Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you? This time for a tech Stuff classic episode.
Speaker 1: We have another multi parder coming up on here. It's
Speaker 1: actually a three partner, So for the next three fridays,
Speaker 1: including this one, we'll be talking about the Macintosh. And
Speaker 1: because this came from a different era, I used the
Speaker 1: imaginative titling sequence of the McIntosh story Part one, so
Speaker 1: I bet you can guess what the next two are called.
Speaker 1: This originally published back on June second, twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: Hope you enjoy.
Speaker 1: The Macintosh came out in nineteen eighty four, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk about its debut toward the end of this podcast,
Speaker 1: because we're really looking at the early stages, what was
Speaker 1: happening back when they were first talking about starting the
Speaker 1: Macintosh project over at Apple, and kind of explaining the
Speaker 1: thought process that went into the formation of that computer.
Speaker 1: Maybe in later episodes, I'll continue to trace the evolution
Speaker 1: of the Macintosh, but it's a pretty interesting story. Just
Speaker 1: the beginning alone is an interesting story. And you have
Speaker 1: to put yourself in the mindset of the early nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: really the late seventies and early eighties, and what was
Speaker 1: going on at that time, and the really the birth
Speaker 1: of the personal computer industry as a whole, because it
Speaker 1: was brand new back in the late seventies early eighties. Now,
Speaker 1: I know a lot of my listeners are younger than
Speaker 1: I am.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you guys enjoy the show. I will be
Speaker 1: talking a lot about the seventies and eighties. I know
Speaker 1: it sounds like ancient history to some of you, but
Speaker 1: that's when I grew up.
Speaker 2: So just be nice. I'm old and my feelings are
Speaker 2: easily hurt. All right, All that's out of the way.
Speaker 1: Let us dive into the world of the Macintosh. You
Speaker 1: know what I do for a living, or, as my
Speaker 1: favorite character from cinema, Quint from Jaws would say.
Speaker 2: You'll know me. You know what I do for a living.
Speaker 2: I don't just talk about technology.
Speaker 1: I have to backtrack fifteen years before the thing began,
Speaker 1: just to tell you all the stuff that happened before
Speaker 1: the beginning thing. So we're gonna talk about some history
Speaker 1: of Apple first leading up into the launch of the
Speaker 1: Macintosh project. So let's begin with the date of April first,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, April Fool's Day, nineteen seventy six. That
Speaker 1: was when two Steves, one known as Steve Jobs and
Speaker 1: the other known as Steve Wozniak, decided in a garage
Speaker 1: to form a very special relationship with one another to
Speaker 1: become partner in a brand new company that would be
Speaker 1: called Apple Computers. That garage was in Coopertino, California, and
Speaker 1: that's where Apple Computers was born on April first, nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six. Now, the actual story, of course, starts a
Speaker 1: little earlier than that. Wosniak and Jobs originally met in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one through a mutual friend named Burl Bill Fernandez,
Speaker 1: and the two of them found that they shared a
Speaker 1: couple of really big interests in common. They both loved technology,
Speaker 1: and they both loved mischief. They really loved pulling pranks.
Speaker 1: Steve Wozniak had come from a phone freaking background, and
Speaker 1: if you want to know what phone freaking is, freaking.
Speaker 2: Is spelled with a pH.
Speaker 1: I did a full episode about phone freaking in the past,
Speaker 1: so you can search the tech stuff archives. In short,
Speaker 1: it involves manipulating the phone system. It's kind of like hacking,
Speaker 1: but for telephones. And it was all about being able
Speaker 1: to make long distance calls for free by fooling the
Speaker 1: phone system that you were some sort of administrative tone.
Speaker 1: You know, you could actually produce a sound a tone
Speaker 1: using a device. One of the early ones was a
Speaker 1: whistle from Captain Crunch Serial and make long distance calls
Speaker 1: for free. Well, Steve Wozniak was a guy who was
Speaker 1: interested in this. He was interested in the way that
Speaker 1: the phone system worked, and he also kind of liked
Speaker 1: the idea of pulling a fast one on people. In fact,
Speaker 1: there's a great story about jobs in Wozniak making a
Speaker 1: call to the Vatican this way and they at least
Speaker 1: reportedly nearly got the Pope on the phone, but he
Speaker 1: didn't pick up because it turned out his fridge was running,
Speaker 1: so he went out to catch it.
Speaker 2: Anyway, the two.
Speaker 1: Joined the Homebrew Computer Club in the mid seventies. This
Speaker 1: was a big club in California, primarily where people who
Speaker 1: were enthusiasts of computers would get together start building kits
Speaker 1: from scratch, trying to make their own co computers. Wozniak
Speaker 1: took inspiration from an early kit called the Altair. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: this was a computer that you would get all the
Speaker 1: parts for, but you would have to put it together yourself.
Speaker 2: It wasn't something you bought straight out of the box.
Speaker 1: Although there were companies that would do that for you,
Speaker 1: where they'd put it together and you would just buy
Speaker 1: the completed Altair.
Speaker 2: That's not what Wosniak was interested.
Speaker 1: Inosneiak decided he wanted to make his own computer. So
Speaker 1: he thought, well, what if I made a typewriter interface,
Speaker 1: which was innovative, no one had done that with a
Speaker 1: personal computer yet. And what if instead of just a
Speaker 1: bunch of lights that would indicate the results, I created
Speaker 1: a display, or I allowed this computer to connect to
Speaker 1: a display and show things on a monitor. And so
Speaker 1: he used a television set, just an old TV set
Speaker 1: that he could wire to his computer, and thus the
Speaker 1: Apple one was born. It was a brand new idea.
Speaker 1: The Apple one computer was a far cry from the
Speaker 1: personal computers that would follow. It was really a hobbyist computer.
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs was able to go to a retailer and
Speaker 1: convince the retailer, why don't you put in an order
Speaker 1: for these Apple one computers because they're going to be
Speaker 1: a hot ticket item. People are really interested in computers,
Speaker 1: and now they can finally get their hands on one.
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs is a great salesman, or was a great salesman,
Speaker 1: and he was able to convince the retailer to put
Speaker 1: in an order, which was the only way they could
Speaker 1: actually afford to build the Apple computers.
Speaker 2: So they couldn't they couldn't.
Speaker 1: Deliver upon the order until they had managed to secure
Speaker 1: the order, and then once they did, they started building
Speaker 1: these things. But even then they had to cut some corners.
Speaker 1: So the original Apple one didn't have a case. It
Speaker 1: was all just naked hardware and you had to build
Speaker 1: your own case for it, or just have all these
Speaker 1: different pieces wired together, but without any sort of protective
Speaker 1: covering around it. Still, it was enough to get people's
Speaker 1: interests and it was enough to finance Apple computers in
Speaker 1: those early days. They they decided, immediately after they made
Speaker 1: about two hundred of these, there were only two hundred
Speaker 1: of the Apple one computers ever in existence, that they
Speaker 1: were going to go on to the next step, which
Speaker 1: was to build a more fully functional, self contained personal computer,
Speaker 1: and they decided to incorporate the company on in January
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven. Now, in April nineteen seventy seven they
Speaker 1: were able to debut the Apple to computer. This one
Speaker 1: had originally tape based storage, So you know cassette tapes.
Speaker 2: Maybe some of you know what cassette tapes are, well,
Speaker 2: we also use those to.
Speaker 1: Store computer data back in the day, but that's what
Speaker 1: the original Apple two computer used as its storage system
Speaker 1: was cassette tapes. Those are not ideal because obviously the
Speaker 1: tape is stored on reels, so if you're trying to
Speaker 1: find a specific piece of information, you have to scan
Speaker 1: through the reel until you get to it, and this
Speaker 1: just takes up time. Eventually they would switch over to
Speaker 1: five and a quarter inch drives, and if you don't
Speaker 1: know what a five and a quarter inch disk is,
Speaker 1: you really missed out. The big black, flimsy discs. And
Speaker 1: if you told people they were floppy discs and they
Speaker 1: weren't familiar with the concept, there was a good chance
Speaker 1: they would fold it in half and put it in
Speaker 1: their pocket and thus ruin the disc For all time.
Speaker 1: It was still a form of magnetic storage, it was
Speaker 1: just in a disc form rather than a tape form.
Speaker 1: Once they were able to do that, they were able
Speaker 1: to speed things up considerably. The most advanced version of
Speaker 1: the Apple two when it was first coming out, had
Speaker 1: a stunning amount of memory, sixty four whole kilobytes of memory.
Speaker 1: That seems like nothing now, and I guess you could
Speaker 1: argue it is nothing now. By the time, it was
Speaker 1: really innovative. The monitor resolution was also kind of funny.
Speaker 1: When you look at today's monitors, you know, you look
Speaker 1: at the ultra high definition displays that we have today,
Speaker 1: four K displays, you look at the retina displays.
Speaker 2: They're amazing. That's not how things started.
Speaker 1: The original Apple to monitor had a resolution of two
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty pixels by one hundred ninety two pixels.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the original monitor.
Speaker 1: Had so few pixels you could, if you were determined,
Speaker 1: count them all. That's pretty amazing.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: If it weren't for the fact that someone actually made
Speaker 1: some useful productivity software, the Apple two probably never would
Speaker 1: have gone anywhere. It was a good idea, but you
Speaker 1: had to have a killer app to convince people, hey,
Speaker 1: this is something worth buying. And the first real killer
Speaker 1: app for the Apple two was one called visycalc. Visycalc
Speaker 1: was essentially a spreadsheet program. It was an application that
Speaker 1: was like something you would see in Excel or Lotus one,
Speaker 1: two three.
Speaker 2: It was new.
Speaker 1: It was a brand new idea. I mean, people just
Speaker 1: didn't have access to that. They had to do all
Speaker 1: their factoring on paper and then they would transfer that
Speaker 1: over into whatever format they needed. This would allow them
Speaker 1: to do that virtual You could create your cells, you
Speaker 1: could create your formulas, and so this was a huge
Speaker 1: demonstration of how powerful and useful personal computers could be.
Speaker 1: It seems pretty silly now to think about it, but
Speaker 1: at the time this was truly new. So it was
Speaker 1: the thing that helped really convince people that the Apple
Speaker 1: to computer was the way to go. It was an
Speaker 1: advantage over some of the other personal computers that were
Speaker 1: starting to debut around that time, things like the Commodore
Speaker 1: sixty four or the Texas Instruments computered. We have to
Speaker 1: take a quick break, but we will be back to
Speaker 1: talk more about the early days of the Macintosh after
Speaker 1: this message. Now I could talk a lot about the
Speaker 1: Apple two a lot. My dad owned an Apple two.
Speaker 1: Technically it was an Apple to e. He purchased it.
Speaker 1: He wrote a book on typewriters, sold the book, used
Speaker 1: the money from that book to buy the Apple to
Speaker 1: E and then use that to write other books. So
Speaker 1: my dad's an author if you did not know, he
Speaker 1: writes all sorts of books, science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery,
Speaker 1: children's literature. If you want to check out his stuff,
Speaker 1: his name is Brad Strickland. But yeah, those early books
Speaker 1: he wrote he wrote on an Apple two E, which
Speaker 1: meant he stored them all on floppy disks. He could
Speaker 1: store about a chapter per floppy discs, so each book
Speaker 1: would be fifteen, sixteen, maybe even twenty floppy discs in size.
Speaker 1: We had entire sleeves of these floppy disks that represented
Speaker 1: the books that my dad had written.
Speaker 2: In fact, I.
Speaker 1: Had dinner with him very recently and he tells me
Speaker 1: he still has all of those. We don't have a
Speaker 1: computer that can read them because we don't have an
Speaker 1: Apple too E disk drive and emulator to read off
Speaker 1: of these things, but he still has the discs now.
Speaker 1: I use the Apple to E mostly to play games
Speaker 1: because I have my priorities stretch. I played a lot
Speaker 1: of Ultima on the Apple two E. Love my Ultima series.
Speaker 1: I thought it was awesome.
Speaker 2: Now, while the.
Speaker 1: Apple two and its variance began to earn some serious
Speaker 1: cash for Apple, they were very successful comparatively speaking, the
Speaker 1: founders were already looking at what comes next. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just about let's rest on our laurels. Now that we've
Speaker 1: made a personal computer, We've made it a success. We've
Speaker 1: managed to make a mark on this brand new, fledgling industry.
Speaker 1: So the logical successor for the Apple two would be
Speaker 1: the Apple three, And in fact, that's what the company
Speaker 1: began to develop. People began to work on the successor,
Speaker 1: and they began to work on the Apple three computer
Speaker 1: it would eventually debut. It was faster, more capable than
Speaker 1: the Apple two, and it was meant to be primarily
Speaker 1: a business machine, not a personal computer, and it had
Speaker 1: built in five and a quarter inch disk drives as
Speaker 1: opposed to the external disk drives you would have to
Speaker 1: connect to your Apple to computer back in those days.
Speaker 1: And it had an integrated high resolution graphics chip. But
Speaker 1: it didn't sell very well. If you are thinking I've
Speaker 1: never really heard of the Apple three, I've heard of
Speaker 1: the Apple too. The reason for that is it just
Speaker 1: was a failure at the market. It wasn't a total flop,
Speaker 1: but they didn't sell nearly as well as Apple was hoping.
Speaker 1: The reason for that, well, there are quite a few
Speaker 1: By nineteen eighty one, IBM had entered the personal computer picture,
Speaker 1: so you had a saturated market. Not only did you
Speaker 1: have the Apple machines, Commodore, you had Texas Instrument, you
Speaker 1: had other devices that were starting.
Speaker 2: To come out too.
Speaker 1: IBM got into the game, and IBM had a huge
Speaker 1: name in business technology, so IBM was able to leverage
Speaker 1: that and move forward creating these business machines and dominating
Speaker 1: that market. This was the beginning of the IBM and
Speaker 1: IBM compatible era of personal computing. So Apple three just
Speaker 1: couldn't really keep up. It was a more expensive machine
Speaker 1: and it was not as well supported as the Apple
Speaker 1: two was. In other words, there weren't as many people
Speaker 1: developing software for the Apple three as they had been
Speaker 1: for the Apple two. And meanwhile, IBM was catching up
Speaker 1: on a lot of ground. So even though you had
Speaker 1: the Apple three team and Apple, some of the other
Speaker 1: folks there were already thinking about the step beyond, where
Speaker 1: do we go beyond just creating the next version of this.
Speaker 2: Particular personal computer.
Speaker 1: What can we do to really innovate and push what
Speaker 1: personal computing is all about. So one of those people
Speaker 1: who was really concerned with this was Steve Jobs. He
Speaker 1: really wanted to look at a way of branching out
Speaker 1: from this traditional approach. So while there was a team
Speaker 1: working on the Apple three, Steve Jobs began to look
Speaker 1: at another project that got started a around nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: Now this was not the Macintosh. Instead, it was called Lisa.
Speaker 1: Lisa was a different project that was taking form at
Speaker 1: the same time as the Macintosh project within Apple. Lisa
Speaker 1: was a different a different kind of computer model. Jobs
Speaker 1: really wanted to take a dramatic step away from the
Speaker 1: early PC.
Speaker 2: Those early PCs were all text based.
Speaker 1: That meant that you would get a command prompt and
Speaker 1: you would have to type in a command and a
Speaker 1: file extension or a file and its extension in order
Speaker 1: to have something happen. You had to navigate directories through
Speaker 1: actual text commands and you would get a text result,
Speaker 1: so you'd have to read through everything. There was no
Speaker 1: graphic representation of what you were working on. It was
Speaker 1: all text based and it was such a wonderful time.
Speaker 1: My friends, I loved this time because I actually learned
Speaker 1: all the different commands, and I could very speedily get
Speaker 1: it through any system because I understood how they worked,
Speaker 1: and it didn't require any overlay on top of the
Speaker 1: basic system, which would slow things down. But then, I'm
Speaker 1: a computer geek. Even though I'm an English literature geek,
Speaker 1: I'm also a computer geek. And a lot of people
Speaker 1: are not computer geeks. And in fact, there were a
Speaker 1: lot of technology enthusiasts who were worried that if we
Speaker 1: stayed in that realm of text based architecture, it would
Speaker 1: keep people from adopting computers. The mainstream would never latch
Speaker 1: onto it because it was too hard to use. So
Speaker 1: Jobs thought perhaps they could create a better system for consumers,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to move toward a graphic user interface
Speaker 1: or a gooey Now. He was not the first person
Speaker 1: to think about the guy that really one of the
Speaker 1: earliest would be Douglas Ingelbart. Douglas ingle Bar had been
Speaker 1: working on early versions of a graphic user interface since
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, and we're almost at nineteen eighty at
Speaker 1: this point of the story. We're beyond nineteen eighty as
Speaker 1: of right now, just in case I confused you at
Speaker 1: that moment. Ingelbart also designed a mouse as a navigational
Speaker 1: tool to help with graphic user interfaces. So before that
Speaker 1: you would just use a keyboard or a data pad, something.
Speaker 2: Along those lines.
Speaker 1: Engelbart said, Well, if we can represent information as graphics
Speaker 1: and we can create an interface that allows you to
Speaker 1: drag and click and point and select things, that would
Speaker 1: make it a much more intuitive interface and allow people
Speaker 1: to understand more easily how to navigate through the computer.
Speaker 1: Ingelbart would then take on this information and bring it forward.
Speaker 1: He had started his work at SRI International, but then
Speaker 1: continued his work at a research and development place called
Speaker 1: Xerox Park. Park is PAARC so as the research and
Speaker 1: development brand of Xerox. It's a branch of Xerox, I
Speaker 1: should say, and Xerox Park a lot of very innovative
Speaker 1: stuff came out of there, And I think I've done
Speaker 1: a couple of episodes that at least relate to Xerox Park,
Speaker 1: but maybe I need to do a full one about
Speaker 1: what the organization was and the things that came out
Speaker 1: of Xerox Park, because it's pretty fascinating. Well, Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: said he knew about Xerox Park, and he wanted to
Speaker 1: learn more about the stuff that they were developing, so
Speaker 1: he asked Xerox, hey, can we come and take a look,
Speaker 1: and some folks from Apple come over and check out
Speaker 1: what's happening at Xerox Park. I realized that this is
Speaker 1: all mostly proprietary, hush hush stuff that.
Speaker 2: You don't want to get out there.
Speaker 1: But come on, we're buddies, right, And Xerox said, essentially,
Speaker 1: show me the money. So here's what happened. They struck
Speaker 1: a deal. Apple said, tell you what we'll do. We
Speaker 1: will sell you up to one hundred one thousand shares
Speaker 1: of Apple stock at ten dollars a share, which was
Speaker 1: a huge discount at what Apple stock was trading for
Speaker 1: at the time. So I said, if you want, you
Speaker 1: can buy up to one hundred thousand dollars at ten
Speaker 1: bucks a share. In return, all we want is three
Speaker 1: days time at Xerox Park. And Xerox said, you're on, mister,
Speaker 1: and this was the deal of the century, and let
Speaker 1: me explain to you why. So let's make a couple
Speaker 1: of assumptions here. Let's assume that Xerox opted to buy
Speaker 1: all one hundred thousand dollars one hundred thousand rather of
Speaker 1: those shares at ten bucks a share. And let's also
Speaker 1: assume that Xerox has held on to all one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand of those shares since then, since nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: That's impressive. First of all one hundred thousand shares at
Speaker 1: ten bucks a share, that's a million bucks. That's not
Speaker 1: a small amount of money. That's a good chunk of change,
Speaker 1: but it's peanuts compared to what it's worth now. So
Speaker 1: you might have heard. Apple's done pretty well for itself
Speaker 1: over the years, so well that the company has split
Speaker 1: its stock four times since it's it first started becoming
Speaker 1: a publicly traded company. Now, that means that they would
Speaker 1: expand the number of shares that they had out in
Speaker 1: the market, and that increases the value of the company
Speaker 1: as a result, And it means that if you own
Speaker 1: shares after the split, you own more shares. How much
Speaker 1: more depends upon the nature of the split. So in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven, in two thousand and in two thousand
Speaker 1: and five, Apple split with a two for one share
Speaker 1: split stock split, which meant that you would get two
Speaker 1: shares for every instead of just one share.
Speaker 2: So if you owned one share.
Speaker 1: Of Apple Stock, after one of those splits, you would
Speaker 1: own two shares, and then after the next split you
Speaker 1: owned four, and after the next split you own eight.
Speaker 1: It's a great way to keep seeing value from your shares.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: The fourth time that they split was in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: and that was a real doozy. That was a seven
Speaker 1: to one split, so for every share you owned, you
Speaker 1: would get seven shares, an enormous return. So one hundred thousand,
Speaker 1: let's go back to Zerox here, one hundred thousand that
Speaker 1: they get nineteen seventy nine, it doubles to two hundred thousand,
Speaker 1: then it doubles to four hundred thousand, then to eight
Speaker 1: hundred thousand. Then you get the seven to one split,
Speaker 1: which means that you get up to five million, six
Speaker 1: hundred thousand shares of Apple stock. So for one hundred thousand,
Speaker 1: they now have five million, six hundred thousand, assuming that
Speaker 1: they bought all one hundred thousand and that they held
Speaker 1: on to it for that long. If in fact, Xerox
Speaker 1: still has those one hundred thousand shares that they bought
Speaker 1: for ten bucks a share back in the day, they
Speaker 1: are sitting pretty because today, assuming that the prices and
Speaker 1: change dramatically, I checked it before, why I did anything
Speaker 1: else this morning? I looked at Apple's trading price. Stocks
Speaker 1: were trading at one hundred forty six dollars fifty three
Speaker 1: cents per share, So the share price is more than
Speaker 1: ten times what it was when Xerox bought it. And
Speaker 1: because of the splits, they now own five point six
Speaker 1: million stocks, not one hundred thousand stocks.
Speaker 2: So you multiply those two.
Speaker 1: Numbers together, the five point six million and one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty six point fifty three dollars, and you factor
Speaker 1: in how much it's actually worth today. That one million
Speaker 1: dollar investment would now be worth eight hundred and twenty million,
Speaker 1: five hundred and sixty eight thousand dollars. So a million
Speaker 1: dollar investment returns almost a billion dollars today. Again, that's
Speaker 1: assuming all of those other factors fall into place for
Speaker 1: a three day tour.
Speaker 2: A three day.
Speaker 1: Tour, we'll find out if Dylan keeps that or cuts it,
Speaker 1: but the line people understand anyway. You could argue also
Speaker 1: that without this visit to Xerox, jobs and Apple would
Speaker 1: have been way behind on innovation. They would not have
Speaker 1: allowed Apple to transform into a company that would eventually
Speaker 1: grow to be worth as much as it was as
Speaker 1: it is today. So you could say, yeah, Xerox made
Speaker 1: a huge return on its investment, assuming all those other
Speaker 1: factors are true. But Apple really benefited from this too.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like it's a one sided thing. So Apple
Speaker 1: was able to redefine again what a personal computer is
Speaker 1: all about because of the stuff they learned from this visit.
Speaker 1: This was a machine that they saw the Xerox alto.
Speaker 1: It was a machine they saw on this visit. This
Speaker 1: was a machine that incorporated Inglebart's ideas about the graphics,
Speaker 1: user interface, and the computer map. Else it was a
Speaker 1: system that wasn't available for purchase. You could not buy
Speaker 1: one of these as just a member of the general public.
Speaker 1: They had made a couple thousand of them, but they
Speaker 1: were all pretty much internal machines. Very few people had
Speaker 1: had a chance to actually see them outside of Xerox.
Speaker 1: Jobs was beyond impressed, and he decided that Apple computers
Speaker 1: from that point forward should have a gooey and a
Speaker 1: mouse system. And he felt very strongly that it would
Speaker 1: open up the computer industry to a wider audience. The
Speaker 1: text based approach just had too steep a learning curve.
Speaker 1: It was discouraging people from getting into computers because only
Speaker 1: computer geeks understood it. And this is really the era
Speaker 1: where we began to define what a computer geek was.
Speaker 1: It was these people who acted like the machines they
Speaker 1: were really obsessed with. They spoke in jargon, they were unrelatable.
Speaker 1: The reason we have that image of the computer nerd
Speaker 1: is because of the text based approaches we had to
Speaker 1: comput early in the days of personal computers. It required
Speaker 1: this dedication and learning curve that not a lot of
Speaker 1: people possessed. Necessarily, going to the graphics user interface removed
Speaker 1: a lot of those barriers and opened it up to
Speaker 1: the mainstream. Although the image of the nerdy computer geek
Speaker 1: would stick with us for many years and still to
Speaker 1: this day is there as evidenced by shows like The
Speaker 1: It Crowd and The Big Bang Theory. Anyway, this was
Speaker 1: sort of the beginning of momentum toward developing both the
Speaker 1: Macintosh project and the Lisa project within Apple and Jobs
Speaker 1: knew that he could really break free of that narrow
Speaker 1: stereotype if they went this route. Now I have a
Speaker 1: lot more to talk about as far as the development
Speaker 1: that went into the Macintosh. But before I get into that,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: So in Apple, you've got two teams forming to work
Speaker 1: on the next big thing within the company, and they're
Speaker 1: independent of one another. They are not working with each other,
Speaker 1: so it's two self contained groups within Apple. One of
Speaker 1: those groups was led by Jobs and this was the
Speaker 1: LISA team. Now LISA, which was the name that Jobs
Speaker 1: had given to his own daughter, ostensibly stood for a
Speaker 1: local integrated system architecture. The LISA machine was meant to
Speaker 1: be a business device, not a personal computer.
Speaker 2: So this was going to be.
Speaker 1: Something that Apple would end up marketing to big businesses
Speaker 1: to use for their operational use and you know, maybe
Speaker 1: employees would have these machines on their desks, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. It was going to be a high end machine,
Speaker 1: complete with a high end price tag. We're talking to
Speaker 1: price tag.
Speaker 2: Of ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Ten thousand dollars in the early nineteen eighties, so you're
Speaker 1: talking more like twenty grand today. You're talking about the
Speaker 1: price of a car, essentially, is what we get down to.
Speaker 1: But the other team was led by a guy named
Speaker 1: Jeff Raskin. Jeff is spelled j Ef only one f.
Speaker 1: Raskin earned degrees in physics and mathematics at State University
Speaker 1: at New York at Stony Brook, and he later earned
Speaker 1: a master's degree in computer science at Pennsylvania State University.
Speaker 1: He actually first started with mathematical logic, but ended up
Speaker 1: having a disagreement with one of his professors and switched
Speaker 1: his focus to computer science and got a masters in
Speaker 1: the Technically. According to reports, he was actually qualified for
Speaker 1: a PhD, but there was one problem. The Pennsylvania State
Speaker 1: University wasn't accredited to award PhDs in computer science at
Speaker 1: that time, so while he may have had the academics
Speaker 1: for a PhD, there was no authorized unit to designate
Speaker 1: him as such. He then studied a lot of art
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: He was really.
Speaker 1: Interested in not just technology but art, and he was
Speaker 1: a really smart guy and a little older than the
Speaker 1: two Steves jobs in Wosniak. Raskin would go on to
Speaker 1: teach several subjects at the University of California, San Diego,
Speaker 1: including computer science, art, and photography, and it was really
Speaker 1: interested in that intersection between art and tech, which I
Speaker 1: think is fascinating and people who have that sort of obsession,
Speaker 1: the people who really focus on that intersection between art
Speaker 1: and computers, I think makes some of the best and
Speaker 1: most innovative designers in the world.
Speaker 2: So when you see.
Speaker 1: A product out there that just is gorgeous and elegant
Speaker 1: in its design and it works well with whatever its
Speaker 1: intended purposes, I think that ultimately you have to look
Speaker 1: for the person who has that vision of where art
Speaker 1: and technology cross in order to understand what were the
Speaker 1: decisions that led to that.
Speaker 2: This guy was one of those people.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like he was a really groovy guy,
Speaker 1: someone that I probably would have enjoyed chatting with. He
Speaker 1: has passed away sadly, so I am not able to
Speaker 1: do that, but I'll talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: his life. He joined Apple as the thirty first employee
Speaker 1: after the company launched the Apple two, so he came
Speaker 1: on board after Apple two had become a thing.
Speaker 2: He had already worked a bit with Apple.
Speaker 1: The Apple had hired his company to write the programming
Speaker 1: manual for the Apple Basic programming language, so he had
Speaker 1: already worked with Apple in that respect, but now was
Speaker 1: coming to work full time for the company and His
Speaker 1: original role was manager of publications and new product review,
Speaker 1: but he had this passion project he really wanted to do.
Speaker 2: He wanted to develop a.
Speaker 1: Personal computer that was more accessible to a wider audience.
Speaker 1: That was his real desire. He wanted to push personal
Speaker 1: computers beyond the hobbyist and the early adopter phases. So
Speaker 1: he was the one who started the Macintosh project back
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine, and he named it after his
Speaker 1: favorite type of Apple, the Macintosh, although it spelled a
Speaker 1: different way than the Apple the actual Apple is. Now
Speaker 1: you could argue and probably convincingly, that Raskin was somewhat
Speaker 1: responsible for pushing Jobs's shift toward designing a computer for
Speaker 1: the general public, because Raskin was writing memos to the
Speaker 1: rest of the company really to direct it to Steve Jobs, saying,
Speaker 1: I really think we are missing an opportunity here. If
Speaker 1: we're able to tap into that market, it's so much
Speaker 1: larger than just the hobbyist market.
Speaker 2: It's a huge beneficial.
Speaker 1: Business decision and it will really push the development of
Speaker 1: personal computers. And he was one of the people who
Speaker 1: really championed that idea. Now, one thing he didn't do
Speaker 1: was talk about graphic user interfaces and computer mice or
Speaker 1: a computer mouse's miss whatever. He was looking at keeping
Speaker 1: costs down. So his original plan was to make a
Speaker 1: personal computer that was still text based but more accessible
Speaker 1: than previous machines were. So it was a little different
Speaker 1: than the Lisa development, which was really looking at using
Speaker 1: the graphics user interface and the computer mouse, but a
Speaker 1: slightly different version. The mouse they saw at Xerox Park
Speaker 1: was a three button mouse, and the mouse that they
Speaker 1: talked about for the Macintosh was a single button mouse.
Speaker 1: This was in part to simplify things and also to
Speaker 1: bring down costs. They didn't want the components to be
Speaker 1: more and more expensive because the price tag for the
Speaker 1: Lisa was already pretty astronomical.
Speaker 2: As it is.
Speaker 1: So Jobs was more or less on the Lisa team.
Speaker 1: He was kind of supposed to be adjacent to the
Speaker 1: Lisa team, but he kept involving himself more and more
Speaker 1: in their activities, and Raskin was leading the Macintosh team,
Speaker 1: and they weren't necessarily competing because they were looking at
Speaker 1: developing computers for two different consumer groups. Right, Jobs wanted
Speaker 1: to build computers for businesses and Raskin wanted to build
Speaker 1: computers for personal users, so they weren't directly competing with
Speaker 1: one another, but there was some professional competition going on
Speaker 1: between the two and kind of a race to see
Speaker 1: who could develop their machine first and who was going
Speaker 1: to make the next iteration of the personal computer. They
Speaker 1: were both relying on similar philosophies to make computing more
Speaker 1: intuitive to the average person, although again Jobs was looking
Speaker 1: at the guy route, whereas Raskin was saying, how can
Speaker 1: I make the text route more accessible and keep those
Speaker 1: costs down. Meanwhile, over on the corporate side of Apple,
Speaker 1: the company began to bring on more experienced folks from
Speaker 1: the business world to help make sure Apple became a
Speaker 1: quote unquote real company. These were the people who formed
Speaker 1: the policies and practices of Apple, the ones who kind
Speaker 1: of codified what the rules were and determined how business
Speaker 1: would be done, making sure it would maintain a position
Speaker 1: of dominance in the computer marketplace.
Speaker 2: But they also.
Speaker 1: Began to change the culture of Apple, and some of
Speaker 1: Apple's employees were a little chafed by this. They didn't
Speaker 1: really want to see things change that much, and it
Speaker 1: caused some growing pains as a result. One person who
Speaker 1: caused some serious growing pains was Apple's first president and CEO.
Speaker 1: Whose name is and I'm not making this up, Michael Scott.
Speaker 1: This is not the Michael Scott from dunder Mifflin. It's
Speaker 1: not Michael Scott from the office. But it is a
Speaker 1: guy named Michael Scott, sometimes called Scotty. Now, some people
Speaker 1: would go on to say that Michael Scott would end
Speaker 1: up wreaking havoc through Apple. He had been brought on
Speaker 1: by one of Apple's early investors, Michael Markula. Markula was
Speaker 1: technically the third employee of Apple after Wozniak and Jobs.
Speaker 1: Markula spent much of his own money as an investment
Speaker 1: in the company and then some more money as a
Speaker 1: loan to the company. So not only did he invest,
Speaker 1: he also loaned an extra amount of money to Apple
Speaker 1: in its early days. And he was the one who
Speaker 1: kind of brought Michael Scott on board to become a
Speaker 1: leader for the company. Now the leaders had almost canceled
Speaker 1: the Macintosh project a few times. It was a very
Speaker 1: small project, very humble beginnings. Jeff Raskins had a group
Speaker 1: of like three people working with him to develop this
Speaker 1: idea and design the Macintosh computer. And it was always
Speaker 1: on the verge of the chopping block because the management
Speaker 1: was saying, well, could we not dedicate your attention somewhere else,
Speaker 1: someplace that we're definitively going to make money. And each
Speaker 1: time Jeff Raskin would argue to allow the project to continue,
Speaker 1: and it would kind of be allowed to continue for
Speaker 1: a little bit longer until the next time this would happen,
Speaker 1: and then you'd rinse and repeat. The project was almost
Speaker 1: canceled in nineteen seventy nine and in nineteen eighty despite
Speaker 1: the fact that again it was very modest, it wasn't
Speaker 1: taking a huge amount of Apple's resources away. Then in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one, we had a really rough year for Apple,
Speaker 1: very rough year in nineteen eighty one. A lot of
Speaker 1: bad things happened. For one thing, Steve Wozniak was in
Speaker 1: a plane crash and was severely injured. His recovery would
Speaker 1: take a huge amount of time, and he stepped away
Speaker 1: from Apple because he had to concentrate on his health.
Speaker 1: That same year, Michael Scott in February nineteen eighty one
Speaker 1: fired more than forty Apple employees, which was a significant
Speaker 1: number considering this was a very small company at the time.
Speaker 1: It was on a day that was called Black Wednesday
Speaker 1: within the company. That was the day Michael Scott came in,
Speaker 1: fired a bunch of people, rolled a keg of beer
Speaker 1: into the office, and then proclaimed himself Lord and Master
Speaker 1: of all. He surveyed, that's probably going a bit far,
Speaker 1: but apparently the keg of beer thing is true, which
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna leave that. It's a little too soon
Speaker 1: for me to talk about kegs of beer and triumphing
Speaker 1: over other people's misfortune. Enough commentary. At any rate, The
Speaker 1: move did not go over very well with a lot
Speaker 1: of Apple employees, and in fact, Mark Coola himself said
Speaker 1: that's a bit much and decided, you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to pull some rank here. I am the
Speaker 1: big investor, I'm a majority owner of Apple. You are out,
Speaker 1: and he pulled Michael Scott from position of president and
Speaker 1: CEO and made him vice chairman. Steve Jobs had become
Speaker 1: the chairman of the company, so he was in charge
Speaker 1: of that. Marculo himself would step in as the president
Speaker 1: of the company.
Speaker 2: Vice Chairman was a.
Speaker 1: Title that had practically no actual responsibilities or power associated
Speaker 1: with it, so it was almost a title and name alone,
Speaker 1: and later on that year, Michael Scott would actually resign
Speaker 1: somewhat defiantly. It all seems very melodramatic to me looking
Speaker 1: at it in hindsight. So Mike Marcula, who was a
Speaker 1: man who had retired at the age of thirty two
Speaker 1: because he made so much money from stock options. He
Speaker 1: had worked for Fairchild semi Conductor in the marketing department
Speaker 1: and as a result of his work there, he had
Speaker 1: been awarded stock options, and the stock options ended up
Speaker 1: being worth millions of dollars because of the success of
Speaker 1: Fairchild semi Conductor. It's a good time to get into semiconductors,
Speaker 1: just before the computer age dawned, And so he was
Speaker 1: a multimillionaire already.
Speaker 2: He had retired at age thirty two. That blows my mind.
Speaker 1: Now he becomes the acting president of Apple, and Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs is acting as chairman.
Speaker 2: Now, the reason I.
Speaker 1: Tell you all of this is not just to give
Speaker 1: you a history lesson of Apple. It's so that you
Speaker 1: understand how things happened. Next, you've got Jeff Raskin, who
Speaker 1: was working on creating an affordable, intuitive computer for consumers,
Speaker 1: and his project had been on that verge of cancelation.
Speaker 1: A couple of times, you have Steve Jobs, who was
Speaker 1: getting more and more involved in a project that.
Speaker 2: Technically wasn't his.
Speaker 1: Lisa was being spearheaded by other people, but Jobs was
Speaker 1: getting more and more involved in it, and you had
Speaker 1: Markola as the man who's leading the company. And then
Speaker 1: things turned south a bit. Jobs's team was in trouble
Speaker 1: largely because of Steve Jobs. He was getting personally involved
Speaker 1: in the develop of Lisa, and this was upsetting the
Speaker 1: managerial structure of the project as a result, because it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's the guy who isn't in charge who
Speaker 1: comes in and says like, hey, I founded the company,
Speaker 1: you should do things this way, not that way. If
Speaker 1: you've ever worked on any project where someone who was
Speaker 1: not in charge starts to try and take charge, you've
Speaker 1: probably experienced this kind of level of friction. Well, this
Speaker 1: was that on a pretty grand scale, and things were
Speaker 1: becoming really problematic as the project was progressing, so much
Speaker 1: so that Markola made the decision to remove Jobs from
Speaker 1: the team entirely, essentially saying you aren't allowed to work
Speaker 1: on that project, stop bothering them, and put them into limbo. Essentially,
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs had really nothing to do at that point,
Speaker 1: and the control of the project went over to a
Speaker 1: guy named John Couch. Jobs was left with no real
Speaker 1: position of his own, something that would become a recurring
Speaker 1: theme with an Apple. If you've heard our other episodes
Speaker 1: about Steve Jobs and Apple, you know how at times
Speaker 1: in his career in Apple he rubbed people the wrong way,
Speaker 1: and so the people in charge would just kind of
Speaker 1: tell him, go into your own office and do whatever
Speaker 1: you want to do, but stop bothering these people. And
Speaker 1: part of it was Steve Jobs's fault. Part of it
Speaker 1: was the fault of the management. It's no one is
Speaker 1: blameless in this. I'm not trying to say that Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs was a total nightmare to work for. Some people
Speaker 1: felt that way, but I'm not saying that that's definitively
Speaker 1: the case, rather than it was complicated. So Jobs is
Speaker 1: removed from the Lisa project, he decides that he needs
Speaker 1: something else to do, and then he takes a good
Speaker 1: look at the Macintosh project and then says, ah, I
Speaker 1: want to work on this. Here's the problem. Jeff Raskin
Speaker 1: was working on that. That was his project and his team,
Speaker 1: and Steve Jobs wanted all of it. He wanted to
Speaker 1: jump in there and take over the Macintosh project and
Speaker 1: turn it into something that it wasn't when it got started.
Speaker 1: At that time, Raskin was really working hard with a
Speaker 1: small team to develop a low cost consumer computer. Jobs
Speaker 1: immediately began to make changes, demanding changes to the work
Speaker 1: and redesigning the computer pretty dramatically, changing it from the
Speaker 1: track it had been on since nineteen seventy nine. Remember
Speaker 1: this is like nineteen eighty one eighty two. This was
Speaker 1: enough to exasperate Jeff Raskin, who ultimately decided to resign
Speaker 1: his position in nineteen eighty two after enduring multiple changes
Speaker 1: to a project he had defended numerous times from cancelation.
Speaker 1: So think about that for a minute. He had worked
Speaker 1: very hard to keep this project alive, arguing for its viability,
Speaker 1: and then one of the founders that the company comes
Speaker 1: in and starts making dramatic changes to his design decisions.
Speaker 1: It was very frustrating, and so ultimately he decided to resign,
Speaker 1: and in the book Becoming Steve Jobs, they published a
Speaker 1: memo that was written by rask And upon his resignation,
Speaker 1: and it reveals some of the issues. The passage reads
Speaker 1: while mister Jobs's stated positions on management techniques are all
Speaker 1: quite noble and worthy. In practice, he is a dreadful manager.
Speaker 1: He is a prime example of a manager who takes
Speaker 1: the credit for his optimistic schedules and then blames the
Speaker 1: workers when deadlines are not met. He also said that
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs missus appointments, does not give credit, has favorites,
Speaker 1: and doesn't keep promises, and in another interview, Jeff Raskin
Speaker 1: said that Jobs would have made quote an excellent King
Speaker 1: of France end quote. That is a sick burn. I'm
Speaker 1: assuming that Raskin was specifically meeting the kings of France
Speaker 1: who were in power directly before the French Revolution.
Speaker 2: That's brutal.
Speaker 1: Raskin would actually go on to found a company called
Speaker 1: Information Appliance, Incorporated, and later would teach computer science at
Speaker 1: the University of Chicago. That after the McIntosh debuted, he
Speaker 1: would be kind of referred to as sort of an
Speaker 1: eccentric uncle to the Macintosh, not the father of the Macintosh.
Speaker 1: And the reason for this is because the Macintosh that
Speaker 1: debuted was so dramatically different from the one that he
Speaker 1: had been designing since nineteen seventy nine. It had changed
Speaker 1: enough so it was no longer really the same computer.
Speaker 1: Raskin himself passed away in two thousand and five, and
Speaker 1: I am sad that I never had a chance to
Speaker 1: meet him, as he does sound like he was fascinating.
Speaker 1: Now back to the Macintosh team, Jobs wanted to overhaul
Speaker 1: the computer's esthetic design, both from a hardware and a
Speaker 1: software level. He wanted something sleek and different from previous computers,
Speaker 1: and he really wanted a design that would set the
Speaker 1: McIntosh apart from IBM's personal computers. IBM's PCs started hitting
Speaker 1: store shelves in nineteen eighty one, and they poised a
Speaker 1: direct threat to Apple's position, particularly among businesses. Had that
Speaker 1: reputation and was leveraging it, and Jobs wanted his team
Speaker 1: to finish their work before the Lisa team finished their work.
Speaker 1: Now that he had been removed from the Lisa team,
Speaker 1: that last part didn't happen, though Lisa would launch a
Speaker 1: year ahead of McIntosh. Lisa came out in nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: but the Lisa, unlike the Mac, did not see much success.
Speaker 1: It was just too expensive, it had too limited.
Speaker 2: Software.
Speaker 1: It just didn't have a lot of applications developed for it,
Speaker 1: so there wasn't much of a reason to buy one.
Speaker 2: It would like it would be like.
Speaker 1: Buying a very expensive video game console, but there are
Speaker 1: no games.
Speaker 2: Out for it yet that would be a problem.
Speaker 1: So very few of them were sold. I mean there
Speaker 1: were ten thousand dollars apiece. The Lisa won the race
Speaker 1: to the finish line. It was ready before the Macintosh was,
Speaker 1: but it lost the long game. Apple didn't give up
Speaker 1: on it right away. They launched the Lisa, it didn't
Speaker 1: see a whole lot of success. They then designed and
Speaker 1: launched the Lisa too, so the second computer in this
Speaker 1: line at a slightly lower price point, actually significantly lower
Speaker 1: price point, with some new hardware, some of it taken
Speaker 1: from the Macintosh computer to make it less expensive, so
Speaker 1: instead of using more expensive components, they used the components
Speaker 1: that kept the Macintosh below that exorbitant price point. They
Speaker 1: also rebranded the Lisa too. They gave it another overhaul,
Speaker 1: really kind of. They spruced it up a little bit,
Speaker 1: and they renamed it the Macintosh XL in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: But none of this really kept the Lisa treading water.
Speaker 1: So ultimately Apple pulled the plug figuratively and literally, I guess, since.
Speaker 2: It was a computer. Now.
Speaker 1: Jobs' version of the Macintosh incorporated a graphics user interface
Speaker 1: because he had been so impressed by Xerox's computer. Raskin's
Speaker 1: original design had, like I said, stuck with the text
Speaker 1: based approach. That this was a big change. It required
Speaker 1: a lot of work on the part of the team
Speaker 1: to go from text base to graphic user interface. Raskin
Speaker 1: really felt that it was appropriate to go with text
Speaker 1: base to keep the price down, although he did eventually
Speaker 1: endorse the use of a computer mouse. Raskin's goal was
Speaker 1: to make sure that the Macintosh debuted at a price
Speaker 1: of around five hundred dollars, between five hundred and one
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. As it turns out, that did not happen,
Speaker 1: but we'll get to that. He did, however, think you know,
Speaker 1: Jobs didn't want it to go super expensive like Lisa,
Speaker 1: but he did want to have this graphic user interface
Speaker 1: and mouse in it because he felt that it was
Speaker 1: just worthwhile. He ultimately came to the conclusion that incorporating
Speaker 1: those while it would mean a price hike in the mac.
Speaker 2: It would be worth it.
Speaker 1: People would see the value of the graphics user interface
Speaker 1: in the mouth and so it would make the final
Speaker 1: product more expensive than what Raskin then hoped, but it
Speaker 1: would be a justifiable expense because of the nature of computing.
Speaker 1: On that team where several people here are just a
Speaker 1: few of them, Daniel Kotke, Rod Holt, Mark Lebrun, Larry Tesler,
Speaker 1: Jerry Minak, among others, and in various interviews they said
Speaker 1: their goal was to create a computer that they themselves
Speaker 1: would want to own, which to me seems like a
Speaker 1: really good strategy if you're developing anything. I think that
Speaker 1: developing something that you yourself would want to use is important.
Speaker 1: If you're just throwing in features and stuff in order
Speaker 1: to make it shinier, you're probably on the wrong track.
Speaker 1: If you're incorporating stuff that you yourself would want to use,
Speaker 1: you're probably on the right track. And I see this
Speaker 1: in all areas, not just in technology. The Monty Python
Speaker 1: crew were famous for saying that they wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure the stuff they wrote made each other laugh, and
Speaker 1: if when they got together and they read out the
Speaker 1: stuff they had been working on, if other people were laughing,
Speaker 1: they knew they were on the right track and that
Speaker 1: stuff would go in the yes pile. Stuff that might
Speaker 1: be amusing, but isn't really getting a good response might
Speaker 1: go into maybe pile, and stuff that wasn't landing winning
Speaker 1: a no pile. So whether it's high tech or lowbrow comedy,
Speaker 1: you should follow the same general philosophy. At least that's
Speaker 1: my view and the view of the Macintosh team now.
Speaker 1: Developing that graphic user interface was actually a really painstaking
Speaker 1: process because this was a whole new thing for personal computers.
Speaker 1: No one had done it. Xerox Park had done it
Speaker 1: for their in house computer system, but no one had
Speaker 1: done it for a personal computer. So it required a
Speaker 1: lot of trial and error designing the programs, testing them,
Speaker 1: debugging them. In fact, some of the designers would say
Speaker 1: that the Mac operating system got debugged into existence, that
Speaker 1: essentially they started with a bunch of different code, much
Speaker 1: of it didn't work, and then they eliminated the stuff
Speaker 1: that didn't work until they willed it around down to
Speaker 1: a workable operating system. Seems like it worked.
Speaker 2: Out for them. It had to be.
Speaker 1: Programmed and debugged over a long time, but they still
Speaker 1: had a real goal to get McIntosh out as soon
Speaker 1: as possible, even though the Lisa had come out in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three and really Jobs had gotten really involved
Speaker 1: in in McIntosh at the end of nineteen eighty one
Speaker 1: and into nineteen eighty two. They knew they wanted a
Speaker 1: debut by nineteen eighty four, and they did. And we'll
Speaker 1: go more into what happened next in our next section,
Speaker 1: but first let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: By nineteen eighty four, the Macintosh was finally ready for
Speaker 1: its unveiling, and it had taken a bit longer to
Speaker 1: come out than Lisa and the Macintosh team had to
Speaker 1: contend with Jobs making lots of demands and changes, but
Speaker 1: in the end they were able to create a computer
Speaker 1: design for the average consumer. The specs of the machine
Speaker 1: were impressive for the time, not for today. The Motorola
Speaker 1: processor they were using as the CPU ran at a
Speaker 1: blistering six megahertz, which they cranked up to seven point
Speaker 1: eight megaherts and they marketed as an eight megahertz machine.
Speaker 1: The nine inch screen a massive nine inch screen on
Speaker 1: this computer, which was an all in one by the way.
Speaker 2: You had the computer.
Speaker 1: Body and the monitor all in the same form factor,
Speaker 1: although the keyboard was separate. It was a monochromatic nine
Speaker 1: inch screen and had a resolution of five hundred and
Speaker 1: twelve by three hundred twelve pixels, so only slightly better
Speaker 1: than the Apple to monitor resolution. The name for the
Speaker 1: graphic user interface operating system was called System Software one
Speaker 1: point oh. Later on they would call it mac OS,
Speaker 1: but it was System Software one point zero.
Speaker 2: In the early days.
Speaker 1: Unlike the Apple Too, which had a separate display from
Speaker 1: the computer itself, this one, like I said, was incorporated
Speaker 1: directly with the machine. So the whole thing was in
Speaker 1: a big plastic body, and you had computer and monitor
Speaker 1: right there, including a disk drive, but then you would
Speaker 1: connect the keyboard to it. It had a three and
Speaker 1: a half inch disk drive, so they had advanced beyond
Speaker 1: the five and a quarter inch discs. Now you were
Speaker 1: in the more firm, plastic of the three and a
Speaker 1: half inch discs. People started calling those hard disks because
Speaker 1: they didn't know what a hard disk drive was. That's
Speaker 1: not a hard disk. It was still a floppy disc.
Speaker 1: It was just a different form of a floppy disk.
Speaker 1: It also had a handle. The Mac had a handle
Speaker 1: on it so you could carry it around, making it a.
Speaker 2: Semi portable machine. It was really a bit heavy and
Speaker 2: bulky for toting it around. Everywhere.
Speaker 1: It weighed about out sixteen and a half pounds or
Speaker 1: somewhere around seven and a half kilograms, so that's kind
Speaker 1: of hefty. You don't want to carry that around very far.
Speaker 1: But it did have a handle, so you could if
Speaker 1: you needed to. The original Mac had two serial ports.
Speaker 1: You might remember I talked about serial ports in the
Speaker 1: USB episodes, so that is serial as an se r
Speaker 1: I A L.
Speaker 2: I'm not talking about Captain crunch.
Speaker 1: If you want to hear about that, go back to
Speaker 1: the earlier part of the episode where I was talking
Speaker 1: about phone freaking, had no modem, had no microphone. Sound
Speaker 1: was in glorious eight bit format, so whenever you hear
Speaker 1: chip tunes, that's the good old eight bit sound.
Speaker 2: For the most part.
Speaker 1: You could upgrade the RAM to five hundred and twelve kilobytes.
Speaker 1: But when I say you could upgrade the RAM, I
Speaker 1: really mean a reseller could upgrade the RAM. The Mac
Speaker 1: was designed in a way where you were not, as
Speaker 1: a user, supposed to make any alterations or change it
Speaker 1: or upgrade it yourself. Like you couldn't just crack open
Speaker 1: the case and put in an expansion slot. That's not
Speaker 1: how it worked, and anyone who's used Macintosh computers since
Speaker 1: that day can tell you this is kind of how
Speaker 1: Apple likes it. They really like to create a closed
Speaker 1: off system that you aren't supposed to mess with, so
Speaker 1: it became a recurring theme. Also, it had no hard drive,
Speaker 1: so everything had to run off a disk drive. If
Speaker 1: you wanted to boot up your computer, you had to
Speaker 1: put the system boot disc into the disk drive, turn
Speaker 1: your machine on. It would read the operating system from
Speaker 1: its boot disc, launch into it. And then if you
Speaker 1: wanted to change another, you know, to another software, another
Speaker 1: piece of software, you would go in, you would activate it,
Speaker 1: you would be prompted to put in the appropriate disc.
Speaker 1: You'd pull out the system operations disc, put in your
Speaker 1: application disc. Then you could use your application. Such were
Speaker 1: the dark days of the personal computer industry. Now, eventually
Speaker 1: you could end up buying a secondary drive that would
Speaker 1: be dedicated solely to the system boot disc, which meant
Speaker 1: that you could use the other drive for all your applications.
Speaker 1: But that cost extras. So let's talk about cost. Remember,
Speaker 1: Raskin wanted his machine to cost between five hundred and
Speaker 1: one thousand dollars, So how much did the original Mac
Speaker 1: cost when it went on sale. The original Macintosh cost
Speaker 1: two thousand, four hundred ninety five dollars in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: If you were to adjust that for inflation and say
Speaker 1: how much would I need to spend today to be
Speaker 1: equivalent to the spending power, the purchasing power of that
Speaker 1: twenty four hundred ninety five dollars in nineteen eighty four money.
Speaker 2: The answer to that is nearly five thousand, seven hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: So that translates into saying that the first Macintosh computer
Speaker 1: would have cost you about the same as five thousand,
Speaker 1: seven hundred bucks in today's money. Pretty expensive computer, extremely expensive, honestly.
Speaker 2: Now, eventually, like I.
Speaker 1: Said, they would release the hard disk twenty that was
Speaker 1: the drive that would be the sole purpose of keeping
Speaker 1: the system to itself, so that you could use the
Speaker 1: other drive just for your applications. That was an additional
Speaker 1: one four hundred and ninety five dollars, so very expensive,
Speaker 1: more than half of what the computer itself cost. Not
Speaker 1: exactly a budget machine. On the software side, the coding side,
Speaker 1: who had Bill Atkinson who had coded a method for
Speaker 1: displaying overlapping windows to make it smooth and useful for
Speaker 1: Apple users. That allowed you to actually have numerous applications
Speaker 1: open at the same time and you could navigate between them.
Speaker 1: Anyone who's used a guy based computer system and at
Speaker 1: all is familiar with this that you can have multiple
Speaker 1: windows open and switch between them. That was new back
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty four, something that you you know, normally
Speaker 1: you would have to quit of an application and open
Speaker 1: a new application if you wanted to do something different
Speaker 1: on the computer. You couldn't just switch back and forth.
Speaker 1: So this was a new thing and very innovative. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you also had other designers who were working on the
Speaker 1: iconography for the operating system, so the different little icons
Speaker 1: you would see, the designs that would pop up whenever
Speaker 1: the machine was processing information. All of that went through
Speaker 1: rigorous design before it ever launched with the Macintosh, and
Speaker 1: it made the computer more appealing to use. It was
Speaker 1: like it was a more friendly type of machine than
Speaker 1: the cold text based devices of the past. Oh and
Speaker 1: there was a commercial that didn't hurt too much either.
Speaker 1: It was the infamous Apple nineteen eighty four commercial and
Speaker 1: it was directed by the famed director Ridley Scott. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the same guy who directed Blade Runner directed an Apple
Speaker 1: commercial in nineteen eighty four. That blows my mind. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a visionary director. And if you watch that commercial,
Speaker 1: it's very powerful. It's an incredible ad. It has often
Speaker 1: been listed among the best commercials of all time, and
Speaker 1: I think it still holds a place up there just
Speaker 1: for its dramatic impact. So in the commercial, and it
Speaker 1: was all a matter of timing, it was so well done.
Speaker 1: We see a dystopian futuristic society, kind of like a
Speaker 1: bunch of people dressed in gray shaved heads, staring straight ahead,
Speaker 1: marching down the hallway into like a lecture hall, taking
Speaker 1: seats in almost like an auditorium setting, staring at an
Speaker 1: enormous screen where there is the very large face of
Speaker 1: a man. The man's face is probably normal size, but
Speaker 1: the image makes it look huge, yelling out various authoritarian nonsense,
Speaker 1: stuff like you will conform and you will obey that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, very big brotherish and dictating to the
Speaker 1: group how things must be. And you also keep cutting
Speaker 1: back over to this woman in a colorful outfit as
Speaker 1: she's jogging down the hallway and she's carrying a massive hammer,
Speaker 1: like a big warhammer style hammer, and she runs. It's
Speaker 1: really an Olympic hammer. I guess she runs into this lecture,
Speaker 1: Hall does a spin throw and throws the hammer into
Speaker 1: the screen, destroying it, and it shows this beautiful bright light,
Speaker 1: and the people snap out of their dystopic funk and
Speaker 1: they look around, and then you get hit by the tagline,
Speaker 1: which says, on January twenty fourth, Apple Computer will introduce
Speaker 1: Macintosh and you'll see why nineteen eighty four won't be
Speaker 1: like nineteen eighty four. So what they mean is the
Speaker 1: year nineteen eighty four won't be like the classic George
Speaker 1: Orwell novel nineteen eighty four, which features Big Brother in
Speaker 1: this authoritarian government that dictates everything. Has to be a
Speaker 1: very specific way. The message being, hey, the Macintosh breaks
Speaker 1: free of the mold. You get to be you. You
Speaker 1: aren't some drone, You're not some just faceless entity inside
Speaker 1: a larger company or corporation. You are a person. That
Speaker 1: was the message. So it was really selling the idea
Speaker 1: that the Macintosh was all about individuality and not about conformity,
Speaker 1: and it was incredible.
Speaker 2: I didn't own the Macintosh.
Speaker 1: I had an Apple two E and then we switched
Speaker 1: over to IBM compatible machines in my house, so I
Speaker 1: don't have any personal stake. I have no nostalgia for
Speaker 1: the Macintosh computer as a thing, but I certainly think
Speaker 1: the marketing scheme for the Macintosh was nothing short of
Speaker 1: a masterpiece. Jobs really loved the ad, and so did
Speaker 1: John Scully, who at that time was the president and
Speaker 1: CEO of Apple.
Speaker 2: Markola had stepped down.
Speaker 1: John Scully, who had come from PEPSI, had now taken
Speaker 1: the helm of Apple, and Scully and Jobs.
Speaker 2: Both thought the ad was tops.
Speaker 1: They showed it off to the board of directors and
Speaker 1: they were less happy with it. They thought it was
Speaker 1: too oppressive, too dark, too gloomy, so they wanted to
Speaker 1: scrap the ad, and jobs in Scully really didn't want
Speaker 1: that to happen, so they kind of dragged their feet
Speaker 1: a little bit, and their their ad agency that commissioned
Speaker 1: they commissioned the ad from said eventually, you know, we
Speaker 1: can get rid of most of the ad spots, but
Speaker 1: there two we cannot offload.
Speaker 2: One of them was in Idaho.
Speaker 1: The other was a national spot during the nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: four Super Bowl. Right, we can't. We can't drop that one.
Speaker 1: It's no one's going to buy it. You would lose
Speaker 1: a huge amount of money because the ad space is
Speaker 1: so expensive.
Speaker 2: Whether that was true or whether this was.
Speaker 1: All an attempt to kind of get the ad to
Speaker 1: the public despite what the bord of directors had said,
Speaker 1: who's to say. But ultimately Apple went ahead and ran
Speaker 1: the ad during the Super Bowl, reaching more than ninety
Speaker 1: million people in the process, and it was an enormous impact.
Speaker 1: News agencies ran stories about this ad because it was
Speaker 1: just so effective, and they called it a groundbreaking commercial,
Speaker 1: which gave Apple even more marketing reach that they didn't
Speaker 1: pay for. Because news agencies were talking about a commercial
Speaker 1: for them. It was a gold mine for Apple, and
Speaker 1: they were able to sell more than seventy thousand Macintosh
Speaker 1: computers within a couple of months of it debuting.
Speaker 2: It debuted late January.
Speaker 1: By March, they had sold more than seventy thousand computers
Speaker 1: at more than two four hundred and ninety bucks a pop.
Speaker 2: That was a really.
Speaker 1: Expensive computer in nineteen eighty four, and selling seventy thousand
Speaker 1: of was a huge success story. And it was just
Speaker 1: the beginning for the Macintosh. And there's so much more
Speaker 1: I could say about this computer, but for today, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call this a close. I'm gonna bring this to
Speaker 1: an end because this was the birth of the Macintosh,
Speaker 1: its debut to the world. I think it makes a
Speaker 1: good ending for this part of the story, and in
Speaker 1: a future episode, I'll explore how the Macintosh evolved into
Speaker 1: the Mac and the trials and tribulations of its evolution,
Speaker 1: how it changed so dramatically, how Jobs being forced out
Speaker 1: of his own company effectively changed the way that the
Speaker 1: Mac developed, How the mac almost perished before Jobs came
Speaker 1: back and changed things dramatically again. So love him or
Speaker 1: hate them, jobs got results done and he sold a
Speaker 1: lot of computers, So that's another story. I'll probably take
Speaker 1: that on. Who knows, maybe that'll be my next episode
Speaker 1: I have. I've not decided yet, but maybe next episode
Speaker 1: will be The Macintosh Story Part two, where I talk
Speaker 1: about how it changed from its initial version over the
Speaker 1: years to turn into things like the iMac.
Speaker 2: And that'd be kind of fun. But for now, I
Speaker 2: gotta go.
Speaker 1: All right, I hope you enjoyed that classic episode of
Speaker 1: tech stuff, The Macintosh Story Part one. Next Friday, we
Speaker 1: will have part two. The friday after that, we're gonna
Speaker 1: have part five three. Sorry, hope you're all well and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is
Speaker 1: an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.