Revolution in The Valley [Paperback] Read online

  Bill was used to showing off his latest advances to the Mac team, and this new, icon-based approach to file management was a particularly important one. Bruce Horn had started working on the Mac team the previous month and was already starting to develop our file manager, which Bud had christened “The Finder.” Bruce had similar ideas about spacial filing, and he and I had created a prototype called the “micro-finder” that represented files as tabs that were spatially organized on a picture of a diskette. Bill thought it was important for us to see the new direction as soon as possible, so he left us a copy of his prototype with strict instructions not to show it to Steve.

  We had a few close calls over the next couple of weeks as we played with the prototype, frantically quitting it when we heard Steve approaching. Finally, on the last day before the deadline expired, we must have cut it too close because Steve knew we were hiding something from him. We explained our promise to Bill, but Steve demanded to see it. We had to show it to him. He immediately fell in love with it and ran off to talk to Bill and Wayne, just as we feared.

  Luckily, the development had gone well the last two weeks, and Wayne was ready to commit to the new approach and unveil it to the entire team. He called an all-hands meeting, to which Bill, Dan, Frank, and Wayne wore newly minted T-shirts labeled “Rosing’s Rascals.” Wayne explained the surreptitious nature of the two-week effort to the team while Bill set up the demo. Rosing’s rascals had pulled it off, endowing the Lisa with a much more intuitive file manager that quickly became a hallmark of Apple’s new user interface.

  Gobble, Gobble, Gobble

  March 1982

  We interview candidates for software manager

  When Bud told us in early December of 1981 that he had to leave the Mac team to go back to Seattle to keep his place in medical school, both Burrell and I were pretty shaken. We were worried we couldn’t pull it off without Bud and that to fill his place we’d get some authoritarian manager who would wreck the unique spirit of our team. We expressed our concerns to Steve, and he promised we’d have a big say in hiring the new manager. He also said he’d personally protect us if a situation like the one we feared ever arose.

  In January, we began interviewing candidates for the software manager position. We had high standards and expectations and interviewed a number of outstanding people, like Ed Taft, who became one of the first employees at Adobe, and Tim Mott, who helped start Electronic Arts, though for one reason or another neither took the job. But we also interviewed some more mundane candidates, which got pretty wild if Steve decided he didn’t respect someone.

  For example, Burrell, Steve and I interviewed Angeline Lo’s former manager, whom she highly recommended. I knew the interview was going to be problematic as soon as the guy walked into the room. He was extremely straight-laced and uptight, and was dressed more like an insurance salesman than a technologist. He also seemed very nervous as he fumbled at our first few questions.

  I could tell Steve was losing patience when he started to roll his eyes at the candidate’s responses. Steve began to grill him with some unconventional questions.

  “How old were you when you lost your virginity?” Steve asked

  The candidate wasn’t sure he had heard correctly. “What did you say?”

  Steve repeated the question, changing it slightly. “Are you a virgin?” Burrell and I started to laugh as the candidate became more disconcerted. He didn’t know how to respond.

  Steve changed the subject. “How many times have you taken LSD?”

  The poor guy was turning varying shades of red, so I tried to change the subject and asked a straightforward technical question. But Steve got even more impatient when he started to give a long-winded response.

  “Gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble,” Steve said, making turkey noises. This was too much for Burrell and me, and we started cracking up. “Gobble, gobble, gobble,” Steve continued, laughing himself now.

  Software Wizard

  March 1982

  The Mac group gets business cards

  By the spring of 1982, the Macintosh project was beginning to transition from a research effort into a mainstream project. We had to get more organized as the team grew.

  Initially, we didn’t have formal titles in the Mac group, but we needed to figure out what they were in order to get business cards made. My title with the Apple II group was “Senior Member of Technical Staff,” which sounded dull to me. Peggy Alexio, Rod Holt’s secretary, was ordering the business cards, and I told her I didn’t want any because I didn’t like my title.

  The next day Steve Jobs came by and said he had heard I didn’t want business cards. He wanted me to have them, though, and he didn’t care what title I used. I could pick any title I liked. After a bit of thought I decided on “Software Wizard” because you couldn’t tell where it fit in the corporate hierarchy and because it seemed a suitable metaphor to reflect the practical magic of software innovation.

  When I told Burrell about my new title he immediately claimed “Hardware Wizard” for himself, even though I discouraged him because it diminished the uniqueness of my title. And as soon as word got around, lots of other folks on the Mac team started to change their titles to something more creative. Bruce Horn chose “Trailblazer,” for example, reflecting his work for the Sierra Club as well as his programming inclinations. My nomination for the weirdest Apple business card title goes to Ed Tecot, whose title was “Not Andy Hertzfeld.” I never knew whether to take that as a compliment or a slur. The trend persisted at Apple for many years, and even spread to other companies. But as far as I know, that’s how it got started.

  I was “Boy Guru” and “Exception Handler,” and, eventually, when I worked in a group called “Class,” I was “Class Clown.” Bill Dawson’s card read “I have no pants on.” Darin Adler was “Cheese Host.”

  Scott Knaster

  Andy Hertzfeld sitting on his car in 1985

  US Festival

  September 1982

  We travel to Woz’s rock festival

  As soon as Steve Jobs took over the Macintosh project in January 1981, he recruited many of the crucial early Apple employees who had worked on the Apple II, including Rod Holt, Jerry Manock, Dan Kottke, Randy Wigginton, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

  VIPs, thanks to Woz

  Woz was enthusiastic about the Macintosh and started hanging out at the Mac team’s new office at Texaco Towers, reviewing Burrell’s design and learning the 68000 instruction set. But he was only working on the project for a couple of weeks when he crashed his Beechcraft Bonanza airplane while taking off near his home in Scott’s Valley, sustaining a serious head injury and knocking out a couple of teeth.

  The accident put Woz out of commission for almost two months. While he was recuperating, he had time to rethink his priorities and he decided he wanted to go back to college to earn his undergraduate degree (he needed just one more year of classes) instead of returning to Apple. He enrolled in the engineering program at UC Berkeley in the summer of 1981 under the assumed name of Rocky Clark, in honor of his dog Rocky and his new wife, Candi Clark.

  A couple of months after the crash, Woz was listening to his favorite radio station, KFAT, and had an inspiration about putting together a music festival, a “Woodstock West” featuring his favorite progressive country music performers. He realized that while he had the financial wherewithal, he didn’t know the first thing about the music industry and filed the idea away, but not before mentioning it to a few friends.

  Later that fall, while attending classes at Berkeley, Woz was introduced to a new age entrepreneur named Dr. Peter Ellis. Peter was a former college radical who had organized a “survival fair” at San Jose State University in the 60s, during which he presided over the burial of a Ford Pinto. He hit it off with Woz and was enthusiastic about Woz’s Woodstock West idea. Peter came up with the name “The US Festival” (in reaction to the “me” decade), and threw in other ideas like incorporating a technology fair and featur
ing a satellite linkup with rock musicians in Moscow. Woz wrote a sizable check to fund a new corporation named Unuson, which stood for “Unite Nations Using Singing Over Network,” to create and produce the US Festival. Peter was the executive director.

  Peter put together a team and plans began to take shape for an impressive three-day music festival to be held over Labor Day weekend at Glen Helen park in San Bernardino, around an hour away from Los Angeles. Unuson paid top dollar to hire Bill Graham, the foremost rock promoter in the country, to put together a superlative bill of first-class bands, including the Police, Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty, Santana, and many others.

  Woz encouraged his Apple friends to come to the US Festival by giving us special gold passes that got us in for free and permitted us to hang around back stage. Burrell Smith, Bill Budge and myself rented a camper and drove down together, skipping work to leave Friday morning so we could be there by the start of festivities that evening.

  After the long drive, we parked the camper a half mile away from the festival site and walked the dusty trail to the main concert area amid the gathering crowd. We arrived just as the sun was setting and the first band, The Gang of Four, was taking the stage. After their set ended, we made our way to the stage area to test out our gold passes and see if we could find Woz.

  The security guard at the stage door verified our gold passes and let us in, but seemed to resent doing it. I had never been backstage at a rock concert before. There was a nice spread of cold cuts and beverages in front of a line of trailers that served as dressing rooms for the bands. Lots of people were milling around, including roadies, groupies, bodyguards and even the occasional rock star.

  Suddenly I heard a very loud noise as someone rode into the backstage area on the largest motorcycle I had ever seen. At first I thought it was a Hell’s Angel, but it turned out to be Bill Graham in a black leather jacket and sunglasses, scowling as he ordered people around. We didn’t feel very welcome and were frequently asked to show our passes. It seemed as though the festival staff was resentful that Woz’s friends were allowed to be there.

  We finally spotted Woz and waved to get his attention. He came over to us, looking happy and excited.

  “Do you guys want to introduce a band? Which one? I’ve got it worked out with Bill Graham so my friends can introduce their favorite band if they want to. We still have plenty of slots left.”

  gold pass for the US festival

  I was intrigued since one of my favorite groups, the Kinks, were scheduled for Saturday afternoon. But getting up on stage in front of hundreds of thousands of people sounded utterly terrifying to me. I declined, but then I noticed Burrell’s eyes had lit up and he was very excited.

  “Santana? Can I introduce Santana? That would be so cool ...” Carlos Santana was one of Burrell’s favorite guitarists.

  That evening, when we got back to the camper, Burrell wrote a brilliant short, sweet and humorous introduction of Santana to use the next day, and started to memorize it by reading it aloud. It was all he could talk about until we made our way backstage early on Saturday morning. Burrell waited expectantly until Woz showed up. He read Woz his introduction, which Woz really liked.

  Woz led Burrell up onto the stage to introduce him to Bill Graham and tell him about the upcoming Santana intro. But lots of people wanted to talk with Woz and he got distracted, leaving Burrell alone on stage for a few minutes, just as Bill Graham appeared, looking pissed off as usual.

  Bill Graham took one look at Burrell and grimaced. “Who the #$*! are you? What are you doing on the goddamn stage?”

  Burrell explained he was a friend of Woz’s and was waiting onstage to introduce Santana. He pulled out his notes for the introduction from his pocket and waved them for Bill Graham to see.

  “Sure you are,” Bill Graham responded sarcastically. “I’m going to introduce Santana. And you’re gonna get the #%$*! off the stage right now, this instant!”

  Burrell looked around for Woz but couldn’t spot him. He started to argue but stopped short when he saw how furious Bill Graham became.

  Crowd at the US Festival at Glen Helen Regional Park in San Bernardino, California

  Bill Graham motioned to one of his ubiquitous bodyguards, a huge guy with long hair and tattoos covering his forearms. “Please escort this gentleman from the premises,” he ordered peremptorily, “and don’t let him return!” The bodyguard literally picked Burrell up off the ground by the back of his shirt collar and carried him off the stage and then completely out of the backstage area.

  That was the last we saw of Burrell for the next six hours, and we wondered what had happened to him. Finally, he reappeared just before Tom Petty started the final set of the day. Bill Graham’s thug had dragged him outside the festival gates and confiscated his gold pass. Burrell didn’t know what to do, but eventually he obtained another gold pass by walking a few miles to the house that Woz had rented for the weekend. Woz was sorry about what had transpired and asked Burrell if he wanted to try again on Sunday to introduce another band, but this time Burrell was wary and quickly declined. In fact, he had had enough of the US Festival and persuaded Bill and me to drive back home early on Sunday morning without attending the last day of shows.

  Woz plays “air computer” on an Apple IIe

  part three

  The future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.

  William Gibson

  And Then He Discovered Loops!

  April 1982

  Bob has written many lines of code

  We interviewed quite a few candidates to replace Bud Tribble as the software manager before encountering Bob Belleville, who was one of the main hardware designers of the Xerox Star, the first commercial computer with a graphical user interface. He was intelligent, soft-spoken, and dryly skeptical about human nature. One of his many aphorisms was “The Law of Conservation of Misery,” which said no matter what course of action is taken, the total human misery in any given situation is maintained. It seemed particularly applicable to large computer companies.

  It looked as though Bob’s background was stronger in hardware, so we were somewhat skeptical about his software expertise, but he claimed to be equally adept at both. His latest project was a rebellious, skunk works effort to make a low-cost version of the Star called “Cub,” which used an ordinary Intel microprocessor (the 8086). This was heresy to the PARC orthodoxy that felt you needed custom, bit-slice processors to get sufficient performance for a Star-type machine. Bob had written much of the software for Cub himself.

  “I’ve got lots of software experience,” he declared. “In fact, I’ve personally written over 350,000 lines of code.”

  I thought that was pretty impressive, although I wondered how it was calculated. I couldn’t begin to honestly estimate how much code I had written since there are too many different ways to construe lines of code.

  That evening, I went out to dinner with my friend Rich Williams, who started at Apple around the same time I did. Rich had a great sense of humor. I told him about the interview with Bob and how he claimed to have written over 350,000 lines of code.

  “Well, I bet he did,” said Rich. “But then he discovered loops!”

  busy being born

  A visual history of the development of the Lisa/Macintosh user interface

  The Macintosh User Interface wasn’t designed all at once; it was actually the result of almost five years of experimentation and development at Apple, starting with graphics routines Bill Atkinson began writing for Lisa in late 1978. Like any evolutionary process, there were many false starts and blind alleys along the way. It’s a shame these tend to be lost to history, since there is a lot we can learn from them.

  Fortunately, the main developer of the user interface, Bill Atkinson, was an avid, lifelong photographer, and he had the foresight to document the incremental development of the Lisa User Interface (which more or less became the Mac UI after a few tweaks) with a series of photographs. He kept a Polaroid camer
a by his computer and took a snapshot each time the user interface reached a new milestone, which he collected in a loose-leaf notebook. I’m excited to be able to reproduce and annotate them here because they offer a fascinating, behind-the-scenes glimpse of how the Mac’s breakthrough user interface was crafted.

  • • • • • • • • • • • •

  The first picture in Bill’s notebook is from Bill’s previous project, just before starting work on the Lisa: Apple II Pascal. The high-performance graphics routines Bill wrote for Apple II Pascal in the fall of 1978 led right into his initial work on the Lisa.

  The center and right photos, from the spring of 1979, were rendered on the actual Lisa Display system, featuring the 720 × 360 resolution that remained constant all the way through to the shipping product. No Lisa existed at this point; these were done on a wired-wrapped prototype card for the Apple II. The middle picture shows the very first characters ever displayed on a Lisa screen; note the variable-width characters. The rightmost picture has more proportional text about the Lisa display system, rendered in a font Bill designed by hand.

  The leftmost picture illustrates the first graphics primitives Bill wrote for LisaGraf (which was eventually renamed to QuickDraw in 1982) in the spring of 1979, rendering lines and rectangles filled with 8 × 8 one-bit patterns. The power and flexibility of the patterns are illustrated in the rightmost shot, which were our poor man’s substitute for color. Color was too expensive (at the required resolution) in the early 80s.

  The middle picture depicts the initial user interface of the Lisa, based on a row of “soft-keys” drawn at the bottom of the screen, which would change as a user performed a task. These were inspired from work done at HP, where some of the early Lisa designers hailed from.