The real hero of the PC revolution is Stephen Wozniak. Jobs just came along for the ride — sort of. Wozniak was a brilliant engineer who was able to design and build radically new concepts almost on the spur of the moment. His memory of code could be prodigious, and numerous stories are recounted in this book of Wozniak designing something new — and better — at seemingly the last minute to save Apple’s bacon. His most telling breakthrough was to put multiple functions on a single processor. Another breakthrough was completely redesigning the floppy disk controller that recognized the superfluity of the contemporary design and produced something far more reliable and efficient. This changed the game. No longer would large computer companies spend time trying to dumb down the computer for personal use, but rather to increase the power of the desktop PC.

The miniframe companies soon lost the battle they had won over the mainframes. In just two years, in a feat of extraordinary creative bursts, Woz had “designed one of the world’s first personal computers, then built the first practical home computer complete with color display; he had also written the programming language for those computers, and now had brought mass memory to the average computer user. Hardware, software, display, and storage: Wozniak had pulled off an engineering hat trick that has not been matched.”

Many could have predicted success for the shy “Woz.” At thirteen, on his own, he designed a computer that was as powerful as any in the world just a few years before. What was even more incredible was that his design was elegant. It used less board space and fewer parts. Elegance was to be characteristic of many of his future designs. Typically engineers had created a more complex solution as the problem became more complex. Woz possessed a supernatural talent to simplify (Bill Gates should hire this guy).

Ironically, Woz was forced to build the first Apple around the Motorola 6502 because he didn’t have the money to buy the Intel 8080, a far superior chip. The reason he didn’t have the money was because Steven Jobs wouldn’t pay him back some $3,000 Jobs owed Woz. If the Apple had been designed by Woz around the 8080, it might very well have blown all the competition away. Jobs’ role in all this was an entrepreneur, convincing those with money of the value of their product, building coalitions, and persuading the skeptical.

It wasn’t long before Apple had become fat and arrogant, going out of its way to kill off thirdparty vendors. They even insisted on building their own keyboards. Soon Apples became more expensive than anyone else’s brand. Another error was the way they abandoned Apple III owners. After its initial flop, it was redesigned and was actually a very good machine, but the decision was made to abandon it in favor of the Mac, leaving all those who owned the Apple III high and dry. Many of these people would never again trust the company that claimed to be different. In the meantime, design genius Wozniak had, thanks to the hugely successful IPO, discovered the wonderful world of material goods and was abandoning computer design for fast cars and airplanes.

The myth that Steve Jobs created the ideas for the Mac after a visit to Xerox’s famous research facility is punctured. The LISA and Mac that used the mouse and bitmapped screens were already on the Apple drawing boards before his visit. In fact, the Mac was the brainchild of John Raskins, who had been inspired by his visit to Xerox several years earlier. Jobs had even tried to sabotage the Mac concept within the company until he realized how successful it had become. Jobs’s decision to hire John Scully was a huge mistake. Scully had made his name marketing Pepsi, but the industry selling sugared water was so venerable that a huge market shift might represent a mere point in market share. Scully failed to recognize that making a mistake in the bitterly competitive computer world would mean the death of the company.

Atari, three years before, had been at the pinnacle of success; now Silicon Valley was littered with its parts. Even though he understood some of the IBM culture, Scully failed to recognize that corporate purchasers were looking for stability, not a company that celebrated its counterculture. “No one ever lost his job by buying IBM,” was the favorite saying of purchasing agents, and IBM was just about to announce the IBM XT. After being turned down by many others Jobs personally lured Scully. It was a strange relationship: Jobs looking for a mentor, and Scully, the frustrated art major, succumbing to the father-image Jobs sought. “He [Scully:] confessed that if he hadn’t been a businessman he probably would have become an artist. Jobs, in a remarkable coincidence, said that if he hadn’t become a technologist, he would have been a poet in Paris. The birds twittered in the trees.”

Scully was the ultimate marketing person, and decisions he made during the first six months spelled doom for the company in its race to dominate the market. Neither he nor Jobs understood that the business world would decide the fate of the personal computer. It was not yet an appliance like the telephone, where styling might make the difference between a purchase or not. Ironically, Jobs’ return to Apple has resulted in the cute little Apples now selling reasonably well. Scully’s pay compensation was so huge that, in typical fashion, it pissed off the insiders who had been working hundreds of hours on salary. He and Jobs had failed to recognize the dispiriting impact of a CEO who accrues bonuses and perks to him/herself at the perceived expense of the workers in the company.

The company never could decide what it wanted to become: supplier to the business world or to the consumer market, with its vastly differing needs for open architecture and price sensitivity. The LISA, Apple III, and Mac were each developed by different teams without any cross-platform compatibility. They never figured out who their customers were until it was already too late. Eventually, the company and the employees lost sight of where they were headed and this “drains energy. It tires out people who are working hard.”

Of course, this book was written before the iPod changed everything. ( )

Ever seen the movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley"? This book is essentially it, except with one major advantage: you understand the events of this monumental era from different perspectives.

There are things that can be had from watching a movie (LOTR comes to mind), and there are moments when reading a book helps you understand the drama and triumphs of certain events. Infinite Loop by Michael S. Malone is exactly that kind of book.

Full of anecdotes and written in a chronological manner yet referencing past events relevant to the subject matter being discussed for that chapter, this book is a wonderful addition to the library of any computer enthusiast. It tells the history of one of the most important and influential computer compaines in the world and how it was formed and what effect these events might still have to this very day.

Highly recommended. ( )

Apple (Subject)