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The Beginnings of Apple Computer
John Burek points out an article written by Stan Veit, former editor-in-chief of Computer Shopper magazine, and one of the first retailers to deal with the fledgling Apple Computer in the late 1970s. Veit describes his introduction to the Apple I and his early interactions with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak as they developed their early models. Quoting:
"After Woz hooked his haywire rig up to the living-room TV, he turned it on, and there on the screen I saw a crude Breakout game in full color! Now I was really amazed. This was much better than the crude color graphics from the Cromemco Dazzler. ... 'How do you like that?' said Jobs, smiling. 'We're going to dump the Apple I and only work on the Apple II.' 'Steve,' I said, 'if you do that you will never sell another computer. You promised BASIC for the Apple I, and most dealers haven't sold the boards they bought from you. If you come out with an improved Model II they will be stuck. Put it on the back burner until you deliver on your promises.'"
The sad thing is, without Jobs the Apple might never have gotten anywhere. Now Jobs runs it all.
I wonder if Woz is happy.
I miss the "Old" Computer Shopper.
Priceless
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
When Apple went public, Jobs would not give stock to several employees who made the Apple possible. My son gave them stock out of his allotment, or they would have never benefited from the long hours and devotion they put in to start the company. If you had given Jobs the money, he would have found a way to keep you from getting the stock.
I guess Wozniak is a class act. And as far as Jobs is concerned, well; I guess he and Gates are similar people. Actually, I don't think I've heard of Gates screwing employees out of stock.
Where's my iTablet Steve?
Online & Feelin' Fine
Everytime leading up to a new product release, lots of people put off buying the computer/ipod/etc they want because the next version is just around the corner and is going to be so awesome they'd hate themselves for not waiting.
From 1986 to 1996, Microsoft's stock soared more than a hundredfold as the company's Windows operating system and Office applications dominated the PC industry.
That explosive climb made millionaires of employees who had accepted options as a substantial part of their compensation for 60-hour workweeks fueled by a diet of Twinkies, Coca-Cola and marshmallow Peeps. The sudden riches led many to refer to themselves as "lottery winners.
"While the exact number is not known, it is reasonable to assume that there were approximately 10,000 Microsoft millionaires created by the year 2000," said Richard S. Conway Jr., a Seattle economist whom Microsoft hired to study its impact on Washington State. "The wealth that has come to this area is staggering."
The Microsoft Millionaires Come Of Age [May 29, 2005]
_____
Not everyone draws the winning hand, of course - some simply come into the game too late.
The Few, the Tech-Savvy Few: Option Millionaires [Feb 11, 2007]
For comparison's sake, Microsoft currently employs about 90,000 world-wide.
In 1990, around 6,000.
"'...You promised BASIC for the Apple I, and most dealers haven't sold the boards they bought from you. If you come out with an improved Model II they will be stuck. Put it on the back burner until you deliver on your promises.'"
And lo, the hardware/software upgrade cycle was born.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
The movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122/ does a great job of showing the dynamics involved at the birth of the 'Personal' computer.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
I liked my old Apple II. Then one day apple was all about MAC and those of us who already spent a lot of money and time on the Apple II were left behind with no upgrade path, as though we were nothing more than garbage. That is why I have been a PC user ever since.
- James
The Apple users were much more oriented toward software and graphic applications. They were more interested in what a computer did then how it did it.
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
In the 1980s, I made the following call, which changed my career -- and my life. call -151
That this has been modded insightful boggles the mind...
The Apple I and II BASIC were basically the same thing and the project was never put on hold. The Apple II had very little extra code, only for handling character I/O differently, some color graphics commands that I added, and the slot-directed character I/O commands (PR #6). If there was some trying to back out of implementing this BASIC on the Apple I, it was never communicated to me. I never spoke to Stan Veit myself about this.
In fact, I definitely had the completed Apple I BASIC running Star Trek on a dozen Apple I's in a store in Orange County, long before BASIC was adapted for the Apple II.
Bottom line is...it's news to me although it makes some sense (the push to support the Apple I).
OK a new size TV
That's a shock. Woz tends to be overly frank. But based on the article, Jobs acted in an impulsive kind of way, and stuck the author with big shipping bills without asking.
Table-ized A.I.
I read about this awhile go ago and thought it was relevant. For those that are still addicted to the Apple I, there is a functional replica with a few extra features. http://www.brielcomputers.com/replica1.html Just thought someone might get a kick out of it.
Restore the madness of youth's lechery
Wozniak just wanted to innovate and see how he could push the technological envelope. Jobs just wanted to see how far he could push his financial envelope... at the expense of the Woz and anyone else he could manipulate.
The glaring contrast between Wozniak and Jobs was one of the earliest influences that led me to despise manipulators of all varieties. I admired Woz and hated Jobs.
I thought it was pretty funny myself, and it's stuff like this that really makes me question the modding and their quirkiness. I mean, once it's modded insightful and then changed to flaimbait? How does that work exactly? Is it just because people responded by flaming him that the moderation is changed? I'm beginning to totally ignore the modding and give people a chance, at the risk of not being part of the popular kids' table in the high school cafeteria.
I forgot to point out that some of this info also came from the book, "Founders at Work", where one of the chapters spotlights VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet software.
Table-ized A.I.
An associate of mine opened the first retail computer store in Anchorage selling the Apple II and the Commodore PET and hired me (supposedly on a share of the profits) to run it for him. I could have sold at least one Apple II each day, but the distributer in Seattle was hording the inventory and distributing it to local stores. I could only get one Apple II per week. I called Apple, talked to Steve Jobs, and he passed me off to someone else who flat-out told me they depended on the distributor so much that they couldn't do anything to make the distribution more fair, and I couldn't order directly from Apple because they had a territory agreement with the distributor. (I felt that orders should be filled on a first-ordered, first-filled basis, and we were paying cash up front for our inventory, so there was no credit problem. Dumb move; the distributer was probably using the money we sent with the order to finance their friends' stores.) It got worse when Apple came out with the hard drive. I was selling accessories, but they weren't moving very fast when nobody could get the computers to attach them to. I remember ordering a digitizer tablet from Houston Instruments, and how surprised I was that I couldn't just plug it into the computer and make it work. There was no interface, and I ended up buying the parts and soldering them together to make a serial port. (Lucky background in connecting modems, teletypes and CDC 160A and 160G systems earlier in my career.) Then I had to write the software: I tried to write it in the BASIC that was included on the Apple, but a couple of conversations with Bill Gates and he convinced me to write it assembly language. I spent many hours after work writing, first the communications code (which we would now call drivers), and then a small application to draw geometric shapes using the tablet. I had some help from Steve Wozniak and a lot of help from a guy named Chris Espinoza who was absolutely brilliant at explaining things over the phone. I was also lucky that I had a good background in assembly language programming from the Army and subsequent stints with CDC and Honeywell writing things like light pen interfaces. I managed to write the software and sell both tablets and two Apple II's to a couple of Burroughs guys for enough money to keep the store open a little longer.
As bad as my experience with Apple was, my relationship with Commodore pissed me off each time I had to deal with them. We had to buy 5 Commodore PET systems at a time. We had to put up $5000, which gave us a "credit line" of $5000 dollars, and which was enough to buy 5 systems (which sold retail for $1499). However, the manufacturing of the PET was sloppy, to say the least. I've had as many as 4 of the 5 in my order come in DOA. So I had to RMA the defective systems for repair. Then, in order to get more inventory, I had to put up another $5000 to "increase my credit line". In order to keep enough stock to sell, we ended up letting Commodore have $15,000 of deposit money. This shouldn't have been news to me: Before I worked for Honeywell in 1968, I sold business machines in Minneapolis. The guy I worked for sold Commodore calculators. Commodore actually came out with the first truly programmable calculator, which used a Nixie-tube display and magnetic cards to preserve the programs. (Marchant and Friden also had "programmable" calculators, but neither of them did recursion and both of them were twice the size of the Commodore.) My boss used to complain about the way Commodore treated him, for the same reasons. In 1990, in Houston, the vendor I worked for who sold the Amiga was still complaining about the same problems. (Rumor has it that Commodore was a Mafia-owned company and very risk-aversive while not being particularly customer-sensitive.)
Eventually, the owner/investor of the store decided that there was no point in keeping it open since there was not enough saleable stock to satisfy the customers or make a profit.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Microsoft was never a side show.
The PC without high level programming languages is the side show.
Microsoft was selling BASIC to clients like GE and Citibank in 1976. Applesoft BASIC, and BASIC for the Commodore PET and TRS-80 ship in 1977. MBASIC defines the eight-bit micro.
April 4, 1979, Microsoft 8080 BASIC is the first microprocessor product to win the ICP Million Dollar Award. Traditionally dominated by software for mainframe computers, this recognition is indicative of the growth and acceptance of the PC industry. Microsoft Timeline From 1975-1990
This is from an excerpt from "Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer," published in 1993. You can buy the hardcover version here: http://www.amazon.com/Stan-Veits-History-Personal-Computer/dp/156664030X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228605724&sr=8-1. I have the softcover version. Just thought I'd point that out.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
But people like Jobs start industries which lead to cool toys for good prices, available for the masses.
In 2004, Woz gave a great presentation about his early work at Gnomedex 4.0.
"The Gnomedex Geeks-Gone-Wild crowd was fixated on this rare and brilliant presentation by Steve Wozniak, a true geek's geek. His playing started with games and pranks, crystal-set radios, reading Popular Electronics. Then he met Captain Crunch and got into telco-busting Blue Boxes.
Woz wanted to be an HP engineer forever and never thought he'd start a company, but his friend, Steve Jobs, said, "Let's sell it!" at every opportunity. Good thing he did, and good thing HP turned down Woz's offer for the rights to build what would become Apple's first computer. You'll enjoy this -- one of the best from Gnomedex 4.0."
The recordings are still available in MP3 form:
Part 1: http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail214.html
Part 2: http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail215.html
Direct links to the MP3s:
http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/audio/download/Steve%20Wozniak%20Part%201%20-%20Gnomedex%204.0.mp3
http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/audio/download/Steve%20Wozniak%20Part%202%20-%20Gnomedex%204.0.mp3
Hey, you had the idea, wrote all that, and still got First Post? Congratulations, my friend! If I had mod points and you hadn't posted AC, I would surely mod you (+1, Informative)
No:
Those industries exist to concentrate wealth into the hands of people like Jobs. The fact that we get new toys to play with is almost incidental... witnessed by the fact that CEOs routinely jump ship from one corporation and even one industry to another! The primary purpose of "industry" is to concentrate wealth for those who control and operate it; the product is merely the vehicle that enables the concentration to proceed. Captains of industry don't care what product or service "their" companies offer, as long as it makes them tons of money. Don't they teach you kids anything about capitalism in school these days? :-)
I doubt that Jobs is actually any different; the only reason he wound up in a business making and selling computers as opposed to something else is because of his leech-like attachment to Wozniak and his ability to manipulate him. Had Woz been focused on inventing the next great television, say, then that's what Jobs would be selling today.
Steve, Don't think I'll ever get a better chance to directly communicate with you--and I'm too disorganized to ever write a letter. But I thought you'd like to hear that after reading "iWoz" my 11-year-old son developed a massive interest in electronics. Since then we've been busily hacking away at building kits, and he's learning a lot. I bought him an Apple IIgs, and we're working on designing an interface card to let him control a robot from it. This contrasted with school where "Computer Science" means learning Microsoft Word at his level, and one course in Visual Basic in the high school. So here's to hero worship!
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
"Look at the people running free software projects: Linus, Richard, Theo, etc. They tend to be egotists and jerks too, for exactly the same reasons."
So what does that make the leader of the most trafficked site?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
"I assume y'all know about the upcoming Rebooting Computing summit, which aims to put the magic back into our field."
Wonder if the founders of the canning industry could put the magic back in their profession?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
It's called the "Osborne Effect":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect
The funny thing is that Apple probably puts more effort than any other major computer manufacturer into making sure it DOESN'T suffer from the OE. Yet they still get stuck with it (thanks to speculation.)
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Those industries exist to concentrate wealth into the hands of people like Jobs. The fact that we get new toys to play with is almost incidental...
They go hand-in-hand.
Economy of scale. Hobbyist pursuit vs wide-market pursuit. The fact is Woz hanging out at a computer enthusiasts group doesn't get his machine into millions of homes without somebody like Jobs to expand the vision, get investment, hire other people, etc.
I know it's easy to hate rich business people, and there's a lot of bad with the good, but there are tangible benefits.
because of his leech-like attachment to Wozniak and his ability to manipulate him.
Woz made his choices. He was an adult. He seems to have done ok by Jobs. Maybe you should ask Woz himself if he agrees with your sentiments. He's already posted once in this thread.
Since he clearly pays attention, I expect that if he disagrees strongly and thinks it's worth the time to set me straight, then he'll do so. I didn't mean to imply that Wozniak was oblivious to the manipulation; he was no doubt aware of it and tolerated it when it suited his goals. Nevertheless, the conclusion I draw from Jobs' behavior over the last four decades is that he takes more from the world than he contributes to it personally; that is quite the reverse of Steve Wozniak, who you might say lives by the "backpackers' ethic" (as I try to do). Even though I'm pretty damned certain I understand the neurology of a Steve Jobs well enough, I'm not immune to being mistaken from time to time.
I am sure there are quite a few of us that had unknown roles in the birth of the personal computer industry. I for one wrote the driver for the BritePen (the first light pen for the Apple ][). Also I interfaced the Genie hard drive for the Apple ][. Knowing too little about stock, fortunes were made without me. But I am just like a million others who preferred to write code instead of attending MBA classes. I find this thread very painful though, and I feel bad for others who participated and didn't get remembered when things went right. Some of these stories about how the early Apple company treated people are not that different than what I have experienced recently. I could say that only the stock holders are doing well these days, but they aren't doing well. So who is making money at Apple now?
This is not necessarily a bad thing. To most people (The 99.whatever% who don't use linux) a computer is a tool, not a project. There's nothing wrong with either view to be perfectly fair, but it's unfair to come down on people just because they want to get things done (or don't - whatever).
You don't need to be a mechanic to get your driver's license...
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
They're horny and crave cock. Duh.
I can't believe that, what a fucking prick.
Life has been WAY too kind to him.
Ah, yet another reason to refrain from buying Apple products, and - more importantly - recommending their products to windows users . . . for the last six months, I have been pointing them to Ubuntu . . .
SARAVA!
The Apple I was introduced around 32 years ago at the Stanford SLAC auditorium. It was a just motherboard. The Steves brought it in a *wood* box to show how it connected CPU, TV and keyboard together. A lot of people in club, including myself, worked with computer with more primitive interfaces like dipswitches and punch tape. Some of us thought it would "all the fun out of it" to have a turn-key computer you could take out of a box. We were wrong. There are some grainy movies of us in Revenge of the Nerds. Have these been you-tubed yet?
Without people like Jobs, Woz would have been "that guy who built his own toy computers" and we'd probably still be using remote terminals to telnet into some gigantic mainframe.
And lest anyone think I'm leaning too far the other way, without people like Woz, Jobs would have been "that asshole who used to hack the phone system" and we'd also probably still be using remote terminals to telnet into some gigantic mainframe.
I don't understand at all why you call this a "marriage made in hell". Seems to me that the combination of inventer and entrepreneur is what gives us all this awesome technology that we enjoy today.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
I can't cite some dubiously funded study to prove it to you, but my intuition screams that this is not a wise arrangement long-term and that in the end we all lose a little bit more ground to a controlling minority.
What good does all this mass-produced stuff do us if we're increasingly unable to afford to possess it because the predominant flow of money and resources is IN TOWARD that wealthy controlling minority and not OUT FROM them? The majority is slowly but increasingly disadvantaged to their benefit; though it's happening so slowly that many people are oblivious to the effect, it's significant and detrimental and something Hari Seldon would recognize. It's what causes exoduses and revolutions.
What good does all this mass-produced stuff do us if we're increasingly unable to afford to possess it because the predominant flow of money and resources is IN TOWARD that wealthy controlling minority and not OUT FROM them? The majority is slowly but increasingly disadvantaged to their benefit; though it's happening so slowly that many people are oblivious to the effect, it's significant and detrimental and something Hari Seldon would recognize. It's what causes exoduses and revolutions.
I have to wonder if you're living in the same world I am. Computers and electronics in general have become steadily more accessible and more affordable over the past decades. In the 70s only big companies, universities, and crazy hobbyists had computers. In the 80s, people with a lot of money and a real need had them. In the 90s owning a computer ceased to be a mark of wealth or a technical trade and became somewhat commonplace. Now, not owning a computer is nearly as bizarre as not having a telephone.
You can go out and buy a highly capable computer for about a week's worth of minimum wage now. And you're trying to tell me that this stuff is getting less affordable?
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
You haven't been paying attention to the larger economic picture, have you? You're right: I'm not living in the same world as you. A self-imposed opaque bubble is no better a living arrangement than a dank dark cave when it comes to opportunities to observe and learn. Might I suggest using the letter opener for an unintended purpose? A three-foot gash ought to be big enough.
You haven't been paying attention to the larger economic picture, have you?
If you wish to make a point about the larger economic picture, do so with facts and figures, not bizarre analogies. The point the parent made was correct - computer prices have dramatically dropped in the last 2 decades, with many many people in the world having a computer in their pocket phone as powerful as those discussed here.
PS Hari Seldon doesn't exist, and quoting implausible determinist pop-psychologists from utopian science fiction as your inspiration doesn't do much for your credibility.
I've been paying attention to the larger economic picture just fine. By paying attention to this larger economic picture I have been able to observe that a fairly poor computer still cost a middle-income worker several months' salary in the 1980s, and that a great computer costs a minimum-wage worker about a week's salary today. Do you dispute this fact or do you just want to wave your hands about without specifics?
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.