Woz and Jobs - the two Steves. Apple s history starts with the story of two young and exceptional people who began building a computer in their garage and launched the microcomputer revolution, changing our daily life in many respects.
The Apple story is the story of the two Steves. Stephen G. Wozniak was a typical Silicon Valley child. Born in 1950, he had grown up with the electronics industry in Silicon Valley, and had been intrigued by electronics from the start, since his father w as an electronics engineer. Wozniak, known to his friends as Woz, was bright and was an electronics genius. At the age of 13, he won the highest award at a local science fair for his addition-subtraction machine.
His electronics teacher at Homestead High School recognized Woz s outstanding talent and arranged a job for him at a local company, where Steve could work with computers once a week. It was there that Wozniak saw the capabilities of a computer it was the DEC PDP-8 minicomputer and studying the manual, it became his dream to have a computer of his own one-day. He designed computers on paper. Many other students who grew up in Silicon Valley shared this dream.
In 1971, Wozniak built his first computer with his high-school friend Bill Fernandez. This computer they called it Cream Soda Computer was developed in his friend s garage and had switches and lights just as the Altair would have more than three years later. Bill introduced Woz to a friend of his named Steven P. Jobs. Jobs was born in 1955, and his foster parents were - unlike most other people in Silicon Valley - blue-collar workers. However, growing up in an environment full of electronics, Steve came in con tact with this fascinating technology and was caught by it. Jobs was a loner and his character can be described as brash, very ambitious and unshakably self-confident.
With his directness and his persistency he persuaded most people. He had the ability to convey his notions and vision to other people quite well. An d he was not afraid to talk to famous people and did never stop talking to them until they gave in and did what he wanted.
His traits could already be observed in his adolescence, for instance when he - at the age of thirteen - called famous Bill Hewlett, president of HP, and asked him for spare parts he needed for his frequency counter. Although Steve Jobs was five years younger than Wozniak, the two got along at once. Apart from their common fascination with electronics, they shared a certain intensity. Whereas Woz was intense in digging deeper into an intellectual problem than anyone else, Jobs s intensity was in ambition.
Moreover, both were genuine pranksters, and often they fooled others with their technical knowledge. When they heard of phone-phreaking - making free long-distance telephone calls with a device called blue box - the two started their first business venture, building those blue boxes. In 1972, Steve Jobs went to Reed College in Oregon however, there he became more interested in Eastern religions, dropped out a year later and returned to Silicon Valley, where he took a job with Atari a young video game company until he had saved enough money to go on a trip to India for some months.
Then he went back to California and to his work at Atari. After attending three different colleges, Wozniak had begun work for Hewlett-Packard in summer 1973. When Atari planned to develop a new game called Breakout, Jobs boasted he could design it in only four days - quicker and better than anyone else. Jobs t old his friend Woz about it, and the two designed the game in record time, working four nights and days, and were paid the promised 700 for it. This experience showed them that they could work together on a tough project and succeed.
The first AppleWhen the Homebrew Computer Club came into existence, Wozniak began attending its meetings. As he later would recall, Homebrew was a revelation for him and changed his life. He met people who shared his love for computers and learned from them as well a s he encouraged them with his technical expertise.
Others brought along their Altairs, which Wozniak was interested in but could not afford. He realized this computer resembled the Cream Soda Computer he had built some time ago. Soon after, Chuck Peddle at MOS Tech released his new 6502 microprocessor chip for only 20, which was a sensation compared to the usual price of 400 for those chips then. Suddenly, Woz saw his chance and decided to write the first BASIC for it, which was the most spread programming language. After finishing with the BASIC, he made a computer for it to run on. The other hobbyists at Homebrew were impressed by Wozniak s kit, which actually was a board with chips and interfaces for a keyboard and a video monitor.
Steve Jobs saw the opportunity of this machine, which they named Apple, and finally persuaded Wozniak to start a company in April 1976. The two raised the money for the prototype model with a printed circuit board by selling Jobs VW microbus and Wozniak s HP calculators. With the Apple I, Steve Wozniak had designed a technological wonder and made his dream of owning a computer come true. His friend Steve Jobs played the role of a salesman and his ambitious promotion made the Apple I a star in the tight world of computer freaks.
The breakthrough for the two Steves came in July, when Paul Terrell ordered 50 Apples for his Byte Shop, however on condition the computers were fully assembled in a case and equipped with a cassette interface to enable external data storage.
Jobs could obtain net 30 days credit for the parts they needed for their computer. Working hard in Jobs parents garage, they managed to construct the 50 Apples within those 30 days. The Apple I was continuously refined by Wozniak, and its sales made the young company known, partly because the company s name appeared on top of computer lists, which were published by electronics magazines in alphabetical order.