Revolution in The Valley [Paperback] Read online

  REVOLUTION

  in The Valley

  REVOLUTION

  in The Valley

  Andy Hertzfeld

  with contributions by Steve Capps, Donn Denman, Bruce Horn, and Susan Kare

  O’REILLY®

  Beijing Cambridge Farnham Köln Sebastopol Tokyo

  Revolution in The Valley

  by Andy Hertzfeld

  Copyright © 2005 Andy Hertzfeld.

  All rights reserved.

  Printed in Italy.

  Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc.,

  1005 Gravenstein Highway North,

  Sebastopol, CA 95472.

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  Editor Allen Noren

  Production Editor Philip Dangler

  Art Director Michele Wetherbee

  Cover Designer Ellie Volckhausen

  Interior Designer Melanie Wang

  December 2004: First Edition.

  Revision History

  2004-12-06: First release

  2011-09-09: Second release

  The O’Reilly logo is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc.

  Apple, the Apple logo, and all Apple hardware and software brand names are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the United States and other countries.

  The song The Times They Are A-Changin’ by Bob Dylan Copyright © 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music. Used by permission.

  Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and O’Reilly Media, Inc. was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in caps or initial caps.

  While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

  ISBN: 978-1-449-31624-2

  [TI]

  For my wife, Joyce,

  my stepson, Nick,

  my “best friend,” Burrell Smith,

  and the rest of the original Macintosh team.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Introduction

  Cast of Characters

  Part One

  I’ll Be Your Best Friend August 1979

  We’ll See About That November 1979

  I Invented Burrell

  Scrooge McDuck February 1980

  It’s the Moustache that Matters September 1980

  Good Earth October 1980

  Black Wednesday February 1981

  Part Two

  Reality Distortion Field February 1981

  Texaco Towers January 1981

  More Like A Porsche March 1981

  Square Dots April 1981

  Early Demos April 1981

  Bicycle April 1981

  A Message for Adam April 1981

  PC Board Esthetics July 1981

  Pineapple Pizza May 1981

  Round Rects Are Everywhere! May 1981

  Apple II Mouse Card June 1981

  Diagnostic Port July 1981

  Shut Up! July 1981

  Donkey August 1981

  Desk Ornaments

  I Don’t Have a Computer! by Bruce Horn December 1981

  Hungarian January 1982

  Calculator Construction Set February 1982

  –2000 Lines of Code February 1982

  Mister Macintosh February 1982

  Signing Party February 1982

  And Another Thing... March 1982

  Rosing’s Rascals March 1982

  Gobble, Gobble, Gobble March 1982

  Software Wizard March 1982

  US Festival September 1982

  Part Three

  And Then He Discovered Loops! April 1982

  Busy Being Born

  I Still Remember Regions April 1982

  You Can’t Fire Bruce! May 1982

  Alice June 1982

  Do It June 1982

  Inside Macintosh June 1982

  Creative Think July 1982

  Resource Manager Countdown August 1982

  You Guys Are in Big Trouble August 1982

  Five Different Macintoshes

  Boot Beep September 1982

  Sound by Monday September 1982

  The Little Kingdom December 1982

  What’s a Megaflop? January 1983

  Credit Where Due January 1983

  Too Big for My Britches February 1983

  Steve Icon February 1983

  Bouncing Pepsis March 1983

  Swedish Campground August 1983

  Busy Being Born, Part 2

  Quick, Hide in This Closet! August 1983

  Saving Lives August 1983

  Stolen from Apple August 1983

  World Class Cities by Susan Kare August 1983

  Pirate Flag August 1983

  Make a Mess, Clean It Up! by Donn Denman September 1983

  MacPaint Evolution June 1983

  Part Four

  Steve Wozniak University September 1983

  The Mythical Man-Year October 1983

  1984- September 1983

  Monkey Lives October 1983

  Puzzle September 1983

  We’re Not Hackers! September 1983

  A Rich Neighbor Named Xerox November 1983

  Price Fight October 1983

  90 Hours a Week and Loving It October 1983

  MacPaint Gallery October 1983

  Steve Capps Day December 1983

  A Mac for Mick January 1984

  Real Artists Ship January 1984

  Disk Swapper’s Elbow by Steve Capps January 1984

  It Sure Is Great to Get Out of That Bag! January 1984

  The Times They Are A-Changin’ January 1984

  Part Five

  Can We Keep the Skies Safe? January 1984

  Leave of Absence March 1984

  Spoiled? April 1984

  Thunderscan June 1984

  Switcher October 1984

  Handicapped 1985

  Are You Gonna Do It? February 1985

  MacBASIC June 1985

  Mea Culpa

  Things Are Better than Ever September 1984

  The End of an Era May 1985

  The Father of the Macintosh

  Epilogue: The Macintosh Spirit

  How the Book Came to Be

  Afterword to the New Edition

  Acknowledgments

  Index

  Foreword

  There are occasionally short windows in time when incredibly important things get invented that shape the lives of humans for hundreds of years. These events are impossible to anticipate, and the inventors, the participants, are often working not for reasons of money, but for the personal satisfaction of making something great.

  The development of the Macintosh computer was one of these events, and it has changed our lives forever. Every computer today is basically a Macintosh, a very different type of computer from those that preceded it. Who were the people who developed this revolutionary computer? What motivated them? What advancements did they make? How were tradeoffs made? What was the environment like where it happened?

  The answers to some of these questions can be derived from other books. But they too often have the flavor of highly edited reality TV shows scri
pted by outsiders who weren’t there. I occasionally read an article based on good, exhaustive reporting that gets to the heart and soul of this computer and of the people who created it, but none do it as well as this book.

  Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made is a collection of stories by the actual personalities who gave life to this amazing computer, and it’s more captivating than any book or article I have read. As you’ll soon discover, these are people whose passion for doing great things has never before been captured, until now.

  It’s chilling to recall how this cast of young and inexperienced people who cared more than anything about doing great things created what is perhaps the key technology of our lives. Their own words and images take me back to those rare days when the rules of innovation were guided by internal rewards, and not by money.

  Steve Wozniak

  Introduction

  The best purchase of my life occurred in January 1978 when I spent $1295 plus tax, most of my life savings at the time, on an Apple II microcomputer (serial number 1703) with 16K bytes of RAM. I was instantly delighted with it, and the deeper I dug into it, the more excited I became. It had incredible features, such as seven expansion slots and high-resolution color graphics. But it also had an ineffable quality that went beyond mere features. Not only could I finally afford to have my own computer, but the one I got turned out to be magic; it was better than I ever thought it could be.

  I started spending most of my free time with my Apple, and then most of my not-so-free time, exploring various technical aspects of the system. As I taught myself 6502 assembly language from the monitor listing that came with the machine, it became clear to me this was no ordinary product: the coding style was crazy, whimsical, and outrageous, just like every other part of the design—especially the hi-res color graphic screen. It was clearly the work of a passionate artist. Eventually, I became so obsessed with the Apple II that I had to go to work at the place that created it. I abandoned graduate school and started work as a systems programmer at Apple in August 1979.

  Even though the Apple II was overflowing with both technical and marketing genius, the best thing about it was the spirit of its creation. It was not conceived or designed as a commercial product in the usual sense. Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak was just trying to make a great computer for himself and impress his friends at the Homebrew Computer Club. His design somehow projected an audacious sense of infinite horizons, as if the Apple II could do anything, if you were just clever enough.

  Most of the early Apple employees were their own ideal customers. The Apple II was simultaneously a work of art and the fulfillment of a dream, shared by Apple’s employees and customers. Its unique spirit was picked up and echoed back by third-party developers, who sprung out of nowhere with innovative applications.

  Making the transition from an ardent Apple II hobbyist to an Apple employee was like ascending Mount Olympus, walking among the gods, working alongside my heroes. The early team at Apple was full of amazing individuals, people like Steve Wozniak, Rod Holt, and Mike Markkula. It was a privilege to get to know them and learn the company mythology firsthand.

  Apple’s other co-founder, Steve Jobs, had no shortage of vision or ambition. Flush with the rapidly growing success of the Apple II, Apple initiated two new projects in the fall of 1978 (codenamed Sara and Lisa), which were aimed beyond the hobbyist market. Sara was a souped-up successor to the Apple II, using the same microprocessor with an 80-column display and additional memory, intended for small businesses. Lisa was an ambitious, more expensive, easy-to-use, next generation office computer featuring a revolutionary graphical user interface (GUI). By the time I started at Apple in August 1979, both projects were staffed up and well underway.

  The Sara and Lisa teams were organized in a conventional fashion, with seasoned computer industry veterans recruited from companies like Hewlett-Packard coordinating dozens of engineers and marketing folks across multiple layers of management. I was afraid Apple’s original freewheeling style was waning when I heard about Jef Raskin’s Macintosh project, a tiny research effort to design an easy-to-use, low-cost, consumer-oriented computer. Jef recruited a brilliant young technician named Burrell Smith from Apple’s service department to be his Macintosh hardware designer, and Smith quickly came up with a stunning design.

  Burrell worshipped Woz’s Apple II design and forged his own idiosyncratic design style that was even crazier than Woz’s, using many clever tricks to coax enormous functionality out of the minimum number of chips. Somehow, Burrell’s embryonic Macintosh board reeked of the same creative spirit so prevalent in the Apple II; as soon as I saw that board, I knew that I had to work on the project.

  Steve Jobs also became enamored with Burrell’s logic board and quickly took over the project, moving it to a remote location and inspiring us with a grand vision. The Apple II had broken through an important price barrier, making a useful personal computer affordable to ordinary individuals, but it was still much too hard for most non-technical people to master. The Macintosh would harness the potential of Motorola’s 68000 microprocessor to provide a GUI and become the first personal computer that was both easy-to-use and affordable. We thought that we had a chance to create a product that could make computers useful to ordinary people and thereby truly change the world.

  Most users today have never experienced what computing was like before the graphical user interface. Applications were usually controlled via a command line, where the user typed terse, cryptic commands that had to be memorized. There was no standard user interface, so a new method of interaction had to be mastered for each application. For many users, it simply wasn’t worth the effort.

  The Macintosh design team was inspired by Woz’s original design and tried to recapture its innovative spirit. Again, we were our own ideal customers, designing something that we wanted for ourselves more than anything else. Although Apple was already a large company, Steve’s unique position as co-founder enabled him to maintain the Macintosh group as a little island where Apple’s original values could flourish and grow.

  This book contains numerous anecdotes about the development of the original Macintosh computer, from its inception in the summer of 1979, through its triumphant introduction in January 1984, until May 31, 1985, when Steve Jobs was forced off the Macintosh team. They are arranged in roughly chronological order, but are also interlinked, and classified by topic and characters. The stories cover the full gamut of Macintosh development. I hope they will impart to the reader a sense of what it was like to be there at the time.

  I’ve been regaling my friends and colleagues with these tales for years, but I had some trepidation about writing them down. I was afraid that my account would be limited, biased and self-serving, like so many others, no matter how hard I tried to get down the truth. Eventually, I had the idea of using the web to air out the anecdotes, allowing others to contribute comments and stories of their own. I began writing them in June 2003 in Hawaii, and I had over sixty stories written when I unveiled my web site in time for the 20th anniversary of the Macintosh launch in January 2004.

  That web site, http://www.folklore.org, currently has over 115 stories, and will hopefully continue to grow over time. It has lots of relatively short anecdotes rather than a monolithic narrative because the anecdotal approach is inherently extensible, and multiple authors can elaborate the story indefinitely, without compromising their individual voices. The size of the web site is unlimited, but the book had to meet tighter constraints. We decided to include some stories written by other key original Mac team members (Steve Capps, Donn Denman, Bruce Horn, and Susan Kare), to provide a taste of the broader range of perspectives presented on the web site.

  The accomplishments of the original Macintosh team are a crucial link in a long chain of development that stretches back to the work of Ivan Sutherland and Doug Englebart in the 1960s, and the efforts of Alan Kay and his amazing team at Xerox PARC in the 1970s. There are also man
y great stories about the continuing evolution of the Macintosh platform, with surprising twists and turns as it switched to the PowerPC without skipping a beat in 1994 and, against all odds, was reunited with Steve Jobs a few years later. Hopefully, all of that folklore will eventually be collected somewhere.

  The Macintosh became very successful, although not quite in the way we imagined. Today, twenty years later, the user interface that we pioneered is ubiquitous, and used by hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis, even though most experience it through non-Apple platforms. But I also think in the largest sense we substantially failed, because computers remain frustratingly difficult to use for ordinary users. There is still a long way to go before the Macintosh dream is fully realized, and perhaps the best stories are yet to come.

  Cast of Characters

  Bill Atkinson Jef Raskin recruited Bill to work for Apple in the spring of 1978. His work on the QuickDraw graphics package was the foundation of both the Lisa and the Macintosh user interfaces. Later, he single-handedly wrote MacPaint, the first great application for the Macintosh, followed by HyperCard in 1987. He co-founded General Magic in 1990 to develop personal intelligent communicators. Since 1996, he’s been a full-time nature photographer and has recently published a beautiful book of mineral photographs titled Within the Stone.

  Bob Belleville After a stint at Xerox where he was one of the main hardware designers of the Xerox Star, Bob joined the Mac team in May 1982 as the software manager. In August 1982, he replaced Rod Holt as the overall engineering manager for the Macintosh division. He was one of the driving forces behind Apple’s LaserWriter printer, which introduced Steve Jobs to the Adobe team. He left Apple in June 1985 and worked at Silicon Graphics in the 1990s. He is currently retired from the computer industry.

  Steve Capps Steve joined the Lisa Printing team in September 1981 after computerizing his high school library and learning about GUIs at Xerox in Rochester, NY. He joined the Mac team in January 1983, and was an invaluable contributor during the home stretch, writing the text editing routines in the ROM and helping Bruce Horn finish the Finder. He left Apple in 1985, but he returned in 1987 to become one of the main creators of Apple’s Newton PDA. He is now the founder and principal developer at Onedoto.