Krazy Ken: With a valuation of over $2 trillion and a worldwide iconic brand, Apple is arguably the most successful and infuential company in the world. But it wasn't always like that. In fact, there was a time when Apple co-founder Steve Jobs left the company in the early days when the Macintosh was only one year old. We'll talk about all that and more today on Apple Keynote Chronicles.
Krazy Ken: Apple Keynote Chronicles is made possible by our awesome friends at Linode. With Linode, you can simplify your infrastructure and cut your cloud bills in half with their Linux virtual machines. To put it simply: If it runs on Linux, it runs on Linode.
Krazy Ken: Hey guys, how are you all doing? If you're new here, welcome. My name is Krazy Ken, and welcome to the very frst episode of Apple Keynote Chronicles. And our mission here is to chronicle every single Steve Jobs Apple Keynote, or "Stevenote", as we'd like to say. And we're not just going to talk about the physical events that take place on stage, but we'll also dive into the backstories, the products and our own personal experiences, too. And along the way throughout this journey, we'll have some other surprises, kind of woven in throughout time. Throughout this whole crazy ambitious journey, I am joined by Brad, the crazy guy who agreed to do this with me. Brad, thanks for agreeing to be on this show, which is probably going to consume about a year of our life force. Probably longer.
Brad: Hey, you know, that's okay. We were just talking before we started recording that it's a very pleasant surprise. We've watched a lot of keynotes and have talked about keynotes and stuf.
Krazy Ken: The new ones, yeah.
Brad: The new ones. The new ones, and so, but then that got, you get into talking about it and you go back to the old ones. And I think we both just had a passion for it. So we're actually going, even these frst ones we're going to talk about, I had never seen before.
Krazy Ken: Right.
Brad: So I'm really looking forward to doing it. Thanks for asking for having me.
Krazy Ken: Abso-freaking-lutely. And of course, Brad's not going to be the only one here. He's kind of the main co-host, but we plan to have other special guests on the show. In fact, I've already had a few people tweet me. I've had two people tweet me that they were actually in the audience during some of the keynotes and one person who tweeted me was also a stagehand. He said he was a producer backstage or something like that. So if we can get more behind-the-scenes people on the show, that would be awesome, too. So lots of cool, potential surprises there to come.
Krazy Ken: So we're starting at the beginning here, before Stevenotes were really a thing. This was before Apple events were really big. They are a show. They aren't just some product demo. They are a show. Millions of people watch them when they live stream them now. It has become a full-blown production, almost kind of like a mini Super Bowl for us computer guys. And the frst major Apple Product Event was held at the Flint Center on January 24th, 1984. But we're actually going to rewind a little bit to late 1983 to the Sales Conference in Hawaii.
Krazy Ken: So Steve Jobs is talking at this conference and he's setting the stage for where Apple is going to go in January, where they reveal the Macintosh to the public for the frst time. Well, ofcially for the frst time. It wasn't really a very well kept secret. You know what I mean? So Steve has this, I don't know, rallying speech or whatever you want to call it and feel free to chime in with any of your own adjectives, Brad. But he's kind of behind the podium setting the stage for like, "IBM is our enemy."
Krazy Ken: IBM is dismissing the personal computer. And this was when the Apple II has already made like $300 million. That was a personal computer. But, IBM was in the mainframes and stuf. They weren't interested in the personal computer. But then what happens? IBM gets into the personal computer market in the early '80s with the IBM PC. So now Apple and IBM are the biggest competitors in the personal computer market in the early '80s. So then Steve is like, "Will they dominate the entire computer industry? Was George Orwell right?" There was this whole 1984, the book, 1984, mentality behind this whole thing where it's Apple trying to free people from Big Brother and the Thought Police and all that stuf.
Steve Jobs: Well, Big Blue dominates the entire computer industry. The entire information age was George Orwell right about 1984.
Krazy Ken: So then, Steve previews the 1984 ad to the whole audience. This was before it aired during Superbowl XVIII ... I believe it was Super Bowl XVIII, and the audience was going kind of crazy as you can hear. And there's an insane, I don't know how you want to defne insane, but there's a pretty crazy backstory here. Did you look into the backstory of this commercial?
Brad: Of the commercial? I've known of the commercial for before I had seen-
Krazy Ken: Probably longer than me. Brad: Well, the commercial is yeah, it's a very famous commercial in the advertising world, and one of my favorite flmmakers, Ridley Scott-
Krazy Ken: Oh, yeah.
Brad: Is the maker of it. So, they really went all out for this and it's a powerful piece. This is still referenced today.
Krazy Ken: It is. Yeah. Actually, I'm glad you brought that up because Epic Games is having this whole debacle with Apple right now. And what did they do with their press material? They made an animated version of this 1984 ad.
Brad: I wouldn't be surprised if actually this is the most parodied ad of all time.
Krazy Ken: It might be, actually.
Brad: I bet there's a Simpsons version of it.
Krazy Ken: There is a Simpsons version. Yup.
Brad: A Family Guy, like name of the show. There's some version of this because Apple is kind of one of the most parodied companies. You know?
Krazy Ken: Oh, totally. Yeah, they totally are. Yeah, I can confrm for sure there is a parody on the Simpsons. It was from the episode, MyPods and Boomsticks, that is one of the best episodes ever, in my opinion. Valve did a parody of it when they released Steam on the Mac. They had Dr. Breen on the Big Brother screen. It was really funny. And yeah, Epic did it. So that's at least three right there, and I'm sure there's a dozen.
Brad: But no, I don't. I know the making of it, I know it's quite famous. But if there's more history to it, I'd love to hear it.
Krazy Ken: Yeah, and I actually only learned about it more recently because I'm starting to sink my teeth into Walter Isaacson's biography, which by the way, is an amazing biography about Steve Jobs. We do have links in the show notes if you want to get it yourself. Chiat\Day was the agency behind this ad, and I believe Apple was using them for multiple things. Lee Clow was the creative director. And as you mentioned, Ridley Scott was the actual director-director. And I think at that time, didn't he just fnish up Blade Runner or something?
Brad: I can't, I think Blade Runner was maybe made in 1982 or something like that.
Krazy Ken: '82, okay.
Brad: So yeah- Krazy Ken: It was a pretty big hit, though.
Brad: Yeah, I'm sure that's where a lot of the visual, it has the visual style of Blade Runner.
Krazy Ken: Yeah. So Jobs was being pitched this idea that younger people in the counterculture saw computers as scary. Now I can't speak for myself. I didn't grow up during this time. But if you watch a lot of older movies, especially Sci-Fi, even Space Odyssey, you had the HAL computer, which was IBM, just minus one letter on each thing and you spell Hal.
Brad: Oh.
Krazy Ken: Yeah.
Brad: I didn't know that.
Krazy Ken: Little tidbit right there. Computers were kind of painted as scary, I guess you could say. But also in reality, they weren't really accessible to a ton of people. Apple was helping liberate the technology, and IBM was making the IBM PC now. But before that, it was mainframes and punch cards and all that stuf. There wasn't a computer in people's homes. It wasn't like that. So people didn't really know what computers could do for them. They just saw what they were like on movies and TV.
Krazy Ken: So that was the Orwellian future and Jobs wanted to fght against that, hence the whole 1984 idea. And he was kind of a rebel himself, even at Apple. The Macintosh team was kind of, you could call it "rebellious". I don't want to say they isolated themselves, but they had their own area at the campus. They had a pirate fag waving in the air above their building and stuf. So they were kind of, I guess you can say, the island of misft toys. I don't know what you want to call it. But Steve Jobs wanted to fght against that. Now, what do you think? Is that maybe a little hypocritical considering even at the time, the Macintosh was a closed system. Steve wanted end-to-end control over it.
Brad: It's defnitely a curious way to open it up. As you watch these later keynotes or appearances, he's very passionate about giving power to the developers, and talking about starting things out small in a garage. And so, it doesn't seem that hypocritical.
Krazy Ken: Sure.
Brad: He seems to really believe it. Krazy Ken: My perspective is it may sound hypocritical. And I know in the Fassbender/ Steve Jobs movie, they do have the Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs scenes were Wozniak is like: "People want slots." "They want slots. They don't want a closed system." So it can look hypocritical, sure. But yeah, I think Steve's vision was a little bit diferent. And it's not like you couldn't expand it at all. You can still plug stuf into it. You can run third-party software. It just didn't have "slots".
Krazy Ken: So we're going to talk about a guy called John Sculley, the CEO at the time. He came from Pepsi and the famous line is: "You want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to come with me and change the world?" Steve asked John Sculley that. So John was the CEO at the time and he was skeptical about this whole commercial.
Krazy Ken: We look at it now. It's an historic piece. It's been parodied everywhere. It's still referenced today even though it came out, what, 40-something years ago? It's still famous today. But back then, I could probably understand why it'd be a little skeptical too. But in the end they got a $750,000 flming budget and it was shot in London with that very dystopian atmosphere, and something I didn't know. I thought everyone in the audience watching Big Brother was just an actor, but apparently they were real skinheads that were brought in to flm.
Brad: Oh, wow.
Krazy Ken: Yeah. They were not extras. They were not actor extras. They were real skinheads.
Brad: Wow. I guess that makes sense, as someone who's lacking in the hair department here. I'm glad that we've moved beyond that. That I can shave my head and have that today.
Krazy Ken: Sure.
Brad: Because that was a thing I remember even growing up, baldness was like kind of associated with that, but more so. That's kind of crazy, but maybe back in the day, maybe, we are talking, like you said, 40 years ago.
Krazy Ken: Yeah. 1980-
Brad: Maybe that was the way. I guess I don't know how I feel about that, but diferent times, I guess. Krazy Ken: Yeah. I'm not sure how they really pulled it of. I did read about it in the biography, but I don't remember them saying how it was done. But I'm sure the agency has some story posted somewhere.
Brad: Wow.
Krazy Ken: Yeah. I don't know how that was really pulled of. But they were really going all out with this thing. So Steve plays it for, or Sculley, someone plays it for the board during a board meeting and everything I've read about the story says the same thing about this next part. At least one board member had his head on the table when the video was over. He was like ... A lot of them really didn't like it. A lot of the board, maybe even all the board, did not like the ad. But in the end, it did air during Superbowl XVIII. It was in between plays cut to two seconds of just ominous black. And then this ad rolls and it went viral. News was talking about it the next day, like crazy. And this was before YouTube. So this was probably as viral as a viral video could get before social media and YouTube and Vine and everything existed. It was a pretty big deal.
Brad: I can't imagine. That would be very powerful.
Krazy Ken: Yeah.
Brad: And of course the suits wouldn't like it. Of course, they didn't get it.
Krazy Ken: Yeah.
Brad: Everybody wants what ... you know? That is not something ... That is fully Steve. Look, you can see it in his face. I think it's one of the best moments to watch here is I think it's one of the happiest I've ever seen Steve Jobs.
Krazy Ken: I was going to say. Yeah.
Brad: Is the moment the commercial ends, and when people are going ape and clapping and it's like getting this extended to plus Steve. He almost can't contain himself. That is not the measured Steve. It has, it's a smile. It's pure pride.
Krazy Ken: Oh, totally. And I encourage anyone after you listen to this podcast episode. I have links in the show notes for the keynotes and stuf. Go ahead and watch them. Yeah, he has a huge beaming smile in multiple parts. And I think you can even hear him chuckling to himself over the microphone a little bit. Yeah.
Brad: I wrote down-
Krazy Ken: Yeah. Brad: I think he knows he nailed it.
Krazy Ken: Yeah.
Brad: Because that's the thing. He was taking this risk and when the audience reacted like that, I would imagine that's when he knew that it's going to work like that for the Superbowl audience.
Krazy Ken: Totally. And we're going to absolutely dive more into that shareholder event because he showed the ad twice. He showed the ad during the sales conference, but that was a smaller audience. Later, actually January 24th, 1984, he showed it to like 28, whatever, a hundred people at the Flint Center. So back to the sales conference for a bit. There was another fun, little thing they did called the Macintosh Software Dating Game, which I thought was cheesy as [00:13:15 sound efect]. But it was 1983, whatever. So Fred Gibbons was there, Mitch Kapor, I think I'm pronouncing his name right. He was the guy behind the Lotus and Lotus 1-2-3, and all that software, pretty big back in the day. And Brad, I don't recognize this other guy's name: Bill Gates. Have you ever heard of him? [inaudible 00:13:31]
Brad: He must have had a bed in there. The thing of the time.
Krazy Ken: Bill Gates was there. Obviously, everybody knows who Bill Gates is right now. This was back when he was at Microsoft. Microsoft was one of the earlier developers for the Mac, maybe even the frst. I'm not sure, but very early on. And Bill said that, "Microsoft expects to get half its revenue from Macintosh software." And I just want to set the stage for people. Pretty much everybody knows what Windows is now and Microsoft and all that stuf. But this was before Windows even existed. This was before PCs shipped with Windows. This was before Windows. This was before all that existed. They were developing software for other companies. And there's this fun little soundbite I have here.
Steve Jobs: Well, to create a new standard, it takes something that's not just a little bit diferent. It takes something that's really new and really captures people's imagination. And the Macintosh of all the machines I've ever seen is the only one that meets that standard.
Krazy Ken: So yeah, I always enjoyed that one.
Brad: I was going to ask you though-
Krazy Ken: Yeah, yeah. Brad: In that, I don't know really about Bill Gates history too much, but is he being sincere there, do you think? Or is he just going along with the show?
Krazy Ken: So ... Dang it, Brad. That's something I've thought about. Obviously, there's the Pirates of Silicon Valley, the historical fction biopic that interprets this a little bit diferently. But what was actually in his head? I don't know. I've thought about that. But I've never come to any conclusions because the tricky thing is he knows Microsoft's working on Windows during that time. And obviously Windows is ginormous now. They had a plan.
Brad: Yeah. That's what I'm wondering if he's ... Is that the point where ... You're trying to, you know the future right there. It's just so, and that's what I'm saying.
Krazy Ken: Huh.
Brad: This one is so weird to read because everyone, it's really, it's zany. This part of the conference is zany. And it's a very loose Steve in the way of like, which you've rarely seen him. And Bill Gates, even, he's a little stif, but even at some point he's cracking up at something Steve did. And I was wondering, do you think you could even with Apple being a $2 trillion company, could any company worth anything close to that pull something of like this today? Or is it too zany because everything's worth billions and trillions now.
Krazy Ken: Yeah. I think they have their own style of ... Are you talking about like the presentation?
Brad: The presentation.
Krazy Ken: Yeah.
Brad: Doing the game and all that.
Krazy Ken: I think nowadays, it would be totally amateurish coming from them nowadays. It was kind of a very cheesy thing. If you guys want to watch it again, the links are in the show notes, but brace yourself for 1983 cheesiness. But they have their own style of humor now, whether it's Hair Force One running through a parking garage or whatever.
Brad: Mm-hmm (afrmative).
Krazy Ken: They have their own style of humor, but yeah, nowadays this wouldn't fy. But it still shows that they put some culture and fun into their presentations. They weren't just like, okay, let's read the minutes, let's do the thing. You know? Krazy Ken: Yeah. I'm not a hundred percent sure, man. That's a really good question. I haven't read a biography about Bill Gates, but I probably should. But yeah, that's a good question. If anybody listening knows, feel free to tweet me. If anyone knows, if Bill gave an interview or something. But yeah, if I was in his position, I feel like I'd still be happy for Apple and I'd be honest. I'd be like, the Macintosh is really cool. But I would still know in my heart like, well this is a business and I am working on this other thing. So now we get to the coup de grace. All our French viewers are probably going to hate me right now. I'm not French, I'm sorry. We get to the big meat of this whole story for this frst ...
Krazy Ken: Sorry. We get to the big meat of this whole story for this frst episode, the Shareholder Event, January 24th, 1984 at the Flint Center at De Anza College. I actually went there a while ago. It was surreal to see it in person. Just from the outside. There was no one there. I couldn't get inside, but it's really cool. Unfortunately, it's getting torn down. It sucks that such a historic place is being torn down for student housing, but I'm not sure how much that has actually progressed with COVID going on and everything. Have you ever been there, just swung by it in California?
Brad: I haven't. I mean, I've spent time in California, but not really in that area for a signifcant amount of time. It's pricey to stay out there.
Krazy Ken: Yep. I'm aware. It's at De Anza College, and they actually flmed the Fassbender movie there on location. But yeah, that's where they hosted this frst grand unveiling of the Macintosh. So back at this time, this wasn't called an Apple Special Event. This wasn't called a Steve Note or anything. It was just their shareholder meeting. That's what it was. There's some formal parts to it. They tally the votes and all that stuf. But since they were already going to have thousands of people gathered together, they thought, "Okay, well, let's do the product reveals here too." It made sense. The facility could hold about 2,600 seats. I've heard some people say some diferent numbers, but about 2,600. They were overfowing. They had to have people stand outside because of the fre laws. There were too many people there. Every seat was packed and they still had overfow.
Krazy Ken: But thankfully, they taped it, and this particular taping, again, the link is in the show notes, John Sculley introduces it with this little prerecorded segment. And I thought it was funny that they also have this little title in there that says some parts are hard to see because of the lighting and the venue. Hey, video technology has come a long way. But yeah, there are defnitely some dark parts. Steve Jobs talks for two minutes straight and you can't see his face. But it almost makes it more ominous and fun. And I think it was on CNBC Titans where John Sculley talked about Steve Jobs. Steve is backstage and John said he was white as a sheep. Steve was nervous. He was about to do this big reveal. So much was leading up to this moment, he was pretty nervous. So Steve opens up with a poem by Bob Dylan. He loved Bob Dylan. The Times They Are A Changing.
Krazy Ken: It was about maybe a minute or two, and then he left, and then Sculley comes back on stage because it's still a shareholder meeting so they have to go through all the formal stuf. I think they actually bring Al out. I forgot his last name, but he takes care of the more legal stuf. He even had this funny quote where he said, "I'm doing the legal part. The real excitement will hopefully not come from me." So then they play this Leading The Way video. They made a song. It was called like, We Are Apple Leading The Way. Anyway, it wasn't really a video. It was a slide show with cross dissolves in it. They played this cool little video, I guess, just to jazz up the audience. And then John Sculley comes back and he talks about how Apple had $400 million in growth last fscal year, and he talks about one of the more important things that's happened in his life in the last nine months was his relationship with Steve Jobs.
Krazy Ken: Oh, it's hard to say that knowing what happens later, but we'll talk about that later. Yes, he's known Steve for the last nine months. It's been a big thing, and John Sculley's been integral at getting Apple to where they were at this time. So John goes over the more numbers and stuf, and, "We're making millions of dollars," this, this, that. "We're going to do this." Not super exciting, but still important for the shareholders. So then Steve Jobs comes back on stage and, again, TV camera technology, lighting at the venue wasn't super, super amazing, but it made it more ominous. Steve recites, like that war cry sort of thing that he did at the thing in Hawaii, and he does it with more oomph this time. On the tape, you can't see him so it's just his voice, but I thought it was a nice setup. And then they play the 1984 ad for the whole audience to see. I still get goosebumps from it. I don't know about you.
Brad: That's great. I mean, that's like the Wizard of Oz or something. He's the man behind the curtain and then that ad, can you imagine being in a crowd like that and seeing it? I bet they had the sound all great and the image as good as it could be. That would be a powerful moment. Dude, I would love to see that in person. That would be so cool.
Krazy Ken: Yeah, the audience cheered for maybe about a minute straight until they continued. Then Steve makes the point about milestone products in the personal computer industry. Earlier, we talked about Apple II and IBM PC. So he reiterates that during this event. There's been the Apple II and then the IBM PC, and then there's about to be this third big, innovative new product in the personal computer space. One year after Lisa, which was there pre- Macintosh, which was insanely expensive. So then that's when he introduces Macintosh and those famous words, "It's going to be insanely great." That's one of his earlier catchphrases, I guess you could say, was insanely great, and we'll defnitely cover his catch phrases a lot throughout this show. So he introduces it at a "mainstream price" of $2,495. I don't know. I wasn't alive at the time. I don't know how much I would have been willing to spend on a computer at that time. Nowadays, yes, for what I do. But back then, I don't know.
Brad: Well, especially $2,000.
Krazy Ken: In 1984 dollars.
Brad: I don't even know what that equates to. I'd be willing to guess-
Krazy Ken: It's probably four now, I'd say.
Brad: Four?
Krazy Ken: About.
Brad: I would guess 10,000 at the time.
Krazy Ken: You want to go to the Infation Calculator, Brad? Is that what you want to do?
Brad: That's my guess. Maybe I'm way of.
Krazy Ken: I'm going to the Infation Calculator. Let's see. $6,300.
Brad: Okay. All right, yeah.
Krazy Ken: Defnitely, I've never spent that much on a computer.
Brad: My guess was that because I follow movie industry stuf and what they made in theaters or what movies cost back then are so radically lower that the numbers just compared to what it is today.
Krazy Ken: The interesting thing is though, there was this debate in Apple, particularly between Jobs and John about price, and we'll talk more about it coming up soon. But one side was like, "No, the price is fne," and one side was like, "The price is why it's not selling, blah, blah, blah!" But spoiler alert, anyway, back to this. So $2,495, there were some big innovations in here. We take this stuf for granted nowadays. The fact that we have a graphical user interface, we have Windows on our computer, and icons and menus and we can move a mouse around and click on stuf. That really wasn't a thing. That was defnitely super far from mainstream in 1984. The Lisa had it, but the Lisa was a $10,000 Apple computer. It wasn't really afordable. So the Mac's idea was to bring that Lisa technology with a graphical user interface and a mouse into that 2495 price point and get into people's homes.
Krazy Ken: Those are the big features. It used a Motorola 68,000, or 68 K, and that is the type of chip that lets these graphics draw themselves. Because without it, you don't really have the horsepower to draw the graphics. And it was funny, he said, "It eats 888s for breakfast." That was always funny. 128 kilobytes of RAM, 64 kilobytes of ROM, so the graphics package and the operating system are in the ROM. And I thought it was also interesting that they called it K bytes. It wasn't just Apple. Other people said that. They said K bytes back then instead of kilobytes.
Brad: Wow.
Krazy Ken: Yeah. We don't say G bytes. Now, this was a newer thing. At the time, fve and a quarter inch foppy disks were the thing, but they were pushing three and a half inch foppy disks, which were actually less foppy. They were more rigid. 400 K bytes of storage and built in speech, which is an exciting thing that they demoed. And high res graphics, black and white screen, and it was a third of the size and weight of those honking big IBM PCs. And they also sold an image writer printer. So not that dot matrix thing. You actually got crisp text and graphics printed out, and an external disc drive so you can plug it in and get more storage. So those were the innovation Steve was pitching, but now he was like, "We've seen some pictures of Macintosh. Now I want to show you Macintosh in person." And that is where I get to the reveal. I love this part.
Krazy Ken: I've re-watched this reveal 50 times. Not in the past week, but like in my life. One thing I do want to mention though, and you talked about developers earlier, is one thing throughout this podcast series we're going to talk about a lot is developing applications, because we can't forget even though the Macintosh was being pitched as this awesome thing, we talked about it in the Macintosh Software Dating Game, we need third-party developers. If developers don't make software for this computer, what's it going to do? And we'll talk about that a lot more throughout the podcast, especially in the next episode where Steve Jobs has this new plan for developing software, the Macintosh. But just a quick little rabbit hole here. I'm just curious, Brad, have you ever wanted to develop a website or a web app or mobile app?
Brad: Oh sure, mobile app. I get ideas for mobile apps all the time.
Krazy Ken: Do you know how to code? Brad: Oh no, I can just do it. I'd love to, but no, I can't. If it was as easy as clicking a button, that would be cool.
Krazy Ken: The thing is, I think we just forget sometimes how much stuf goes on behind the scenes on a website, how much physical infrastructure needs to be in place. It just looks like magic when we click a button and something happens, but there's so much stuf going on behind the scenes. In fact, I think one of the earliest pizza online ordering things was done with Steve Jobs. He helped make one of the frst online pizza ordering things where it was automated from the computer to the restaurant. And we all think of it just like as magic, but there really is a lot of stuf that goes on behind the scenes. And the cool thing is our awesome friends at Linode can help you guys make that stuf yourself. Because it takes a lot of power, but the cool thing is they can give it to you and it's really freaking awesome. So with Linode you can simplify your infrastructure and cut your cloud bills in half with their Linux virtual machines.
Krazy Ken: You can develop, deploy, and scale your applications faster and easier. You don't have to have a giant computer sitting in your mom's basement or whatever. These guys have these computers for you. You can use them over the internet. So whether you're developing a personal project or managing larger workloads, overall, you deserve something that's simple, afordable, and you need to be able to have access to those cloud computing solutions. The good news is you can get started with Linode today. We'll give you $100 in free credit just for listening to Apple Keynote Chronicles. You can fnd all the details at linode.com/computerclan. And when you use that link, it's in the show notes, it's in the description, go ahead and click on that, you get that $100 in free credit and you are supporting this podcast, so thank you very much. Linode is helping make this all be possible and they have data centers around the world with the same simple and consistent pricing, regardless of location. So just choose the data center closest to you.
Krazy Ken: And hey, Brad, another question for you. When you have a problem and you call tech support, do you like talking to a robot?
Brad: No, absolutely not. I avoided it at all costs.
Krazy Ken: It sucks, doesn't it? So the cool thing with Linode is 24/7 365 human support with no tiers or hand-ofs. Regardless of your plan size, you'll get that 24/7 support. You can choose between shared and dedicated compute instances. Or you can use your $100 in credit on S3 compatible object storage, managed Kubernetes, and more. To keep it simple, if it runs on Linux, it runs on Linode. So go ahead and visit linode.com/computerclan and click on the Create Free Account button to get started. And again, the link is in the show notes and in the description. Go ahead and click on that. Thank you to our friends at Linode for making this podcast possible. So go ahead and enjoy that. So Steve Jobs now, talked about the Mac, now he wants to show it in person. This is the frst ofcial public revealing of the Macintosh, and he's like, "All the images will be generated by what's in that bag."
Krazy Ken: And he walks over, takes the thing out of the bag, in mostly complete darkness, it's hard to see, and he puts it on the stage, and starts the reveal. And what were you going to add in here?
Brad: Oh, I was just saying it's such a Steve Jobs reveal. This is the precursor to the iPhone, to the MacBook Air, to these iconic reveals of the past. Even everything from pulling out the foppy from his jacket pocket.
Krazy Ken: Yep, yep.
Brad: And I love that consistency. I love that he always did that and that Apple still tries to do that today.
Krazy Ken: I totally agree. You watch him do a grand reveal from a 2004 keynote or whatever, it has such a similar feel to this 1984 one. He really nailed it from the beginning.
Brad: He knows how to rile an audience up and you can see he's a showman. I mean, basically he has the same, after the whole reveal and everyone's clapping and going ape, he has that same smile, that same pride of he knows that he did it.
Krazy Ken: Oh yeah.
Brad: He's a master at that. That's why we all love him, especially when you're going to drop that kind of money on a product.
Krazy Ken: He could sell them a fridge to an Eskimo. So he starts up the Demo, Chariots of Fire starts playing. Full disclaimer, the Chariots of Fire music wasn't being generated by the Macintosh. That was one of the plans, and Andy Hertzfeld actually wrote a program to make it play digitally, the Chariots of Fire song, but Steve didn't like. It didn't sound so good. So they went with a traditional, I was about to say, CD recording, but this was 1984, so a studio recording, whatever you want to call it. They played that over the PA system while the Macintosh generated images. They had a camera pointed at it and they were image magnifying it on the big screen. Here's the funny thing though, did you know the Macintosh on the stage was actually not the one they were selling? That wasn't the model that was available to people. Brad: Oh no, I did not.
Krazy Ken: That's the thing, of course, they don't say that during the keynote. But remember earlier how I said the Macintosh came with 128 kilobytes of RAM?
Brad: Oh yes. This is the part in the movie where they run the demo, yeah.
Krazy Ken: They talk about it in the movie. Obviously, the movie condenses the timing where they're rushing backstage and stuf. In reality, it didn't happen that way. But yeah, the Macintosh they were using on stage actually had 512 kilobytes of memory, not 128. RAM specifcally I mean, not counting the ROM. And we'll talk about why in a moment. So like you said, he pulls the disc out of his pocket, he inserts it in the disc drive, the big Macintosh title scrolls across the screen as the music plays. You see screenshots of Mac and Mac paint in fonts, like fonts on a computer screen. What? That was practically unheard. Seeing that stuf pop up, it was super freaking cool. You saw those stars twinkling with the insanely great drawing on the screen. And then Steve wants Macintosh to speak for itself, probably the coolest part of the demo.
Macintosh: Hello, I am Mackintosh. It sure is great to get out of that bag. Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, I'd like to share with you a maxim I thought of the frst time I met an IBM mainframe, never trust a computer that you can't lift! Obviously, I can talk, but right now I'd like to sit back and listen. So it is with considerable pride that I introduce a man who has been like a father to me, Steve Jobs.
Krazy Ken: The audience goes on to cheer for about two minutes straight. He's got that beaming smile on his face. That demo was freaking awesome. It's really cool that they pulled it of. But yes, they really couldn't pull it of with the Mac 128K because it wasn't going to work properly, and like you said, they do mention this in the movie. So there was an Apple II software called SAM. It stood for software automatic mouth. I don't know if they did any tweaks to it or whatever, but I know they've renamed it to MacinTalk for the Macintosh. But the 128K Mac couldn't play it. So they used a 512 K model onstage to make that speech demo work. And it blew people's minds, as you could see, but the real 128K Macintosh couldn't do that very well.
Brad: Well, in talking about him being a showman.
Krazy Ken: Yep.
Brad: But the thing is, I guess, with the beneft of hindsight we can look back, I can give it to Steve Jobs, we know how passionate he was. He's always been about bringing the future and making technology frictionless. And you know that if he showed it, he's going to make that happen someday.
Krazy Ken: Right.
Brad: But also, I would be not happy if I thought that the computer I was going to buy could do the things they showed me.
Krazy Ken: Yeah. I mean, he did mention that speech was built in, and I'm not sure I've never actually owned an original Macintosh, it's a goal of mine, but I'm not sure maybe it could do speech to an extent, it couldn't just do that much. I'm not actually sure. I've never tested it myself. But yeah, I would hope it works at least a little bit for a $2,495 computer. But according to Andy Hertzfeld, they were actually working on the 512 at the time. That wasn't just a stage model. That was actually a prototype.
Brad: Oh yeah, wow.
Krazy Ken: That's cool to think we were actually looking at a prototype.
Brad: Oh, that was actually a prototype.
Krazy Ken: Oh, yeah. Wow. That's kind of cool to think we were actually looking at a prototype the whole time. Wow. No, no, never really thought about that before. There were only two in existence and the 512K, I believe, went on sale later that year. It wasn't insanely long after. I think it was within a year you could get a Mac 512K. So, Steve was trying to push this idea of the computer being an appliance. He wanted it to be simple. He wanted it to be quiet. You know, like appliances are, like a fridge. No, I'm just kidding. But he didn't like fans. He wanted it to be quiet, so the Mac didn't have a fan in it.
Krazy Ken: He said, the Mac is going to be, or he wants it to be... I'm not sure of his exact words... but he wanted it to be the second desktop appliance. The phone is number one. Every desk had a phone... Well, maybe almost every desk had a phone, but he wanted the Macintosh to be the next desk appliance. It was for the knowledge worker and the college worker. I thought that was a cool little rhyme they did. They were targeting people in the ofce and people at educational institutions. There were tens of millions of people they could target with this. The Olympics were coming up, so they had a fve-part ad campaign that they aired during the Olympics. I believe the overall tagline was the computer for the rest of us, because at the end of every ad, it would say, "Macintosh, the computer for the rest of us." That was their ad campaign, in addition to 1984, from the Super Bowl they played earlier. Brad: Well, it defnitely worked with the educational market because, I mean, that's where I remember it from is seeing... I don't know how long they kept that design for throughout the-
Krazy Ken: Quite a long time.
Brad: ... but there was always, at least when I was in school, a Mac like that sitting somewhere in the room. No one ever used it. It wasn't a familiar thing, but it was always just sitting there.
Krazy Ken: I also just want to give context to people who probably aren't aware. Apple still had a huge hand in the classroom. Apple IIs were everywhere, not necessarily Macintoshes. Some people mix them up. Even though they're both by Apple, the Macintosh is separate from the Apple II. Apple IIs are still everywhere, but yeah-
Brad: So that all-in-one box design.
Krazy Ken: They were there, just not really... The thing is... Okay, I'm trying to put myself in the shoes here. It's like, I'm picturing myself as back in the '80s. I'm just thinking like, "I have an Apple II. I love the thing. I've used it for years. I like Apple a lot." Then they come out with this other thing. But to me, I'm just going to be like, "Well, I already like the Apple II so much, why would I bother moving to the Mac?" I feel I would be hesitant maybe to move over. I'm not saying that's how everyone felt, but even though the Mac was cool and stuf, it takes time for people to realize what can be done with it.
Brad: I would have been all over it, for sure. I would have been a sucker for the all- in-one design type thing. I mean, that's what I'm always looking for. Whenever they come out with the iMac Pro, even the iMac from the beginning, I'm always a sucker for what is. Kind of what you're saying, what can make this less of a computer and more of an appliance [crosstalk 00:36:55] something?
Krazy Ken: Yeah, called it an appliance, yeah. I mean, I might've been all over. I mean, I'm all over a lot of that stuf now. When the frst iPad came out, I was frst in line on the frst day. When the Apple Watch came out, I ordered it at 4:00 in the morning in my underpants. Nowadays, yeah, I'd probably be all over it.
Brad: I mean, the design, too. I mean, of course, it looked dated for a period of time, but now we're what we're coming back to. I feel it still feels kind of like, I don't know, like steampunk, sci-f, retro. I mean, I feel that kind of look is still almost modern in a way now.
Krazy Ken: Is it? Brad: It's almost modern again.
Krazy Ken: Yeah, I mean, I still kind of like it, especially with MacEfects. They actually make clear versions of Mac SE cases so you can have that compact kind of Mac look, but it's see-through, so even modern day, people make case mods and stuf like that. It's still-
Brad: As you're clicking through this, I remember they made a big deal about picking it up.
Krazy Ken: Oh, the handle built in.
Brad: Yeah, the handle built in, being able to pick it up and move it. That was the reason that the very frst Mac I ever bought was the iMac G5. That was all just a screen. I bought an iLugger case for that, too.
Krazy Ken: Oh, yeah.
Brad: iLugger was this company that made stuf for blimps, and they made this case, because that was like, "Wow, I can carry around this thing." That even carried through to today. I would have been sold on, "Yes, here's a computer I can lift." That is just too cool, too futuristic.
Krazy Ken: Never trust a computer you can't lift. Apple was big on handles. We'll talk about that more throughout the show. They revealed a bunch of products where Steve specifcally showed the handle. He was all about handles, and it makes sense. Nowadays, not needed as much because computers are much lighter, but the frst iMac weighed 38 pounds. Yeah, handle, please.
Brad: You know what? This trend is still going on today. This is the trade-of. How small, minimalistic, portable, can you get the thing and still have it... We were just talking about it wasn't powerful enough, the unit at the thing, to do the text-to-speech. That's what we're getting to now with the M1 stuf and the MacBook Air, it's delivering on that dream. That's what I'm saying. When looking at these old keynotes, you kind of see that we're really delivering on a lot of the dreams that were just not quite there back then.
Krazy Ken: Some things never change. We see today, Apple makes the computers really thin, but there can be heat problems with that. I mean, they're moving away from that since they're moving away from Intel. But with Intel, there's been issues with thermal throttling and overheating with the really thin designs. That is one of the issues that did happen with the original Mac, is it had no fan. Oh, it's so negative. We'll talk about that in a bit. We'll focus on the cool future right now, beating Big Brother and everything. Krazy Ken: Then Steve plays what he called the Macintosh group video, the production team video. He actually called it a multimedia presentation, because it wasn't a video. I don't know why they did this. Maybe it was just their style. It was voiceover narration with like cross dissolves of photos, even someone maybe moving their hands, but it wasn't real-time video. It was cross dissolve. That's just what they did, I guess. Andy Hertzfeld, who was on the Mac team, starts with a little voiceover and the slideshow starts playing. But one thing, I have actually not seen this video before I started planning this podcast, at 59:26, I thought it was interesting, they show a prototype Mac. It's got a clear case and a fve-and-a-quarter-inch Twiggy drive on it. I remember you asked me earlier if Apple shows any of that kind of prototype stuf now. Nowadays, they don't, but I thought they really never did, but I guess I was wrong. In this video they show the prototype Mac to the whole fricking audience.
Brad: Interesting tidbit. Yeah, because that would be curious to know, where does that ft in the Apple lore? I guess that's part of what we like about Apple now, is that they drop... Would you want to see prototypes today, or do you want to just have this design dropped on you?
Krazy Ken: I mean, I would maybe like to see prototypes after the fact so they don't ruin the magic, but that's kind of the funny thing with the leaker community and the rumor community, sometimes it happens by accident. iPhone4, which will be in a way future episode, because that happened in 2010. Actually, I'll put a link in the show notes. I did a couple of episodes about Apple prototypes if you want to check them out. There's some extremely rare stuf in there. I visited this guy, Hap, really cool, rare stuf, links in the show notes of Apple prototypes. Yeah, they just showed this one publicly to everyone. It's got a clear case, so you can see on the inside as you're testing it.
Krazy Ken: But the thing I'm really excited about is that it has a fricking Twiggy drive in it. You know how they pushed the three-and-a-half-inch disc. This was before that. This is when they were testing the Mac with a fve-and-a-quarter-inch disc drive. The cool thing is there are some Twiggy Mac prototypes out there that aren't in a clear case that are actually in the beige case. They look like a Mac, but with the fve-and-a-quarter-inch slot and not a three-and-a-half-inch slot. They are out there.
Brad: So are you saying that it getting that three-and-a-half-inch thing was kind of maybe a pivot at the last minute?
Krazy Ken: That's what I was thinking about. I don't remember reading about it, but I've thought about it. Yeah, I kind of want to go revisit on that later. Maybe I'll have to re-research that, but it seems like, yeah, that was not an initial plan to have the three and a half inch in there. I think it was kind of a later thing that came on. So, the video keeps playing. Again, I encourage you guys to watch it after you listen to the podcast. I mean, the whole thing is an hour and a half long, so I'm not going to talk about every single second of it. There's a lot in there.
Krazy Ken: So, Steve comes back on stage. He talks about the Lisa technology. Again, the Lisa was this really expensive computer, wasn't really afordable, but it had this technology in it to draw the menus and the windows and the icons, all the stuf we use every day and take for granted. But back then, that wasn't really a thing. He mentions, "This is the Lisa tech. We're putting it in the Macintosh box. We're shrinking it down and making it more afordable." But then he mentions the imitations. He explicitly says, "MS Windows," so he knows Microsoft is working on Windows. It wasn't out yet. I mean, it's out now. Obviously, it's huge. Everybody, a bajillion people, use it, but back then... It's crazy to think that it had zero users at one time. That's just so mind- boggling.
Krazy Ken: The thing is, they didn't just unveil the Macintosh. They unveiled a whole product line of what they call, 32-bit super micros. It kind of reminds me of the iPhone event like, "We're not doing one, but three revolutionary products." He's like, "We're not doing one, but three more Lisa's." They do the Mac, and then they do the Lisa 2, which is an upgraded version of the Lisa with a three-and-a-half-inch foppy disk drive, as well. Then the Lisa 2/5, which was basically Lisa 2, but with a fve-megabyte Profle Winchester hard disc sitting on top of it... fve megabytes, whoo, and then Lisa 2/10, which had a built-in 10-megabyte hard drive, which was 5,500 bucks total... 10 mgs, man, whoosee. That's nothing now. The cool thing was, if you had a Lisa 1, you can get upgraded to a Lisa 2/5 for free, and the whole Lisa line was compatible with the Macintosh software, as well. That was their strategy for the 32-bit super micros, three of them Lisa's, one of them Mac, diferent price points.
Krazy Ken: Then Steve exits the stage, and Al comes back and talks about... He has to do some of the more ofcial stuf, because again, it is a shareholder meeting. He talks about how not everyone could enter the auditorium. This is where he explicitly brings up the fre laws thing. They couldn't let more people in. He said, "I think my voice is being piped outside." I can't confrm if it was or wasn't, but if people were outside and his voice wasn't being pumped, sorry, you missed it. That would suck though anyway. You couldn't see what was going on. It would be like, "Why are they cheering? What are they looking at?" I don't know, but that's what he said. But he didn't mention the whole event is taped. I mean, that's how we have it now. It was taped. The struggles of pre-Internet events, man. Now Apple just streams their events, but back then, it's like, yep, if you missed it, you got to-
Brad: Oh yeah, how would... There was no way you would ever see these things back in the day.
Krazy Ken: They rebroadcasted it on television. It was KT48 or whatever it was in the area. I think they also did a movie theater screening or something like that. They replayed it with a Q&A panel or something like that.
Brad: Oh, this is interesting. I wonder if there was people bootlegging VHS's-
Krazy Ken: There might have been.
Brad: ... back in the day.
Krazy Ken: Yeah. I don't know. I have no ofcial confrmation of that, but that wouldn't surprise me. If I was Apple, it'd be like, "Whatever, free advertising." Then Steve and Sculley come out for a Q&A, which that's usually not part of the event. Nowadays, they'll have separate press things, but this was actually part of the taped event. They did a Q&A. I thought it was kind of funny where someone in the audience yelled, "What's the availability?" Sculley was like, "Hey, if you want to buy one, you can buy one, but you better hurry." This is actually where Scullyy mentions the 512. Someone asked a question about RAM and he said, "We intend to introduce a 512K version." It was public information that they were working on that version, but it wasn't necessarily at the time public information that that's what the audience was actually seeing demoed was a 512K prototype this whole time. Sculley also mentioned they had over 100 developers working on third-party software for the Mac.
Krazy Ken: Then that particular event wraps up and, right Brad, everything's all good. The Mac went on to be a huge success. We're all good. We're all done here. The future looks bright.
Brad: Like I said, today we got them in every classroom, and yeah, we're still looking at them today.
Krazy Ken: Yeah, the future looks bright. Wrong, kind of sucked. It was, all new things come with struggles. Like I said earlier, no matter how cool of a thing it is, people have to actually realize that it's cool. They may not get it at frst. I'm sure you and I have been through this before, where you fnd a cool thing, and I might be like, "I don't really get it." That's why I like that you're kind of the forefront of that stuf, and then you show me, and it's like, "Okay, I get it more now." But that's kind of the thing. You kind of have to sometimes just be persuaded more.
Krazy Ken: The Mac had some struggles. Then on April 24th, 1984, Apple hosted what Steve Jobs called the second major product event. I don't know if it was ofcially called this, but a lot of people referred to it as the Apple II Forever event. I thought it was kind of odd that Steve Jobs comes out on stage to talk about the Mac success. There's this music playing, "Apple II Forever." It's like, "Really? Really?"
Brad: There's odd music choices across all of these things. We didn't even talk about it in that frst one, but there is-
Krazy Ken: On the Dating Game?
Brad: Well, before the Dating Game, even before Steve Jobs comes out and gives that war cry, there's a song playing that's some sort of Apple version of-
Krazy Ken: Oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. They called it Apple Leading the Way, but you're right. It is a parody of a song. It's on the tip of my... [inaudible 00:47:21] is shaking his head right now like "Ken, dang it. You should know this."
Brad: Well, I'm... It's like, "What I'm feeling." I don't know.
Krazy Ken: Yeah, yeah.
Brad: That's the Apple version of that or something. Weird song choices in these keynotes. That point, yeah.
Krazy Ken: On top of that though, if I was trying to say that the Macintosh is the future of apple, and I'm coming out on stage to talk about how the Mackintosh is doing, and they're playing music saying the Apple II is the way to go, I might feel a little weird. I don't know. That's just me personally. I don't know if that was going through Steve Jobs' head, because they were two diferent product lines. Same company, but two diferent product lines. The Apple II and the Mac were diferent. Any who-le, he came up on stage and talked about the frst hundred days. One thing I noticed that was odd in his presentation was Steve would kick his leg. You could see behind the podium, and he would do a little leg swing. I don't know if he was just nervous or something, but I've never seen him do it in any other taping. But at this particular Apple II Forever event, behind the podium, he would just swing his leg.
Brad: I bet, I've watched plenty of YouTubers who do body language breakdowns. It'd be really interesting if someone could analyze the Steve Jobs thing. because I bet that is a tic of trying to hold back some sort of thought that he's got going on.
Krazy Ken: You want to say something, but you can't. It's a nervous habit to try to keep it down.
Brad: Oh, for sure.
Krazy Ken: I'm sure a lot of our listeners have watched the Steve Jobs movies. There's been tons of movies about him. One of the newer ones, probably the newest one at this time is the Fassbender one written by Aaron Sorkin, was it?
Brad: Yep.
Krazy Ken: Okay. Did I pronounce his name right?
Brad: Yeah. Aaron Sorkin and Danny Boyle.
Krazy Ken: Yeah, yeah. That's right. In the movie, and again, it's, it's a biopic. It's historical fction. I just want people to realize if you watch it, don't watch it for educational reasons. Watch it just for fun. In the movie, steve is like, "The Mac is going to sell a million in the frst 90 days." I've never seen any information, through any of my research, that that was actually a goal of his, to sell a million in the frst 90 days. What he reports during this presentation was they wanted to sell 50,000 in the frst hundred days, not a million in 90. The real goal was 50,000 in the frst hundred days.
Krazy Ken: He goes up there, he presents, and by the way, he uses the Macintosh to do the presentation, clicking through the slide show and everything, which I thought was pretty cool. He talked about how the Apple II, which was driving Apple. Most of their money was coming from the Apple II at this point. The Apple II took two and a half years to reach 50,000 sales. The IBM PC took seven and a half months to reach 50,000 sales. The Macintosh sold it's 50- thousandth unit in 74 days, so they exceeded their goal. At the time they had 250 developers on board, and they were projecting 150 applications by year- end. There was probably more to this event, but for this particular tape, that was it. The footage just ends there. I'm guessing there was more. I can't fnd any more tape of the event, but that's basically the chunk that I needed to know. Now we kind of go into the aftermath of this. It's been a hundred days since the Mac came out, over 50,000 sold, so far, so good-ish.
Brad: If you're hitting your goal, you're hitting your goal.
Krazy Ken: The problem is though, the momentum kind of lost steam. In the second half of the year, sales kind of started fattening out a little bit. We hinted at this earlier. Inside the company, there was this debate of the Mac is too expensive or is it too under-powered? It was underpowered. Let's be honest, 128 kilobytes of RAM, and there was no hard drive either, so you couldn't store anything. On the computer nowadays, it's like, whatever, save whatever, done, but you couldn't do that. The GUI was beautiful. The mouse and everything like that-
Krazy Ken: ... That. And the GUI was beautiful, the mouse and everything. That was one of the big selling features of it. But on a traditional computer, if you display a character that uses at most a byte of memory, probably less than a byte of memory to show the one character, but because the Mac had to draw everything in the QuickDraw environment, it took about 20 to 30 times as much memory just to draw one character.
Krazy Ken: So 128K, maybe. Okay, good. But if you're using 20 to 30 times as much memory to display text, that's a little bit of a problem. And again, no hard drive. You couldn't store stuf. So have you ever thought about AirDrop, like how fricking cool AirDrop is? You can do your phone, like, "Hey, I'll send you a fle," and you can send it to your Mac or your phone or iPad.
Brad: I use it all the time.
Krazy Ken: Fricking awesome. Have you ever thought about what it's like to copy a fle from one foppy disk to another foppy disk on a Mac that only has one disk drive and no hard drive?
Brad: I am old enough to remember the days of having to burn a lot of DVDs and CDs back and forth for a video production and stuf so I can only imagine going backwards from that.
Krazy Ken: Yeah, it was kind of like the whole back and forth thing. A lot of people call it "disk swapper's elbow." So let's say I had a disk and another disk and I wanted to copy one fle from one desk to the other. I would eject. Oh gosh, I've never done this in person so I'm trying to picture it in my head. I've never owned an original Mac, but I think it's something along the lines of like, you have to eject the disk. Now, the operating system would still work, but you couldn't execute anything. It would say, "Please insert a disk," but the screen was still on. So you'd eject the disk, then you insert the new disk. Maybe you're going to copy a fle of of it or whatever. So then it pops up on the desktop. Then you drag the icon to a ghost disk. It's ejected, but it still pops up there.
Krazy Ken: So you drag it to the ghost disk. So then it's going to go ... read the disk data and then it's going to go like, "Please insert the other disk." So then you got to take that disk out and then put in the other disk. Then it's going to take the fle it just put part of in the memory and write it to the disk. Now, that's already written. Now it's going to say, "Please insert the other disk." So it's going to reject that disk. Then you have to put the other disk back in and you're going to have to do that over and over and over as it copies small chunks of the fle into the memory. You have to swap the disk manually, put the new one in, and then it will write that from the memory to the disk and then you have to swap it again. Disk swapper's elbow.
Brad: Wow. Yeah. I'm exhausted just listening to that. Wow.
Krazy Ken: It's kind of a pain. If you had two disk drives or a hard disk, it was much easier, but the stock Mac confguration didn't have any of that. So you had to do disk swapper's elbow. And I don't know if this was a bug necessarily, but I've read stories of ... folklore.org is a good place to read early stories about this. I'll put a link in the show notes. It was written by the Macintosh team. I think there was one of these early bugs with the fnder where sometimes the overhead would be massive. So the more RAM the fnder was using, the more you'd have to swap the disk. But if the bug was cooperating or whatever, if the bug went away and the overhead was less, then the disk swaps would be less. So on a good day, you'd maybe do six swaps. On a bad day, you'd maybe do 20 to copy a fle or something like that.
Brad: I'm glad we're not in those days any more.
Krazy Ken: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. We're done with that crap, but that's how it was back then. So another thing I talked about was there's no fan. Now, there's ventilation on the top. I think their pamphlet called it "clever ventilation," but there was no fan. And there were hardware failures with that. I think some newspaper magazine called it the "beige toaster," because it had overheating issues with no fan in there.
Brad: Well, did they sell some sort of upgrade where you got a cast iron skillet or something?
Krazy Ken: So you can put a ...
Brad: Yeah. Cook an egg with it.
Krazy Ken: Nope, not ofcially. Maybe a third party did.
Brad: There we go.
Krazy Ken: But yeah, it had some hardware failures because of the heat. And again, at this time, the Apple II was generating most of Apple's revenue. And with Mac sales going fat, didn't look so good for the Mac. So Sculley wanted to keep the max price high. Remember I was hinting at this earlier, but I didn't name drop. Sculley was the one that wanted to keep the price high because he didn't think the price was the problem. Jobs thought the price was the problem. Jobs wanted the price lower. So in March of 1985, Mac sales were ... I'm going to let you guess. Here's the budget of how many sales we want to have by this point. What percentage do you think they hit?
Brad: Fifteen.
Krazy Ken: Oh, you're pretty close, actually. Ten percent. They were 10% of budget. That's bad. That's really bad.
Brad: Yeah. There's going to be some unhappy meetings revolving around that.
Krazy Ken: You're a kid. You want to sell a hundred cups of lemonade today. You sold only 10. That's not good. So Steve and Sculley were butting heads a lot. And a lot of employees also didn't like Steve's behavior. He was an emotional guy. He was a very emotional guy. I'm not going to say what parts were exaggerated or not exaggerated in the movies. But if you've ever watched interviews of people talking about Steve or read the biography, he is very emotional to the point of even ... almost like soap opera-ish. Taking a picture of him and John Sculley and throwing it and cracking the glass and the picture frame in some drama.
Brad: Well, you could see it in just the way he does the speeches and the drama of it. He's very theatrical [crosstalk 00:56:04].
Krazy Ken: He is. Absolutely.
Brad: He truly is theatrical. That's how he lives the world. And this is maybe just him a little ... I don't know even how to say it. It's like, uncorrupted and unhinged and it's before he's been almost ... you see it later. We'll talk about it when we get into the next episode, but it's a diferent Steve. He seems to be a little more ... I-
Krazy Ken: Totally diferent.
Brad: ... don't know if "humbled" is the word, but wise to the business world.
Krazy Ken: It's almost amazing. And that's why I'm so excited for episode two. He has gone through a complete transformation, but it was a 12-year transformation. But yeah, I would agree. Not necessarily humbled but wise. So Arthur Rock was one of the board members at the time. He referred to Steve, at least in the biography, the Isaacson biography, he referred to Steve as "a petulant brat," which kind of describes ...
Krazy Ken: I mean, Steve is young. He was 30 at the time. So whatever. Young, startup company, yay. He wanted to be more in control, but the board was like, "No, no, no, no, no, no." Ultimately, the board went with Sculley and his plans and Jobs didn't want to give up control over the Mac division. He was not giving up on this thing. So Sculley had to take a business trip to China and Steve starts planning a coup and Sculley caught wind of the news and canceled his trip in the middle of his trip.
Krazy Ken: And on May 24th, they have this executive staf meeting and Sculley confronted Steve about the coup. And he gave the board an ultimatum. He was like, "You can have me, or you can have Steve." The board sided with Sculley. And there's diferent perspectives on stories, depending on who you ask. Steve Jobs, during his Stanford address ... have you watched his Stanford speech?
Brad: Yeah. Not in a while, but yeah, I have seen it.
Krazy Ken: Yeah. In that, he claims he was fred, which, for all intents and purposes, to keep the story short, he said he was fred. And I guess you could say he was, but he technically wasn't. Even though the board sided with Sculley, Steve could still be there. He was the chairman, but he didn't really have power in the company. So in the end, Jobs wanted to start his next company. I mean that in the proper noun sense. It was actually called NeXT. Capital N, lowercase E, capital X, capital T.
Krazy Ken: He was starting this company and he wanted to take some people with him from Apple. Sculley. Wasn't super happy about that, but Steve was like, "These are not high up people in the company," but Sculley found out the list of, I think it was fve people give or take He was like, "Steve, these are not low people on the totem pole. These are important people, key people you're taking from the company."
Krazy Ken: So I'm sure they argued a lot more over that, but he got them. He got them to go with him to NeXT. And Steve's letter of resignation, written on a Mac, by the way, was dated September 17th, 1985. He ofcially resigned and Apple's stock went up a point at the announcement of his resignation. I thought that was kind of funny. So yeah, he wasn't technically fred, but he lost a lot of power. Brad: He would say basically forcing someone out, making them ... I mean, especially for someone as theatrical, as truly passionate, as visionary as that. You have to imagine. I'm sure being a creative yourself-
Krazy Ken: I would feel like-
Brad: ... supposedly being in an environment where you're technically surrounded by the things that you love, but have no say over it, that would be more miserable than leaving.
Krazy Ken: Yeah. Yeah. That's probably how he felt. I'd probably feel like that too, so he lost power and wanted to build what some people call his revenge company, NeXT. So to kind of sum up, it sounded like things were going pretty good at frst. The Apple II was making a lot of money. The Mac sounded really promising and it got of to a decent start. Sales went fat, though. And then ultimately, Jobs and Sculley were butting heads and the board sided with Sculley and Jobs ended up leaving.
Krazy Ken: But this is where episode two comes in and this is why I'm really excited. What's coming up next, on the next episode of Apple Keynote Chronicles, is Steve starts getting things back on track because Apple is close to insolvency. They are losing so much money, but Steve Jobs is doing this thing at NeXT, and Apple ends up acquiring NeXT and Steve Jobs for over $400 million. And this is years later. I think they just realized like, "We need Steve Jobs back." He's gone from Apple. He was gone for 11, 12 years. They buy him back with his NeXT technology for over $400 million. And that is what we're going to talk about in episode two.
Brad: That's going to be good.
Krazy Ken: It's going to be good. I'm really excited about this next one. So if you guys want to follow along, which I super hope you do, make sure you subscribe or follow whatever your app says. If it says subscriber, follow. It's all free. And hey, if you like the show, if you'd like, please leave a rating. If you want to leave a review, that's cool too. Some apps make you write a review to leave a rating. Whatever you want to do. You don't have to rate it. Only if you liked it, go ahead and leave fve stars, leave a nice review, whatever you want. But if you didn't like it, you don't have to rate. You know, you don't have to rate it. That's cool too. You can go somewhere else.
Krazy Ken: But if you've been listening to us this whole time, I'm sure you liked it by now. And I'd love to see you guys stick around for episode two. So defnitely subscribe for that because we are just getting started. So Brad, is there anything else you wanted to share about this amazing frst chapter of this crazy, wicked Steve Jobs/Apple Mac story?
Brad: I'm just really excited to go back through this. A lot of these ones that we're watching, I haven't seen yet. I've probably seen all of the Apple keynotes from around maybe the second iPod or right at the third, somewhere in there. I've been a big fan since. So all this is new and it's really just so fascinating. I really encourage anybody who's listening to this, it's well worth your time clicking through these and watching these.
Brad: What I was telling Ken before we started recording was just that it might've not been something that's on my list to spend the weekend going through and watching. There's so many movies and TV shows, but this was as rewarding ... Especially if you just have a interest in Apple and seeing the ... You can see the things. Everything that you see in these carries through to today, which really just kind of reafrms why I love Apple and why we love Steve Jobs and they're a joy to watch. It's real interesting. And you can already see ... When we go into episode two here, you're going to see this progression, and in the end too. Okay, maybe I'll get a little theatric here. We're talking about a great visionary.
Krazy Ken: Absolutely.
Brad: I guess there's a little bit of yourself that goes like, "Everyone's so sick of hearing about Steve Jobs," or everybody likes Steve Jobs, but he really is just this visionary that everybody can see it. And it's amazing to kind of go back to the beginning and kind of watch that evolution happen.
Krazy Ken: Yeah. And there's a lot of people that will say like, "Oh my gosh, stop putting Steve on a pedestal." I don't think I am. We're talking about the bad stuf too. He was so far from a perfect human. Absolutely. But he did a lot of cool ... come on. But that's what makes him three-dimensional. You can't have a three-dimensional character without the struggles, but he overcame them and he turned a company around.
Krazy Ken: Like I said at the beginning here, they have a valuation of over $2 trillion today. But what we're going to be talking about in episode two is, their share price was so low and they were very close to insolvency and him ... Of course, not just him. It was a team efort. They fricking got on the ship, plugged the leaks, turned it around and look at it today. It's fricking crazy.
Brad: And not only they turned it around, but they turned it around with innovation and fun. Krazy Ken: They made it a cooler ship!
Brad: Yeah. It was really ... We see so many things that have kind of copied the Apple style now in a way of the corporate type of lingo. But you see the evolution through watching these things. When we get into episode two, that's a very corporate event. And Steve really it turned around and turned it into art that these keynotes ...
Brad: We'll get into this later, but as the evolution happens, the keynotes that we're getting now are these prerecorded things. They're great. They're beautiful. Apple does a wonderful job with them, but there is a magic in the keynote, the live event when you're watching pieces of history or that they're doing a look back on the years. They're showing clips of Steve ... When you see something that's a recap of the 20th century and the early 21st century, they always throw a shot of Steve Jobs from a keynote.
Krazy Ken: Oh yeah. And even just like on other documentaries or whatever online that ... or on TV that talk about technology around the time, you always see a fash of an iPod or an iMac or something too [crosstalk 01:04:39].
Brad: It's shorthand. A shot of Steve Jobs on stage holding an iPad or an iPhone is shorthand for the visionary. I guess that's what Apple has always been for me and what Steve Jobs was pitching was a vision of the future and making technology frictionless for someone who isn't a coder, doesn't really know.
Krazy Ken: Yeah. And again, we're going to talk so much more ... As you probably have already picked up on, we're going to talk so much more than just about the products. We will talk about even his little catch phrases that he starts making big, you know, "One more thing" and all that stuf and his presentation styles too. There's even a book out there ... I think it's called "How to present like Steve Jobs." I want to dive into that and actually research more from there to learn on paper, what are some more of his presentation techniques too? We're going to be talking about all that stuf here. So I cannot wait for you guys to join us in the next episode. Make sure you're subscribed so you can get it sent out to your feed. The idea is every other Monday, every other Monday morning, we like to make your Monday a fun day so you can have us with you and your car, commute to work. You can have us with you during your workday.
Krazy Ken: That's why I like to release these on those Monday mornings, just to make your day and your work week that much better. So thank you, Brad, very much for being on this episode. And again, thanks to our friends at Linode. Go check them out if you need your Linux stuf running in the cloud. If it runs on Linux, it runs on Linode. There's the links in the show notes. Thanks again, guys, for making this episode possible. And hey, if you're just fnding our podcast now, you may not know, I do run a YouTube channel. The Computer Clan is a bigger thing than just this podcast. If you want to see some more cool tech stuf and some tech scam busting and retro technology, the Computer Clan YouTube channel link is in the description as well. Go check that out. It's actually one of the longest running tech YouTube channels in history. And there's some really cool stuf on there.
Krazy Ken: So if you're a techie and you need that tech fx, oh yeah, we got you covered on the Computer Clan YouTube channel. So go ahead and enjoy that stuf and we'll see on the next episode, on that next Monday. We do this every other week. Subscribe, stay tuned, catch the crazy and pass it on.
Transcriptions are outsourced. Please forgive any inaccuracies.