Two Books About Apple with Insights Into Steve Jobs

Revolution in The Valley
By Andy Hertzdeld
O’Reilly Media, 2005
Return to the Little Kingdom, How Apple and Steve Jobs Changed the World
By Michael Moritz
The Overlook Press, 1984 & 2009; Prologue and Epilogue 2010

Book Review by Jim Scheef

Revolution in the ValleyAs chance would have it, I was reading Andy Hertfeld’s book when Steve Jobs passed away in October. Andy's book, Revolution in the Valley, is the story of the creation of the original Macintosh, a process which we all know Steve Jobs led to fruition, but there is more—much, much more to the story. Andy Hertzfeld is generally credited with writing the original Mac operating system, although he denies that thru this book. Job’s passing made the parts about Jobs all the more interesting when compared to the stories in the news at the time. This book is atypical in many ways. First it’s a collection of vignettes written by Andy plus five other members of the Mac design and development team. Thus the book really has many authors and each tells their recollections of events in their own words. As you read, you learn a lot about the culture of Silicon Valley and the desire of the people to be a part of something they believed in and how they wanted the end product to be the best there is. It also becomes obvious how difficult it was to work for Steve Jobs.

Another thing atypical about this book is the fact that you can read it without buying it. The website www.folklore.org has the stories in the book plus a few more added since the book was published. In many ways the website is better than the book because it's indexed by topics, authors and characters. If you have a tablet computer of some sort, you can even take it to the men's room. There are also links to other early Mac websites.

Story #53 (on the website) tells about how Steve Jobs wanted the history of Apple documented. Apple's historian was to be Michael Moritz. Jobs decreed that Moritz have free access around Apple. In 1982 Jobs ejected and banished Moritz from Apple after Jobs was removed at the last minute as the Time Magazine Man of the Year. Instead the title went to "the computer" and Jobs thought Moritz had leaked... (You have to read the book). Anyway, Hertzfeld says that Moritz's book The Little Kingdom, published in 1984, remains the best book about the early days at Apple.

Return to the Little KingdomNaturally, that had to be the next book on my reading list and a quick trip to abebooks.com found the book selling at rare book prices. A search as I write this review finds two copies offered at $277.16 and $899.99. Just a few weeks ago, copies were selling for less than $100. Fortunately, a brand new copy of the version you really want (the one for "the rest of us"?), the paperback published in 2010, is available for $4, delivered to your mailbox. Unfortunately for Michael Moritz, this was just one year too soon to capitalize on Steve Jobs' untimely passing. This revised and updated book is called Return to the Little Kingdom: How Apple and Steve Jobs Changed the World. Be sure you order the paperback as that one has an updated version of the Prologue and Epilogue written for the 2009 hard cover. This points out the difficulty of reading about "history" that is still so fresh. Just keep in mind that all such computer books are merely collections of "facts" that cannot be interpreted without the passage of more time.

Return to the Little Kingdom will answer all the questions and settle all the arguments you have ever had about the early days of Apple Computer (except one). The book is the result of extensive interviews with everyone involved, even both Steve’s' parents. Why was Apple Computer successful when so many other companies founded at the exact same time, like Northstar and Osborn (to pick a name that links this story directly to our club), failed so ignominiously? My summary, after reading these two books is that Apple was profoundly lucky. Steve Wozniak, a self-taught engineer, could produce designs that were simple enough to be reliable and easy to manufacture. Steve Jobs had the vision to see beyond the Homebrew Computer Club and turn Woz's design for the Apple II into a desirable consumer product. When the Commodore PET had a chicklet keyboard, Apple had a real keyboard. When the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1 required an expansion chassis to make it useful, the Apple II had eight expansion slots with technical specs allowing third parties to add real capabilities to the little machine. Plus the Apple II had color graphics! Remember, all three of these machines were introduced within months of each other in 1977. Just a few years later we would see how IBM both learned and didn't learn from these examples.

As much as Hertzfeld's book talks about the culture at Apple Computer in the years immediately following the IPO, Moritz's book goes way back to why the area at the south end of the San Francisco peninsula and west of San Jose had the resources needed to nurture a bunch of enthusiasts who would create much of the personal computer industry. Did your high school have a course in electronics, Or an electronics workshop, With an oscilloscope!? As you read the book, the founding of Apple Computer seems almost preordained. The fact that it survived into the 80's was the result of Steve Jobs realizing that he could not run this company alone and then having the good fortune to seek advice from the right venture capitalists. Return to the Little Kingdom documents the incredible drive and hard work that both Steves and their parents and even girlfriends put into the first Apple products. The first batches of Apple II's were built by a cottage industry network that centered on the Jobs home. The financing for the parts was shoe-string all the way aided in large part by Steve Job's now legendary powers of persuasion.

Neither of these books is solely about Steve Jobs, yet together they give as much insight to Jobs as I suspect the new biographies will do. Was Steve Jobs a cheap-skate? No, but he was often super frugal and sometimes down-right stingy both with money for employees and recognition. There were some real hard feelings when the people were chosen to be publically presented as the Mac Design Team. But on the other side of the coin it was Steve Jobs continually insisting that things could be simplified that led to the original Macintosh. Was the Mac a simplified Lisa? Absolutely not! The Mac project began as an attempt to make the Apple II as easy to use as a kitchen appliance. When they couldn't get what they wanted using the Motorola 6809 processor and 64k of RAM, they moved to the 68000 and 128K. Remember how much RAM cost in 1984? The Mac's hardware engineer, Burrell Smith, included the ability in the final prototype to address 512k making possible the "Fat Mac" modification applied to early Macs.

If you're an Apple fan or just enjoy reading about the industry, these books are really fun reading and highly recommended.


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