in Apple’s major lawsuit against Microsoft for copying their “look and feel” it came out that Apple had licensed this technology to them. Microsoft got a very favorable contract. Apple maintained that they had only licensed it for a version of Windows that was still pretty much just a shell on top of DOS. But Microsoft pointed to the phrase “and derivative works.” In my opinion, a real GUI, and even Windows 95, is not a derivative work of these early DOS-Windows hybrids, but a new form of OS, that competes directly with MacOS. But the judge didn’t see it that way.

I admired taking bold steps like not having a floppy or hard disk, but it’s only worthwhile when it works out. The first NeXT Cube had too many problems.

The depiction of Steve’s personality in the movie is quite accurate and I suppose that Steve is happy with it. Although Steve almost always acted and spoke as though he was more right than anyone else, he only sometimes engaged in the activities portrayed, such as berating employees. I’ve heard from enough employees to know about these outbursts although I fortunately never witnessed one. Steve would probably tell you that these were artists who had to be treated that way to get the great art out of them, that anything just adequate wasn’t what they were capable of. Also, others that aren’t performing like great artists aren’t worth keeping in Steve’s eye. It’s a very debatable issue, but I won’t debate it with Steve. We’re different here.

He’s a fine person who is a friend of another friend that often hangs out at my casual office (with T1’s and other facilities) who one day offered to redo my web site, which badly needed redoing, just because he was nice and liked the sorts of things I do. He is spending as much time as I am. Every email I send, he analyzes for web possibilities. I’m sure to offend some people since I give no notice [as far as what to post].

Serious Apple Computer!

You see what many miss, exactly. Plus, the stock is essentially from the shareholders, paid for with dilution, and is worth as much as it costs, on the average. So Microsoft lost nothing, Apple gained $125M, and it’s shareholders lost $125M. But that loss was really a necessary and proper investment which was recovered (by the shareholders) once it helped the company become more healthy.

After college and putting on some large rock concerts, I returned to Apple. John Sculley was just arriving and right away took resources off the losing Apple /// computer and revived the Apple ][. I was part of an engineering team trying to design a new and faster Apple ][. That project, the Apple ][x, got cancelled. By then, I was consumed with speeches and interviews and the like and couldn’t design so I had my salary reduced below the real engineers. They soon thereafter went to the drawing boards again and came up with the workable approach of the Apple ][ GS, with a correct and plausable way of doing the graphics in particular.

The Apple ][GS team recognized me as a symbol of and some of the inspiration for this project. I was asked to supply a signature for a limited edition model. I gave a signature, figuring it was for 100 or 200 computers. But one day I was told that they made 50,000 of these. I was quite blown away.

Apple has always been ‘the place to be’ whether we’re doing fine or in deep waters. Steve brought a lot of newness back to Apple. I wouldn’t say that it changes Apple’s position per se, but it inspires Apple loyalists to remain so and keep up the passionate side. It also gives the company a lot of needed credibility in the eyes of the financial community.

I was shocked that they could copy these ROMs, and copy the PC board too. But I got the president of Franklin to tell the press that I was their chief engineer.

We did so well in the days when we had extremely open products. But Steve Jobs has always tried to make them tighter and more closed. He says that it’s beneficial to the user not to have all the many permutations of configurations.

We basically only had one disagreement over the Apple ][ design. He tried to get me to go with 2 slots instead of 8. I stood for 8 and told him he could find another computer. Call it artistic license. It paid off in the long run. But from that day on, he always tries to have less flexablitiy and variation possible in our computers than PC’s have. He tries to define a machine for one purpose and precisely configured for it. But people always want other things too.

You find a ton of people like I was once, engineers and technicians, who can buy PC subassemblies and chips and can make breadboards and you don’t even have magazines telling how to do this on Macs. I have no further comment.

Open source attracts open minds. That’s good.

Every letter like that would have gotten to me and very likely gotten a personal reply. Some days I can’t get to all the mail however. Back in Apple days I didn’t believe in a secretary and my own phone rang and I answered all my own mail.

Yes, a Newton Message Pad 2100. I used to like to use it for taking notes. But it’s sort of obsolete now. I have a PalmPilot but I don’t intend to live by it.

Steve didn’t ever code. He wasn’t an engineer and he didn’t do any original design, but he was technical enough to alter and change and add to other designs. I did all of the Apple I and Apple ][ myself, including the feature choices. I did all of the BASIC myself (it’s in handwriting as I couldn’t afford an assembler). The only person who helped write some of the Apple ][ code was Allen Baum, who helped with the ‘monitor’ program.

Quite a few people in the company saw Steve’s management style as bad for Apple and not in line with how they ran companies. Steve tried to wrench the company on a different path, and schemed to try and have our CEO, John Sculley, removed. John caught wind of it and things wound up with Steve having the freedom to start a project of his own but not to manage the Macintosh or other Apple products at that time. It was like a strong demotion. Steve took it very hard and personal. Instead of trying to do something positive within Apple, he left to try and outdo Apple on his own. It left a feeling among most Apple people of disloyalty to Apple.

My own feeling is that Steve thought he was so great that he would succeed larger than Apple outside of Apple. Also, that he didn’t like finding that he was not on top at Apple. He would say that he seemed meant for this great role in life and that it was impossible to do within Apple any longer and that’s why he left. There are a lot of credible explanations, but the truth is hard to know for sure.

The iMac has some impressive sales figures, but it hasn’t brought Apple out of a dangerously low market share. Something more revolutionary will be needed for that.

I can’t see myself going back to Apple. I don’t like stress and conflicts and I have a great life even though I’m constantly busy.

It sounds like a good idea. The need for video archiving is fast approaching. I recently cut back my own HD size and I had to toss a lot of videos that I always liked to play to entertain others and myself. One day I was wondering where all the camera and data and video media types wind up. A friend replied, instantly, “RAM.” He indicated that we might someday have a RAM card the size of a stamp or something with enough capacity to hold hundreds of videos. Then what does it all mean? Where does life head when this is possible? I wish I could be here when it’s reached, but it’s a long way off.

Thanks for seeing this and feeling the way you do. I am an ideal hero and image for young people, because of how I treated people and the morals that I held on to, as well as being a great engineer and helping start this industry.

That’s my approach to all of life’s conflicts and setbacks. I’m very forgiving and it would give me a worse feeling head if I kept sadness inside. Better to forgive and forget and remain friends. Good things can come out of that.

It’s possible that I lost my drive and edge. But did I lose my drive and then go in other directions because of it, or did I go in other directions and find great satisfaction and let some things, like engineering, slip away? The truth is closer to the latter. My kind of intense, best in the world, engineering was very very hard and I knew that no human could keep it up for long. When I departed Apple a second time it was to start a company and make a small programmable remote control. I did engineering and wrote the code for one of the internal microprocessors myself. I used a Mac, an Apple ][c, and an Apple ][e throughout this development, those were my main tools (the Mac for non-engineering things). The code for the second, and main, microprocessor wasn’t coming easily so I flew to Hawaii to work on it for a week without phone calls and interruptions. Every day for a month I loved looking out to the sea. I came back and decided right then to hire other engineers for this task. I looked more at my young children. Other personal changes ensued. I’ve remained pretty comfortable ever since, although I never have a minute without something to do. But what do you expect with lots of kids still in school.

I do feel more tired today than back ‘then’ and I do want to take life easy. But I remember while designing the Apple I and Apple ][ explaining to people that I was actually lazy, and designed things with very few chips so I’d have less construction to do and less to debug. I used this ‘laziness’ excuse with my software being tight also. Maybe I believed in laziness even back then, even while I designed 2 computers and peripherals and wrote BASIC and much more code, all in a year, all while working days at Hewlett Packard.

I knew Steve Jobs from when he was very young. Of course he’s grown a lot. But some of the personality traits can be traced back even to those times. I’d say he grew up and lives an adult life now. But that’s not attractive to me. I decided when I was young and idealistic that I didn’t want to grow up and get the adult evilness in me. I always wanted to have a fun life no matter what I did for work. I did not include drugs and partying in my fun, just humor and pranks and strange adventures and weird friends. I have done the best at staying young of all the people that I know, and I’m very happy.

Back in the earliest days we felt sure that computers belonged in every home and would one day be there, even if they were just 4K machines!

I’m glad to hear about your HyperCard game programming. Hypercard is an amazing system of a very complete environment covering many bases, and the most natural writing programming language ever, that obeys human rules before computer rules. I loved teaching how to write puzzles and games in the HyperTalk language. I’m glad for you if that’s what you’re doing.