Every child, I think, likes to hear stories about his or her birth
and infancy. Sit down with their parents and look at baby photos. Many
families assemble 'baby books', combining photos and reminiscences and
more.
The Mac was developed in the period 1979 to 1984 - the same period
that my children were born.
Andy Herzfeld is arguably one of the Mac's parents; buying an Apple
II in January 1978, he became obsessed with it. Teaching himself 6502
assembly language, he quit grad school in August 1979 to become a
systems programmer at Apple. There he heard about Jef Raskin's project to create a low-cost
easy-to-use personal computer and got himself assigned to the team in
February 1981, shortly after Steve Jobs replaced Raskin as the team
leader.
On the Macintosh team, Herzfeld worked on the operating system, its
underlying Toolbox, and many of the original Desk Accessories. Leaving
Apple after the Mac's release, he went on to found Radius and General
Magic.
He began writing down his stories of the birth of the Mac and began
posting them online at www.folklore.org while soliciting
contributions from other original Mac team members.
Revolution
in the Valley (O'Reilly, US$24.95,
CDN$36.95) is an assembly of reminiscences in book form, mostly from
Herzfeld, but also with contributions from team members Steve Capps,
Donn Denman, Bruce Horn, and Susan Kare. Like a family's baby book,
it's lavishly illustrated with photos showing the Mac's parents (with
hair and clothing that could have been me in my children's baby
books).
For any Mac-owner interested in his or her technological roots, this
book is a really fun read. Herzfeld brings to life the people and the
project; the stories move beyond the technical issues to highlight the
culture of Apple in which it all took place.
Read, for example,
"It's the Moustache that Matters", how Burrell Smith, frustrated at
being considered a 'lowly service technician' realized all the
company's hardware engineers had prominent moustaches. After growing
his own, he was quickly 'promoted to full-fledged engineer'.
Herzfeld considers relatively unknown Burrell Smith one of the true
'fathers of the Macintosh' for a series of innovative hardware
designs.
Herzfeld's anecdotes highlights the long and difficult birth process
of the Macintosh - how it started off in the shadow of older siblings
like the Apple II and the far larger Lisa development effort. (Lisa
developer Larry Tessler stalked out of a joint team meeting grumbling,
"Tell Steve that I think he's destroying Apple"). Relations with Bill
Gates and Microsoft. (Gates responded to Jobs' November 1983
accusations that "You're ripping us off!" and "We both had this rich
neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set
only to find that you'd already stolen it"). Fights with Steve,
especially as the Mac grew from what Raskin had wanted to be a $500
computer to one targeted for $1,500 and that eventually went on sale
for $2,495. How even the Puzzle desk accessory could become
controversial.
Jobs always insisted
that "real artists ship", and in January 1984 the Mac was finally ready
(or as ready as a 128 KB system that really needed 512 KB would ever
be). Burrell and Andy get their pictures in Newsweek and get recognized
by the flight attendant while flying to Boston.
With the product release, the stories get sadder as team members
move on and out; by the beginning of 1985, Burrell Smith had quit Apple
and Herzfeld had taken a leave of absence from which he would never
really return. Even Steve Jobs would be forced out of Apple.
But as Herzfeld closes the book, "the urgency, ambition, passion for
excellence, artistic pride, and irreverent humor of the original
Macintosh teach infused the product and energized a generation of
developers and customers with the Macintosh spirit, which continues to
inspire more than 20 years later".
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