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  • what is

  • it about this machine? Why is this machine so interesting? Why has it been so influential?

  • Ah ahm, I'll give you my point of view on it. I remember reading a magazine article

  • a long time ago ah when I was ah twelve years ago maybe, in I think it was Scientific American.

  • I'm not sure. And the article ahm proposed to measure the efficiency of locomotion for

  • ah lots of species on planet earth to see which species was the most efficient at getting

  • from point A to point B. Ah and they measured the killer calories that each one expended.

  • So ah they ranked them all and I remember that ahm...ah the Condor, Condor was the most

  • efficient at [CLEARS THROAT] getting from point A to point B. And humankind, the crown

  • of creation came in with a rather unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the

  • list. So ah that didn't look so great. But ah, let me do this over again.

  • I remember ah reading an article when I was about twelve years old. I think it might have

  • been Scientific American where they measured the efficiency of locomotion of all these

  • species on planet earth. How many killer calories did they expend to get from point A to point

  • B? And the Condor came in at the top of the list ah surpassed everything else. And humans

  • came in about a third of the way down the list which was not such a great showing for

  • the crown of creation. And ah but somebody there had the imagination

  • to test the efficiency of a human riding a bicycle. A human riding a bicycle blew away

  • the Condor all the way off the top of the list. And it made a really big impression

  • on me that we humans are tool builders. And that we can fashion tools that amplify these

  • inherent abilities that we have to spectacular magnitudes. And so for me, a computer has

  • always been a bicycle of the mind. Ah something that takes us far beyond our inherent abilities.

  • And ah I think we're just at the early stages of this tool. Very early stages. And we've

  • come only a very short distance. And it's still in its formation, but already we've

  • seen enormous changes. I think that's nothing compared to what's coming in the next hundred

  • years. In program six we're going to look at some

  • of the past predictions of why people have been so wrong about the future. And one of

  • the notions is that today's vision of a standalone computer is just as limited as those past

  • visions of it being only a number cruncher. What's the difference philosophically between

  • a network machine and a standalone machine? Let me answer that question a slightly different

  • way. There have been, if you look at why the majority

  • of people have bought these things so far, ah there have been two real explosions that

  • have propelled the industry forward. The first one ah really happened in 1977. And it was

  • the spreadsheets. I remember when ah Dan Fylstra who ran the company that marketed the first

  • spreadsheet, walked not my office at Apple one day and pulled out this disk from his

  • vest pocket and said, "I...I have this incredible new program. I call it a visual calculator."

  • And it became Visicalc. And that's what really drove, propelled the Apple to...to the success

  • it achieved more than any other single event. And...and with ah the invention of Lotus 123,

  • and I think it was 1982, that's what really propelled the IBM PC to the level of success

  • that it achieved. So that was the first explosion was the spreadsheet. Ahm the second major

  • explosion has driven our, the desktop industry has been desktop publishing. [MISC BACKGROUND]

  • The...the second really bit explosion in our industry has been desktop publishing. Happened

  • in 1985 with the Macintosh and the laser writer printer. And at that point people could start

  • to do on their desktops things that only typesetters and printers could do prior to that. And that's

  • been a very big revolution in publishing. And those are really, those two explosions

  • have been the only two real major revolutions which have caused a lot of people to buy these

  • things and use them. Ah the third one is starting to happen now. And the third one is let's

  • do for human to human communication what spreadsheets did for financial planning and what public,

  • desktop publishing did for publishing. Let's revolutionize it using these desktop devices.

  • And we're already starting to see the signs of that.

  • As an example in an organization, we're starting to see that as business conditions change

  • faster and faster with each year, ah we cannot change our management hierarchical organization

  • very fast relative to the changing business conditions. We can't have somebody working

  • for a new boss every week. We also can't change our geographic organization very fast. As

  • a matter of fact even slower than the management one. We can't be moving people around the

  • country every week. But we can change an electronic organization like that. And what's starting

  • to happen is as we start to link these computers together with sophisticated networks and great

  • user interfaces, we're starting to be able to create clusters of people working on a

  • common task in a s... you know literally in fifteen minutes worth of setup. And these

  • fifteen people can work together extremely efficiently no matter where they are geographically.

  • And no matter who they work for hierarchically. And these organizations can live for as long

  • as they're needed and then vanish. And we're finding we can reorganize our companies electronically

  • ah very rapidly. And that's the only type of organization that can begin to keep pace

  • with the changing business conditions. And I believe that this collaborative model

  • has existed in higher education for a long time. But we're starting to see it applied

  • into the commercial world as well. And this is going to be the third major revolution

  • that these desktop computers provide is revolutionizing human to human communication in group work.

  • We call it interpersonal computing. In the 1985 we did personal computing. Ah and now

  • we're going to extend that as we network these things to interpersonal computing.

  • What was the image of the computer in the mid 196Os or whenever you first saw one? And

  • where are we now? I ahm, I first saw my first computer when

  • I was twelve. [MUMBLES] I saw my first computer when I was twelve. And it was at NASA. We

  • had a local NASA center nearby. And it was a terminal, which was connected to a big computer

  • somewhere and I got a timesharing account on it. And I was fascinated by this thing.

  • And I saw my second computer a few years later which was really the first desktop computer

  • ever made. It was made by Hewlett Packard. It was called the 9100-A. And it ran a language

  • called Basic. And it was very large. It had a very small cathode ray tube on it for display.

  • And I got a chance to play with one of those maybe in 1968 or 9. And ah spent every spare

  • moment I had trying to write programs I was so fascinated by this. Ah and so I was probably

  • fairly lucky. And then my introduction to computers very rapidly moved from a terminal

  • to within maybe twelve months or so, actually seeing one of the first, probably the first

  • desktop computer ever...ever really produced. And ah so my point of view never really changed

  • from being able to get my arms around it even though my arms didn't quite fit around that

  • first one. What was the role, how have personal computers

  • changed the landscape of computers? I mean back then it was centralized power, it was

  • in a mainframe. Now we have three times as much power at the fringe than we have in the

  • center, five times as much power. How did the PC change the world?

  • Well, though the analogy is nowhere perfect and certainly ah one needs to factor out the

  • environmental concerns of the analogy as well. Ah there is a lot to be said for comparing

  • it to going from trains, from passenger trains to automobiles. And ah the advent of the automobile

  • gave us a personal freedom of transportation. In the same way the advent of the computer

  • gave us the ability to start to use computers without having to convince other people that

  • we needed to use computers. And the biggest effect of the personal computer revolution

  • has been to ahm allow millions and millions of people to experience computers themselves

  • decades before they ever would have in the old paradigm. And to allow them to ah participate

  • in ah the making of choices and controlling their own destiny using these tools.

  • But it has created ah, it has created problems. And the largest problems are that ah now that

  • we have all these very powerful tools, we're still islands and we're still not really connecting

  • these people using these powerful tools together. And that's really been the challenge of the

  • last few years and the next several years is how to connect these things back together

  • so that we can, can rebuild a fabric of these things rather than just individual points

  • of light if you will. And ahm get the benefit of both, the passenger train and the automobile.

  • What's the vision behind the next machine? Everything that ah, that we've done in our

  • [PAUSES] Everything I've done with computers in my life has been along pretty much a single

  • vector. Ah and next is just one more point on that same vector. Ah in this case what

  • we...we observed was that the computing power we could give to an individual was an order

  • magnitude more than the PCs were given. In the sense that people want to do many things

  • at once and you really need true multi tasking. We really did want to ahm start to network

  • these things together in very sophisticated networks.

  • So the technology to build that became available. And most important we saw a way to build a

  • software system that was about ten times as powerful than any PC. And where new software

  • could be created in a fourth of the time. So we spent four years with ah fifty to a

  • hundred of the best software people we could find building this new software system. And

  • it's turned out beautifully. Ah what happens in our industry... [TAPE CUT]

  • what's the vision behind NEXT? Ahm it's not so much different than everything

  • I've ever done in my life with computers starting with the Apple II and the Macintosh, and now

  • NEXT which is if you ah believe that these are the most incredible tools we've ever built

  • which I do, then the more powerful tool we can give to people, the more they can do with

  • it. And in this case ah we...we found a way to do two or three things that were real breakthroughs.

  • Number one was to put a much more powerful computer in front of people for about the

  • same price as a PC. The second was to integrate that networking into the computer so we can

  • begin to make this next revolution within a personal computing. And the PCs so far have

  • not been able to do that very well. And the third thing, and maybe the most important

  • was to create a whole new software architecture from the ground up that lets us build these

  • new types of applications and let's them, let us, let's us build them in 25 percent

  • of the time that it normally takes to do on a PC. So ah we spent ahm four years with 50

  • to a hundred of the best software people that I know creating a whole new software platform

  • from the ground up. And the way our industry works is that you create this platform software

  • first and then you go out and you get people to write new applications on top of it. Well

  • the...the height that these new applications can soar is...is enabled or limited by the

  • platform software. And there's only been three systems that have

  • ever been successful in the whole history of desktop computing and that was the Apple

  • IIs platform software of which there wasn't too much. The IBM PC and Macintosh. So we're

  • attempting to create the fourth platform software standard and hopefully we'll succeed because

  • it will allow these applications to be written which far far exceed in capacity what can

  • be done in today's machines. What happens when you have a network that

  • allows the relative minorities in a whole different area come together. How does that

  • change the democracy? I don't know.

  • Okay. But...but what I have seen is I've seen interpersonal

  • computing happening at our own company. Or maybe the best way to put it is ahm, I remember

  • when the first spreadsheet came out. I saw it fly through Apple as well as other companies.

  • And when we ah, when we invented desktop publishing of course it influenced Apple first.

  • And I've seen the same thing happen with interpersonal computing here at NEXT. We decided to put

  • a NEXT machine on every employee's desktop about 18 months ago and connect them with

  • the very highspeed networking that's built in. And I've seen the revolution here with

  • my own eyes. And it's it's actually larger than the first two. Let me give you some examples.

  • Ah if we want to ah, if we're going to be doing a special project let's say with a company,

  • and we. and let's say the company is called ahm, what's your...

  • WGBH. WGBH. we're going to be doing a special project

  • with WGBH. And what we'll do is we'll create a ah special mailbox, WGBH and we'll put twenty

  • people on it that are going to be helping on this project. Now these twenty people will

  • be from all over our company. From marketing, from sales, from engineering, some from manufacturing.

  • Maybe some from our Boston office so they can be close by. And ah if one sends a message

  • to this mailbox, [SNAPS FINGER] they'll all get it like that, instantly.

  • And if ah one sends a reply they'll copy the whole mailbox so the rest of the team members

  • get to read ah the intellectual content going back and forth. And everyone on this, in this

  • mailbox will probably get around 30 mail messages a day. And they'll spend about twenty minutes,

  • thirty minutes reading these and answering these per day. And it will be like a beehive.

  • Now this project is very important for our company and I want to make sure it's getting

  • off right. So I'll put my own name on this mailbox and l'll see these thirty mail messages

  • fly by. All of the disagreements and the arguments and the thoughts and the decisions. And I

  • can just let it fly by and read it. I can do some background coaching with a few people

  • if I think they're a little off track. I can get right on the network and kibbutz if I'd

  • like. And after a month or so when I know that it's

  • going well I can take my name off. And so not only is this a way to organize violating

  • all management and geographic boundaries, it's also a way to manage. Where one can see.

  • Again the thoughts, disagreements and decisions of a company fly by a manager in a way that

  • they never could before. And ah we have seen it reduce the number of meetings we have at

  • least by fifty percent. we've seen it get far more managers and individual contributors

  • involved in decisions than there ever were before. We think the quality of the decisions

  • is a lot higher. And we've seen a window for management to look into the process of this

  • organism we call our company in a way that has never before been possible.

  • There was an article written by a guy by the name of . . . [END OF TAPE]

  • As we become part of this electronically community ahm that's going to provide us wonderful new

  • capabilities and ah communications abilities. But we still always want to be able to disconnect

  • that network spigot, take it off, and take our standalone computer somewhere, let's say

  • home. Now what's going to happen rapidly as with radio links and with fiber optics to

  • the home, you're going to be able to hook your computer up to your network at home.

  • Ah but there's always going to be that cabin in the middle of nowhere that I want to go

  • for a two week vacation where I want my computer. And if it doesn't work in a completely standalone

  • way, I'm I'm going to be no happy. So we have to provide a fluid way for these

  • things to kind of dock into the mother load network, but also undock and allow me as an

  • individual to carry my computer up into Yosemite backpacking. And where there's no radio links

  • and no fiber optic links and still be able to use it and then come back and dock back

  • into the network and find out what happened when I left and share some of my thoughts

  • maybe with some other folks. So we're working on that. That's our goal for the next five

  • years is that seamless transition between a standalone computer and the computer as

  • part of this network community. It also keeps away the welling aspects of

  • always being hooked into the network. That's right. I actually think what an interesting

  • paradox is the network which is ultimately going to define and create the home computer

  • market. Not keeping our recipes on these things or something like we thought in 1975. Ah being

  • a part of that network and not being able to stay away from it while you're home will

  • drive people to get computers in every house just like we have a telephone.

  • But computers then then won't be just computers. They'll be radios, and stereos, and TVs.

  • No I think, I think they'll be just computers. Just like your phone isn't your television

  • set. Just like your toaster isn't your radio. I think they'll be computers and they'll have

  • many of the capabilities of these other devices. Ahm multimedia, the ability to integrate sound

  • and video in with the computer is absolutely coming. But a lot of people have mistaken

  • it as the end rather than the means. Ah we see multi media as more of a means.

  • In other words, people aren't going to buy a computer for multi media. They're going

  • to buy it for training. Or they're going to buy it for interpersonal communication. And

  • in that communication, in addition to a text, they're going to want voice. They're going

  • to want, potentially I might want to send you a videoclip. But the real market is to

  • help us communicate better, or to help us train somebody. And ah we need to not lose

  • sight of that. I want to get your thoughts on the user interface

  • stuff. And I'd like to look at the transition ah Xerox to Apple. when did you hear, what

  • was the image of Xerox PARC and what was it like when you first went in there?

  • Ahm well Xerox PARC was a...a research lab set up by Xerox when they were making a lot

  • of profits in copier days. And ah they were doing some computer science research which

  • was basically an extension of some stuff started by a guy named Doug Engelbart when he was

  • at SRI. Doug had invented the mouse, and invented

  • the BIP map display. And some Xerox folks that...that Xerox ah I believe hired away

  • from Doug or split off from Doug somehow and got to Xerox, were continuing along in this

  • vain. And I first went over there in 1979 and I saw what they were doing with ah the

  • larger screens, ah proportionately spaced texts ah and the mouse. And it was just instantly

  • obvious to anyone that this was the way things should be. Ahm and so I remember coming back

  • to Apple thinking our...our future has just changed. This is where we have to go.

  • The problem was that Xerox had never made a commercial computer. This group of people

  • at Xerox was...was ah was more concerned with...with ah looking out fifteen years than they were

  • looking out fifteen months trying to make a product that somebody could use. So there

  • were a lot of issues that they hadn't solved like menus, other things like that. And at

  • Apple what we had to do was to do two things. One was complete the research which really

  • was only about fifty percent complete. And the second was to find a way to implement

  • it at a low enough cost where people would buy it. And that was really our challenge.

  • What did you succeed in doing with the MAC? Well the Macintosh as you remember when it

  • came out, we called it the computer for the rest of us. And what that meant was ah that

  • while experts could use some of the computers that were already out, most people didn't

  • want, again the computer was not an end in itself. It was a means to an end. And so most

  • people didn't want to learn how to use the computer. They just wanted to use it. And

  • the Macintosh was supposed to be the computer for people that just wanted to use a computer

  • without having to learn how to use one, spend six months.

  • Now it turned out that the...the paradox was that to make a computer easier to use you

  • needed a more powerful computer in the first place because you were going to burn a lot

  • of the cycles on making it easy to use. And so this computer that was easy to use was

  • actually more powerful and could do more things than the less easy to use computer. And it

  • took people a few years to figure that out about the Macintosh. But I think ah, I think

  • people did. Actually there's a funny joke that we were

  • clowning around one day. And one of our group is an IBM person. And so he was saying, some

  • little girls walks up and sees a prompt and goes to her daddy and says "it's broken".

  • Where's my desktop? Where's...where's my metaphor. And we've gotten, we've...we've adopted this

  • new metaphor. How has that changed the look of computers?

  • Well I think, I think the Macintosh was created by a group of people who felt that ah there

  • wasn't a strict vision between sort of science and art. Or in other words, that mathematics

  • is really a liberal art if you look at it from a slightly different point of view. And

  • why can't we interject typography in the computers? Why can't we have computers ah...ah talking

  • to us in English language? And ahm looking back, five years later, this seems like a

  • trivial observation. But at the time it was cataclysmic in its consequences. And the battles

  • that were fought to push this point of view out the door were very large.

  • The balance between thinking and doing. I mean one of the things in the semiconductors was

  • you had risktakers. Bob Noyce learns to hang- glide at age 40. These people like laying

  • their butts on the line. How important was that in the early days? I mean we're going

  • back to '75. Well again after seeing... my entire life has been spent only in one industry

  • which is this one. And but I've been in it now for about fifteen years and I've seen

  • a lot of people make a lot of things. I've seen a lot of people fail a lot of things.

  • And my...my point of view on this, or my observation is that the doers are the major thinkers.

  • The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker

  • and doer in one person. And if we really go back and we examine, you know did Leonardo

  • have a guy off to the side that was thinking five years out in the future what he would

  • paint or the technology he would use to paint it, of course not. Leonardo was the artist

  • but he also mixed all his own paints. He also was a fairly good chemist. He knew about pigments.

  • Ah knew about human anatomy. And combing all of those skills together, the art and the

  • science, the thinking and the doing, was what resulted in the exceptional result.

  • And there is no difference in our industry. The people that have really made the contributions

  • have been the thinkers and the doers. And when you, when you ah, a lot of people of

  • course, it's very easy to take credit for the thinking. The doing is more concrete.

  • But somebody, it's very easy to say oh I thought of this three years ago. But ah usually when

  • you dig a little deeper, you find that the people that really did it were also the people

  • that really did it were also the people that really worked through the hard intellectual

  • problems as well. What's it going to take to make computers

  • accessible to the rest of the public. And I don't know what the statistics are but 20

  • million people on computers or .... What's it going to take to get it to a hundred million?

  • Well probably death is the best invention of life. Ah because it means there's a constant

  • turnover. And so if you want to make a change in our society, the best place to do it is

  • in the educational system. So that you're ah, there are, there are now generations of

  • people that have come out of school who computers are second nature to them. And the people

  • in our society that...that ah at this point still have, have not embraced these things.

  • Or getting older. Has that cycle, that wheel of birth and death turns, ah just like driving.

  • People that don't drive are very rare. Another generation or two, people don't use computers

  • are, will be pretty rare. Going back...

  • It's a harsh way of saying it but... It's very true. I mean there is a line that

  • says those people that don't adopt it will die off. Focusing now on the third program

  • where we've gone from semiconductors and the vision is that IBM is this big machine, UNIVAC,

  • big large machine. And we take the line through an integrated circuit microprocessor. And

  • I actually got some great stuff from Ted Hoff about, you know, it's a lightbulb. It burns

  • out, you replace it. Then we lead up into the beginnings of the personal computer. So

  • what were you doing at the time and how did that get started?

  • Actually you know, it wasn't Intel that first figured out that the microprocessor was a

  • computer. They designed these things to be used in calculators. And they thought, the

  • reason that the microprocessor came about was they thought if they could design a slightly

  • programmable one, the next customer that walked in the door that wanted a slightly different

  • calculator they could just spend a few months rather than a few years designing a new piece

  • of silicone. But I think the thought of making a computer never really occurred to them.

  • And it was the hobbyists that thought about making a computer out of these things. It

  • was the computer hobbyists community that first did that.

  • Ah and I don't think Intel quite understood that for a few years. But again the first

  • thing that happened was these people came together and formed a club, the home ____

  • computer club at Stanford was the first one in the country. And ah it was a beehive of

  • all of these people who were interested in these small little computers. People that

  • might have been ham radio operators, people that might have you know worked with large

  • computers ah were all gathered together to share, discuss their ah, their latest little

  • projects. It was very exciting. And there was not a month that would not go by where

  • some breakthrough didn't happen. And then the first magazine came along which was Byte

  • magazine to communicate on a national scale with all these hobbyists. So that it was a

  • very, very exciting dynamic time. what did you think when you saw the Apple

  • I? What did I think when I saw the Apple?

  • Yeah when you first saw that Woz was building that board.

  • Well it didn't quite work that way actually. what happened was that Woz and I ah had known

  • each other since I was about 12 or l3 years old. And we built, ah our first project together

  • was we built these little blue boxes to ah make free telephone calls. And ah we had the

  • best blue box in the world. It was this all digital blue box. I don't think it works anymore.

  • But ah we had, we had a fun time doing that. So when it came to building a computer together

  • ah Woz focused mostly, Woz was the brilliant hardware engineer and focused on the core

  • design of the computer. And ah I was worrying about which parts we ought to use and how

  • we were going to build these things and how it sort of, and somebody that wasn't a Wise

  • was going to manage to buy all the extra parts you still needed to buy and plug this thing

  • together because you still needed to buy your own keyboard, your own display, and your own

  • power supply. And ah so you needed to be pretty much of a hardware hobbyist.

  • Now we made the, a very important decision was to not offer our computers a kit. Even

  • though you needed to buy these extra parts. The main computer board itself came fully

  • assembled. We were the first company in the world to do that. Everybody else was offering

  • their little computers a kit. And what that meant was was there was maybe an order of

  • magnitude of more people who could actually buy our computer and use it then if they had

  • to build it themselves. And the Apple II was actually the first computer

  • to come fully assembled where you didn't have to do anything. And the reason there was it

  • was our observation that for every hardware hobbyist, someone who could either build the

  • kit themselves or at least find these five or ten extra parts they needed, there were

  • a thousand potential software hobbyists. And if they didn't have to do anything with the

  • hardware except use it, make... that meant write their own programs.

  • Still there was a much larger group of people that could take advantage of this. So we wanted

  • to reach them. That was the real breakthrough of the Apple II.

  • Contrast if you will the Atlantic City fair over the West Coast computer firm.

  • Ahm well the....the Atlantic City ah computer show was the first... [PAUSES] [

  • Look at the light bulb. [SNEEZES] The ahm, the first an face to face

  • gathering of personal computer hobbyists from all around the country was the show put on

  • in Atlantic City in 1976. And it was in the basement of some dingy hotel. And it just

  • happened to be about 300 degrees outside. So the basement, it was like a steambath.

  • And it was impossible to be down there for longer than a half an hour without being completely

  • drenched. And nevertheless there were a few hundred hobbyists completely drenched walking

  • around for hours. And we had a little tiny booth there.

  • There was a table tablecloth over a hotel table. And there were, Woz and I and a friend

  • or two of our went there and we had our few Apple ls there and a little poster we made.

  • And that was really our first ah, the first computer show in the, the ah world. A year

  • later, I think ah maybe even nine months later, there was the first West coast computer fair

  • which was a much more professional operation by, in comparison with Atlantic City. But

  • still very every hobby oriented compared with what goes on today. And that was in San Francisco

  • and there were maybe a hundred ah companies showing their wares. And it was attended by

  • maybe a thousand people which was a lot for our industry at that time.

  • 13,000. l3,000, wow, really. 13,000 people. That's

  • a lot. Jim Warren told me that.

  • That's a lot. I...I'd be surprised at that. But maybe.

  • Call it half that. 6,000. 6,000. Thousands of people. And ahm that's

  • when we introduced the Apple II. And ah I think the Apple II is probably the hit of

  • the show. Inbetween you went and found McKenna and Markkula?

  • Well we found Regis by ahm, I used to like Intel's advertising. So I called him up one

  • day and I said who does your advertising? And he said Regis McKenna. And I said what's

  • Regis McKenna? He said no it's a person. He gave me his phone number and I called Regis

  • up. He told us to go away about four or five times, but eventually he ah agreed to help

  • us out. And then Mike Markkula I found ah from ah

  • a venture capitalist actually. Ah told me that I should go talk to Mike Markkula. Now

  • we...we hooked up with Mike just around the time we introduced the Apple II. Maybe a month

  • before. But the Apple II was pretty much designed and ready to go. And then Mike came on board

  • and ah things really started to take off. How important was the disk drive in the development

  • of Apple? Disk drive was crucial. Ah one of the things

  • that people forget when they think about...about Apple and the Apple II in particular was that

  • we were the first company to come out with a reliable, inexpensive floppy disk drive.

  • And we had a low cost floppy disk drive that really worked about two to three years before

  • any of our competitors. And that was an incredibly important reason why the Apple II was successful.

  • A matter of fact, ah there were a few others. The Apple II could hold up to 48 kilobytes

  • of memory which today doesn't seem like much, but at that time was maybe three times as

  • much as its competitors. And that's why Visicalc was written for the Apple II. It was the only

  • computer that could hold it. And so if Visicalc had been written for some other computer you'd

  • be interviewing somebody else right now. And it was because of that design decision and

  • other design decisions like it that the Apple II really beat its competition.

  • How did the Apple II change the world of computing? Well the Apple II was the world's first successful

  • personal computer. And really defined the personal computer as we know it today. So

  • ah I think it changed the world a lot from that point of view. [END OF TAPE]

  • One of the theses is that um .... well let me turn this question around. How important

  • is market research? How much did you rely on it in the early days?

  • Well you know I think in the early days it was very easy because you would go to a home

  • group computer club meeting and there was your whole market and so you could find out

  • what they thought. Now if you show them your product and see what they thought and you

  • could because products were much simpler then and within a few months you could change it

  • all around and come back and show the new one.

  • But as the market got more sophisticated it was less easy to do that. And the problem

  • is is that market research can tell you tell you what your customer think of something

  • you show them. Or it can tell you what your customers think of something you show them.

  • Or it can tell you what your customers think of something you show them. Or it can tell

  • you what your customers want as an incremental improvement on what you have but very rarely

  • can your customers predict something that they don't even quite know they want yet.

  • As an example no market research could have led to the development of the Macintosh or

  • the personal computer in the first place. So there are these sort of non incremental

  • jumps that need to take place where it's very difficult for market research to really contribute

  • much in the early phases of thinking about how to you know what those should be.

  • However once you have made that jump possibly before the products on the market or even

  • after is a great time to go check your instincts with the marketplace and and verify that you're

  • on the right track. And usually when you show people something they'll they'll say oh my

  • God this is fantastic. Or give you some feedback along those lines.

  • How has the personal computer changed society? I mean how have we fundamentally changed the

  • way we do do our do our daily business our our daily lives? How's it affected that?

  • I'm not the right person to ask. when you were getting started out I read somewhere

  • that you had no intention of building a company you were just out to do something for yourselves.

  • Well at the time when we started Apple um _____ was working for Hewlett Packard I was

  • working for Atari actually for ______ ______ designing video games and ah we we went through

  • Atari and showed them our early protoypes and we went to HP and we encouraged each company

  • to hire the other one and let us do this for them. And we got we got turned down in both

  • places. Probably for good reasons but ah we started

  • a company because it was the only alternative left. Not cause we wanted to.

  • when did you ever think that it was going to really this was really going to happen.

  • That this was going to go from just an interesting idea that ah....

  • Oh it didn't take very long. It it happened for me when I saw people that could never

  • possibly design a computer. Could never possibly build a hardware kit. Could never possibly

  • assemble their own keyboards and monitors. Could never even write their own software

  • using these things, then you knew something very big was going to happen.

  • When we got into that stage where we were high enough on the food chain if you will

  • that ah a lot of people could use these things and they were really liking it.

  • What's the the goal of the the the next factory? why why is it so automated? Why is that necessary?

  • Um one could go on for a long time about how the US has forgotten about manufacturing which

  • has certainly been true but we're starting to wake up. And ah what we're finding is is

  • that ah time to market is very important and quality is very important and the way we can

  • make tremendous increase in quality and and reductions in market is through automation.

  • So the automation isn't there to lower the cost although it does do that it's really

  • there to increase the quality and decrease the time it takes us to get a new product

  • as an example to market which is very important in a technology based market place.

  • So um we happen to be the lowest cost producer in the world already next of our class of

  • products. we also happen to be one of the highest quality producers of our type of product

  • in the world. And we think for a company to survive much less prosper in the nineties

  • that these are going to be very very important things to be world class at. we're not competing

  • at the home group computer society anymore we're competing with Europe ink and Japan

  • ink and IBM ink ah and ah in order to do that we really have to be world class manufacturers.

  • [BACKGROUND DISCUSSION] What if computer networks offered education?

  • Well ah education been on computer networks for longer then almost anyone else. The Department

  • of Defense has an office called DARPA and they funded a thing called ah ARPANET many

  • many years ago to try to build a command and control network for military ah ah purposes.

  • And they did a very brilliant thing. After they got a prototype working they gave it

  • to the university community in America and said bang on this for awhile and see if it

  • works and help us make it better. And after a few years of the university community doing

  • that they created a separate version for military purposes but they left the ah educational

  • version going. And that is tied together the research community

  • of the United States now for about a decade. And it's vital to the functioning of higher

  • education in this country. So higher education has actually led the way. That's why we started

  • off focusing exclusively on higher education because where else could you find five thousand

  • people on a network but university as an example.So higher education has been five years ahead

  • of business in using computers in some of these powerful new ways which we're going

  • to see now ripple into business in the first half of the nineties. It's pretty exciting.

  • How about lower education? How about school? How about lower ....

  • Um sharing valuable resources. So far ah computer use in K-12 has been primarily Apple IIs.

  • And ah I wish ah I wish that they'd be upgrading the MacIntosh's faster then they have been

  • but I think ah I think that slowly happening and IBM is is getting in there as well. The

  • primary purpose of computing in K-12 has been just computer literacy and um there's been

  • a bottle neck because there hasn't been enough sophisticated course wear written and that's

  • a problem for our society in general amongst all the other problems with our K- 12 education

  • system. One could talk about that for a few days easily. Easily. [BACKGROUND DISCUSSION]

  • Going back to the Mac and meeting the deadline for the Mac how crazy did it get? I mean you

  • had already said that you were going to have this big scratch at the Super Bowl.

  • Um actually we wanted to get the Mac out a year before we did so we had internal deadlines

  • ah that we were not able to meet but by the time we set ah by the time we bought the spots

  • for the Super Bowl and things like that it was basically in the bag. It's not that we

  • didn't work twenty four hours a day for the last six months to get it out but um we were

  • on the ______ run at that time. I love this this I don't want to call ______

  • this thing that you did was just have everybody sign the _______ that was great. Why did you

  • do that? Um because the people that worked on it consider

  • themselves and I certainly consider them artist. These are the people that under under different

  • circumstances would be painters and poets but because of that time that we live in this

  • new medium has appeared ah in which to express oneself to one's fellow species and that's

  • a medium of computing and um so a lot of people that would have been artists and scientists

  • have gone into this field ah to express their their feeling and um so it it seemed like

  • a the right thing to do. what was it like when you announced at the

  • shareholders meeting? Oh wow it was well I got the first few rows

  • had all the people that worked on the Mac. About a hundred people. A hundred fifty people

  • that really made it happen were all seated in the first few rows and when it was introduced

  • after we went through it all and had the computer speak to people itself and things like that

  • ah the whole auditorium of that twenty five hundred people gave it a standing ovation

  • and ah ah the whole first few rows of Mac folks were all just crying.

  • All of us were just .... I was biting my tongue very hard because I had a little bit more

  • to do. But ah it was a very very emotional moment because it was no longer ours. From

  • that day forward it was no longer ours. We couldn't change it. If we had a good idea

  • the following day it was to late. It belonged to the world at that point and time. [BACKGROUND

  • NOISE] So what did you accomplish? what did you set

  • out to do and what did you do? Well I think maybe it's something different

  • along the lines then what you want to ..... . You know the semi-conductor people didn't know

  • what they had in the micro-processor for two to three years. It was the computer hobbies

  • that really got the idea to make this into a computer rather then a calculator.

  • Would you like to build a company or change the world?

  • Ah when we started Apple we were out to build computers for our friends. That was all No

  • idea of a company. How important is a user interface in the design

  • of a computer? Well the whole idea of the MacIntosh was a

  • computer for people who want to use a computer rather then learn how to use a computer.

  • So....One way we've been playing with it is it's not how it does it but what it does.

  • In other words I don't care how it does it anymore I just want it to do what I want

  • it to do. [BACKGROUND DISCUSSION] Where are we in the evolution of the user

  • interface? And where are we going? The whole discussion about user interface

  • is just strange to me because to me it's just sort of a natural thing that had to happen

  • and did happen and it's happened. It's kind of like automatic transmissions. Um not quite

  • the same as that but... [BACKGROUND DISCUSSION] Um okay networking. Why is networking important?

  • Why is it the future? Well in the nineties we're going revolutionize

  • human to human communication using these desktop computers in the same way that spreadsheets

  • revolutionize financial modeling and the desk top publishing revolution as publishing.

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