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CNET Tech Industry The untold story behind Apple's $13,000 operating system

The untold story behind Apple's

$13,000 operating system
CNET looks at newly surfaced contracts, design specs, and page after page of schematics and
code, revealing how Apple created its first disk OS, a chapter of Silicon Valley history critical to
its later success.

Tech Industry
April 3, 2013
4:27 AM PDT

by Daniel
Terdiman
@GreeterDan

SANTA CRUZ
MOUNTAINS, Calif. -In the common
retelling of Apple's
history, it was Steve
Jobs' and Steve
Wozniak's second
computer, the Apple II,
that launched their
The April 10, 1978, contract that
fledgling company
laid out the terms of the creation
toward stratospheric
of Apple's first disk operating
growth and financial
system.
success. The
James Martin/CNET
machine's triumph as a
single platform for
business software, games, artistic tools -- and more -- set the stage for the later
debut of the first Mac, and later OS X and iDevices.
What many forget -- or may not even know -- is that when the Apple II was
introduced at the inaugural West Coast Computer Faire in April, 1977, it suffered
from what, in retrospect, was a glaring shortcoming: It had no disk drive.
Thanks to 35-year-old documents that have recently surfaced after three-plus
decades in storage, we now know exactly how Apple navigated around that
obstacle to create the company's first disk operating system. In more than a literal
sense, it is also the untold story of how Apple booted up. From contracts -- signed
by both Wozniak and Jobs -- to design specs to page after page of schematics and
code, CNET had a chance to examine this document trove, housed at the DigiBarn
computer museum in California's Santa Cruz Mountains, which shed important new
light on those formative years at Apple.
What they show is the process, driven by Jobs' urgency and inspired by Wozniak's
technical vision, yet emblematic of their reliance on outside help, behind one of the
most vital software projects in Apple's history. Without the project, we now know,
Apple's ambitions of selling a serious computer for a wide audience might very well
have collapsed just as the company was on the verge of making the big time.
'They were in trouble'
With its professional-looking (for 1977) injection-molded case and a design

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aesthetic to match Jobs' perfectionism, the Apple II was a breakthrough product for
the time. But though it was years ahead of the kit-like Apple I that it was meant to
replace, the Apple II still only offered a cassette drive.
"They were in trouble," recalled Bruce Damer, founder of the DigiBarn. "With a
cassette, you had to wait and wait and wait [to load anything] and it was unreliable. It
was a hit or miss process. Can you imagine trying to build a company on this?"
THE ORIGINAL APPLE OS DOCUMENTS (PICTURES)

6 - 10 of 22

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Wozniak and Jobs weren't blind to the need for a functional, and powerful, disk
drive and a disk operating system to run the system. But despite its deep bench of
in-house talent -- a roster of eventual Silicon Valley legends including the likes of
Woz himself, Jef Raskin (the "father of the Mac"), John "Captain Crunch" Draper, to
name a few -- building its own DOS was beyond Apple's ability at the time. The
company needed to look elsewhere.
Taking Apple seriously
Though the Apple I brought Wozniak and Jobs fame in the largely insular world of
enthusiasts, the computer had no case, no power supply, and no keyboard -- and
failed to generate much interest among business buyers. With the Apple II,
however, which Wozniak designed in the fall of 1976, Apple set out to attract a
wider audience. It was a decision that laid the groundwork for a more expansive
sales and marketing strategy. First item on the agenda: Get a disk drive into the
system to force the market to take Apple seriously.
"The difference between cassette and disk systems was the difference between
hobbyist devices and a computer," said Lee Felsenstein, the creator of the
Osborne I, the world's first portable computer. "You couldn't have expected, say,
VisiCalc, to run on a cassette system."
VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program, was one of -- if not the -- single-most
important pieces of software in PC history. As Paul Laughton, who wrote Apple's
DOS, put it, VisiCalc was "the thing that [made] microcomputers take off."
That's because it gave businesspeople a reason to spend a lot of money on a new
microcomputer. "If you knew VisiCalc, and what it did, and you were a skilled
salesperson, and the right person came in the door," said Dan Bricklin, the cocreator of VisiCalc (along with Bob Frankston). "You could probably sell them a
fully-loaded machine."
Bricklin explained that he and his publisher released VisiCalc for the Apple II first, in
part because his publisher, Dan Fylstra, was an Apple fan, and in part because they
had an assembler for the 6502 chip that the Apple II was based on. But the
decision to go first with the Apple, Bricklin said, was partially based on the fact that
the Apple II was more likely than its competitors to have the floppy drive.

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Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

James Martin/CNET

For a year, VisiCalc was an Apple exclusive, and during that time, about a thousand
copies of the software were sold a month. That number may seem small today, but
at the time, it was significant. Plus, Bricklin said, "it corresponded to a lot of Apples
being sold -- more than a million dollars in Apple computers being sold every
month."
Can you draw a line from Apple's DOS to the company's eventual success through
VisiCalc? Felsenstein certainly thinks so. VisiCalc, he said, "was the killer app, the
one that made everybody pay attention and realize that you could do real stuff with
these devices. They were not toys."
Woz recalls
Talk to just about anyone intimately familiar with the Apple II, and one thing you'll
hear often is that the disk controller Wozniak designed over the 1977 Christmas
holidays for the computer was a proverbial game changer.
The chief innovation was making the controller compact by using software while
competitors relied on hardware. As Bill Fernandez, then an electronic technician at
Apple, remembers it, "the key advantage of [Wozniak's] design [was] that it used
only six chips instead of the usual 60 to 70 -- a huge reduction in size and cost."
Bricklin said Woz's controller was "wonderful," while
Felsenstein marveled at its "elegance." Damer
called it "masterful." And surely Apple's financial
people were happy, because the simple design
meant profit margins would be much higher than
those on competitors' drives.
But no matter how great its disk controller was,
Apple had no DOS. Or any way to build one of its
own. "They looked around Apple," Damer said, "and
no one could write a DOS."
Wozniak's options were few. On the one hand, he
told CNET, there were no existing disk operating
systems for the 6502 chip. And though the Apple II
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Wozniak's design for the disk drive controller is

said to have been groundbreaking for using just
a handful of chips while most others needed
dozens.
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did have a mini-DOS built into its ROM that could

redirect input and output streams to any slot by
manual or program command, Wozniak wanted
more.

James Martin/CNET

One option was CP/M, a popular OS at the time. But it was known to be clunky, and
though Wozniak said he talked to CP/M's creator, Gary Kildall, about operating
systems, "I was looking for something easier to use."
Although he knew little about operating systems, Wozniak is confident he could
have built a good one. But his co-founder couldn't wait. "Steve Jobs, who didn't
have patience for a project that took more than a week, found [Shepardson
Microsystems] and...they sounded eager and knowledgeable...so we hired them."
As then-Shepardson employee Paul Laughton remembers it, Wozniak came by one
day saying Apple had a disk drive, but no DOS, and was wondering what to do. "I
said, 'I know about operating systems.' And so he said, 'Cool, let's have you do it.'"
'Possibly the most important Apple documents in history'
On April 10, 1978, the contract was signed. For $13,000 -- $5,200 up front, and
$7,800 on delivery, and no additional royalties -- Shepardson Microsystems would
build Apple's first DOS -- and hand it over just 35 days later. "Amazing," said Damer,
speaking about that deadline. "Can you imagine delivering an operating system in
just 35 days today, with no tools and partially functional hardware? That truly was
the greatest generation of programmers."
For its money, Apple would get a file manager, an interface for integer BASIC and
Applesoft BASIC, and utilities that would allow disk backup, disk recovery, and file
copying.
"I sat down and started writing," Laughton recalled. It "was written on punch cards. It
was put into a minicomputer and assembled, and the output was paper-taped.
Then we proceeded to debug it."
In the recently surfaced documents, which Laughton donated to the DigiBarn, is a
wealth of information about the Apple DOS project. From contracts -- signed by
both Wozniak and Jobs -- to design specs to page after page of schematics and
code, this is a treasure trove of Silicon Valley and Apple history. Or, as Damer said
he thought upon looking through the papers, "Oh my God, these are possibly the
most important Apple documents in history."
One of the fun parts about reading through the
documents is seeing pages filled with Wozniak's
own writing. The project, after all, was based on
specs Apple's legendary co-founder gave
Laughton for how to create a boot disk. Among
the treats -- for those who can appreciate such
things -- is Wozniak's hand-drawn diagram for his
highly regarded floppy disk controller.
The margins of the source code also have a
series of notes explaining what's going on that
are like catnip for true Apple geeks. Looking
over the documents, and seeing a comment
about "Must not cross page boundary," Apple's
sixth employee, Randy Wigginton, who worked
closely with Shepardson Microsystems on the
project, said, "I forgot how crossing a page
boundary added an extra cycle on the 6502."
"The 6502 liked everything to be in neat 256byte 'page boundaries,' Wigginton explained to
CNET by e-mail. "When writing code that had to
be rigorous about timing, you had to be careful
http://www.cnet.com/news/theuntoldstorybehindapples13000operatingsystem/

"The difference
between cassette and
disk systems was the
difference between
hobbyist devices and a
computer. You couldn't
have expected, say,
VisiCalc, to run on a
cassette system." <br
/>--Lee Felsenstein, the
creator of the Osborne I
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about crossing a page boundary....[Otherwise] an extra cycle was consumed by the

processor. That's why Woz has a note 'Must not cross page boundary' on his code."
For Laughton, who turns 69 this month, his essential role in one of Apple's most
important projects was a career highlight. Even in 1978, he could tell Apple was a
special company, particularly because he recognized the "genius of Wozniak in the
design of the Apple II and the design of the disk drive interface card."
He's also had plenty of opportunities to revisit his contribution
to Apple. "From time to time, it would come up in
conversation and someone would say they had an Apple II,
and I'd say I wrote the DOS," Laughton said. "They were like,
'Wow, did you make a lot of money," thinking I probably
worked for Apple.
In fact, though, Laughton made about $35,000 a year working
for Shepardson at the time. He knows how much he could
have made on Apple stock if he'd worked directly for
Wozniak and Jobs, but in 1978, Apple was just another
startup, and Laughton enjoyed the steady work writing
software for Shepardson's many clients.
Besides, he recalled, "I remember talking to Wozniak, and his salary was lower than
mine."
Tags: Apple, Tech Industry, Tech Culture, Laptops, Storage, Steve Jobs

DISCUSS: THE UNTOLD STORY BEHIND APPLE'S $13,000 OPERATING...

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delriodemon

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FAQs / Guidelines

Apr 15, 2013

I bought my Apple ][ in 1977, serial #455 and still have it. It didn't come with a disk drive,
but a cassette tape recorder. I also have the original tape for Microsoft's Basic that came
with it. It all still works, by the way.
REPLY /

anthonymaw

LIKE

Apr 13, 2013

It also reminds me that Bill Gates Microsoft *BOUGHT* DOS from Seattle Computer
Products in 1981 andsubsequentlymade millions, if not billions of dollars and the rest is
computer science history as they say....
REPLY /

BobFrankston

LIKE

Apr 6, 2013

Just as an FYI, VisiCalc actually had support for cassettes. But we didn't tell anyone
because it made so much more sense to use discs. But when I started writing the
program in November 1978 we couldn't assume everyone had a floppy drive.
REPLY /

Netteligent

(3) LIKE

Apr 6, 2013

Apple IIe was my first computer and still having it today. Understand a great story behind
its creation is wonderful. Thank you for sharing.
REPLY /

digitalgnome

http://www.cnet.com/news/theuntoldstorybehindapples13000operatingsystem/

LIKE

Apr 5, 2013

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IIRC wasn't Bill Gatesinvolvedin Apple BASIC and Apple DOS?

REPLY /

anthonymaw

LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

It's fair to say that if you're old enough to remember when this Apple computer thing was
"new" in 1980, you're well and truly "OVER THE HILL"!!!!!! ;-)
REPLY /

Gerdd

LIKE

Apr 8, 2013

@anthonymaw
as someone to whom your remark does apply, let me tell you that from my
perspective it looks somewhat different: I have now almost reached the end of
the climb and can look forward to a good long stretch on level surface, which
should be rather relaxing and thus quite enjoyable ;-)

REPLY /

sumit8510

(1) LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

Great story to read. Thanks for sharing.

REPLY /

GeeDeezy

(2) LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

Great story. Thanks for the solid research and great storytelling.
REPLY /

seansd

(2) LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

Today,
would $13,000 for software, $13 million for lawyers on call, $13 billion for patent lawsuit
settlements
Those were the days...
REPLY /

edaboy51

(1) LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@seansdAs expected, some hater is the first person to try to steer history to his
personal narcissism. Put the mirror away.
REPLY /

seansd

(3) LIKE

Apr 5, 2013

@edaboy51
Sorry, meant back then was easier to go out and DO. Sketch out a new
controller, then go out and get an OS to run it in a month? Those days are gone
in thetoday'sPatent Wars. It took a company the size of Apple to reinvent the
computer tablet and create a new model for apps. But now we also have patentonly companies who's only business is suing others, even if just an app
programmer hoping to make a few thousand dollars on the iPad or Android. We
need to get back to where there can be many more Apples, Microsofts, HPs,
Googles, Facebooks, and Amazons.
It's the patent lawyers who now seem to be the growth industry.
REPLY /

edaboy51

(3) LIKE

Apr 5, 2013

@seansd @edaboy51 Patent lawyers who you're referring to are simply hired
hands of companies formed to earn a big payday at some uncertain future date.
The patent lawyers are feeding at their trough. This is a business-as-usual facet
of capitalism and entrepreneurship. Perhaps some of the same lawyers are
forming the companies that buy up the patents. However, anyone can start a
company with that goal: that's the American way, unpleasant as that may be.
REPLY /

airmanchairman

LIKE

Apr 7, 2013

@edaboy51 @seansd One of the biggest patent trolls around today was
actually formed by a group of patent lawyers that were part of the gigantic $600
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million plus settlement that RIM had to cough up to NTP in order to continue
operations in the face of an injunctionin 2006.
It has obviously been seized upon by that profession as an outstanding growth
industry, so unwholesome as it may sound,@seansd has a point.
REPLY /

dwoods12

LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

Der... Apple sucks, I bet Android was way better even back then!
Just kidding, this is pretty neat, it's always cool to look back and see how the things we
take for granted today came to be.
REPLY /

Renegade Knight

(5) LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@dwoods12
Deft business in getting it off the ground. Not quite as deft capitalizing on
VisiCalc. IBM with 123 and Dbase did a far better job capitalizing on the
software.
REPLY /

unanamuschicken

LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

Wozniak should've replaced Jobs after his death. That would've ended the litigation
immediately.
REPLY /

HL3870

(2) LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

@unanamuschickenWoz wasn't even keeping the company afloat when he was

there. Being the founder doesn't make him a keeper nor does it make him an
innovator in today's world. Where was Woz when the company fell through and
was on the verge of closing the doors? Apple certainly didn't ask him to help
save the company, they asked Jobs. Y'all be giving Woz way too much credit.
REPLY /

interstellarsurfer

(6) LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@HL3870 Woz was not possesive of the fanatical/tyrannical leadership ability

that Job's had, but the fact remains that he helped bootstrap the company, and
engineered the first successful product apple had. He may not have been a
good replacement for the hands-on leadership of Jobs, but he deserves a lot
more credit than what he's given.
REPLY /

Renegade Knight

(4) LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@HL3870
Where was Job when Apple floundered? Right at the helm. Yup, Jobs drove
Apple into the ground and got his butt booted as a result. There is an irony that
Jobs was ultimatly brought back and did turn it around. It changes nothing about
Apple floundering under his watch though.
REPLY /

boethius70

LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@Renegade Knight @HL3870 You do know that Jobs was never actually the
President and/or CEO of Apple in its early days, right? Oh wait, apparently you
don't. Of course he exerted a lot of power and was its key product
tyrant/visionary but he didn't actually run the company, legally or otherwise.
Mike Markkula was its first President then John Sculley and there was another
President in between there that I can't recall (Google isn't helping me here, but I
do recall there was an "adult" who ran the business side as President before
Sculley was brought in from Jobs' biography).
Jobs' ousting was primarily a function of the power struggle between he and
Sculley and less because of the slow sales of the Mac. And, if we do accept for
a moment Jobs ran Apple in its early days (i.e., 1977-ish to his ouster in 1985),
please define what you mean by "floundering" then. Apple's revenue grew from
less than $1m in 1977 to almost $2B ($1.91B to be precise) by the time of Jobs'
ouster. If this qualifies as "floundering" I would LOVE to start a billion dollar
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"floundering" company. I bet you would too (well, if you like billion dollar
companies, anyway).
The fact is Apple's real downhill slide began under Sculley's watch. Subsequent
CEOs Michael Spindler and Gil Amelio didn't do much better and in fact
precipitated Apple's steep decline. Many of us - and I include myself in this thought Apple was gasping its last breaths when Jobs finally came back (though
in truth it still had billions in cash reserves and could have survived quite a while
longer). One could argue quite effectively that it was Jobs' tenacity in creating
the Mac that even allowed Sculley and subsequent CEOs to have anything at all
to work with, as the Mac was effectively Apple's only significant revenue stream
in the years they ran the company. What other great, visionary products did
other Apple CEOs create while Jobs was out of the picture? The Mac TV? The
Newton? Yea, that's what I thought.
Irony is generally defined as getting the opposite results from what you expect.
Perhaps some people expected Steve Jobs to tank Apple after he took it over
and while NeXT was not exactly his crown jewel, Pixar was taking off by then
and NeXT's technology would prove crucial to Apple's future. Sure he had had
some failures but he also had a raft of almost unimaginable successes in his life
by then. He was instrumental in creating a massively successful billion dollar
computer company in the early '80s when almost none existed at that level, he
created another massively successful billion dollar company outside of the
entrenched Hollywood system (Pixar), had a sizable failure, too (NeXT), which he
still kept as an important element to the transformation of Apple - i.e., NeXTStep
became OSX, then came back to turn Apple around in 1997 that was indeed by
then floundering. It didn't happen overnight, certainly, but Jobs had a lot of
work ahead of him to fix what was wrong with Apple. By the time of his death
he had created 2 massively successful billion-dollar enterprises - in fact, one
that has more revenue and market capitalization than any other company in
history - has had almost as much cash on its books as the U.S. Government has
had in its general accounts, and certainly more revenue than many other first
world governments. It's not "irony" that he turned around a floundering
company.
It's not all hagiography for Jobs. He could be a massive, insufferable jerk (to put
it very, very politely and to dramatically understate how truly vile he could be at
times). He made a lot of peoples' lives miserable. He was also young and brash
and had huge financial success very early on to fuel his massive ego when
Apple had its first successes. Yet whatever your opinion of him personally
there's little question his drive and determination and vision have had an almost
unimaginable influence on the world around us.
In any case I would carefully measure out your consideration of Jobs and how
you label him before you understand his real legacy, history, and the importance
of what he did.
REPLY /

msbpodcast

(5) LIKE

Apr 10, 2013

@boethius70 @Renegade Knight @HL3870 Excellent reply and mostly

accurate but I would quibble about "...had a sizable failure, too (NeXT)..."
Perhaps the only problem with NeXTStep was that it was too advanced for the
state of computing at the time.
The internet and the browser were built on NeXT Cubes as development
platforms and as the WWW server, but they were not adopted by the rest of the
world for mant years.
REPLY /

Greevous00

LIKE

Mar 13, 2014

@boethius70 @Renegade Knight @HL3870

Not to quibble, but Michael "Scotty" Scott was the first true President and CEO
of Apple, not Markkula. Markkula was like a "business consultant / part owner"
that Jobs lured out of retirement. Markkula convinced Scott to join as CEO until
1981. THEN Markkula took the helm as CEO until 1983.
REPLY /

HufflepuffBR

LIKE

Apr 8, 2013

@HL3870 Woz was the one who did the real job. Not the marketing, zen,
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beauty, easy, yadda yadda yadda. The REAL thing. No Woz, no Apple II. No
Apple II, no Apple
REPLY /

HL3870

LIKE

Apr 8, 2013

@HufflepuffBR @HL3870 Yeah and where was WOZ when the company
almost went belly up. Get over yourself, if there was no STEVE JOBS there
would be no Apple today. JOBS brought Apple to life again. WOZ had nothing
to do with it. Being a founder means zilch if you can't keep the company afloat.
REPLY /

Greevous00

LIKE

Mar 13, 2014

@HL3870 @HufflepuffBRWozniak is a lot like Bob Moog was. He's an engineer

at heart. He wants to solve hard technical problems and then amaze those who
can appreciate what he solved. It's the same motivation that magicians have for
perfecting their craft. Woz also likes practical jokes -- it's a similar motivation -it's a "see what I did?" kind of thing.
That kind of personality tends to be at odds with managerial responsibilities.
Managers are responsible for a lot of babysitting... coaxing people to do things...
threatening people when they don't.... hiring people.... firing people... these
aren't skills that people like Woz get much enjoyment out of developing,
because they're frankly, kind of mundane. They don't push the state of the art
forward. They're a necessary evil from an engineer's perspective.
People like Woz can start 100 companies, but rarely are able to turn them into
large corporations. I'm actually convinced that Jobs himself couldn't have
turned Apple into anything either. It was the guiding influence of Markkula and
Scott that transformed the company from Woz's Home Brew designs into a
mega corporation. Jobs, especially in the early years, was almost as much of a
problem as a solution. People like to say he was an inspiring personality, and if
you read "Revolution in the Valley", you do indeed see glimpses of an
emerging, inspirational leader. However, you also read that Jobs was often a
real jackass -- unnecessarily so -- very full of himself, and exhibiting aspects of
bi-polar personality disorder, that totally obscured his design / product focus (if
you believe he truly had them at that point in time, and wasn't just stealing ideas
from Xerox, which is entirely debatable). I think it took his virtual ousting from
the company to force him to examine himself a bit. By the time Apple acquired
Next, he was a different person. He had distilled what he uniquely brought to
the table (focus on product and design), and softened some of his rough edges
when dealing with people. (Though, as Ray Smith from Pixar has said, he could
still be an ass sometimes.) This more experienced Jobs, while still no where as
demure as Woz, was indeed a leader who fought the big, important fights first,
and let some things take care of themselves by hiring and retaining good
people. If he had any truly unique gift, it is probably that -- being able to
identify when someone or some group of people truly have a tiger by the tail,
and then jumping on board and hyping the crap out of whatever they're doing.
REPLY /

ms--monopolyscrooge

LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@unanamuschicken
Woz is good as a advisor, hacker and an engineer.
He can't keep trade secrets.
As lawsuits tell you that Apple needs to keep secret otherwise Samsung and M$
copies it because they can. it's like catch me if you can catching a criminal.
REPLY /

HufflepuffBR

(4) LIKE

Apr 8, 2013

@ms--monopolyscrooge @unanamuschicken Woz was a hacker on the original

stem. He built things and liked people use it. Jobs was the one there to take it
and make money. Unfortunately, Woz, like RMS and Linus are fated to be
unsung heroes of computing revolution.
REPLY /

boethius70

http://www.cnet.com/news/theuntoldstorybehindapples13000operatingsystem/

LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

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@unanamuschicken Woz has repeatedly and emphatically stated that he has

never even remotely had an interest in being a manager. That was Jobs' great
genius and ability - to manage, to motivate (or berate ceaselessly, depending on
the moment), to inspire. Woz was the technical genius; Jobs the managerial
genius and great Apple visionary that drove its products. Even when Apple
became a full-fledged company with big revenues from the Apple II, Woz was
quite content to work very much behind the scenes on the engineering and
technical challenges. Even though he owned a big chunk of the company he
worked for he was not a department manager, not an engineering manager and
was just a rank-and-file engineer taking his tasks from someone else.
Woz would never - rightly so - take the helm at Apple. Indeed, he couldn't (i.e.,
the board and shareholders would never allow it). He's not qualified and he
knows it as well as anyone - except YOU, apparently.

[[Edited by CNET staff to remove personal attack]]

(3) LIKE

REPLY /

HufflepuffBR

Apr 8, 2013

@boethius70 @unanamuschicken As I'm saying, Woz was one of those unsung

heroes, that prefers to be side by side with his family, like Linus and unlike Jobs,
than to be yelling to workers and Steveing them out of their company, making
money and sitting over the bodycount.
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GREG_GOLDEN

LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

Well, it's all history now. I do remember the Apple II, my first computer, around 1979.
The [floppy] disk drive was an expensive option which I never bought. I just worked from
a cassette recorder, which as they said above, was hit-or-miss. Tons of errors when
trying to load code. My next computer, a DOS PC in 1986, was miles ahead in reliability.
And look where we are now.
(4) LIKE

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goodlucktomorrow

Apr 3, 2013

Here's notes from the cnet meeting , early this week.

"Can you guys come out with a story about Apple that is based on facts and leaves no
room for shearcriticism? "
Well done! I have nothing negative to say other thanWozniak has been now replaced by
Samsung as the real brains behind Apple. You are not an OEM when you are using other
OEMS to make your product
(2) LIKE

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pgarcia90943

Apr 3, 2013

@goodlucktomorrow UGH! Does Samsung have to put their shills everywhere?

Give us a break every now and then, please.
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goodlucktomorrow

(20) LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@pgarcia90943 @goodlucktomorrow I agree. This story is about the old Apple

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jmonty--2008

(2) LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@goodlucktomorrowSamsun innovates NOTHING compared to Apple.

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goodlucktomorrow

(7) LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@jmonty--2008 I agree and disagree at the same time. I don't like either. I am a
google boy.
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jimhass

LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

Note, the simple, software-driven, cheaper drive controller, which provided higher
margins. That's the Apple ideal. Do things with better design and pocket the savings.
Thus the high margins that some people moan about. Thus the contrast between iOS
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and everybody but Samsung -- nobody makes money on Android except Samsung.
Maybe Google, indirectly. Me, I don't trust anything you get for "free." It's not free, you
just don't know what it costs.
REPLY /

drfillgood

(4) LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

@jimhass HTC makes money on Android. Not ridiculous amounts, but still
good. But in today's world, if your profits aren't obscene, critics consider it a
failure.
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LelandHendrix

(4) LIKE

Apr 5, 2013

@drfillgood @jimhass pennies. HTC make just enought pennies to barely stay in
the black.
REPLY /

dreikim

LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

"...set the stage for the later debut of the first Mac, and later OS X and iDevices."
Interesting story, but not sure about the accuracy of the above statement. Aren't the
newer Mac OSs & iOSs based on BSD-Unix or forks of it? I don't recall it having anything
to do with the earlier Apple OS...
REPLY /

Bee_Ryan

(2) LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

@whatever_007 >> you are correct. When NeXT Computer "took over" Apple
Computer, Apple used NeXT OS's BSD/Display Postcript/etc... system for the
basis for Mac OS X (Mac OS 10). This was developed by Steve Job's second (or
maybe 3rd?) company, NeXT Computer and also helped - in part - to establish
the internet in the early 90's.
I think what they mean, though is there were two fundamental things that
helped make Apple successful in the early years - Steve Wozniak's engineering
brilliance and the fact that Woz and Jobs saw fit to put a disc drive and a Disc
Operating System (DOS) on the Apple II. Had they not done this, Apple may
have not survived the 80's and we would have never seen NeXT or Mac or Mac
OS or even Mac OS X...
Wozniak, or the "Woz", was pretty smart for his day and he also had a strange
notion that there should be some "plug & play" or even a little "intelligence" with
certain devices and computer systems - such as when you plug in a printer - the
computer knows it is a printer and it knows enough to allow you to print (ie, the
system can communicate directly with the printer and print on the fly with out
doing any odd or special configuration or driver and software install).
Crazy I know, but Windows did not really get this down, until the release of
Windows Xp ... which stood for eXperience, but I think they saw Mac OS X as a
"threat" and decided to try and confuse people a little ... but they failed to see
the big market in mobile ... and the Darwin kernel that OS X and iOS are based
on also came from ... NeXT OS, back in the day.
REPLY /

bombones

(6) LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

"Driven by Jobs' urgency and inspired by Wozniak's technical vision". This summed up all
and everything that is about Apple; the genius of Woz and his vision contrasted with the
petulance of Steve Jobs. Makes one wonder, how in the world Steve Jobs became a
demi-god, not Woz.
REPLY /

Parkerl75100

(2) LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

@bombones Because Jobs was the face of the company while Woz was
content to do his magic in the background. Woz doesn't get enough credit for
the early success of Apple. I think Jobs need Woz more than Woz needed
Jobs.
REPLY /

Synthmeister

(5) LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

@Parkerl75100 @bombones
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Woz was an engineering genius, but had no vision for a computer for the
masses which would be useful for spreadsheets and typography and music and
desktop publishing and movie editing. Woz just wanted to give away computer
kits to the computer club geeks.
Jobs had a vision for using computers as an enjoyable tool in all aspects of the
liberal arts.
And after his "second coming" he was a pretty masterful CEO.
And yes, he was jerk whenever he felt it would serve his purposes.

REPLY /

Parkerl75100

(6) LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

@Synthmeister @Parkerl75100 @bombones You can categorize all of what

you said into marketing... You can try market a vaporware but without a physical
product you're dead in the water. Jobs was a good salesperson but I think the
type of "vision" your talking about in the earlier stage was both shared by the
Steve's. To say that Woz was directed to make this and that according to Jobs
exact direction is ludicrous.
REPLY /

Synthmeister

LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

@Parkerl75100 @Synthmeister @bombones

Jobs certainly knew something about marketing but he was also a design
genius as well. His name is on over 300 patents. For comparison,Gatesonly has
nine patents to his name.Larry PageandSergey Brinhave slightly more than a
dozen.
REPLY /

Diviance

(4) LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

@Synthmeister @Parkerl75100 @bombones

Gates only has his name on patents he himself made. Jobs has his name on
patents he had nothing to do with. There is a big difference between the two.
REPLY /

Synthmeister

(2) LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

@Diviance @Synthmeister @Parkerl75100 @bombones

Baloney, you will get into serious legal trouble if you try to put your name on
patents you weren't involved with. That is a serious criminal offense. Esp. if you
have hundreds of them, the people actually responsible would have raised a
stink.
REPLY /

sgns

(4) LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

@Synthmeister@Parkerl75100@bombonesSpot on I also think what set

Wozniak and Jobs apart was their capacity to put the pieces of their
contemporary setting together, like for example how some of the marketing
strategy came from Mike Markkula, and they were unique in aiming at a new
market and having limited resources, and yes, taste. There was really no single
source of correct insight, but the capacity to learn and put together, which of
course is what design *is*. Things which which of course were even more
emphasized by Jobs' "second coming". Thanks for an inspiring comment, this
stuff makes me tick
REPLY /

sgns

LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

@Parkerl75100 @Synthmeister @bombones Precisely, marketing is much like

design. You can't start doing it when you've finished the product, it's about
reaching your customers where they are. Jobs and Woz certainly were aiming to
reach their future customers, and in this they were obviously depending on
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each other. Thanks for an inspiring comment, this stuff makes me tick
REPLY /

interstellarsurfer

LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@Synthmeister @Diviance @Parkerl75100 @bombones Jobs was involved

with his hundreds of patents the same way Thomas Edison was involved with
his 1091. He told a designer/engineering team to make it, and he signed his
name on the bottom line. It's not the least bit illegal, and since Edison, pretty
common.
REPLY /

HufflepuffBR

(1) LIKE

Apr 8, 2013

@interstellarsurfer @Synthmeister @Diviance @Parkerl75100 @bombones no

t illegal, but imoral. But I don't want to talk anymore about Jobs. The REAL
Apple genius for me is a Polish guy with real humor sense
REPLY /

edaboy51

LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@bombones You do cause one to analogize. If Thomas Edison was 'Jobs-like'

and you could've stopped him because you objected to his personality, then the
world would've been better off without electric lighting for several decades;
until a suitable personality could be found.
REPLY /

trajan2

LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

I love how Steve Jobs made sh*t happen. What a go getter!! People wanted this
technology and Jobs thought like most people. The talent is out there to make
something great but visionaries are needed. Its all about the vision to do what is right.
REPLY /

Seaspray0

LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

If you could group a "hall of fame" for 5of the most well known and prominent
computers ever made, this one would make the list. I'd add to that list the original IBM
PC, and also include a Cray as well. I'd throw in compaq for their groundbreaking
portables. Last but not least, the grandfather of them all, the Univac.
REPLY /

shimself

(1) LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@Seaspray0 Atlas would be the great grandfather then.

REPLY /

HufflepuffBR

LIKE

Apr 8, 2013

@Seaspray0 Univac, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, IBM PC, Apple II, Commodore 64

REPLY /

CitizenX

LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

I did sell a lot of Apple IIs' because of VisiCalc.

REPLY /

laurimue

LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

@CitizenXThe only reason I was able to have a Mac while working for P&G in
the early '90s was because JMP statistical analysis software was Mac-only and I
needed a way to analyze consumer research data. That's why I laugh when the
haters claim Macs aren't for "real" work.
REPLY /

dwoods12

(2) LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@laurimue I'm sure they were, back in the day, but today it's a different world. I
think what people mean by "real" work is stuff like what my dad does, which is
programming. I don't know many serious programmers who use a Mac. There is
tons of amazing Mac specific software out today, but it's mostly for the
Art's/Music industry, most everything else can be done on a Windows machine
for cheaper. I think that's what they mean...
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Woochifer

Apr 4, 2013

@dwoods12 @laurimue So, everybody that develops iOS apps (the SDK only
runs on OS X) isn't a "serious" programmer?
REPLY /

macbrett

(1) LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@dwoods12 @laurimue The Mac OS is built on top of UNIX. It is great machine

for programming. The hardware is such that you can even run MS Windows on
it if you desire.
REPLY /

interstellarsurfer

(1) LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@macbrett Woochifer It may be so today, but before 2005 this wasn't the case.
Except for the Apple I and II, they used Motorola and PowerPC, processors,
completely incompatible with popular software and programming tools used by
the PC majority. When it became obvious that PowerPC was inferior to what
Intel was offering they made the switch, and have been rolling in success ever
since.
REPLY /

laurimue

LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@dwoods12@laurimuewell, I assure you when I create motion graphics for

$75+/hr it should be considered "real work". But the things other people
consider "real" work like programming, Word docs and Excel spreadsheets don't
require a high-end computer. So, yes, a cheaper computer would work just fine
for them. But, when Apple haters claim a Mac isn't used for "real" work, they say
it to imply Macs are low-powered or "toys". I assure you that most of what I do
requires a very powerful computer and that's why I use a Mac. And maybe that's
why most of the crew that put Curiosity on Mars use Macs (12 Macs, 3 PCs).
REPLY /

Parkerl75100

LIKE

Apr 5, 2013

@interstellarsurfer @macbrett PowerPC was certainly NOT inferior to x86

architecture. Way back in the day when there was the CISC and RISC argument
in the CPU market, PowerPC (RISC) architecture implemented many advanced
features before x86 (Intel). The only real advantage x86 had over PowerPC was
market share. Today the situation is that most modern CPU's incorporate many
of the features of RISC processors that were found only in RISC processors.
Internally modern x86 chips work very similarly like a RISC processor.
REPLY /

omnimoeish

LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@laurimue
Actually the opposite. Literally every programmer I know uses Macs. If you go to
the IT department at my school, all they do is talk about the last upgrade they
did on their Macbook Pro while it's connected their 27" Apple monitor so they
can write code. I'd easily bet more programmers use Macs than not.
REPLY /

Renegade Knight

LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@CitizenX
VisiCalc put computers on desktops. 123 & DBase did the same for IBM PC's. In
the end IBM did a far better job Marketing the software that sold the computers
than Apple. I think that more than anything is why IBM clones took over the
world and Apple became a distant #2from their early lead. Having used both
IBM and Apple in the era there really wasn't much difference they were both a
PITA by any modern standard but once you got VisiCalc/123 going their worth
was proven.
REPLY /

donnclark

LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

Where is the history on how they decided ethics and humanity couldn't be part of their
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company?
REPLY /

Neo Con

(4) LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

@donnclark Read the Jobs book - that came with the advent of the iPod.
REPLY /

khoramdin

LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

@donnclark companies and corporations have those?

REPLY /

Waveneyman

(6) LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

@khoramdin @donnclark
Shhhh...it only applies to Apple, dontcha know?
REPLY /

interstellarsurfer

(4) LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@khoramdin @donnclark All corporations today have 'ethics', as a business

major you'll even have to take a class on it. Unfortunately ethics is a remarkably
flimsy and broadly defined concept, which basically amounts to making money
while doing the minimum required by the law. Anything more than that is
handled by the PR department, which makes the problem appear to go away, or
the legal department.
REPLY /

astromacman

LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@interstellarsurfer @khoramdin @donnclark

Agreed. Capitalism is inherently unethical, so we shouldn't hold Apple
*separately* to such a standard. Plus, as others have pointed, much, if not most,
tech gear is made in similarly harsh working conditions around the globe.
Long gone is the sense of social and personal responsibility.
Apple, at least, due to the publicity, is making changes, agreeing to audits,
paying more, and improving conditions in its overseas plants.
REPLY /

Bee_Ryan

LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

@donnclark The "ethics" of any company is to make money. They should

follow the law - and that is up for the prosecutors and courts to decide. They
should be ethical, however that can be up to the consumers and clients to
decide... most companies do not know ethics, until they get hit upside the head
with a lawsuit or a consumer/client revolt.... but that rarely happens.
AFAIK, Apple is fairly ethical - they just tend to draw more bad press at times,
because they are on top...
Not saying this makes Apple's actions right, but just look at any other company like say Enron, Arthur Anderson, MCI/WorldCom, any investment house or
"bank" on Wall Street ... the Federal Reserve (which is a private company) or
Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac (government sponsored companies) and even
Congress ... all can be seen a highly corrupt and very damaging to the US and
World economies ... then we get into Exxon and BP and see there are other
types of corruption as well.
REPLY /

dwoods12

(3) LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@Bee_Ryan @donnclark Not sure how Apple is "on top." I think the reason
they get more bad press is because they create it. Things like Apple employee's
committing suicide due to the stresses of working for jobs, or pointless lawsuits,
or improper working conditions in factories. This happens in other companies as
well, but then they usually take steps to fix the problem. Apple tends to either
dismiss the problem, or blame others, or blame the consumers for having a
problem with said problem. Apple takes the stance of, "We are the best, and all
else is inferior" and then when that is proven untrue they get defensive. It's a
great marketing strategy, that's evidenced by their sales figures, but it draws
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more attention when something goes awry.

I think a good way to point this out is the whole maps fiasco. Regardless of how
it performs now, Apple Maps was not ready at launch, but Apple basically said
"Live with it" until they fixed some of the problems. Google has released tons of
flop software, but their stance is more like, throw everything at the wall and see
what sticks, so people are okay with failure because it's part of the process.
Apple's marketing says, "use us because our stuff works best" even if it doesn't,
but people believe it. Google's marketing is more like, "We're gonna try stuff, tell
us what you like" and people like that because they believe they'll get more
innovation. It's all the same stuff.
REPLY /

Israelitarian

LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@dwoods12@Bee_Ryan@donnclark
Whoseemployees committing suicide?
BTW, do you know who's going to build Google Glass? Just google it.
REPLY /

Allen_Wentz

LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@dwoods12 @Bee_Ryan @donnclark

You guys who have no clue should not just repeat the fandroid drivel you read
somewhere else. In the "maps fiasco" GOOGLE, not Apple, was providing a
special-to-Apple-users intentionally-lamed version of Google maps.
What you haters fail to understand is that before Apple Maps, iOS 5 only had a
deliberately-lamed-by-Google version of Google Maps: no turn-by-turn, rasteronly graphics, hiway lines that blocked hiway numbers, etc. Built by GOOGLE.
Apple was forced to develop its own maps because the version of maps that
Google licensed to Apple was so limited. The anomalies in Apple Maps were a
very small issue to real iOS maps users like me because iOS6 Apple Maps are an
order of magnitude better that iOS5 core maps from Google.
Google lost ~100 million Google maps users overnight when Apple was forced
to provide their own Apple Maps in iOS6 just to get a decent core maps version.
The CNets of the world of course made a big deal about obvious anomalies in
Apple's v1.0 of Apple Maps, but as a user I can state that even v1.0 was hella
better than the Google-provided maps in iOS5.
REPLY /

cnetfreak2

(1) LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@Allen_Wentz @dwoods12 @Bee_Ryan @donnclark

holy spin, batman. I'm seriously dizzy.

REPLY /

coolrider101nk

LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

@donnclark The decisions was by Jobs before Apple when he convinced Woz
to build a Hardware Breakout game for the Atari in only 4 Days. He told Woz he
made much less than he really did, and paid Woz based on that lower amount.
Woz was the engineer, Jobs was the marketing Genius.....Reeks of Tesla /
Edison
REPLY /

laurimue

(1) LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

@donnclark I guess you aren't aware of Apple's RED program that generates
money for AIDS research and their program where they'll pay the shipping to
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return your old Macs to Apple for environmentally-proper disposal. Just two
examples of their corporate ethics and humanity. What do YOU do?
REPLY /

dwoods12

(2) LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@laurimue @donnclark I still think Gates' philanthropy spanks any of Apple's

ecofriendly or AIDS research work...
REPLY /

Israelitarian

LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@dwoods12 @laurimue @donnclark

Gates is just trying to make himself forgive for having flooded the world with
crappy software for more than two decades.
REPLY /

Allen_Wentz

(1) LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@dwoods12 @laurimue @donnclark

Gates is a classic born-rich, get richer corporate robber baron who then thru
philanthrophy buys his way to added respectability. His business model was
very destructive to smaller innovators. There is a reason MS lost all the way to
the US Supreme Court and in the EEU, and it is not because he was such a good
person.
REPLY /

laurimue

LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@dwoods12 I certainly admire what Bill and Melinda Gates are doing. BUT, don't
assume a company or person doesn't do noble deeds because you don't hear
about it. Many people and companies do good deeds quietly, without the need
for thanks or publicity. Feel free to encourage any company to do more but
don't vilify a company simply because you have an irrational negativity towards
them.
REPLY /

sgns

LIKE

Apr 3, 2013

@donnclark That history was written hundreds of years before Apple (Adam
Smith and the Benthamists, for example, I'd suggest). I guess we're all at some
level wrestling with how to do ethical things in very unethical settings, and
where I am at least, I see people achieving small good things each day, in the
middle of the most deprived systems.
As Richard Sennett (sociologist) wrote somewhere, it is kind of inhumane to
expect people in very tough and harsh settings to not become hardened. So, if
you're trying to make a dent in the universe it shouldn't surprise anybody if
you lose some of your softness in the progress. It is "hard" to do.
That's no excuse, but maybe it could help guide people in their efforts to help
guide people's actions in a humane direction rather than condemn the persons
wholesale. I think all people have pockets of innocence which they're holding
on to mostly unconsciously.
Just felt called to write this maybe we could be a little grateful for all the
elements of goodness which this world after all has been able to produce all
around us, in spite of all the other stuff, and then try to put them together in
new ways to create a bigger good.
REPLY /

omnimoeish

(1) LIKE

Apr 4, 2013

@donnclark
I see it as Apple is like someone who went through the depression. They came
so close to bankruptcy that Steve Jobs got this save every penny mentality.
Don't offer dividends, don't donate to charities. That is changing under Tim
Cook pretty quickly though.
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