CHM Live | Apple at 50: Five Decades of Thinking Different

Hello. Hello. Hello. It's so great to see everybody tonight. Wow. You can feel the energy in this room. It's great to have everybody in the room. I want to thank everybody who's online watching us. I also want to thank everybody in this room who has worked on an Apple product. You have literally changed history and changed the way we communicate. I wish we had 50 chairs up here because there are so many people in the room we would love to hear from. My name is Mark Edkin. I am the CEO of the Computer History Museum. We are here tonight to celebrate David Pogue's book, Apple, the First 50 Years.

We're also here to celebrate CHM's initiative on Apple. We're launching a new exhibit. We're launching events like this, family days, demonstrations, and more. As many of you know, we have the world's largest collection of historical artifacts. We've been collecting for over 40 years. That includes 6,000 rare pieces of Apple history.

Yeah, thank you. We use those pieces. We don't just collect. We use those pieces to have impact, to tell stories, to decode the past, inform the present, and inspire the future. And we've taken the rarest pieces from our Apple collection, the prototypes, and we have an exhibit downstairs. It's an exhibit that will give you unique insight to how these machines were designed, how they were engineered, how they were created. And we also hope it'll inspire the next generation to become an engineer, an innovator, and an entrepreneur.

The other thing we do is we use our collection. We open it up to writers, historians, technologists. Case in point, David Pogue used our collection, used our archive, used our oral histories to help write this book. He also utilized our incredible knowledge base of curators. Hansen Sue, one of our curators, served as the technical editor of that book. Thank you, Hansen.

And with that, I would like to introduce David Pogue. Many of you know David Pogue. He's won seven Emmys for his work on CBS Sunday Morning. He's been on 20 NOVA episodes. He's been on TED Talks. He was a contributor to Macworld, New York Times columnist, and wrote Mac for Dummies. And thank you David for making this the kickoff to your new book. So introducing please David.

Wow, this is really cool. This is going to be an amazing night. I'll have you know you were lucky to be here. This event sold out in 15 minutes. So that tells me two things. It tells me that you are the few, the proud, and it tells me that they underpriced the tickets. So we are also being watched by a vast audience on the live stream. So, for the benefit of the live people on the live stream, can I hear the live people cheer? And now, for the benefit of the people in the room, could all the people on the live stream cheer? My wife's like, 'That joke's never going to land.'

So what's interesting about this book is that it began the journey of this thing began right here on this stage two years ago when I was asked to MC the Mac 40th anniversary event and they brought Andy Herzfeld and Bill Atkinson and Susan Kare and all the key people who designed the Mac and it was just it was like a love fest like a Woodstock. It was laughter and tears and PTSD. And what did I say? And then a few weeks later, my wife Nikki, that's that's her right there. Yeah. She literally shook me awake in the middle of the night and she's like, 'David, I have a great idea for a book.' And I'm like, 'What?' She goes, 'That thing was so emotional, so much fun. You should do a book on Apple's 50th.' And I literally shut her down. I'm like, 'Dude, that's come and gone.' And we went back to sleep. But in the morning, I'm like, 'Has it?' And I looked it up and no, it was 2 years away. The perfect amount of time to write a 600-page book if you're crazy. So, we all owe all this to Nikki.

What then followed was 150 interviews. What happened to my slide? God damn it. We transferred this from Keynote to PowerPoint this afternoon. God damn it, Johnny. I was up there. I can't win. They'll fix it in the edit anyway. Oh, HERE THEY ARE. OH, OKAY. THANK YOU, MICROSOFT. Apple did not have editorial control over the book, but they did do something extraordinary. They said I could interview current executives, engineers, and designers, which is a blessing. I can't because otherwise the last 200 pages would have been blank. So incredibly generous. Thank you guys. And access to the archives. So Apple's two archivists dedicated weeks to finding amazing pictures and documents for the book. I cannot tell you how appreciative I am.

And then the computer history museum got involved. So this outfit has been conducting for many years an oral histories project. So they interview like long interviews like six, eight hours important figures like Mike Markkula, the adult supervision for Apple for its first 20 years. People who you can't interview anymore. Some of them have passed away, some of them have developed dementia. So, it was an incredible resource. And then as you heard Hansen, who talk about overqualified, grew up in Cupertino, worked at Apple, he's a historian, and he works at the computer history museum. So Hansen and then also Hansen hooked me up like, 'Oh, I can get you in touch with Bill Fernandez. Like, I can get you in like he knows everybody.' So, a total gift. And the result is that it came out yesterday. Yesterday. And people online are taking pictures of it like propped against their iMacs and stuff like one guy said it's so beautiful I'm buying the Kindle version so they don't have to turn the pages. I highly recommend that idea.

So the book is in color. That is very expensive to do as the publisher made expressly clear. But it's quite beautiful and it'll be available for me to autograph downstairs later, but I'm not here to push books. So Apple is one of the most successful, most profitable, most scrutinized companies in the history of the world. 2.5 billion people at this moment are carrying around Apple devices. That if you're doing the math is 31% of every man, woman, and child alive. If they were a country, they would be the biggest country in the world, bigger than China or India. They earn a million dollars every 90 seconds. So next time you're feeling well paid, they're approaching a $4 trillion market capitalization. And it all started with these two Steves. Neither one of them could be with us tonight. Steve Wozniak has another thing, but we did interview him. I interviewed him at this museum a week and a half ago, and we're going to show you now an excerpt from that story.

But the two Steves would never have met and there never would have been an Apple if they hadn't had a mutual friend at the Cupertino High School who hung out independently with both guys and was like, 'You guys are both into Dylan. You guys are both into pranks. You should meet.' His name is Bill Fernandez. He became Apple employee number four. HE'S HERE. HE'S HERE, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.

Greetings.

And the mic doesn't work.

Yes, the mic. The mic worked earlier. Come on. You're going to stand over here and I was going to stand over here. That's the way we rehearsed it so we could look at the camera. We have the lights in our eyes. Yeah. Come on.

All right. Get with the program here, Dave. Have I got it right? Because what I wrote in the book I hope is correct.

I haven't read the book yet, so I don't know if you got it right. I'm pretty sure it's right. You were mutual friends. Yes.

And tell us about the actual day when you introduced Jobs to Woz.

It was a night like no other night. I can't work like this. I met Steve Jobs in junior high school and I got him interested in electronics and we started going back and forth to each other's garages doing electronics projects and we were over at each other's houses so often that my mom considers Steve Jobs her fifth son. Okay. And she's known for that. I moved into the house I lived in when I was five and across the street the Wozniaks moved into the same house. It was a new tract that was built for Lockheed engineers. His father was a Lockheed engineer, but he was four years ahead of me. So, we were never childhood friends. It wasn't until high school that I started doing electronics projects with Woz and we were but he didn't have a garage he could work in. So, he had to come over and work in my garage and that's where we built the Cream Soda Computer one summer. Okay. So, I had an electronics buddy and electronics buddy. And then right next to Woz's house was Mr. Taylor's house. And Mr. Taylor had had an electronic surplus store and when he closed the store he moved his stock into his garage and I had no money being just a kid. So I would do gardening in his front yard and we had a little log and I would collect hours and every now and then when I needed parts for a project I'd go over to Mr. Taylor's house and we'd consult the log and he'd tell me how many hours you know each the parts I wanted were worth. Okay. And that's how one that's one of my sources of parts. So Jobs bicycled over to my house one day so we could hang out. I needed parts. So, we went across the street to Mr. Taylor's house. Woz next door was out on the street washing his car. And I said, 'Well, here are two electronics buddies. They'd probably like to know each other.' And so, I instead of going to Mr. Taylor's house, I turned left and said, 'Hey, Woz.' Well, we didn't say Woz in those days. They were both Steve. They weren't Woz until they were both working in the same building at Apple years later. But at that point, it was just Steve. So, Steve, I've got a friend named Steve here you might like to meet. And that's the story.

And in brief, we hear that there were kind of two Steve Jobs's. There's a Steve Jobs 1.0, very raw, very, you know, some say cruel and abusive, and then there's a mellower one after he came back from the next Pixar and all that. What was he like when you knew him, like middle school, high school?

Well, in those days, we were just clueless kids. Seriously. Huh. Okay. So, we didn't know anything. And then as we grew up, we'd go over to each other's houses. We'd take long walks. We'd go out in the orchards and talk about philosophy and life and over and girls and whatever we couldn't understand and what we couldn't figure out and who we might be able to hook up. That was in high school age, not in middle school. Okay. That's tough. So at that point, we were just clueless kids trying to figure things out.

Well, I want to apologize to your mother. Last week CBS Sunday Morning and I came to film an interview with Woz in the very spot where you and Jobs...

She noticed that.

Yes.

She had a friend across the street call her and say, 'You know, there are people videotaping up in your driveway. Did you know about that?' And she didn't.

Yes. I know she noticed because she came out and yelled at us. But you could feel the history. I don't mean your mom. I mean the house. The house. Yeah. Anyway, Bill Fernandez, ladies and gentlemen, thank you, man. This is so awesome.

So on April, so then came the Apple 1 and the decision to start a little company to market it. And on April 1st, 1976, almost exactly 50 years ago, they signed a partnership agreement. And that's the actual signatures. However, there's something wrong with that photo because there was in fact a third founder. There was this mythical guy, this Ronald Wayne character who supposedly also signed that I got to yell over here. Also signed the document was cut in for 10% of the company. Decades have gone by. Nobody's ever seen this guy, interviewed him, heard from him, but you guys, he's here, TOO.

Ronald Wayne is here. Thank you for joining us, man. Here, I'll just give you this and you can hold it.

Thank you very much for having me here. I much appreciate the opportunity.

Have I told it right so far?

You have told it absolutely correct.

Can you tell us about why the two Steves needed your help?

Ah, well, it began when Jobs and I were working at Atari and, he came to me one time. Should I give you the whole story?

Shorten version.

Well, I at one point in time I was involved in slot machines and I was involved in the gaming industry. I actually created the first fully electronic slot machine qualified by the Nevada State Gaming Control Board. Okay. Thank you. That's better. All right. So, I'm not used to this. But you said Woz was concerned about who would own his work at Apple because he was still working at HP. That's correct. Well, Woz was very proprietary about the circuits that he designed and he knew that he had to turn over full ownership or title to whatever he created to the ownership of the company. And no matter what Jobs tried to do, he couldn't dissuade him from that. Jobs had many talents, but diplomat was never one of them. And you know what a diplomat is? That's a guy that can tell you to go to hell in a way that makes you look forward to the trip. Okay. And anyway, he didn't have that talent, but he thought that I had the skill and the talent to be able to do this. I said, 'Well, fine. Bring him over the house. We'll sit down. We'll chat.' and I figured I could solve the problem for them. They came by and Woz is a reasonable guy. All he had to do is lay it out for him as to the importance of proprietorship of circuitry and concepts and ideas. And it took me about I think maybe 30 minutes to discuss the thing with him and he popped up and said that's it. Okay, I understand. And he accepted the concept of proprietorship and his designs would become the property of the company. It was at that moment in time when Jobs jumped up and said that's it. We're going to form a company and he and Woz would have 45% and then knocked me off my pins. He said Ron Wayne is going to have 10% as tiebreaker in case he had any disputes in the future. I said, 'Okay, fine. That's planned.' So I marched him into my office and I sat down to my IBM Selectric typewriter and I typed out three copies of a three-page partnership agreement and Jobs and Wozniak had never seen anything like that where somebody who was not an attorney would sit down and write down a complete partnership agreement. You could have knocked his eyes off with a stick as he's watching this. Anyway, that was the beginning, the origin of the Apple Empire.

It's amazing to hear it from the actual guy. But if your book is correct, and by the way, he's got his book here, too. 12 days later you changed your mind about getting involved with these two scruffy guys.

That is true because the situation evolved where we had this order or they had gotten this order from the Byte Shop and they were going to produce 50 machines for the Byte Shop. And in order to do that, you had to buy a lot of parts. And the parts that they committed to was a commitment for $15,000. And this is 50 years ago. It'd be the equivalent of about $100,000 today. And the problem was that this was a partnership, not a corporation, which meant that we were equally and severally liable. And if the whole thing came unglued, Jobs and Woz didn't have two nickels to rub together. So, who are they going to come after obviously and I didn't feel that I could stand the risk of such a disaster. I mean, I could have lost everything. Yeah. So, I passed I decided to slip away. That was essentially that was what that is. But I actually never sold my 10%.

What?

I actually never sold my 10%.

HE'S WORTH $350 BILLION.

The story that's been floating around for decades about $800 for sale, you know, that I had sold for 800 that was totally inaccurate. It was a fact that when I had my name taken off the contract for economic purposes because I was scared witless to tell you the truth. The agent at the office said, 'Well, you got to have some sort of number on this' and suggested $800. I said, 'If that's what it takes, let's go ahead and do that.' But what happened actually as far as the $800 was concerned was that several at least I think it was about two months after I'd separated myself from the enterprise, I got an envelope in the mail from Jobs containing no letter, no note, no explanation, nothing. Just a check for $800. And to be candid, I thought it was a tip. And a cheap one at that for the work that I had done because I had done quite a bit. I'd created the Newton logo which was the first...

Yeah. Here, that was Apple's first logo. Ron waved at it.

Yeah. And no one was more surprised than I when it became a worldwide icon to tell you. Well, so in your book, you mentioned that probably the number one question people ask you is do you regret having left the partnership? Well, actually I for you know the reasons why I left. Okay. Yeah. But it was purely protective. All right. It was a matter of getting out from under a debt that I couldn't endure. That makes sense. And in the book you said, 'But I've never starved.' No. In brief, what are you working on now? What am I working on now? Thank you for asking. As a matter of fact, my associate, Mr. Charles Stigger and I have developed a computer system that will run on 30% less power and will run not only faster than any other computer in the world, it'll run faster than any other computer possibly could run. And that is what we're developing today.

Well, thank you for joining us, Ronald. Thank you. So good. Ronald Wayne, he is here. All right. So, our first onstage guest is the one and only person who has been at Apple for the entire 50 years. As an added blessing, he has a steel trap memory like you would not believe. He is a natural explainer to book authors like me because he spent years writing documentation for Apple. He became my best friend for questions in writing the book. He was so generous with this time. Like I kept interviewing people and they were like and then we were in the Infinite Loop campus and then we were in Cupertino. I'm like what is that? Is that far away? I don't get it. So Chris literally drew me a map. And if you open this book when you get your copy, I took that. It's a two-page spread that looks like that. I stole his idea. Oh, I don't need this anymore. Ladies and gentlemen, he is here tonight. Chris Espinosa.

So, if you've been here for 50 years and you started at adult working age, you must now be 90 and looking really good. There's a picture of me in the basement of Bandley 1 that looks like crap.

All right. So, how is it that you got involved so young? You're what, 14?

I was 14 or 15 when my friend Jim Guard and I took the bus up and helped Paul Terrell set up the first Byte Shop computer store. HEY PAUL.

PAUL TERRELL IS HERE TOO.

And then one of the things that we saw in that and the other Byte Shops were the flyers for the Homebrew Computer Club. And I managed to persuade my mother to drive us up there on, you know, the odd Wednesday evening so that we could sit in this room full of weirdos while she sat in a Ford Gran Torino station wagon in the parking lot for 3 hours. And she got tired of that pretty quickly and said, you know, is there somebody who lives near you who could drive you to these? She was fairly comfortable with it at that point. And the person who lived closest to me was Steve Wozniak, and he was already giving Randy Wigginton. Hey, Randy.

Is Randy here? Randy is here. OH MY GOD. EVERYBODY COME TO THE STAGE. EVERYBODY.

And so, Woz drove me and Randy, because Randy had gone to summer school with me, at Homestead High School where Woz had gone and I was at Homestead. And we'd drive up to Homebrew and then come back and we'd sit in the Denny's or the Bob's Big Boy and Randy would put sugar in the salt shakers and Woz would leave tips under inverted glasses of water and we'd write software for the Apple 2.

Wow. And what was the relationship between you and Woz? Was he like this is my resource?

He was just a kid with other kids. Woz. I am amazed by Woz at how he has maintained his childlike attitude for 50 years. He's just a big kid and he loves it. And he was just so comfortable hanging around a bunch of teenagers teaching us everything we knew. I didn't know and that clip really explains a lot. See, I didn't know anything about electronics till I met Woz. And so I learned everything I knew from him. And I had no idea that it was weird and that it would absolutely ruin me. And so when I wrote the Apple 2 reference manual, I had no idea that that was not how normal computer design worked.

When I spoke to you at Apple Park, again, thank you Apple for letting me speak to people who are still working there. I asked you, what were you like as a 14-year-old?

Ah, I was probably insufferable. A lot of us were. I was hyperfocused on the things that I really wanted to do. I was, you know, mostly very social with the computer club and the electronics club. But then in the, you know, last two years of high school, I got into the drama club and met a lot of, you know, longtime friends that I've had my whole life and got a little more social. But then I started hanging around with these grown-ups. I mean, they were 20. They were 24 and they were offering to pay me all of $3 an hour just to go, you know, write software and do demos and duplicate cassette tapes and things like that. And I thought it was a nice summer job to have and a little something to do in the afternoons after school. But boy, there was a lot going on. There was some I met some very interesting people like bankers and venture capitalists and all sorts of people.

I mean, I can't get over this. You have seen it all. I mean, every one of the classic Apple lore you've seen. I mean, you saw the dawn of the Apple 2, the very first all-in-one self-contained, ready-to-use computer when it was in wire wrap.

When it was in wire wrap. That's right. So, in brief, what was the world of computers and people's attitude toward computers before the Apple 2 and then after the Apple 2? Well, you know, before the Altair age, people's ideas of computers in the 70s were that computers did two things. One is that they screwed up your electricity bill and the second is that if you gave them a logical riddle, they exploded like on Star Trek. And that was what people knew about computers in the 70s. And so hobbyists had been starting to look at the Intel, you know, the 8080 and the Altair and the IMSAI. And there were maybe a few thousand people in America who had seen a desktop computer that they could actually use. There were, you know, tens and hundreds of thousands more working on minicomputers, but that was all really institutional. The idea that you could have a computer of your own was both radical and it set you apart because, you know, who would have their own computer? It was weird. And so when, you know, the coming out party of the personal computer revolution was the first West Coast Computer Faire in April of 1977, who was there? There we go. Paul was there and that was the debut of the Apple 2, but it was also hundreds and hundreds of other new products and new companies and we were there front and center and we had Mike Markkula to come in and shepherd us to impute the impression of a successful organized company. You know, we looked like the duck above the water. And we had the slickest booth and we had beautiful brochures and we had a nice display and you know I was even dressed up in my Levi's Panatella rust-colored wide whale corduroy three-piece suit. Come on. It was 1977. Hair down to here. And it was you know it was like an explosion of people suddenly looking at these things and saying you know I could have the power of these big room full of computers and I could have that all to myself. I wouldn't have to time share it. I wouldn't have to lease it. Wouldn't have to ask anybody to use it. And it would only, you know, cost me $1,295 which was $7,000 in today's money. That was a lot of money, but people were doing it.

Unfortunately, this should be a 10-part Netflix miniseries, but we have an hour to do 49 years now. So, as I understand it, the Apple 2 was a huge hit and it literally sustained Apple for the next 10 years as they tried to come up with its successor. Several of which failed. So, what was the idea behind the Apple 3 and give that incredible description of the heat problems that you gave me with the pins?

Okay. Okay. Sorry, Wendell. So, as soon as we really succeeded with the Apple 2, it became obvious that we needed to have a follow-on product. And Frederick Brooks calls this the second system syndrome. And everybody has a problem because it's like you want to do the same thing but better. And Wendell Sanders designed a really really nice board, but kind of at the last minute in design, the marketing team decided that it needed to have an Apple 2 emulation mode so it could run all the Apple 2 software. So he needed to put all of Woz's crazy ass circuitry on the board to make it work like an Apple 2. And he came up with this brilliant way of doing it is that he popped the memory off of the main board and he put it on an auxiliary board that sat on top of it. And they picked two sets of connectors, vertical pins, one on each side, and then they just sat the memory down on top of that, but they didn't bolt it down. And so what happened was Steve hated fans. He always hated...

Steve Jobs didn't like fans.

And so the heat management was this solid aluminum chassis and it still got really hot inside. It was just supposed to radiate it out. And what happened was when the heat built up inside the Apple 3 from, you know, hours and hours of use, then that board floating on those pins would flex. And what happened was we didn't use gold connectors. We used aluminum connectors that built...

Man, if you found your audience...

I'm talking to MY PEOPLE HERE. AND what builds up on pins? I don't belong here. And so the pins would oxidize and they had higher resistance and then you'd have more attenuation on the memory clock circuitry and you'd lose access to memory and the computer would crash. And the solution to this was to reseat the board. And since you didn't want to open up the case, what you did was you lifted the lip of the computer off 3 to 5 inches. This was an officially documented service technique and you dropped it again and that broke up the oxide and the computer would boot again. So that kind of damaged the reputation of the Apple 3.

Yeah. So, I'd heard this story about the advice to the dealers to drop the computer on the desk to reseat the pins. I thought it was apocryphal. There's so many stories, great stories that are not in this book because they're not true. So, this story about Steve Jobs wanted the iPod small as possible and so like they brought him the prototype and he dropped it in the fish tank and he saw air bubbles. You're like, 'See that? THERE'S STILL SPACE in there. Make it smaller.' What a great story. Not true. And I thought this story was not true. It's too good to be true. And Hansen got me the oral history of Wendell Sander. And he said it.

Yep.

So it's true.

It's true.

Okay. So then came the famous trip to visit Xerox PARC. If you want to see that whole segment, go to YouTube and watch the Mac at 40 panel. Incredible. And you were there for all of this. You were seeing how the Lisa developed a graphic interface, mouse, overlapping windows, menus. Right there it is.

I was there in fits and starts because I was going to college trying to get a college degree because I didn't think that my career would go anywhere without great...

I know. But it would have made a better story if you were there the whole time.

That's true. That's true.

Yeah.

But it's not true.

That's not true.

It's not true. All right. No, no, no. The thing is that the Macintosh was the product of three people. It was the product of Mike Markkula who wanted to sell an inexpensive home all-in-one computer. And you know what? Mike was right. What saved us with the iMac was an inexpensive all-in-one home computer. And that's what Mike wanted to do in 1979. He managed to convince Jeff Raskin and Jeff started working on finding resources to work on it and Jeff found this guy in the Apple 2 repair line who had learned as I did all of Woz's weird circuitry and amazing hardware technology from having to repair the Apple 2s that didn't make it through manufacturing. This is Burrell Smith. And so the triumvirate of Mike Markkula with the idea of who it was for and Jeff Raskin for how it would work and Burrell Smith for how it would be designed. They came up with the core concept of the Macintosh well before the trip to Xerox PARC. Xerox PARC added the graphic user interface and the ease of use, but the form factor and the target was those three guys.

Wow. And so then Jobs who was pushed off the Lisa project for reasons of volatility and personality, right? He kind of found the Macintosh project and said, 'This is more like it. I'm taking this over.'

Generally, that's what my book says.

Yes. So famously what he did was he started I mean Jeff was kind of running it on a shoestring and Steve went and grabbed a bunch of people. He grabbed Andy Herzfeld. He grabbed me. He grabbed a bunch of people from all over Apple.

Andy's here.

Yeah, Andy's here. Andy Herzfeld is in the room.

And he also got Bill Atkinson to port the graphics routines from the Lisa. So Lisa Graph became Mac Graph and then he decided not to have two names. So he called it QuickDraw on both platforms. And that's when it really got started.

Can you having seen it describe Steve Jobs's treatment? Like I kept hearing from these people two different versions. There's oh Steve Jobs is just cruel. He was just mean. And then I heard Steve Jobs is different from the others in Silicon Valley who are egocentric. He was this rare mission-driven... It's a different thing. Okay. And multiple people told me, you know, I said, 'Steve, you can't do that in this much memory.' And he would scream at me and I'd go home and think about it and I would find a way. I mean, I kept hearing that. So, which is it?

Both. Oh my god. I mean, the latter is absolutely true is that he challenged people to be better than they could possibly be. He wasn't the only one who did that. I mean, Jeff Raskin when he sent me off to my first year at college at Berkeley, he gave me this job of writing the Apple 2 reference manual, hardware, software, everything, soup to nuts, by myself while taking a full college course load as a freshman in college. And he didn't tell me that that was crazy. So, I did it. And I came back, you know, nine months later with a laid out, pasted up, typeset on the Unix system in troff with tables set in place and the TeX process. Oh, troff, we got T-R-O-F-F fans in the house, don't we? Who are you people? And so, you know, Steve wasn't unusual in that challenge, but he was more abrasive about it, but he also commanded, I think more loyalty and, you know, more of a sense of gratification at the success from that. But he could also be, you know, especially back then, he could be, you know, sneakily or, you know, badly cruel. When he hired me to come run the Macintosh publications department and drop out of school, he asked my mom first and she told him it was a great idea and I told him I wanted to get my degree and she told me I was nuts. You know, I should take the chance. But Steve didn't tell me that Jeff Raskin was already the head of Macintosh Publications and that as soon as he hired me, he'd be firing my mentor.

Oh wow. You know Andy Herzfeld when I interviewed him told me something I've never forgotten. It's in the book that like Steve he would cry piteously. He would laugh uproariously. He could dress you down. He could put you on a pedestal. He was every adjective you can use to describe a person all in one. And that's why people who say Steve Jobs was this. It's like the blind men with feeling different parts of the elephant like you know...