I have to be honest. I’m into children being precocious and being somewhat problems. If too heavily protected they might have too boring a life. But when you play tricks on people or take other negative actions (copy software) then you should have some solid, logical, ethical thinking that convinces you that you believe in your reasons enough to tell other people what you do and why. That’s the ethical hacker approach.

My own keys to happiness include knowing that I’m good and that logical truth reigns and in knowing that I don’t have to convince other people to believe in that which I do. My life was successful when these keys came to me, before college even. Hey, a built-in religion with no church, and no group to agree with all the time, is the best for me. I just stayed very young in my beliefs all these years.

My commitment to education and to children in schools was with me all my life. In the movie they show the time Steve and I and his girl friend wore Alice in Wonderland costumes in a shopping mall. It was a joy of my life. I even took a week’s vacation from my job as an engineer at Hewlett Packard to take this minimum wage job. Steve doesn’t look back on it as a great thing in life but I do.

For years, we Mac users knew how much better a computer system we had. Then the PC clones appeared running the Windows OS from Microsoft. It was so sad to see the copiers win out, particularly since the copies weren’t as good.

I’m sorry. I probably misdirected others too. I made a lot of comment about having done a lot of hardware and software, including writing BASIC for the Apple I and Apple ][, in my “Pirates” replies because I did this design while Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and Paul Allen were not as great as engineers. As for the engineering, on the ‘dark’ side there was Ed Roberts with a computer (who designed it???) and Bill Gates and Paul Allen writing a BASIC. I did all of this and much more, singlehanded, while working a day job at Hewlett Packard too. Steve Jobs did not design the computer in hardware or software terms. He did what was needed to start a company. He found people and companies that could get us to a product (it was manufactured at a company in Santa Clara and we just put the final pieces together in the garage) and sell it and more. He also had product design contributions along the lines of the plastic case and low heat power supply. But almost every other unique ‘first ever’ feature was my own idea of what would make a good computer. In the spirit I had, of helping and not making money, I gave out schematics to anyone that wanted them in the Homebrew Computer Club. This is what led to the interest that led Steve to see a possibility of making a product for sale.

I’ve spoken many times in the past about the importance of Steve Jobs’ role in the Apple computers. But I was the inventor and engineer, solely. Remember, the Apple I was the first small computer ever with a keyboard standard, and the Apple II had the first color graphics, the first hi-res graphics, the first BASIC in ROM, the first sound and paddles for games, and a host of very clever approaches. Plus, it was so understandable and versatile and usable that it inspired tons of people. I hear from these people all the time, everywhere I go.

In my speeches I go out of my way to make Steve Jobs’ role, in non-engineering ways, seem more important. But in response to the movie, I’m trying to compare myself as the engineer to Gates and Allen as engineers and any perceived denigration of Steve Jobs is not intentional.

Thank you for the chance to explain.

Thank you for your kind comment. My own comment is just plain out and out the truth. I had my happiness for life long before Apple, I assure you. Mostly it’s in how a person thinks and acts and what’s important and how true they can stay to what they say they really want when they are young

While teaching, I often wished I was 10 years old again so that this time I could grow up with the computers that I always loved and wanted. But then it occurred to me that I’m lucky to have seen the ‘before’ and the ‘during’ in order to see how great a change to life has happened. In earlier years, I never could have dreamed of such rapid advancements, well, changes anyway.

Thanks for the note. You do bring back memories, including the Corvus Concept. I can look back and see how important the Apple I was now. Good luck getting or seeing one!

It’s very scary when Apple has serious problems every few years or so. It might take a bit of the dark side to get companies straightened out once in a while. We didn’t have much problem in our early years. There is a bit of Apple that means ‘goodness to people’ but I think the attitude is more ‘get rid of the problems’ when things are bad.

Thanks for having a clear head and not caring about what everyone else might have. That’s to your benefit and it’s a benefit to you also. My part of the history is very unusual as major business success stories throughout time go. Someday it may be told in a book. But Apple may only be in the background!

It’s hard to recommend a computer to anyone without knowing a lot about that person and what they need to do. The only computer that is general enough and good enough to be recommendable to almost everyone is the iMac.

I think that I already gave you some insights. We have such clear insights as to what we want to be like when we’re young and idealistic, but few remain true to these ideals. I’m just simple enough not to play games and bend and twist my early idealistic views. I do need recognition for having been a great engineer, I don’t need credit for the company, or power

It was a big deal to give the stock to people that were along for the incredible ride the first couple years of our company. It was rare and brave and right. I don’t know why the definition of right and wrong change once you ‘get there’.

Apple worked with Xerox openly to bring their developments to a mass audience. That’s what Steve portrayed Apple as being good at. Xerox got a lot of Apple stock for it too, it was an agreement.

Microsoft just took it from Xerox or Apple or whomever. It took them a long time to get it halfway right.

MacOS has been more constant since it’s beginning 15 years ago. Look how many times DOS and Windows have changed. That doesn’t lead to stardards that feel good. MacOS always feels better to those of us who use both. It’s been built in from the ground up, from the atoms of the OS up. It’s also part of our culture to put a high priority on how easy it is to use.

Your story probably means much more to many more people than my own. We, and the way we started Apple, were the rare exception, and not what people should be taught to expect. But your story is more real and an example of just plain wanting to be in the industry and making sound decisions that did well for you. The best thing is that you say you are at peace. Not everyone could do what we did with Apple, but everyone should see themselves capable of your sort of success.

Thanks for sharing this fine story with me.

We just give you more for the buck than PC clones, that’s all.

A1: I actually manage to answer most of my email. I do have a lot of it every day.

A2: Yes

A3: This is VERY MUCH the case.

Steve and I had started a company and sold mostly built computers during 1976. I had designed the Apple ][. It had half the parts and ten times more things than any other low cost computer, including many revolutionary ones that would set the tone of what a personal computer should be. It would wind up being the first successful, massively selling, personal computer.

But this industry was just kicking off and we realized that we could probably sell 1,000 of this great computer per month. That took a lot of money. We had none, so we went looking. We met Mike Markkula, and he launched us. I had to leave Hewlett Packard, which was tough.

At this time the [first] West Coast Computer Faire was being planned for Civic Auditorium. Steve Jobs got the info packet. Both he and I felt that we had such a good product that we should immediately secure the prime booth spot, which we did. We also arranged to rent a video projector. This was such an early year that such projectors were virtually unknown. It was a BIG deal.

The few of us that made up Apple at this time were all there to meet people and show them what we had. Mike Markkula talked to store owners and gave them legal paperwork to establish accounts with us and start ordering. We were a rare company at this time to even have such a professional approach. Almost all the companies had amateur technologies and amateur business practices.

This would be the show to officially unveil this great machine, and the company. It is fair to note that I had insisted on introducing the Apple ][ PC board (not the cased computer) by holding it up in front of the Homebrew Computer Club and explaining what it had and how it worked. This had been a big deal for me, because I was too shy to talk much back then. The only 2 times I actually said anything to the club were when I introduced the Apple I and Apple ][ computers there.

There was no such thing as political correctness at this time. The top selling joke book was The Official Polish/Italian Joke Book. I created one of the programs that we demonstrated at Civic Auditorium. It asked the user their name. It tried to figure out their nationality and would ask back “Are you by chance French?” or “Are you by chance German?” or whatever it guessed the corresponding nationality was. If the last name ended with a vowel, it guessed Italian. As a last resort, it would ask the user to type in their nationality. Then it would start presenting jokes, modified for that particular nationality.

Another thing that I remember is that Mike Markkula arranged to have something like 20,000 brochures printed. I was astounded that this many people might attend. I decided to do a major prank.

The hot-selling hobbiest computer platform then was called S-100 and the computer that had started this movement was the MITS Altair, based on the Intel 8080 microprocessor. The company Zilog had come out with a compatible processor, which they called the Z-80. A few companies using this chip were establishing brands based on Z words. Like ComputerZ or Z-Node or the like. I created a phony ad for a product called the Zaltair. I copied some of the worst ads I could find for wording. It started out “Imagine [this]. Imagine [that]. Imagine [other]…” with superlative descriptions of a computer that solved every problem in the world. I came up with ridiculous lines like “Imagine a car with 5 wheels” as though it would be better! I made up words like PerZonality, BaZic, etc.

I also had a comparison chart. I compared this new phony Zaltair computer to the Altair, the Apple and a couple of other ones. The categories I made up were ridiculous, things like “software,” “hardware,” “usefulness,” “appearance,” “durability,” etc. The Zaltair was normalized to 1.0 for every category. The next best computer was always the Altair, with numbers like 1.8 or 2.5. This was another ridiculous clue, since the Altair wasn’t superior to the other computers of the comparison. The other computers would have numbers like 5.3, 7.1, etc.

I added a section where you could ship back your Altair 8080 of Altair 680 computers (the latter was a real dog) and get a discount. This phony Zaltair was supposedly from the same company MITS. I’d made sure in advance that MITS would not be at the show.

A very young high school aged friend in Los Angeles helped me with some of the corny wording. He found a place to get it laid out professionally and I had about 8,000 printed down in L.A., to be safer. Even Steve Jobs didn’t know I was doing this.

The only people that knew were Chris Espinosa, my L.A. friend Adam, and Randy Wiggington. Eventually, we slid Chris to the side so there were basically 3 of us involved. Adam and I spotted a huge table filled with handouts from many companies at the show. So we went to our hotel and came back with a box of 2,000 Zaltair handouts, in various colors. We set the box down and went away laughing. Not much longer I heard that the brochures were gone. We went and looked, and sure enough they were gone. My calculations didn’t add up to that many going to show attendees so quickly. So we walked to the hotel and got another box. We set it on the table, and not very much later at all a gentleman came over, looked in it, and took it away. It turns out that a rep for MITS was at the show.

Now we started taking large batches of our Zaltair handouts under our coats, and in bags from the show. We’d lay batches out on any table or phone booth we could find at the show. If I had a green batch, I would find another batch of green brochures, take a few of them to ‘read’, place them on top of my green Zaltair handouts, and put the green stack back in place. One time I immediately saw someone rush over and read the top brochure. In my mind, he was from the MITS rep, trying to catch the perpetrator.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I put a fake quote from Ed Roberts, the president of MITS, at the top of the first side of my Zaltair brochure. It said things like “Predictable Refinement Of Computer Equipment Should Suggest Online Reliability. The Elite Computer Hobbiest Needs One Logical Option Guarantee Yet.” The first letter of each word spelled Processor Technology, another top hobby computer company. I had learned from many pranks before that it was better to make it look as though someone else did it.

At the conclusion of this show in Civic Auditorium, as we were taking stuff out to our cars, Mike Markkula told me that it was really going to happen, that he’d seen the signs at this show to know that we were on the track that would make us worth $500M in 5 years.

The next night there was a meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club. Some people talked about the Zaltair ad and waved them in the air. It did cause a bit of a stir, and some people had actually gotten this brochure. But someone said that he had called MITS and that it was a hoax.

The very next day, we were talking about the show at Apple. I pulled out a Zaltair handout and asked Steve Jobs if he had seen it. He started reading it and inspecting it closely. Rod Hold came over and said that it didn’t exist, that the handout was full of “Imagine [this]” wording in the first paragraph. But Steve said it had to be real because it even had copyrights and trademark notices. I’d put on things like “Zycolac is a trademark of…” and “Zaltair” is a trademark of MITS” with the company logos.

I was barely holding my laughter and acting like it was kind of funny when Steve saw the computer comparison chart, with categories like “quality.” When he said “Hey,we didn’t do too bad” I couldn’t hold my laughter so Randy and I made an excuse to get out and go to Bob’s Big Boy.

When we returned, Steve had called MITS and found out that the handout was a hoax.

A few days later, back at Apple, Gordon French visited Apple in search of work. The Homebrew Computer Club had started in Gordon’s garage. I called his attention to my Zaltair handout. Like others, Gordon was aware that it was a hoax. He said to me that he knew who did it. I almost laughed and asked who that would be. Gordon said it had to be Larry Ingram (I think) of Processor Technology because he had a ‘strange’ sense of humor. I could hardly contain my laughter. I said that I’d heard there was some sort of cypher in the starting quote, something like the first letter of each word. So Gordon, Steve Jobs, myself and others started reading the letters “P-R-O-C-E-S…” Steve Jobs said the final “Y”. Gordon, and a lot of the world, were convinced from that day that this guy at Processor Technology had done the prank.

Maybe 6 or more years later I gave Steve Jobs a copy of the Zaltair handout, framed, as a birthday gift. When he opened it he started laughing. He had never connected me to this one. …..Woz

I didn’t think that I’d actually get to write to you, but here goes…

It’s hard to catch up with everything that’s happened, but the world is getting to the point that you can come in new and learn just the new ways, mostly on the web, and do OK. Even my mom does OK.

If I ever thought that it would get this complicated and a nightmare to maintain more than a couple of computers, I would have probably not have done it.

The schematics that I gave away were of the Apple I. It used some PMOS shift registers (2904 and 2919 I believe) to cycle the screen data, changing characters at the precisely right time. These chips, I’m sure, are unavailable today. The Apple ][ schematics were in our early manuals. You can probably find one of these somewhere. Although I started designing computers at an early age, ones I could never hope to build, I mainly built a lot of small projects. That’s where I learned techniques. But today you can’t design at the component and gate level as much if you’re planning on a computer. It’s pretty much all done in LSI chips. I learned my electronics from my father (an engineer), from early electronic kits (hard to find nowadays), from getting a ham radio license (you had to build your own tube based receiver and transmitter back then), from Popular Electronics magazine, from some rare computer journal articles, from Terman’s book (a famous old one from the tube days, Terman taught at Stanford), from chip manuals with example circuits, and from computer manuals with logic diagrams of various parts and sometimes code examples.

I like what Steve has always pursued. We probably had some differences whenI felt that the Apple ][ was being unfairly discriminated against, within Apple, for products like the Apple /// and the Macintosh. But I’ve never seen Steve pursue less than the best and products that change things for the better. I feel, like many others have said, that Steve has matured and is a better judge of the impact of rash negative behavior. But I’m just guessing. In 30 years I’ve never seen this side of him.

My philosophy of life is deeply internal but it also includes being able to tell close ones, including parents, about anything you do, even if they might consider it wrong. It’s one thing that kept me away from drugs. I would only do things that I was willing to say I believed were right. As long as I believe it internally strong enough to tell even my parents, I had a very good internal feeling for why my behavior was right. In the case of blue boxes, I broke the law (I was absolutely an ‘ethical’ phone phreak here) but I told my parents. They didn’t like it but somehow didn’t turn on me. Probably that was because I was honest and they could see my side and could accept this stuff as being interesting enough to attract me and they understood me better. I was very bright and didn’t want to risk a good future with drugs. I found that I didn’t need to. I could be among others smoking pot and taking LSD and was accepted by them anyway. Partly that was due to my youth and hippie look; partly it was due to my acceptance of others’ behavior without preaching an absolute view of behavior for all. I only had to say “I’ll pass” and I was still included in parties. Only a couple of times was I excluded and feared as a possible narc. I think that it’s possible to have an incredibly open mind with or without drugs. You just have to believe in that and believe in yourself.

Your need is worthwhile but I can’t invest in or give time to the huge number I receive. I do wish you the best.