The Apple I and Apple II computers were shown off
every two weeks at the club meeting. "Here's the latest little
feature," we'd say. We'd get some positive feedback going and turn
people on. It's very motivating for a creator to be able to show what's
being created as it goes on. It's unusual for one of the most
successful products of all time, like the Apple II, to be demonstrated
throughout its development.
Today it's pretty obvious that if you're going to
build a billion-dollar product, you have to keep it secret while it's
in development because a million people will try to steal it. If we'd
been intent on starting a company and selling our product, we'd
probably have sat down and said, "Well, we have to choose the right
microprocessor, the right number of characters on the screen," etc. All
these decisions were being made by other companies, and our computer
would have wound up being like theirs-a big square box with switches
and lights, no video terminal built in . . .
We had to be more pragmatic. The 6502
microprocessor, for instance, was chosen for one reason only. It was
the first one to sell over the counter for $20. The 8080 cost $370 at
the time, and you couldn't get it at any surplus stores. You had to go
down to a distributor, and they made you feel like you had to be a
company with an account. It wasn't set up for hobbyists or
experimenters.
Apple Seedlings
Steve Jobs was a friend of mine from high school. We were introduced
because we had two things in common: electronics and pranks. It turned
out that he had a tremendous drive to start a company. He had worked at
Atari and had become friends with some of the key people there,
including Nolan Bushnell, the founder. Nolan was his idol. Steve wanted
to have a successful product, go out and start selling it, and make
some money. He also had excellent product ideas for the upcoming home
personal computer.
To produce the Apple I, Steve and I formed a
partnership. We didn't sell very many Apple Is the first year. We built
them at night in our garage. At first we expected to sell circuit
boards at the Homebrew Club: just put in your own chips and it'll work.
Then we got a $50,000 order from a local store and we were in heaven.
The trouble was how to get the money to build a
hundred computers-they might cost over a hundred dollars each to build.
Steve went to a local parts supplier and talked them into giving us a
lot of parts on thirty days' net credit. It was very unusual for them
to give us credit, because we didn't own anything. We didn't own
houses. We didn't even own our cars. But Steve is very persuasive. We'd
get the parts and then stuff them into the circuit boards, have them
soldered, get them back in the garage and test them. And we could turn
the whole cycle around in ten days and get paid. It worked really great
because we had only one level of management.
We got our names established. The computer magazines
started carrying lists of all the microcomputers coming out, and they'd
describe all the characteristics-how much memory, which processor, was
it assembled or was it a kit, what was its price. The Apple I had a
good appearance, and we were always at the top of the lists because
they were in alphabetical order.
After the Apple I was out, we tried to add new
features. We thought about color and maybe some high-resolution
graphics. I found ways to optimize and combine different parts of the
circuits and make things with fewer chips. It's great to show off at a
club that you use fewer chips than someone else. I did it for no other
reason.
The Apple II came out of trying to improve the Apple
I. From thinking out a way to make it with half as many chips, you
could have a much better product. It was faster, it had color, it had
high-resolution graphics, it had mixed modes on the screen with text. A
lot of neat features made it look like this might be a nifty product.
It turns out that some of its best features were inspired by what
little experience we had.
Steve and I had done a game for Atari-Breakout for
the arcades-before games were on microprocessors. We were running the
Apple II down at the Homebrew Club, so I thought it would be neat if
you could write Breakout in BASIC. I added graphics mode commands to
the Integer BASIC I was writing. Breakout needs paddles: I had to add a
little circuitry for paddle and push button. You need sound: when the
ball hits the bricks, ping; when you lose, ehhhh. So I put a speaker
in. All of these features were basically just to play one game.
These turned out to be common features for the
personal computers that have come out since that time. We weren't quite
the first to offer a keyboard and video output, but we were close. We
were the first to offer built-in BASIC. We made the first built-in
cassette port so you could use a cheap cassette recorder to load your
programs in and store them. We had started to set standards for what
have come to be known as low-cost personal computers.
Just about the only argument on product design Steve
and I ever had was on the number of expansion slots. I wanted eight and
he wanted two. I was for eight simply because I'd been around
minicomputers that had a lot of extra function boards plugged in. Steve
figured people would only use maybe a printer and a modem, and that was
it. Fortunately we went with eight, because the Apple II's
expandability was important to its success.
When we geared up to manufacture the Apple II, it
looked like I'd have to leave my nice secure job at Hewlett-Packard. I
thought about it and said no. I just loved going down to the Homebrew
Computer Club, showing off my ideas and designing neat computers. I was
willing to do that for free for the rest of my life. Steve got
extremely anxious. He got all my friends and relatives to start phoning
and tell me why I was making a mistake. Finally one of them called and
said you can start a company, remain an engineer and also get rich. I
decided that you can start a company and make money. Once I got the
consciousness right, it was easy to quit HP and take this big risk.
We got our first ad agency and began discussing who
we were and what our product was and how we would market it. Of course,
to a marketer Apple was an odd name. It came from the days when you
picked an interesting, fun name for a company. You do that when you're
on a hobby basis. The ad agency kept telling us the name had to be
changed. We had to have a name that suggested technology, number
crunching, calculations, data bases. We took the attitude that Apple is
a good name. Our computer would be friendly-everything an apple
represents, healthy, personal, in the home. We had to hold our ground
on that one. The agency designed our color logo. (Our original logo was
Newton under the apple tree.) Steve twiddled the colors around and kept
a rainbow orientation.
COMPUTER GROUP GUIDE
O
ne of the most
complete listings of user groups can be found in the annual Classroom
Computer News Directory. Originally intended for teachers, this
200-page
directory provides a wealth of information for general users on all
aspects of computing, including sets of guidelines for hardware and
software selection as well as a complete Yellow Pages of computer
services and products.
The directory is available from Classroom Computer
News, 341 Mt. Auburn St., Watertown, MA 02172. Telephone: (617)
923-8595.
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Core Memory
We introduced the Apple II at the First West Coast Computer Faire. The
first computer shows were informal, not like the professionally
oriented shows we have today. They were more an outgrowth of computer
clubs. We got a lot of our initial support from these clubs. I started
speaking at them whenever I was invited, and I've been doing it from
that day on. I travel at my own expense because I think it's exciting
to tell the story of how our company sprang up from a club.
Our success was due to a number of factors. First of
all, we had never manufactured computers before. We couldn't look back
and say, "Here's how computers earned a lot of money in the sixties and
seventies, that's the style to do." All we thought about was what was
going to work out great in our own homes. Our motivation was what would
be good in the end. If there was a known formula for what would make a
successful product, and what would make a billion dollars, all the big
companies would have jumped on it. All these companies were a lot
smarter than us. What we had was luck. We did the right things with the
right coincidences of timing and the right people in the right place.
We had a lot of interest and enthusiasm. The rewards
that drove us were all intrinsic. The computers were being put together
to show off at a computer club: "Look at this. I put in these neat
commands." It's not like you get a better salary, or a better title, or
more respect at work, or a new car. We had the autonomy of creators. We
could decide what was going to make a neat computer. We could implement
it, and we could show it off. We also had excellent feedback from our
peers.
Back then, the small computer scene was based on the
belief that we were all on top of a revolution. Everyone attending the
club in 1975-76 knew there was a big computer revolution occurring and
the rest of the world wasn't aware of it yet. That's why there was so
much excitement and spirit. We were finally going to get control of our
own computers. It wasn't a million-dollar thing that belonged to the
company you worked for. This big thing that had so much value, and that
we wanted to use and control, we finally were getting close to. Look at
how many companies have sprung out of our Homebrew Computer Club. At
last count, it was something like twenty-one! We managed to bring the
computer revolution home.
- I might get
electrocuted
. This particular anxiety was a favorite among
our forefathers, who trotted it out when they were confronted by
inventions like the light bulb and telephone. Rest assured: the
computer keyboard's electrical current, about equal to that of a
cordless electric shaver, is just too low to cause harm.
-
I'll never
understand how to operate a computer
. Nowadays, turning on the
machine
usually involves no more than flipping a switch and loading in a
program. And in place of those undecipherable symbols that trigger
long-forgotten fears of fractions, most programs now use English as the
means of communication. Many of them also have pick-and-choose menu
formats to guide you through available choices.
-
I might break it.
You can't get that rough with a computer simply by
typing on it and turning it on or off. Home computers are akin to any
store-bought item: they vary in durability according to manufacturer,
model, and wear and tear, and they have to be treated with a bit of
respect. I have no sympathy for the user who douses his machine with
coffee and complains when it prints out Martian dialect.
-
The machine might
lose my work
. Wiping out a sentence or two is always
a possibility, as is destroying everything you've entered over the last
five years. But you can guard against such losses by watching your
delete commands and taking proper care of your floppy disks. Most
important is that well-known data processing axiom: "Back it up." It
takes no time at all to copy a program or data from one disk to
another, thus assuring yourself of the ability to restore any work that
gets lost along the way.
-
I might lose the
privacy of my data
. If you have the traditional
stand-alone system, with no outside machines attached, your data is as
safe as it would be on a piece of paper. For added security, don't let
anyone read over your shoulder when you enter your data or password and
remove the disk when your session is finished. If your computer is
hooked up via modem and telephone line to a friend's machine, and if
you happen to be paranoid about wiretapping, you can invest in
encryption hardware or software to encode and decode your
communications. As for the suspicion that someone will phone your
computer and search through your disk-based data while you sleep, just
keep the power turned off; no one
has yet found a way to turn on a computer by remote control.
-
Computers have more
capability than I need
. This is also true of
pencils, but how many people worry about not using them to draw works
of art or create literary masterpieces? Personal computers range from
relatively inexpensive units to quite elaborate affairs and offer a
wide array of functions. Chances are, as you and your computer get used
to each other, you'll expand your horizons and purchase software
packages that increase your machine's versatility.
-
Using a computer
will lower my status
. This illusion circulates among
office personnel who are actually afraid of looking silly as they try
to master the new technology. If computers are that alien to you,
especially if you're older or set in your ways, a gradual introduction
is probably best. Sympathetic private tutoring can prevent loss of face
before co-workers and convince you that business computers may enhance
your status.
-
I might lose the
ability to do things on my own
. A computer is not an
electrode-studded brain sapper, nor is it a device that turns users
into Einsteins. As a tool, the computer simply helps you accomplish
your work with maximum efficiency and expands rather than hinders your
own capabilities. Erasing typewriter errors by hand, for example,
impedes the creative act of writing, whereas correcting text on a
personal computer is a pleasure. As for mathematics, is it more
productive to hunt for a multiplication error or to be freed to explore
new formulas?
-
A computer is
mathematical and not for creative types.
This view is
held by artistes, literary denizens, and just plain folks with a morbid
fear of numbers. The good news about computers is that if you don't
want to play with accounting or physics, you can buy a word processing
program to help with your writing, a music package to aid in composing,
or a knee-slapping outer-space game to match your wits against.
GEORGE S. ZARR, JR., Renaissance man and computer professional
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