friendstook to calling Woz’s Castle, with the amenities of life:a video-game room, wide-screen television, ceilinghighstereo system, and what seemed like anexample of every personal computer and peripheralever made.Nevertheless, he was bored. The idea for anenormous rock festival offered some distraction. Hesaid that he first thought of it while driving around inhis car and listening to a parade of hit records frommajor rock groups. “I wanted to do something good. Ithought, ‘Wouldn’t it be neat if all these groups couldbe in one place and play together?’” But he alsoexplained this new venture to his family as amoneymaking enterprise and predicted to his sisterthat the rock festival would turn a $50-million profit. SoWozniak chose to abandon the comfortable certaintyof El Camino Real for the reptilian world of HollywoodBoulevard.Wozniak rented a plush office suite in a glassbuilding in San Jose and recruited an unlikely team.The man he chose to organize the festival offeredcredentials that included some references tomanagement consultancy and experience of est.Before long they were spitting out press releasesannouncing the formation of the UNUSONCorporation, an acronym for “Unite Us in Song,” andtook to preaching a loosely woven gospel thatsounded as if it had been lifted from some freshmanpapers turned in for Mod Psych 101. They said thepurpose of the festival was to “refocus nationalattention on the power of working together.” For this,they observed, marked the change from the Medecade to the Us decade. They promised a largetechnology fair that would show how man andmachine could work together.Wozniak took a small office for himself where heinstalled an Apple II and some game paddles. Everynow and again his hired hands appeared and

addressed him in the tones of older brothersarranging a birthday treat for the youngest, slightlyspoiled member of the family. He invariably noddedor agreed to their requests. As the US Festivalorganizers started to place orders for equipment, theonly numbers they seemed familiar with ended instrings of zeros. The concert soon turned into a sumpfor—depending on the month and the mood of thespeaker—$8 million, $10 million, or $12 million ofWozniak’s Apple fortune.The people who knew Wozniak treated the USFestival with everything from sadness to alarm. Jobs,who was fond of repeating that it was easier to makea dollar than to give away a dollar, talked aboutsetting up a charitable foundation and did little toconceal his contempt for the enterprise. JerryWozniak watched some of his son’s televisioninterviews and said that the figure on the screenstruck him as “manic.” Mark Wozniak treated theshenanigans skeptically: “My brother gets attracted topeople who play up to him. People are using him.He’ll get screwed over and over. It’s the story of hislife. Most of the people he gets involved with wind upscrewing him.” Wozniak’s friend Chris Espinosathought, “As a child and student he was innocent andisolated from the ways of the world. As an adult andmillionaire he’s still isolated.”For months yellow bulldozers and earthmoversscraped and crushed the mesquite near Devore intoa gentle hill. A couple of streams were diverted andunderground pipes turned part of the desert bowl intogreen palmetto. Landfill for parking lots was pouredonto the laterite riverbed. Nearby canyons wereorganized into 100,000 campsites. Scores ofturquoise-colored portable toilets were trucked in toserve as mobile sewers. Shower trucks, with boilingwater and little shelves for the shampoo, were broughtin for the press.Tiger-striped marquees crammed with army cotshoused security guards and the concession-standworkers. By the time the festival got under way andthousands of cars and buses began to peel off thespecially constructed freeway exits, there was anexample of every means of locomotion that had everbeen seen on El Camino Real. Apart fromautomobiles—heavy on the Hondas, Datsuns (theofficial car of the US Festival), and Toyotas—therewere motorcycles, sidecars, two-wheel dirt bikes,three-wheel dirt bikes, Cushman golf carts, flat bedtrucks, Winnebagos, six-pak vans, Airstreamcaravans, bulldozers, backhoes, tractors, forklifttrucks, semis and water dumpsters.From the start Wozniak wanted to make sure thatnobody had to wait more than five minutes for food.So the grounds were turned into an outdoor suburbanshopping center. Beer gardens were stacked withbrown bags of ice and canisters of bottled air. Therewas an official domestic beer and an official importedbeer. Concession stands had munchies: M&M’s,granola bars, trail mix, gum, and smokes. There werewatermelons, pineapples, strawberries, nuts, cookies,New York-style pizza, hamburgers, chili dogs, hotdogs, Polish dogs, burritos, tacos, soda, lemonade,

7-Up, Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola. “Paradise,” asJimmy Buffet, one of the performers, observed, “is acheeseburger.”The suburban shopping-center pharmacy alsomoved in. The thousands of concertgoers could buytoothpaste, soap, sunglasses, insect repellent, andsunscreen from the back of rental trucks. It tooksunscreen to conjure up the ghost of another decade.For when the rock producer urged the crowd to begenerous, he resorted to that deft friendly phrase ofthe sixties: “If you’ve got some sunscreen, share itwith your brother and sister.”There was also a bumpy pyramid of law and order.Signs at the entrance gates were darn right upright:NO DRUGS, BOTTLES, CANS, WEAPONS ORPETS ALLOWED. NO TENTS, SLEEPING BAGSOR LAWN CHAIRS. ALL PERSONS SUBJECT TOSEARCH. Dozens of men from the San BernardinoCounty Sheriffs Department (in helicopters and patrolcars and on horseback and motorcycles) kept an eyeon things. One of a team of policemen from SouthernPacific explained that he was “here to protect therailroad.” Scores of hastily recruited blue-shirtedsecurity guards, the neighborhood vigilante gang,enforced their own amateur brand of justice andguarded the strategic gates in miles of chain-linkfences. All the emphasis on security had itsdrawbacks—a shifting, baffling collection of carefullycolored and painfully coded security badges andlaminated passes. The passes Wozniak programmedon his computer for his friends weren’t evenrecognized.There was more lavish treatment for the rock bandsand the press than for the teeming masses. Thebands—over twenty by the time all the contracts weresigned—had quibbled about terms and demandedextraordinary sums when word trickled out thatWozniak’s pocket was well-nigh bottomless. Mostsaid that it was another date, another gig, anotherday, and giggled at the mention of the US decade.Behind the stage the bands stayed in air-conditionedtrailers hidden by varnished lattice fences. Theirnames were carved in Gothic script on woodennameplates that hung on each door, and their needswere catered to by a squad of runners working out ofanother trailer marked AMBIENCE CONTROL whichwas a glorified room service. Outside the trailers,crowds of press agents, managers, businessmanagers, personal managers—every sort ofmanager—fussed, complained, and argued.Even the sky was for sale. A makeshift air-trafficcontroltower ordered an eclectic collection of aerialobjects to fly in counterclockwise circles. Someultragliders putt-putted like underpowered motorscooters with wings. A couple of parachutistsdropped in. At noon on the opening day of the festivalfive Mosquitoes ripped five white tubular trails acrossthe sky. Little planes coughed and towed bannerstouting automobile insurance, sweat shirts, and cheapair fares to Honolulu. Below the busy air lanes asheriff radioed to his pal in a helicopter, “There’s alow-flying fixed wing in the bowl area. Just want tomake sure you’re aware of it.” At night the Goodyear

limp, in a mosaic of lights, winked WHAT A BIGTIME, THANKS WOZ. Twenty-four hours a dayhelicopters officiously ferried the rock stars and theirgroupies from a soft, steaming patch of blacktop tohotels that lay west of Rancho Cucamonga andCucamonga.The technology fair fell victim to the heat and thedust. It was no traveling Homebrew Club or WestCoast Computer Faire. Some exhibitors failed toshow; others found that their machines weren’tdesigned to cope with the full might of Southlandweather. Many of the visitors seemed to be asinterested in the heaving air conditioners thatstruggled to cool the marquees as in the exhibition.There were some cheap examples of the power oftechnology, like the banks of telephones and theWalkmans and the women plugging their curling tongsinto the electric cables that ran inside some of thetheater-sized marquees.But the triumph of technology was displayed lateone night when three men were setting up ademonstration of a television satellite dish. They useda microcomputer to calculate the pitch and tilt neededto find a satellite floating twenty-five thousand mileshigh and monitored the results of their efforts on acolor television. They adjusted the dish, skipping fromone invisible satellite to another, until they found whatthey wanted: a Los Angeles porn television channelbouncing a signal more than fifty thousand miles sothat three men in the California desert could watch anaked black woman perform cunnilingus on herequally bare, white, female partner. It was, at least, amarriage of community and technology and thefestival organizers would not have been surprised tolearn that the women worked well together.Many of the two hundred thousand or so people(nobody was all that sure of the numbers) who spilledinto the beer gardens, soaked under outdoorshowers, sprayed each other with plastic misterbottles,and wallowed in the drenching drafts of awater cannon, seemed to enjoy themselves. Thosewho had a way with words called the US Festival onebig party, though they made it sound like purdee.Those who liked adjectives thought it one big, fugginpurdee. Many said they had come to purdee, to havea good time, a ball, and a blast. The US Festival was:Neat. Great. Incredible. Fantastic. Unbelievable.Amazing. Like Wow.The altar of this vast affair was a stage cast inempyreal proportions that would have done justice toCecil B. De Mille. A pair of three-story-high videoscreens served as the outer panels of the tryptych.The crowning glory was another screen, the sort usedfor instant replays in baseball stadiums, perched halfa skyscraper high above the well of the stage. In thebowels of the stage roadhands and stage crewoperated elevators and movable platforms andbounced up steep flights of steps tugging racks ofguitars, portable wardrobes, and steel trunkscrammed with the paraphernalia of rock groups. Outin the desert bowl, black banks of loudspeakers sentfour hundred thousand watts bouncing around the SanBernardino and San Gabriel mountains, and cameras

filmed the action for cable television syndication.Laser beams struck across the night sky, arrogantlysketching electronic patterns across sleepy blackclouds. All the gadgetry and noise seemed likecosmographic versions of the videotape recorders,wide-screen televisions, stereo systems and videogames that had crept into Wozniak’s own home.Wobbling alongside the stage was the Apple balloonthat in the hubbub looked strangely innocent andquietly forgotten.Presiding over the entire concert was Bill Graham,a San Francisco rock promoter: a chunk of irasciblethreats who, dressed in denim cutoffs, T-shirt, andbasketball boots, yelled until the veins in his neckbulged and the spittle in his throat dried butcomandeered the festival. He jabbed the air with hisfists, flexed his muscles, and later said that Wozniakwas a tragic figure. When he slipped on stagebetween acts he asked for a big welcome for agrrrrade, grrrrade band, for a grrrrade artist, agrrrrade rock ‘n’ roller and hailed these three grrradedays of grrrade, grrade rock ‘n’ roll.All the virtues Wozniak had combined in the AppleComputer were absent. This was sledgehammeraction and there was no hint of obscurity, no sense ofsubtlety and little discrimination. Perhaps the festivalsprang from some desire to amuse and entertain;perhaps it was nothing more than a spectacularlyconspicuous expression of vanity. It was certainly afreeze frame of celebrity-riddled America. In a whitepress tent two hundred reporters, photographers, andtelevision cameramen waited for Wozniak. Therewere journalists from the television networks, cabletelevision stations, dozens of radio stations, dailynewspapers, weekly magazines, rock ‘n’ roll journals,and the computer trade press. They represented amad welter of well-known names, and while theywaited for a press conference they poked at trays offood, phoned reports to friends and editors, andswatted at the wasps that hovered around soft-drinkcans, garbage pails, and trays of half-eaten food.They waited for Wozniak to descend from a housethat he had rented on a hill overlooking the festivalgrounds and used as a base for excursions in a long,black limousine. The journalists all waited for a line, aquote, a picture, or a close-up. They ruffled throughsteno pads, tightened tripods and monopods, andfiddled with cassette and microcassette recorders. Astream of leads led to a hedge of microphones andtape recorders, and when Wozniak arrived, duckingunder a canvas flap, the tent ballooned to life. A bowlof Nikons, Canons, Pentaxes snapped and clicked.There was pushing and jostling and elbowing. Thecurved wall of cameras slid forward. A table collapsedand there were loud shrieks. The motor driveswhirred, slapping image after image onto roll after rollof film. There were shouts and whistles. “Keep itdown. . . . For chrissake, shuddup. . . . Quiet. . . .Quiet. . . . Woz! . . . Woz! . . .”—and all the while therewas pushing and elbowing to get better pictures andangles. Sitting behind a table between the rockpromoter and the graduate of Erhard SeminarsTraining, Wozniak wore a baseball cap that was set

at a cockeyed angle, a T-shirt, shorts, and socks andgrinned like an admonished schoolboy. He wasspattered with a sad, repetitive, empty loop ofquestions: “How much money you lost? . . . How manypeople are here? . . . Why d’you do this?”

EPILOGUEMore than a quarter of a century has passed since Iwrote the previous page on an Apple III computer. In1984, as the first edition of this book made its way tothe press, I received several letters from the publisher—those being the days before email had become theuniversal telegraph system—expressing anxiety thatApple’s day in the sun might already have passed.The apprehension was understandable. Thehullabaloo surrounding the introduction of theMacintosh—trumpeted with an Orwellian televisioncommercial on Superbowl Sunday 1984—hadevaporated, and the notices had turned sour. IBM’spersonal computer business was gaining strength.Compaq had reached $100 million in sales fasterthan any previous company and Microsoft’s operatingsystem, DOS, was winning licensees by the month.There were plenty of reasons to think that Apple wasteetering.Twenty five years later, when people are as familiarwith the names iPod, iPhone, or Macintosh as theyare Apple, it is hard, particularly for those reared oncell phones and social networks, to imagine a timewhen the company appeared to be just anothertechnology firm that would be snuffed out or absorbedby a competitor. Since 1984, there have been plentyof technology companies that have faded to grey orgone to black, and it’s remarkably easy to come upwith an alphabetical list for these casualties that runsfrom A to Z.The letter “A” alone includes Aldus, Amiga, Ashton-Tate, AST and Atari. As for the rest of the alphabetthere’s always Borland, Cromemco, Digital Research,Everex, Farallon, Gavilan, Healthkit, Integrated MicroSolutions, Javelin Software, KayPro, LotusDevelopment, Mattel, Northstar Computers, OsborneComputer, Pertec, Quarterdeck, Radius, SoftwarePublishing, Tandy, Univel, VectorGraphic, Victor,WordPerfect, Xywrite and Zenith Data Systems. Thelarge technology companies that have weatheredthese decades—IBM and HP—have done so inareas far removed from personal computing. IBM,once the company that others in the personalcomputer industry feared, has even surrendered itsfranchise to the Chinese company Lenovo.The mortality rate makes Apple’s survival—letalone prosperity—even more remarkable. I’vewatched Apple, first as a journalist and later as aninvestor, for most of my adult life. Journalists sufferfrom the malady of not forgetting a topic that onceinterested them. I’m no different. But a couple of yearsafter I finished writing this book I found myself, thanksto some twists of fates, working at Sequoia Capital,the private investment partnership whose founder,Don Valentine, had helped assemble some of theformative blocks on which Apple was built. Sincethen, as an investor in young technology and growthprivate companies in China, India, Israel and the U.S.,I have developed a keener sense for the massive gulfthat separates the few astonishing enterprises from

the thousands that are lucky to scratch out an asteriskin the footnotes of history books.In 1984, if most consumers had been asked topredict which company—SONY or Apple—would playa greater role in their lives, I wager most would havevoted for the former. SONY’s success rested on twopowerful forces: the restless drive of its founder, AkioMorita, and the miniaturization of electronics andproducts consumers yearned for. The Japanesecompany, which had been formed in 1946, had builtup a following as a designer and maker ofimaginative and reliable consumer electronicproducts: transistor radios, televisions, taperecorders and, in the 1970s and 1980s, videorecorders, video cameras and the WalkMan, the firstportable device to make music available anywhere atany time of day. Like the iPod, a generation later, theWalkman bore the stamp of the company’s founder. Itwas created in a few months during 1979, it built itsfollowing largely by word of mouth and in the twodecades prior to the advent of mp3 players sold over250 million units. Now, as everyone knows, the tableshave been turned and some years ago a cruel jokecirculated which spelled out the change incircumstances, “How do you spell SONY?” Theanswer: “A-P-P-L-E.”This begs the question of how Apple came tooutrun SONY, but the more interesting topic is how thecompany came to rattle the bones of mighty industriesand has forced music impresarios, movie producers,cable television owners, newspaper proprietors,printers, telephone operators, yellow page publishersand old line retailers to quaver. None of this seemedpossible in 1984 when Ronald Reagan wasPresident, half of American households tuned into thethree television networks, U.S. morning newspapercirculation peaked at 63 million; LPs and cassettetapes outsold CDs by a margin of ninety to one; theMotorola DynaTAC 8000x cell phone weighed twopounds had thirty minutes of talk time and cost almost$4,000; Japan’s MITI was feared in the West; and thehome of advanced manufacturing was Singapore.Three mighty currents have flowed in Apple’s favor,but these waters were also navigable by other crews.The first swept electronics deeper into every nookand cranny of daily life so that now there is almost noplace on earth beyond the reach of a computer or thebewildering collection of phones and entertainmentdevices with which we are surrounded. The secondhas made it possible for companies born in the era ofthe personal computer to develop consumer products.It has been far easier for computer companies withrefined software sensibilities to design consumerproducts than for those whose lineage was consumerelectronics and whose expertise lay largely inhardware design and manufacturing prowess. It’s nota coincidence that some of the companies with theacutest envy towards Apple have names likeSamsung, Panasonic, LG, Dell, Motorola and, ofcourse, SONY. The third current was “cloudcomputing”—the idea that much of the computation,storage and security associated with popularsoftware sits in hundreds of thousands of machines in

factory-sized data centers. This is the computerarchitecture that, in the mid 1990s, supportedservices such as Amazon, Yahoo! eBay, Hotmail andExpedia and later came to underpin Google and theApple services that light up Macs, iPods andiPhones. Today, for the first time, consumers—notbusinesses or governments—enjoy the fastest, mostreliable and most secure computer services.In 1984 more immediate and mundane challengesconfronted Apple. Faced with the challenge ofmanaging a fast growing company in an increasinglycompetitive business, the Board of Directors ofApple, were faced with the most important task thatconfronts any board: selecting a person to run thecompany. Mike Markkula, who had joined Jobs andWozniak in 1976, had made no secret of the fact thathe had little appetite for life as Apple’s long-termCEO. Thus the Board, which included Steve Jobs,had to decide what course to take. This decision—and three similar decisions over the ensuing thirteenyears—shaped Apple’s future.Only in retrospect have I come to understand theimmense risk associated with hiring an outsider—letalone a person from a different industry—to run acompany whose path has been heavily influenced bythe determination and ferocity of its founder orfounders. It is not an accident that most of the greatcompanies of yesterday and today have, during theirheydays, been run or controlled by the people whogave then life. The message is the same irrespectiveof industry, era or country and the name can be Ford,Standard Oil, Chrysler, Kodak, Hewlett-Packard,WalMart, Fedex, Intel, Microsoft, NewsCorp, Nike,Infosys, Disney, Oracle, IKEA, Amazon, Google,Baidu or Apple. The founder, acting with an owner’sinstincts, will have the confidence, authority and skillsto lead. Sometimes, when the founder’s instincts arewrong, this leads to ruin. But when they are right,nobody else comes close.When corporate boards start to have misgivingsabout the condition of a company or the ability of thefounder and have no plausible internal candidate, theywill almost always make the wrong move. They usuallyneed to make a decision about a CEO when acompany is barreling towards a fall, emotions areraw, testosterone levels are running high and,particularly in a company as visible as Apple, whenevery employee, analyst, smart-aleck and naysayer isready to dispense advice. At Apple in 1985 theBoard’s decision was complicated by the fact thatthere was no obvious successor within the company.Jobs was considered too young and immature, andfor his part, he knew that he needed help if Apple wasto achieve the $10 billion sales level he had alreadystarted to dream about. The oppressive weight ofconventional wisdom tilted the quest towards arésumé dripping with impressive-sounding titles andcredentials. But experience—particularly when it’sbeen acquired in a different industry—is of little use ina young, fast-growing company in a new business thathas a different pulse and unfamiliar rhythm.Experience is the safe choice, but is often the wrongone.

After a lengthy search, Apple’s board announcedthat John Sculley would be the company’s new ChiefExecutive. Sculley was unknown in Silicon Valley,which was hardly surprising since he had spent hisentire business career at Pepsi Cola where, in hisfinal job, he had run its soft-drinks business, PepsiCo.Sculley’s arrival in Cupertino was greeted with thedemeaning commentary that Apple (and Jobs)“needed adult supervision.” This is the very last thingthat rare and wonderful founders need. These raresorts of people may require help, they will certainlybenefit from assistance and there may be plenty ofthings that are new or foreign to them. But theappearance of a boss, particularly one with littleexperience of technology and the brutish rough andtumble of a company in its formative years, will almostcertainly end in misery.At Apple, Sculley was greeted like an archangeland, for a time, could do no wrong. He and Jobs werequoted as saying that they could finish each others’sentences. In hindsight it is fairly easy to say that itwould be almost impossible for a man like Sculley,reared within the confines of an established EastCoast company selling soft drinks and snacks, toflourish in a business where product life cycles aremeasured in quarters, if not months, and wherecowing to convention marks the start of the deathrattle. It is easier for a founder, particularly whensurrounded by people with different experiences, tolearn about management than for a manager from alarge company to master the nuances and intricaciesof an entirely new business—especially if thathappens to be a technology company.Within less than two years familiarity began tobreed contempt—a situation complicated by the factthat while Sculley bore the CEO title, Jobs was theChairman of the company. Disagreements occurred.Sniping and backbiting broke out and the dissensionbecame so intense that in 1987 Sculley, disgruntled,displeased, exasperated and exhausted by Jobs,orchestrated the latter’s dismissal from the company.Sculley’s tenure at Apple lasted until 1993, and forpart of that time the external reviews, at least asposted by Wall Street analysts, were favorable.In the decade Sculley spent at Apple sales grewfrom less than $1 billion a year to more than $8 billiona year. On the surface, this looks like a wonderfulrecord. But the reality was far different. Sculleybenefited from a powerful force—the massivedemand for personal computers. This sort of marketgrowth conceals all types of shortcomings, and it isonly when the rate of change slows or the economycontracts that the real cracks become visible.During Sculley’s time at Apple, the company wasoutgunned by the brute force of IBM, then by thecunning maneuvering of the industry’s arms merchant,Microsoft, which made the operating system that ithad licensed to IBM available to all comers. This ledto a proliferation of what were labeled “IBMcompatibles”—some made by startups like Compaq,others by established players like DEC and still morefrom cost-conscious Taiwanese companies such asAcer. These machines shared two traits: the

hardware was built around microprocessors fromIntel, and their operating systems were furnished byMicrosoft. Apple, in the meantime, counted on chipsfrom Motorola (and later IBM) and had to labor hard toconvince programmers to write software for theMacintosh, whose market share dwindled as theyears slipped by. Apple was fighting on two fronts withweak allies against the vast budget of Intel—in anindustry where engineering and capital counted for alot—and the legions of programmers who haddiscovered they could build a business atop MicrosoftDOS and its successor operating system, Windows.Part of Sculley’s response was to gradually increaseApple’s prices in an effort to maintain profit margins—a ploy that propped up earnings for a while buteventually foundered.While pesky newcomers attacked, inventivenesswithered inside Apple. The company that had led theindustry with color on the Apple II, a graphical userinterface with the Macintosh, desk-top publishing andlaser printing, integrated networks, and stereo soundstopped leading. As Sculley departed, amidst a flurryof recrimination prompted by his affection for thelimelight and dalliance with the national stage, thecupboard was bare. The spark of imagination, or,more particularly, the ability to transform a promisingidea into an appealing product, had beenextinguished. Apple introduced no meaningful newproducts in the decade Sculley spent at the helm. Thecomputers that did appear bore sterile names suchas Performa, Centris and Quadra. Computers withmore memory, larger screens and bigger disk drivesdo not count for lifetime achievement awards. TheNewton, a small, digital organizer championed bySculley in his self-appointed role as Apple’s ChiefTechnology Officer, amounted to little more than anexpensive doorstop. In an autobiography, published in1987, Sculley—in what now seems like a veryaccurate assessment about the gulf between hiscapabilities and the Founder he displaced—savagedJobs’ ideas of the future by writing, “Apple wassupposed to become a wonderful consumer productscompany. This was a lunatic plan. High tech could notbe designed and sold as a consumer product.”When Sculley was fired, Apple was in peril.Windows 3.0, introduced by Microsoft in 1990, wasnot as elegant as the Macintosh software, but it wasgood enough. As Sculley returned to the East Coast,Apple’s market share had eroded, its margins hadcollapsed; the best young engineers were inclined toapply for openings at companies such as Microsoft,Silicon Graphics or Sun Microsystems.By the time Sculley departed, Apple’s board haddegenerated. The people who had been majorowners of the company and had a vested interest inits success had been replaced by an odd cast. Thistroupe was almost certainly bolted together by anominating committee eager to demonstrate politicalcorrectness by assembling a board composed ofpeople with different experiences and backgrounds.Over the course of forty-eight months in the mid-1990s, the Board included the company’s own ChiefFinancial Officer, a person who had built a riverboat

gaming company, the CEO of an enormous Europeanpackaging company, the head of National PublicRadio, and an executive from Hughes Electronics andStarTV. None of these people had experience in thepersonal computer industry, none had worked for anytime in Silicon Valley, none knew the others well andnone, with the exception of Markulla, had a majoreconomic or emotional interest in Apple. It is hard toimagine that they thought of themselves, let aloneacted, as owners. If there were any bond tying themtogether it was probably the desire to avoidembarrassment. It’s little wonder they made twoterrible selections, each of whom was more suited tobe a corporate undertaker than an imaginative leader.The first, Michael Spindler, was a European whosebusiness life, prior to Apple, had consisted of stints atDEC and Intel, where he had been a marketingstrategist. As CEO he continued efforts begun bySculley to sell Apple—with IBM, Sun Microsystemsand Philips as his principal targets—and debatingwhether to license the Macintosh operating system toother manufacturers. An alliance with IBM andMotorola—the sort of convoluted corporate lash-upwhich in the world of technology never amounts toanything—was supposed to slow Microsoft bymarrying Apple software to microprocessors made bythe other two companies. In 1996, after less thanthree years as CEO, Spindler was ushered to the exit.The eight-person Board, without surveying outsidecandidates, turned to a fellow director, Gil Amelio,and charged him with rejuvenating Apple. ThoughAmelio liked to be referred to as Doctor (for his PhDin Physics), it was obvious, even before hisappointment, that he was not the sort of medicinemanthe patient needed.While Apple shriveled, Steve Jobs endured hiswilderness years—an arduous, painful journey that, inretrospect, was probably the best thing that everhappened to him. After being banished from Apple,he sold all but one share of his stock and, aged 30,cast about for a new beginning. In 1986 he boughtPixar, a 44-person company which was owned by thecreator of Star Wars, George Lucas, and haddeveloped a small reputation for making computeraidedanimation systems. Jobs was largely interestedin the influence Pixar’s technology could have onpersonal computers. But for Jobs, Pixar was not themain event. In 1985 he formed a new computercompany which, with characteristic elegance andsymbolism, he named NeXT. There began a torturedtale which culminated at the end of 1996 with the mostunlikely of endings: an acquisition by Apple.Between NeXT’s formation and its sale lay manysagas. The company showed how difficult it is foranyone to start another company after enjoyingextraordinary success with a first. Jobs was a victimof his fame and notoriety and, instead of recalling allthe lessons of Apple’s first year (when money wastight, resources strained, survival always a question,and a workbench in his parents’ garage theproduction line) his first acts at NeXT seemed like acontinuation of life at a $1 billion company. Paul Randdesigned NeXT’s corporate logo just as he had done

for IBM, ABC and UPS; I.M. Pei, the high priest ofmodernist architecture, was commissioned to build afloating staircase (echoes of which showed up yearslater in many apple stores), and Ross Perot, StanfordUniversity and others (including Jobs) supplied thestart-up capital at a valuation roughly equivalent towhat was awarded Microsoft at the time of its 1986IPO.As NeXT evolved into a maker of corporateworkstations, Jobs was taken out of his natural milieu.Instead of conjuring up ideas for products millions ofconsumers could use, he found himself consigned toa market in which purchasing decisions are made bycommittees who aren’t rewarded for makingadventurous choices; where competitors such as Sun,Silicon Graphics, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and, ofcourse, Microsoft wasted no opportunity to heapscorn; and where an expensive sales force isrequired to make inroads into customers. The black,cube shaped computer, which fell victim to terribledelays—one of the many curses that imperil an overfinancedstart-up—soon found itself along other Jobsinspiredproducts in New York’s Museum of ModernArt. Customers were less impressed. NeXT’sfounding team gradually got burned out by the strainand the scent of failure. In 1993, Jobs threw in thetowel on the systems business and attempted toconvert NeXT into a software business—a strategythat invariably is the harbinger of doom for anycomputer company.By 1996, both NeXT and Apple had petered out.Jobs had been relegated to a cameo act in thecomputer business, although his tenacity andpatience at Pixar had paid off. Nine years after hispurchase of the company, the release of the animatedpicture Toy Story and a subsequent IPO gave thecompany the financial staying power to cope with themuscle of its exclusive distribution partner, Disney(which, a decade later, bought the company for $7.4billion, thereby making Steve Jobs its largestindividual shareholder since Walt Disney himself).Then, almost like a chapter out of a nineteenthcentury Victorian romance, Jobs, getting wind ofApple’s interest in purchasing Be, a company startedby a former Apple executive, convinced Amelio thathe was better advised to purchase NeXT and use itsprowess with the UNIX operating system as thesoftware foundation of Apple’s future. Amelio votedfor NeXT, bought the company for $430 million incash, gave Jobs 1.5 million shares of stock and thus,unwittingly, issued his own exit visa. There followed anawkward period during which Jobs announced that hewas only interested in advising Amelio and takingcare of Pixar. His sale of all but one of his recentlyawarded Apple shares registered his real opinion ofAmelio. Less than three quarters after NeXT becamepart of Apple, Amelio was replaced by Jobs, who wasappointed interim CEO. This provoked cackling andheadlines that sounded like obituary notices: “Howdid this mess happen? The untold story of Apple’sdemise” and “Rotten to the Core” were just two of themessages splattered across the front of nationalmagazines. Michael Dell, then one of the darlings of

the personal computer industry, posed a rhetoricalquestion about Apple in the fall of 1997: “What would Ido? I’d shut it down and give the money back to theshareholders.”Steve Jobs had been weathered by his years in thewilderness. His battle with NeXT had taught him to tocope with dire circumstances and his experience inthe animation business at Pixar was as the CEO ofthe world’s most technologically advanced creativecompany. The Apple he inherited in the fall of 1997had lost its creative zest and leadership position inthe technology industry, was almost out of cash, wasunable to recruit bright young engineers, wasdrowning in inventory of unsold computers and hadnothing imaginative in the works. Jobs wasunromantic. The marketing department, eager toannounce a change for the better, wanted to run adsthat said “We’re back!” Jobs would brook none of it.Instead, he rolled out an advertising campaignlabeled, “Think different,” based on a series of blackand-whitephotographs of remarkable individuals. Acouple of iconoclastic businessmen were billboarded,but they were heavily outnumbered by the artistic andinventive. There were musicians (Bob Dylan, MariaCallas and Louis Armstrong), artists (Picasso andDalí), an architect (Frank Lloyd Wright), charismaticleaders (Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King),scientists (Einstein and Edison), movie makers (JimHenson), dancers (Martha Graham), and anadventurer (Amelia Earhart). The campaign was arallying cry, but it was also a keen expression of theartistic, sensuous, romantic, mystical, inquisitive,seductive, austere and theatrical side of the Jobs—adjectives not usually associated with the leader of atechnology company. It was these attributes thateventually came to be expressed in Apple’s products,which Jobs turned into objects of desire.The advertising campaign was simple and direct,which perhaps had more significance inside thecompany than outside. It said, in plain terms, that thecompany could not afford to mimic others but neededto forge its own path. Jobs also forced the companyto act differently. He cut costs, forced substantiallayoffs, killed entire product lines he deemedworthless, undifferentiated or insipid, such as printersor the Newton. He stopped licensing the Macintoshoperating system to other manufacturers, limited thedistribution of Apple products to all but the most rabidof its dealers, installed five of his executives fromNeXT as pillars of his management team whilekeeping Fred Anderson as Chief Financial Officer,jettisoned most of the discredited board of directorsand replaced them with practical, hard-knuckledpeople he trusted, engineered a $150 millioninvestment from Microsoft (that simultaneously endedyears of legal bickering between the two companies,beefed up Apple’s cash position, and ensured theInternet Explorer browser a prominent place onMacintosh computers) and, within ten months,introduced a fresh line of Macintosh computers withhis customary flirtatious flair. One year later, in the fallof 1998, Apple reported annual sales of almost $6billion and a profit of more than $300 million,

compared to sales of $7.1 billion and a loss of $1billion at the time he took the helm.Despite Jobs’ helmsmanship, the pop of thedotcom bubble, the recession of 2001 and the Mac’ssmall market share meant that Apple was still battlingagainst the tide. Leaks had been caulked, uselesscrew members had been made to walk the plank,worthless cargo had been tossed overboard, but thevessel’s course had not been altered. This wasreflected in the losses of 2001, the first red ink inthree years. It was against this perilous backdrop thatthe iPod and Apple’s stores were birthed—both bornof necessity and the sense that the company could notcount on the kindness of others to foster its growth.Independent software developers, includingcompanies such as Adobe, which had helped Applecreate the desktop publishing market, were beginningto abandon the Macintosh; retailers, particularly thelarge stores, were either ignoring or neglectingApple’s products. Jobs and his management teamresisted the temptation to make large acquisitions—the normal way that large companies tend to try toescape testing times and which, almost always, startswith slide presentations promising the moon but endswith write-offs and recrimination. If Apple’s leadersuncovered a small product or promising team thatcould be quickly made productive and folded into anexisting or nascent effort, they pounced. But for realgrowth they relied on their own wit and ingenuity.The first example of Apple’s desire to fend for itselfcame with iMovie, software designed to helpconsumers manage and edit video, an applicationthat, hitherto, might have been supplied by Adobe.Jobs’ conviction that video was the company’sfreedom ticket meant Apple was almost blind-sidedby the dawn of the digital music business. WhileApple was presenting consumers with video software,tens of millions of people were discovering that musicwas available all around the internet. Websites suchas Napster and Kazaa roused the ire of musicpublishers and record companies, but these spots onthe internet, when combined with hundreds of modelsof portable mp3 players, spelled a new chapter for thedistribution of entertainment.It was against this change in consumers’ habits thatthe iPod was conceived and rushed to market at apace similar to the manner in which Sony’s Walkmanhad arrived a generation earlier. It went from start tostore shelves in less than eight months—a madcapeffort to buoy Apple’s flagging sales during the 2001holiday season. The iPod, which at first only workedwith Macintosh computers, had a novel user interface—a dial that helped people sift through their musiclibraries—and a much longer battery life than mostmp3 players. Buried inside was its most importantfeature: a compact version of a UNIX operatingsystem that meant this innocent-looking devicecontained as much computing power as manylaptops. In 2003, while the music labels bickered anddallied, Apple introduced the first legal music onlineservice and replaced the notion of an album with thereality of a track.In the same year in which the iPod was introduced,

Apple opened its first retail store a few miles from theAtlantic coast in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia. Later thatsame day, the second store opened near the PacificCoast in Glendale, California. The stores wereanother expression of the need for Apple to takecharge of its destiny. For most, this looked like adesperate measure, particularly since there were sofew examples beyond the worlds of fashion orcosmetics of manufacturers becoming successfulretailers. Apple’s approach to retailing was influencedby the success of another Northern Californiancompany, The Gap. Jobs had become a director ofthe company and, in turn, Mickey Drexler, themerchant who led The Gap during its decade-longrise, joined the Apple board. The first Apple storerevealed a merchant’s virtuosity. Computers, softwareand consumer electronic devices were displayed inan atmosphere that was like a breath of fresh,California coastal air.The iPod and Apple’s stores struck chords withconsumers, and the company’s managementpounced on the opportunities with the thirst and relishof indefatigable and experienced travelers finallyreaching an oasis. Variants of the iPod wereintroduced as quickly as possible and within fortyeightmonths it had been transformed from a 5GBmonochrome device to a 60GB color player. Whenany model showed signs of wear, Apple’smanagement resisted the opportunity to milk the lastdrop of sales and, instead, replaced it with somethingbetter.The same sort of touch was applied to the storeswith their Genius bars and roving sales assistantsarmed with wireless credit-card terminals. Apple’sU.S. flagship store, which opened on Manhattan’sFifth Avenue in 2006, five years to the day after firsttwo stores opened, was the apogee. Here, on theplaza in front of what was once another symbol ofAmerican success, the GM building, floated a glasscube in which Apple’s illuminated logo wassuspended. The frame for the cube was made fromhand-blasted Japanese steel, pietra serena stonelined the floors and there, twenty-four hours a day,throngs of people of all ages and backgrounds cameto wander, ogle, browse and shop. Apple’s storesreached $1 billion in retail sales faster than any othercompany and by 2007 its sales per square foot—theshorthand measure of any retailer’s health—wasmore than ten times larger than Saks, four timesgreater than Best Buy, and even handily outstrippedTiffany.Inevitably, Apple’s progress was marred byblemishes. There were the occasional productmiscues: a Macintosh housed in a clear plastic cubethat developed hairline surface cracks, lame versionsof the iPod introduced with Motorola and Hewlett-Packard, battery packs in laptop machines that overheatedand an occasional product, like the firstversion of Apple TV, that fell far short of expectations.Later a contretemps erupted over stock options, inparticular, two large grants made to Steve Jobs in2000 and 2001 and which he surrendered in 2003.These, and some more made to other executives,

attracted the attention of the SEC, stirred up the whiffof impropriety and occupied the business press. Butnothing came to threaten Apple as much as SteveJobs’ health when it was disclosed in 2004 that hehad been operated on for pancreatic cancer.Rumors about Apple’s encore to the iPod had beenin the air long before Steve Jobs used one of hishallmark solo shows in San Francisco in 2007 tointroduce the company’s riff on hand-held computing.Though it was dubbed the iPhone, the device Jobsintroduced was not a conventional cell phone or mp3player, was far removed from a personal digitalassistant and did not bear too many resemblances toa portable game device. The same day the iPhonewas introduced, the word “computer” was droppedfrom the company’s name, which was shortened toApple, Inc.—a sign of how far the company hadtraveled in the previous years.The iPhone was a glorious expression of Apple’sapproach to product design. It did not start withlaborious research, focus groups or the acquisition ofanother company with a hot product. It began with afew people trying to design a product they would wantto use and be proud to own. Like many previousproducts conceived under Jobs’ leadership, thisrequired taking a close look at the short-comings ofexisting products, adapting ideas from others andmelding them into something that, by 2007, could onlyhave come from Apple. Such was the allure andromance of being associated with Apple that AT&Tmanagement signed up, on draconian terms, to bethe exclusive U.S. distributor for the iPhone withbarely a glimpse of the product. While theadvertisements, commercials or press reports wouldfrequently employ the term “revolutionary” to describethe iPhone and other Apple products, they wereevolutionary—exquisite refinements of the half-bakedideas and products full of compromises andshortcomings that other companies had prematurelyrushed onto store shelves.The iPhone appeared simple. It fired upimmediately. It was housed in a case less than 12millimeters thick and could connect to any machine—from a supercomputer to a smoke detector—that washooked up to the internet. But simplicity, especiallyelegant simplicity, is deceptively difficult. Jobs’magisterial achievement, one that has few, if any,precedents, was to ensure that a technology companyemploying tens of thousands of people could makeand sell millions of immensely complicated yetexquisite products that were powerful and reliable andwhile also containing a lightness of being. This isApple’s triumph. It is one thing for an individual—Matisse with a line, Henry Moore with a shape, W.H.Auden with a phrase, Copland with a bar, Chanel witha cut—to express themselves. It is another matterentirely for the germ of an idea to be developed,refined, reshaped, molded, tuned, altered andrejected again and again before it is consideredperfect enough to be reproduced in the millions. It isanother matter too to steer, coax, nudge, prod, cajole,inspire, berate, organize and praise—on weekdaysand weekends—the thousands of people all around

the world required to produce something that dropsinto pockets and handbags, or in the case of acomputer, rests on a lap or sits on a desk.The iPhone, in some respects, came to be athrowback to the beginning of Apple and the way inwhich software developers all over the world hadbeen encouraged to write programs for the Apple II. Ina fashion that had not occurred since Microsoft haddeveloped an army of software mercenaries troopingafter its DOS and Windows operating systems, theiPhone ignited an explosion of interest fromprogrammers around the world so that now tens ofthousands of applications, from the life-saving tofrivolous, can be bought with the tap of a finger fromApple’s AppStore.Sales of Apple’s Macintosh computers are nowoutstripped by products that were not even imagined,let alone conceived, at the turn of this century. Thepopularity of the iPod and iPhone and theaccessibility of Apple’s retail store have rejuvenatedsales of Macintosh computers, which were alsohelped by a shift to Intel microprocessors and theconstant refinement of its operating system, whichhas developed a reputation for being more stable andsecure than Windows. The overall results areextraordinary, testament to perhaps the most creativeindustrial turnaround in the history of America. At theend of Jobs’ decade running Apple, an era duringwhich the growth of the personal computer industryhad slowed to a pedestrian pace, its sales had risenfrom $6 billion to $32.5 billion and the price of itsstock had, at its peak, multiplied forty-fold.During a period when so much was fictitious, whenthere were so many empires built on air and whenfrauds were uncloaked, Apple stands is an emblemfor daring, ingenuity and enterprise. When so muchwas piled atop mountains of debt, it is reassuring toknow that real earnings and tangible profits can beused to invest in the future. When weak companiesscurry to Washington to bleat for Federal bailoutmoney, it is a tonic to realize that nothing is moreeffective than the spirit of a restless companythreatened with extinction. When so manymathematicians and scientists caught the scent ofWall Street and used their skills to construct futile riskmodels, it was delightful to know that some of theircontemporaries had spurned the lure of Manhattanhigh-rises and, instead, had chosen to write code orprogram chips, without which Apple’s devices wouldnever have materialized. When entry visas and workpermits were being refused to the brightest fromoverseas, it was all the more meaningful to see thatApple’s engineering ranks were teeming withimmigrants and first-generation Americans. Whenother companies had rushed new products into themarket with scarcely a nod to design and finish, it wasa relief to see a demonstration that aesthetics andattention to detail really make a difference. If everthere was a company that demonstrated anapplication of the exhortation “Yes we can,” it was theApple of the last ten years.As with all books about business, this has been atale of yesterday and today. And, as with all stories of

success, this has been a triumph of human will. Nowlies tomorrow. No technology company has ever beenable to consistently produce great consumer productsfor half a century. So for Apple there is the inevitablequestion, what comes next?Can it continue toproduce encore performances? Will the corpusalways think and act differently? At a time of fears andconcerns for Steve Jobs’ health following thedisclosure of his liver transplant, it’s natural to wonderwho might someday succeed the man whose identityand fate is so closely tied to the company? How willApple avoid the fate of SONY following the retirementof Akio Morita? Will Apple’s next chief possessenough of an owner’s instincts not to keep stopping inhis tracks and wondering, “What would Steve do?”Finally, there is the ultimate barometer reading for anytechnology company—whether it can stay youthful inspirit. This means answering the most testingquestion of all. What will keep the scintillating twentythreeyear old engineers in the world’s greatestcolleges and universities yearning to hear word thatthey have been offered a job at the company formerlyknown as Apple Computer, Inc.?

INDEXAAdvertisingAlbrecht, RobertAlcorn, AlAll One FarmAlpert, RichardAltairAlto ComputerAmerican Telephone and Telegraph, phone phreaksandApple computer, first: built at Jobs’ family home;conflicts over; and contract between Jobs, Wozniak,and Wayne; efforts to find power supply for; firstprices for; first reactions to ; first sale to Byte Shopsof ; Holt and; introduced at Homebrew Club in 1976, ;modifications made to ; pricing of; and Wozniak’searly designs for microprocessor . See also Apple II;Apple IIeApple Computer Company: first management of; atFirst West Coast Computer Faire; logo for; officialformation of . See also Apple Computer, Inc.Apple Computer, Inc.: advertising meetings at ; Appleculture and ; Apple IIe and; arrogance of; attitudetoward technical writers; beginnings of; BlackWednesday firings at; bureaucracy at ; competitionand ; competition with IBM ; and completion ofMacintosh; corporate culture of; dealers and ; earlygrowth of ; early marketing strategy of; employeeturnover at; fan clubs for; finances in 1977, ; financingof ,Apple Computer, Inc. (cont’d.) ; first headquarters of;first marketing campaign of; first staff of; formation ofdivisions by; future of; gifts of computers toeducational institutions from; hiring binge in fall of1980, ; imitators of; impact of rapid growth on; impactof wealth on; introduction of Macintosh by; Japanesemarket and; Jobs’ hesitancies over forming ; Macdivision weekly lunch meeting; meeting with bankmanagers; meeting on publicizing Mac; meetings at;moves to larger headquarters; near failure in 1977, ;new products research at; overseas sales of;personnel recruitment by; press relations of; andproblems with Apple III, ; professionalization of; publicrelations problems of ; public stock offering by ;reasons for studying; rise to top position ; rumoredmerger with IBM; Sculley’s role at ; staff relations in1977, stock distributions or options to buy of; successof; tensions between newcomers to; Terrell and; useof Pascal by; users groups and; Visicalc and ; Wayneand; work retreat for Macintosh Division; workers’benefits at; worth of; Xerox Corporation andApple II personal computer; case design for;contributors to; development of; discussion on pricingof; disk drive added to; introduced at First WestCoast Computer Faire; manuals for; rankings;software forApple III

Apple WriterARPANETArtificial Intelligence Laboratory, StanfordAtari; history of; Jobs works forAtkinson, BillAuricchio, RickAUTOVONBBaba, Neem KarolieBaez, JoanBASIC, used for Wozniak’s microcomputerBaum, Allen; builds computers with Wozniak; andHomebrew Computer Club ; lends Jobs and Wozniakmoney for Apple Computer, Inc. ; Wozniak andBaum, Elmer; Apple stocks and ; hired by AppleComputer; lends Jobs and Wozniak money for AppleComputer, Inc.Belleville, BobBiggs, BartonBlue boxesBoich, MichaelBowers, AnnBreakout (video game)Bricklin, DanielBruener, DonBudge, WilliamBuffet, JimmyBurge, FrankBushnell, NolanByte ShopsCCaen, HerbCall ComputerCantin, HowardCapps, SteveCarson, JohnnyCarter, GeneCarter, MattCavett, DickCharlie Board, TheChaudhari, WasuChiat-Day advertising agency, and advertising forApple Computer, Inc.Chino, KobinClark, CandiClow, LeeColeman, DebiCommodore Business MachinesCommunity Memory ProjectCompucolorComputer Conversor CorporationComputer Space (video game)ComputerlandConsumer Electronics ShowContinental Illinois Bank, Chicago

Cornfeld, BernieCouch, JohnCream Soda ComputerCrocker BankCromemcoCrunch, Captain. See also Draper, JohnCummings, BurtFaber, EdFamily Computer, TheFelsenstein, Lee on Apple II, ; attitude towardmicroprocessorsFernandez, Bill ; Apple stocks and; helps Wozniakand Baum build their first computer; hired by Jobs;relationship with Wozniak and Jobs; role at AppleComputer in 1977,Fial, RonFinley, CharlieFolkedal, TorFolley, ClydeFolon, Jean-MichelFortuneFranklin Computer CorporationFree University of Palo AltoFrench, Gordon. See also Homebrew Computer ClubDDali, PaulData GeneralDavidow, WilliamDavis, TommyDazzlerDEC LSl-11Di Franco, SalvatoreDigital Electronics CorporationDigital Equipment CorporationDisk drives, Apple II and. See also TwiggyDr. Pong (video game)Draper, John; Charlie Board and; Easywriter and;Wozniak and Jobs andDudman, JackDylan, BobEEasywriter (word-processing program)Eddy, JonathanEhret, ArnoldElliot, JayElzig, HalEngelbart, DouglasEngressia, JoeEspinosa, Chris ; Apple II and; on distribution ofApple stocks and options; professionalization ofApple and; on WozniakEsquireF

Friedland, Robert; Jobs andFylstra, DanielGates, WilliamGenentechGhiringelli, PaolaGibbons, FredGinsberg, AllenGoffen, LindaGoldberg, FredGoldman, MauriceGood, TimothyGould, IrvingGran Trak (video game)Grove, AndrewGHHall, JohnHambrecht and QuistHare Krishna temple, Portland, OregonHawkins, TripHelmers, CarlHertzfeld, Andy; background ; completion of Mac and; tests LisaHewlett-Packard; Apple Computer recruits personnelfrom; rejects Wozniak’s microcomputer; Wozniakleaves; Wozniak works forHill, Imogene “Teddy,”Hoar, FredHoffman, AbbieHoffman, JoannaHolmes, ElizabethHolt, Frederick Rodney ; background; changes atApple Computer and; development of AppleComputer and; on distribution of stocks and options ;financial worth of; on firings at Apple Computer ;impact of wealth on ; on Jobs; Markkula and; powersupply for Apple II and; professionalization of AppleComputer and; on recruits from Hewlett-Packard; rolein 1977; on Scott’s forced resignation; on WozniakHomebrew Computer Club ; Apple computerintroduced at; attitude toward professionalization ofApple Computer; First West Coast Computer Faireand; and Intel 8080; Jobs and; Kamradt and; Wozniakand; Wozniak’s computer and; Wozniak’s teenagecamp followers andHomestead High School, Cupertino, Ca.Horn, HapHunt the Wumpus (video game)Huston, DickIBM; competition with Apple Computer ; history of ;rumored merger with Apple ComputerIBM Personal ComputerI

IncInfeld, LewisIntelInterface AgeInvestment bankers, Apple’s public offering andJJanov, ArthurJanov, RobJapanese computersJobs, ClaraJobs, PattyJobs, Paul; background of; first Apple Computerheadquarters in home of ; life in Mountain View, Ca.Jobs, Steven: and addition of disk drive to Apple II;advertising for Apple computers and; advice fromChino on going into business; attitude towardcorporate culture; attitude toward corporations;attitude toward engineering career; attitude towardHomebrew Computer Club; attitude toward unions ;attitude toward work conditions ; becomes phonephreak; changes at Apple Computer and; childhoodof ; Commodore’s efforts to buy Apple Computer and; competes with Kamradt for Wozniak; decision to gopublic; dietary beliefs ; distribution of Apple Computerstocks and; Draper and; fears about going intobusiness; financial worth of; financing of AppleComputer and ; firings at Apple Computer and ; andfirst reactions to Apple Computer; Friedland and ; onFriedland; future of Apple Computer and; growth ofApple Computer and; high school days; hiresFernandez ; at Homestead High School; IBMPersonal Computer and; impact of wealth on ; interestin Zen Buddhism ; introduction of Macintosh and;Kamradt and; leaves Reed College and works atAtari; Lisa and; lives on Friedland’s communal farm;Mac project and ; manuals and; Markkula and;meeting on publicity for Mac; meets StephenWozniak; moves to Cupertino School District;personal problems in 1977; and preparation of AppleII for First West Coast Computer Faire ; in primalscream therapy ; and Raskin’s suggestions forimprovements; at Reed College; relationship withFernandez; relationship with Kottke; relationship withRogers; relationship with Scott; relationship withSmith and Hertzfeld; relationship with Wozniak;Rogers’ daughter and; role at Apple Computer ; andsales of Apple Computer stocks; and Scott aspresident of Apple Computer; Scott’s forcedresignation and; software and marketing issues and;software programmers and; speech to StanfordUniversity students; trip to India with Kottke; Twiggyproject and; use of drugs in high school; at weeklylunch meeting at Mac division ; at work retreat; worksat Atari; works at Hewlett-Packard; Wozniak’schanges in Apple computer and; Wozniak’s computerand; on Wozniak’s sale of stocksK

Kaiser Cement, development of Silicon Valley andKamradt, Alex ; Jobs and; Wozniak andKay, AlanKee GamesKentucky Fried ComputersKesey, KenKierulff Electronics, Palo AltoKildall, GaryKlein, MarciaKottke, Dan; Apple stocks and; and first Applecomputer; hired by Apple Computer; relationship withJobs; relationship with Jobs and Rogers; trip to Indiawith JobsKramlich, RichardLLeary, TimothyLewin, Dan’lLicht, HildyLisa; advertising meeting on; introduction of; Macand; preview of ; sales techniques forLisaguideLivingston, Sherry ; Apple stocks and; on Apple IIILockheed Corporation: changed image of; impact ofmissile division on Santa Clara ValleyLutus, PaulMMcCollum, JohnMacintosh computer (Mac): advertising for;competition problems; headquarters for; history of;introduction of; marketing of; meeting on publicizingof; pricing of ; weekly lunch meeting on ; work sessionon introduction ofMcKenna, Regis; background; bureaucratization ofApple Computer and; growth of Apple Computer and;handling of press byMannock, JerryMarkkula, Mike; attitude toward work conditions;choice of Scott as president of Apple Computer;complaints about Scott to; Draper and ; financialworth of; and First West Coast Computer Faire ; IBMPersonal Computer and; impact of wealth on ; investsin Apple Computer ; management-employee relationsand; marketing and ; problems between Jobs andScott and; recruitment from Intel and; resignation ofScott and; retires as president; role in attractinginvestors to Apple; role in 1977; saleMarkkula, Mike (cont’d.) of Apple stocks and; statusat Apple; stock options and; on WhitneyMartin, GaryMartindale, JimMattelMauro, ChuckMaytag, FritzMelmon, RichardMicrocomputers: disk drives and ; impact onHomebrew Computer Club

“Micro-8 Newsletter,”Microprocessors; impact of ; prices in 1975Milledge, VickiMillek, MarekMinsky, MarvinMITSMollard, RoyMoody, BobMoore, Fred; background ; and Community MemoryProject; and Homebrew Computer ClubMorgan StanleyMorris, AnthonyMOS TechnologyMotorola 6800 microprocessorMurray, MichaelNNational Computer ConferenceNational SemiconductorNewsweekNewton, BobNixon, RichardNold, EllenNova microcomputerNoyce, RobertOpel, JohnOregon Feeling CenterOsborne, AdamOsborne ComputersOPPARCPascalPeddle, Charles H.Penny Arcade (video game)PenthousePeople’s Computer CompanyPersonal SoftwarePong (video game)Popular ElectronicsPower supply for computersPretorious, F. J.PricingPrimal scream therapyProcessor TechnologyPROMSPuppy Pong (video game)Radio ShackRainbow Farm, TheRAMR

RampartsRaskin, Jef; and Mac project; sells Apple sharesReed College, Portland, OregonRegis McKenna Public Relations Agency . See alsoMcKenna, RegisRichardson, Jean; on impact of growth of AppleComputer on working conditions ; on ScottRisk, BettyRizzoRoach, JohnRobertson, Alice; Apple stocks owned by. See alsoWozniak, Alice Robertson Rock, Arthur ; Appleshares owned byRoebuck, JoeRogers, Nancy; claims Jobs is her child’s father ; onimpact of Jobs’ trip to India; Jobs and; on Jobs’desire to find his natural parents; on Jobs’ fears aboutgoing into businessROMsRosen, BenRoshi, SuzukiRosing, WayneRothmueller, KenRoybal, PhilSSan Jose MercurySander, WendellSanders, JerrySanta Clara Valley: description of in 1950s, impact ofLockheed on. See also Silicon ValleySarofim, FayezSchwartz, MelSchweer, KurtScientific AmericanScott, Michael; Apple Computer stocks and; Apple’spublic stock offering and ; attitude toward software ;becomes president of Apple Computer; and decisionto go public; Draper and; financial worth of; financingof Apple Computer and; firings at Apple Computerand; and First West Coast Computer Faire; forcedresignation of ; formation of divisions at AppleComputer and; and organization of Apple Computerstaff; professionalization of Apple Computer and;recruitment and; relationship with Jobs; role in 1977;role of; status at Apple Computer; on VisicalcSculley, John: becomes Apple Computer’s president;role at Apple ComputerSDS 940Second West Coast Computer Faire“Secrets of the Little Blue Box,”SEVASharp, PatShields, BrookeSilicon Valley: Apple Computer, Inc. as example offirms in; development of; First West Coast ComputerFaire in; in mid-seventies; rapid growth of. See alsoSanta Clara ValleySingleton, Henry

Smith, Burrell; background of ; and completion of Mac; phone phreaking andSmith, HankSoftware: Apple II and; Apple III and; controversy over;Macintosh andSoftware companies: Macintosh and ; worseningrelations with AppleSoftware Publishing CorporationSol Terminal ComputerSolomon, LesSousan, AndreSpergel, MartyStanford University, Palo Alto, Ca.; ArtificialIntelligence Laboratory; Linear Accelerator CenterStarSunnyvale ElectronicsSylvaniaSyzygy. See AtariTandyTechnical writersTechnological American PartyTechnology Education Act of 1982,Terrell, Paul; and first Apple computerTexas InstrumentsTimeTognazzini, BruceTouch Me (video game)Trak Ten (video game)Tramiel, JackTRSTurner, IkeTuttle, MyronTwiggy (disk drive)TUUNUSONCorporationUS FestivalUsers groups, attachments and programs for ApplebyValenti, CarlValentine, DonVarianVenrock, financing of Apple Computer byVideo BrainVideo games, Atari andVidovich, StephenVisicalcVWall Street Journal, TheW

Warren, JimWatson, TomWay, RobertWayne, Ron; Apple II and ; on Atari; and early days ofApple Computer; ends partnership with Jobs andWozniakWhitfield, HenryWhitney, ThomasWhole Earth Truck Store, Menlo Park, Ca.Wigginton, Randy ; Apple II and; on Apple III;professionalization of Apple Computer and; onrelationship between Scott and Jobs; role in 1977; onScottWozniak, Alice Robertson . See also Robertson,AliceWozniak, Jerry; attitude toward Jobs; background of;life in Sunnyvale, Ca.; moves family to Sunnyvale, Ca.Wozniak, LeslieWozniak, MargaretWozniak, MarkWozniak, Stephen; addition of color to Apple;addition of disk drive to Apple II and; attitude towardLockheed;Baum and; becomes ham radio operator; becomesphone phreak; birth of; builds first computer; CharlieBoard and; childhood of; Commodore BusinessMachine’s efforts to buy Apple Computer and;conflicts with Jobs ; designs own microcomputer ;designs terminal for Kamradt; and early days of AppleComputer; early interest in electronics; early study ofcomputers; electronic pranks of; family background;financial worth of; and first reactions to Applecomputer; and further development of first Applecomputer; high school electronics training; Holt and;and Homebrew Computer Club; impact ofprofessionalization of Apple ; impact of wealth on ;influence of McCollum on; on Jobs; marital problemsin 1977 of; McKenna and; meets Jobs; power supplyfor Apple computer and; prank at First West CoastComputer Faire; reaction to his microcomputer;relationship with Fernandez and Jobs ; returns toApple Computer ; Robertson and; role in 1977; saleof Apple stocks by; scheme to correct lopsided stockdistribution ; software and marketing issues and;telephone pranks ; at University of Colorado ; USFestival and; Wigginton and Espinosa and ; winsprize in Science Fair ; works at Hewlett-Packard ;works on video games with Jobs; writes software forhis computerXXerox Corporation: buys Apple stocks ; influence onApple ComputerXerox 8010Xerox StarZen Buddhism, Jobs’ interest inZ

Table of ContentsTitle PageCopyright PageDedicationAcknowledgementsIntroductionBOOMTOWN BY THE BAYSUPER SECRET SKY SPIESCARBURETORS AND MICROPHONESTHE CREAM SODA COMPUTERTHE CONDUCTORTHE LITTLE BLUE BOXHONEY AND NUTSBUCKETS OF NOISESTANLEY ZEBER ZENSKANITSKYHALF RIGHTA LOT OF POOPMERCEDES AND A CORVETTEWHAT A MOTHERBOARDUP TO SPECTHE BEST SALESMENTHE BOZO EXPLOSIONTHE PLATINUM CREDIT CARDWELCOME IBM, SERIOUSLY -EPILOGUEINDEX