00:00:00 ◼ ► People have been hearing all sorts of things about computers during the past 10 years through
00:00:19 ◼ ► yet, in spite of that, most adults have no idea what a computer really is or what it can
00:00:26 ◼ ► or can't do. Now, for the first time, people can actually buy a computer for the price of
00:00:32 ◼ ► a good stereo, interact with it, and find out all about it. We started a little personal
00:00:50 ◼ ► personal computers. It's a domesticated computer. People expect blinking lights, but what they
00:00:56 ◼ ► find is that it looks like a portable typewriter, which, connected to a suitable readout screen,
00:01:02 ◼ ► is able to display in color. There's a feedback it gives to people who use it, and the enthusiasm
00:01:14 ◼ ► of things. But in my opinion, the real thing it is doing right now is to teach people how
00:01:20 ◼ ► to program the computer. These are the words of a 22-year-old Steve Jobs quoted in the November
00:01:28 ◼ ► the November 14th, 1977 issue of the New Yorker. Welcome to Designed in California, where we are
00:01:36 ◼ ► telling the best stories from across 50 years of Apple history. My name is Mike Hurley, and I am joined
00:01:44 ◼ ► by Jason Snell. Hello, Jason Snell. Hello, Mike Hurley. It's good to be back. So many decades,
00:01:48 ◼ ► so many eras, so many different stories to tell. Really excited to be telling those stories with you.
00:01:58 ◼ ► He is talking about the Apple II computer, Mike. Okay. The Apple II, Steve Wozniak's second
00:02:04 ◼ ► computer design, at least under the aegis of Apple computer. Now, we are here continuing a story that
00:02:11 ◼ ► we started on the 50th anniversary of Apple, which is to tell some of the story of the very earliest days,
00:02:18 ◼ ► the prehistory and very early history. We are talking 1976, when they signed those papers through
00:02:27 ◼ ► basically early 1977, extending essentially to where young Steve Jobs shows up randomly in an article in
00:02:33 ◼ ► the New Yorker. Last time, we talked about how Apple came to be, how it all happened because a 26-year-old
00:02:42 ◼ ► Steve Wozniak designed his own personal computer circuit board and a 21-year-old Steve Jobs had the
00:02:49 ◼ ► idea to produce a bunch of them and sell them to a local computer store. Now, when we last left you,
00:02:56 ◼ ► Apple had registered as a partnership. It had gotten some help in doing net 30 accounting from their
00:03:02 ◼ ► suppliers because they didn't have the money otherwise to buy the supplies, to assemble the computers,
00:03:06 ◼ ► to fulfill that first set of Apple ones to their first customer, which was a computer store called
00:03:12 ◼ ► the Byte Shop. Once they did that, they had money left over from their profits to make some more Apple
00:03:18 ◼ ► ones and start to sell those. That's where we left it. Eventually, Apple would need to become a real
00:03:25 ◼ ► business. Eventually, they would need to ship a real product, not a sort of pre-assembled circuit board.
00:03:31 ◼ ► That product was this new computer Steve Wozniak had been working on that would ultimately be known as the
00:03:36 ◼ ► Apple II. And we will get to that computer in this series. And we will get to the start of a real business
00:03:44 ◼ ► of Apple computer. But first, we need to take a few steps back because I need to take you back to the late
00:03:52 ◼ ► summer of 1976, where the Apple I is finally out there. And it's kind of a failure. It's not a technical
00:04:01 ◼ ► failure necessarily. Everybody agrees it was a brilliant feat of engineering on the part of Steve Wozniak.
00:04:08 ◼ ► The issue was that nobody was really buying them. The truth is that even though the Apple I was a major
00:04:15 ◼ ► step forward in terms of the hobbyist computer world, you didn't have to buy the chips and install
00:04:21 ◼ ► them yourselves, right? That was part of what they were doing. It was still a do it yourselfers device.
00:04:28 ◼ ► What Steve Jobs delivered in our last go round with this to the bite shop and what Apple advertised in
00:04:35 ◼ ► some computer magazines and took to the homebrew computer club, you still needed to attach a keyboard
00:04:41 ◼ ► and a display. And talking about screwing it into a block of wood, you had to put it in a case. It was
00:04:48 ◼ ► not a consumer product. It was just a better hobbyist product. And it was a better sort of hobbyist product.
00:04:54 ◼ ► But what it was not was a computer for the masses. This is not what they were doing. And as a result,
00:05:01 ◼ ► the volumes of what Apple was selling were not even close to some early PCs like the Altair, which was
00:05:07 ◼ ► again, a lot less friendly. But that didn't end up mattering. Apple was a very, very niche player.
00:05:13 ◼ ► So do we have a sense for the computers that were delivered to the bite shop? Were they sold? Do we
00:05:20 ◼ ► get a sense that these were successful enough for them? I do. I think that the bite shop was catering to
00:05:32 ◼ ► even though there is that famous line about how the guy from the bite shop wanted it with keyboards
00:05:36 ◼ ► and displays, which they're like, are you kidding? That's not, you know, that's not something we're
00:05:40 ◼ ► going to be doing. But that's also a clue. Like I have to imagine that that was also in Steve Jobs's
00:05:46 ◼ ► mind that, oh, what people really want and what we really should get them as a whole product.
00:05:51 ◼ ► And this is the moment, right? This is the moment that Apple One is kind of like losing steam or has
00:05:55 ◼ ► lost steam. Apple was created to make the Apple One. It really, that was it. So does Apple go down one
00:06:02 ◼ ► path and become a forgotten hobby project launched by a couple of kids from the Valley who should have
00:06:07 ◼ ► known better? Or does it turn into a real business? This is the moment where they have to figure that out.
00:06:12 ◼ ► So when I've been thinking about this and like reflecting on our last episode and even you saying
00:06:19 ◼ ► right now, this idea that the Apple One is kind of a failure, I guess the assumption is at this point
00:06:25 ◼ ► that nobody would have assumed that Apple would have been able to be a company to be taken seriously at
00:06:30 ◼ ► this point. Because I would guess there are many small teams in the Valley trying to do something
00:06:37 ◼ ► in this space at this time. And that while the Apple One is interesting, it isn't an obvious path
00:06:45 ◼ ► that we get to where we are today. Yes, including one of the prime movers in the homebrew computer
00:06:50 ◼ ► club who we'll be hearing from soon, who has started his own computer company. So there are a lot of
00:06:56 ◼ ► computer companies out there. This is not, there is nothing. The most notable thing about Apple in
00:07:00 ◼ ► this point is that they would become Apple that we know. This is going to come back again and again,
00:07:05 ◼ ► Mike, in this series, which is, it's a couple of kids and their friends making technology things in
00:07:11 ◼ ► one of the kids' parents' garage. It's not impressive. We are only talking about this because of who they
00:07:17 ◼ ► became. Right. Not because what they were doing at this exact point was really that notable.
00:07:22 ◼ ► Yeah. Well, it's very formative for where they go. And they are doing things technically that are
00:07:31 ◼ ► But they're not quite there yet. The combination, the alchemy between Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak is
00:07:36 ◼ ► going to launch them on that path. But at this moment, I guess what I could say is there's a path here where
00:07:43 ◼ ► Apple just ends right now. That's like, well, we had fun, didn't we? We sold those things and made
00:07:47 ◼ ► a little bit of money. But that's not what happens. So part of this is the creative drive
00:07:52 ◼ ► of Steve Wozniak. We often think so linearly about this where it's like, well, they made the Apple
00:07:57 ◼ ► one and they sold the Apple one. And then there's this idea like, and they did that for a while and
00:08:01 ◼ ► then they stopped and said, well, I guess what comes next? Apple two, I guess. Let's do that.
00:08:04 ◼ ► And that's not what happens. Steve Wozniak designs the Apple one, setting off everything we talked
00:08:09 ◼ ► about in our last episode. He's not sitting still. He knows all of the limitations of the Apple one.
00:08:20 ◼ ► the Apple two. He, he has been counting all the ways that he can make a better computer than that
00:08:25 ◼ ► first computer that he designed. That would be the basis of a new product from Apple. The problem is
00:08:32 ◼ ► they, they're going to need money, right? They're going to need money because they, they've already had
00:08:37 ◼ ► this issue with the Apple one to get enough money to make them and, and a 30 day net at the technology
00:08:43 ◼ ► supplier in order to get it to work. All of that. And keep in mind that they're only this far because
00:08:51 ◼ ► Steve jobs sold his van and Steve Wozniak sold his HP calculator. Yep. And even then they had to use the net
00:08:57 ◼ ► 30 day credit policy from their supplier. So they don't have money. They don't have money. So what are they
00:09:03 ◼ ► going to do to build a real consumer product instead of just a hobbyist gadget? They're going to need serious
00:09:09 ◼ ► investment and a business plan and probably a lot more discipline than you might expect from a couple
00:09:18 ◼ ► Or alternatively, you could just sell the company and provide the technology for a more established
00:09:24 ◼ ► company with a ready-made hit new personal computer. You could do that. You could sell it,
00:09:28 ◼ ► which they tried and they failed to do that. So, um, in our last set, we talked about Mike Markala,
00:09:43 ◼ ► he is the wise old man, but he's only 34, but he made enough money at a couple of previous tech
00:09:47 ◼ ► companies to retire. He likes messing around in Silicon Valley. He enjoys advising other up and coming
00:09:51 ◼ ► interesting industry types. And the two Steve's jobs and Wozniak are people he's going to help.
00:09:58 ◼ ► But I want to be clear. The reason that Mike Markala comes into the scene and helps make Apple
00:10:02 ◼ ► what it is going to be is because Steve jobs is trying to sell Apple to anyone who might buy it,
00:10:09 ◼ ► that this is the, the other path. We can make a computer. Surely a large company with lots of money
00:10:16 ◼ ► will give us money, take our technology and then help us build the next personal computer.
00:10:22 ◼ ► That's the big idea that Steve jobs has is can I take this little Apple thing that we did this hobby
00:10:27 ◼ ► and sell it? That's the plan. So jobs is going around the valley. He's trying to sell Apple to the
00:10:34 ◼ ► highest, middlest or lowest bidder, I guess. And that's how Markala comes into the picture when this
00:10:40 ◼ ► thing becomes on the table. It all will lead to Mike Markala, but just putting in the context,
00:10:45 ◼ ► Mike Markala is always like, oh, well, and then he invested in Apple and got them a credit line.
00:10:49 ◼ ► And then everything worked out. And the truth is, it only happened because they were trying to just
00:11:04 ◼ ► it's not in the condensed histories that people tell now that Apple was essentially trying to be sold for parts.
00:11:11 ◼ ► One of the things we're trying to do with this show is tell these stories. And I hope that we are
00:11:19 ◼ ► unflattening some of the history because there is a simple flat history of Apple that skips over a lot
00:11:24 ◼ ► of these twists and turns that we're trying to get across here that are part of the actual story.
00:11:28 ◼ ► The story, as much as with any history, it's much more complicated and messy than the simple version
00:11:34 ◼ ► that you might have heard. And this is definitely an example of a path almost taken that literally,
00:11:39 ◼ ► if Steve Jobs had gotten his way, they would have sold off Apple to somebody and they wouldn't have
00:11:46 ◼ ► Well, that feels like as perfect time as any for us to take a break. And then when we come back,
00:11:56 ◼ ► Hello, everybody. I hope you're enjoying this first preview episode of Designed in California.
00:12:02 ◼ ► If you're enjoying this, you should go back to the Kickstarter campaign at design.fm. Thank you so
00:12:07 ◼ ► much if you have. So many of you have, in fact, that we're now going to be doing 50 episodes of this
00:12:14 ◼ ► show for its first year. Essentially, Designed in California will be a weekly podcast when it
00:12:19 ◼ ► launches later on this year. So thank you so much to all of you that have. We have been blown away
00:12:25 ◼ ► by the support. It really means the world to us. And we're so excited that we're going to be able to
00:12:30 ◼ ► get to tell you these stories over the next year. Yeah. But there's more to do. And if you haven't
00:12:36 ◼ ► backed yet, or if you want to look at some of the higher level pledge levels where we've got cool stuff
00:12:42 ◼ ► coming, you can still adjust your pledge. We have stretch goals that we're working toward,
00:12:47 ◼ ► including, and some of these have been announced and some of these will be announced as we go,
00:12:52 ◼ ► but like including doing an interview series where I talk to people who have either written about Apple
00:12:58 ◼ ► or who have worked at Apple about some aspect of history that they were involved with. We could throw
00:13:04 ◼ ► those in on the pile as well. And there will be more beyond that. Just stay tuned to the Kickstarter
00:13:10 ◼ ► page and the Kickstarter updates as we move along because we've got a whole month because this campaign
00:13:16 ◼ ► ends July 1st in the morning, Pacific time. So a lot of time left for us to hopefully reach and then add
00:13:24 ◼ ► new stretch goals. We thought we would have more time to arrange a lot of these things, but your support
00:13:31 ◼ ► has really blown us away. We couldn't be happier. You know, as we said in Upgrade, Jason and I have been so
00:13:39 ◼ ► excited about this project and we've really wanted this Kickstarter to fund so we could make this show
00:13:45 ◼ ► for you because we want to make it because we enjoy it and we know you're going to love it. We have so
00:13:50 ◼ ► much great stuff planned. And if you just go to designed.fm, you can read more. We're going to be updating
00:13:55 ◼ ► the campaign throughout the whole month. We're going to be popping in during every one of these preview
00:13:59 ◼ ► episodes and kind of giving you updates about where we are and the things that we're planning on.
00:14:03 ◼ ► There is so much left to share throughout the campaign. So please go and check it out at designed.fm.
00:14:09 ◼ ► All right. So welcome back. Jason, can you fill me in? Who was on the table to try and buy this
00:14:16 ◼ ► little Apple computer company? Oh, well, there are the giants of Silicon Valley, of course. So when we
00:14:22 ◼ ► talked about this on the 50th anniversary of Apple, I mentioned that this all started with Steve
00:14:27 ◼ ► Wozniak saying, "Well, I work at Hewlett Packard, so I should probably give them the opportunity to buy
00:14:33 ◼ ► the Apple One design before I go and make a company of my own." And every division of Hewlett Packard
00:14:40 ◼ ► turned him down. So, okay, not going to be HP. Now, Steve Jobs had been working at Atari, the video
00:14:47 ◼ ► game company, which for people who don't know was the name in video games. They did Pong. They were the
00:14:53 ◼ ► the be all, end all of Breakout. This was the earliest video game era and Atari was one of the
00:15:01 ◼ ► first huge successes in Silicon Valley. And since Steve had worked there, Jobs, he pitched them on
00:15:07 ◼ ► buying Apple. He ends up meeting with the president of Atari, who is not the person that he'd been
00:15:13 ◼ ► working with when he worked there. And this guy's named Joe Keenan. And he is a much more conservative
00:15:19 ◼ ► business guy than the people Jobs had been working with at Atari. And okay, this is what I was
00:15:26 ◼ ► referencing before. And while it is a unfair flattening of the history, if you will, to say
00:15:33 ◼ ► that Silicon Valley was a bunch of smelly hippies, this is an era where Steve Jobs didn't want to bathe,
00:15:51 ◼ ► Joe Keenan, the president of Atari, could not stand him. And he said, not only are we not going to buy
00:16:04 ◼ ► occupy. But I struggled to be able to reconcile a person who is trying to either A, start a company,
00:16:15 ◼ ► or B, sell a company, which is a very capitalistic endeavor with a success-driven end goal, but then
00:16:22 ◼ ► acts in this way. Like, if you have a personal decision to only eat fruit and not bathe, fine.
00:16:33 ◼ ► I feel like I can't get into the mind of the man who is doing this. It's very peculiar to me.
00:16:41 ◼ ► The more I dive into Steve Jobs for this project, the more I'm reminded what an odd person he was
00:16:47 ◼ ► throughout his life. And he grew a lot. There was a lot of personal and professional growth,
00:16:51 ◼ ► no doubt. In this era, it is just kind of like, I don't know. I mean, he's kind of wild.
00:16:59 ◼ ► I mean, he grew up in the Valley, but to be fair, in the 60s and 70s, but he doesn't know what he's
00:17:06 ◼ ► doing. I mean, that's really it. He clearly is so enamored with what they're doing and what they have
00:17:12 ◼ ► and who he is that he thinks that it's fine. And he's running into people who are more establishment
00:17:19 ◼ ► types, right? I mean, there is a hippies and squares dynamic going on here a little bit. And eventually,
00:17:26 ◼ ► Steve Jobs will get with the program and put on a suit and stuff. But this is not that Steve Jobs.
00:17:30 ◼ ► This is summer of 1976, Steve Jobs. And he's putting his feet up. I hope he was wearing shoes
00:17:37 ◼ ► when he put his feet up on their desk. I'm assuming he wasn't, which is, I'm assuming he wasn't. But who
00:17:43 ◼ ► knows? We can't know. Nolan Bushnell, who was the CEO of Atari at the time, because Keenan was the
00:17:49 ◼ ► president. And Nolan Bushnell had worked with Steve Jobs. And what he said, I believe to David Pogue in
00:17:57 ◼ ► his Apple First 50 Years book, excellent book, on sale now. Bushnell said, "He asked me if I would put
00:18:02 ◼ ► $50,000 in and he would give me a third of the company. I was so smart. I said, no. It's kind of
00:18:15 ◼ ► In hindsight, this is a giant mistake, right? But at the time, do you blame any of these people for
00:18:28 ◼ ► It's a tough sell. But he's not putting his best foot, his best dirty, barefoot forward.
00:18:33 ◼ ► Jobs also pitched a bunch of venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. VC existed even in the 70s,
00:18:41 ◼ ► folks, yes. They all passed. What next? Steve Jobs, like, who will buy this Apple computer from me?
00:18:58 ◼ ► calculators or adding machines, sometimes they were called, which I think is a hilarious term.
00:19:09 ◼ ► It was Commodore Business Machines, the name of the calculator maker. He had heard that they were
00:19:14 ◼ ► interested in getting in the personal computer game, and they had an office in Silicon Valley,
00:19:23 ◼ ► you for a moment now and tell you about Commodore Business Machines, a company that people now know
00:19:33 ◼ ► computer product in the 80s. There are a lot of our friends who are children of the C64 and love it and
00:19:41 ◼ ► had it and played games on it. And that was Commodore to them. This is before that. Commodore
00:19:53 ◼ ► I've been really excited to talk about this part. So Michael S. Malone wrote a book called Infinite
00:19:59 ◼ ► Loop that I think is out of print now, but it's a great book about Apple. He refers to Commodore as
00:20:04 ◼ ► registered in the Bahamas, incorporated in Canada, lists its headquarters as Santa Clara,
00:20:11 ◼ ► Yeah. This is just normal stuff that you do when you have a regular business on the up and up.
00:20:20 ◼ ► Yeah. Yeah. Well, because it's so normal, you will not be surprised by the other totally normal
00:20:25 ◼ ► stuff that happened at Commodore. Like a decade earlier, its chairman had died under suspicious
00:20:45 ◼ ► a person who has the most main character energy of maybe anybody ever, a guy named Jack Tramiel.
00:20:56 ◼ ► After being rescued from a Nazi labor camp, he emigrated to the US. He learned how to repair
00:21:06 ◼ ► It's American dream, folks. It's post-war America. He wanted to connect it to the military. He
00:21:12 ◼ ► couldn't get the names Admiral or General, so the company became Commodore portable typewriter.
00:21:20 ◼ ► I mean, the Navy needs typewriters too, I guess. No, I mean, the idea is like everybody is very,
00:21:29 ◼ ► kind of like steal a little bit of that valor maybe, and Admiral and General were taken. So Commodore,
00:21:34 ◼ ► his first big deal, and I am not making this up, was importing typewriter parts from Czechoslovakia
00:21:44 ◼ ► to Canada to avoid import issues. It's a tariff thing involving the Cold War, because of course,
00:21:52 ◼ ► Czechoslovakia was part of the Warsaw Pact. It was part of the Russian sphere of influence,
00:21:58 ◼ ► the Soviet sphere of influence. So the US didn't want you importing your Czechoslovakian typewriter
00:22:03 ◼ ► parts. So Jack Tramiel used Canada as a way station, that he would assemble his typewriters from the parts
00:22:11 ◼ ► in Canada. And then the Canadian assembled typewriters, nobody mentioned Czechoslovakia,
00:22:21 ◼ ► So that's how he built Commodore. And then he later pivoted to the adding machines and electronic
00:22:27 ◼ ► This guy, if you not already detected it, was a character. He was bald. He was gruff. He was
00:22:35 ◼ ► impatient with employees. He was famous for withholding payment to suppliers. And generally,
00:22:47 ◼ ► He would sometimes shut down all conversation. This was his big move. He would shut down all
00:22:51 ◼ ► conversation with people he felt considered themselves superior to him because of their
00:22:56 ◼ ► educational background, because he was a poor kid from Poland who got out of the labor camp,
00:23:01 ◼ ► got to the US, built himself up by his bootstraps, right? People who felt all fancy to him,
00:23:18 ◼ ► It's like, okay. And then everybody leaves. I don't know what you're supposed to say to that.
00:23:43 ◼ ► mechanics apparently, and their calculators in particular, was that they were actually well
00:23:48 ◼ ► That allowed him to sell them at low prices. At some point, Tramiel was frustrated by his chip
00:23:54 ◼ ► partners and he ended out buying MOS technologies. These are the people who made the 6502 chip.
00:24:01 ◼ ► That was the chip that inspired Waz to make his first personal computer circuit board design.
00:24:05 ◼ ► It was very much a, honestly, it's a very much a, uh, an Apple kind of move, which is, uh, we're,
00:24:11 ◼ ► we don't like how this chip business is going. We're going to buy the chip maker and then we're
00:24:15 ◼ ► going to own them and then we can get all the chips we want, I guess. Along with MOS technologies came,
00:24:21 ◼ ► uh, the guy who created the 6502 was a guy named Chuck pedal and he convinced Tramiel that Commodore
00:24:29 ◼ ► could excel at personal computers too. And he knew Chuck pedal knew where they could get a good computer
00:24:35 ◼ ► design on the cheap. Namely, are you getting it yet? From two guys who had to sell their van and calculator
00:24:41 ◼ ► to make a computer in a garage, right pickings right for the taking. We can swoop in there. We can just
00:24:47 ◼ ► duck into that garage, write them a check, get their computer and we're good. And so this is what they
00:24:54 ◼ ► tried sometime in the early fall of 1976. Chuck pedal and another Commodore executive who is not Jack Tramiel
00:25:01 ◼ ► show up at the garage and ask Steve jobs to suggest a purchase price. And remember Steve jobs wants to sell.
00:25:08 ◼ ► Yep. This is what he wants. Steve Wozniak describes the scene to Walter Isaacson in the Steve jobs
00:25:14 ◼ ► biography as we'd open Steve's garage to the sunlight and he came in wearing a suit and a cowboy hat.
00:25:23 ◼ ► This is the Commodore executives, right? Yeah. Okay. All right. So Steve jobs makes his pitch. He says,
00:25:29 ◼ ► you can have apple for a hundred thousand dollars plus some stock in Commodore and you have to guarantee
00:25:43 ◼ ► So today that's about half a million dollars for the company and jobs that would pay the steves
00:25:49 ◼ ► 200 grand a year each. So they want to be set up. It's a big request. This is one of those Steve jobs
00:25:55 ◼ ► moments, right? Where, cause that guy had chutzpah. You got to say it. He is asking for the moon. He thinks
00:26:01 ◼ ► what Apple has, which is Wazniak's design is really valuable. And so he's going to ask for more money
00:26:08 ◼ ► than either of them has ever seen in their lives. Steve Wazniak, meanwhile, is watching this and he
00:26:14 ◼ ► can't believe it. He's like, what are you doing? This is a ridiculous amount. You are asking for
00:26:20 ◼ ► everything. This is, this is, I think Waz would have been happy to get like a pat on the back and a stick
00:26:26 ◼ ► of gum for his designs, right? He just, he's not thinking about it like jobs. It's just so jobs.
00:26:32 ◼ ► He's like, he sees the big picture, which is that this, that, that Wazniak's design is revolutionary,
00:26:38 ◼ ► but also he sees a company that, you know, they got a lot of money. Maybe they'll pay us a lot of
00:26:42 ◼ ► money for it. So the Commodore people are like, okay, okay, we'll take your offer and we'll consider
00:26:53 ◼ ► Oh, wow. So this is all like, I've never met these people before. I don't know who they are,
00:27:00 ◼ ► They know pedal, but like, I need to know if this is going to happen. I need to know who I'm getting
00:27:05 ◼ ► into business with. And so he starts researching and, you know, they remember when I said they were
00:27:11 ◼ ► sort of shady. Jobs calls everyone he knows who knows anything about Commodore and the news is
00:27:17 ◼ ► bad. The products are bad. Again, good designs, but cheaply built and prone to failure. The people who
00:27:23 ◼ ► worked at Commodore hated it. Commodore often didn't pay its bills, which is a red flag if you're trying
00:27:30 ◼ ► to get money from them. And what Steve Jobs later said about it was the more I looked into Commodore,
00:27:36 ◼ ► the sleazier they were. I couldn't find one person who had made a deal with them and was happy.
00:27:42 ◼ ► Everyone felt they had been cheated. So Steve Jobs gets on the phone and calls Commodore and says,
00:27:50 ◼ ► no deal. We're not interested. I guess the timeline of that is interesting because he's made the offer
00:27:57 ◼ ► and they've gone away to think about it. Jobs has had enough time to do some research and Commodore
00:28:09 ◼ ► Well, they weren't. Okay. While this is all going on, Jack Tramiel, who was the CEO, was like,
00:28:15 ◼ ► no. A Commodore exec who had been interested said they thought it was ridiculous to acquire two guys
00:28:22 ◼ ► working out of a garage, which, fair. Despite the best efforts of Chuck Peddle and his cowboy hat,
00:28:35 ◼ ► less impressive computer nine months later called the Commodore PET. And what was said about this whole
00:28:41 ◼ ► thing was the PET kind of sickened me. This is what he said to Isaacson. They made a really crappy
00:28:48 ◼ ► product by doing it so quick. They could have had Apple. So the PET, is that more in line with what they
00:28:56 ◼ ► were building to become the Apple II. So personal disclosure here, the Commodore PET is the first
00:29:02 ◼ ► computer I ever used. It was impressive in the sense that it had the integrated keyboard and display.
00:29:08 ◼ ► Something Apple wouldn't do until the Lisa and the Mac, by the way, the integrated display was not a thing
00:29:13 ◼ ► that the Apple II ever had. In fact, I do wonder if that aspect of the PET inspired Steve Jobs a little
00:29:18 ◼ ► bit in terms of the Mac, the idea that it was an all-in-one in a way that the Apple II wasn't.
00:29:25 ◼ ► But WAS is not wrong. The PET didn't have color. It didn't really have graphics. It had like this
00:29:32 ◼ ► extra set of characters in its character set that were like shapes and lines and stuff. So you could
00:29:38 ◼ ► like build graphics with it. But it was like, if you wanted to do a box, you had to do like right angle,
00:29:45 ◼ ► top line, top line, top line, top line, top line, right angle the other way. And then on the next
00:29:49 ◼ ► line, you had to do like vertical line, a bunch of spaces, vertical line. You would like draw graphics
00:29:55 ◼ ► out of these little teeny tiny parts, like Lego almost. It was not graphics. It was not graphics.
00:30:02 ◼ ► You could fake it, but it was terrible. It was like ASCII art, kind of, but with some extra characters.
00:30:11 ◼ ► neither of which had an integrated display, both of them attached to TV sets, basically.
00:30:14 ◼ ► But they could have had that all with the Apple II. And that's, I think, what Steve Wozniak laments
00:30:21 ◼ ► about this whole situation is that Commodore had this right in front of them. The question,
00:30:29 ◼ ► and this is super important for where we go next with this story, is Steve Jobs didn't wait to be
00:30:37 ◼ ► told no by Commodore. Steve Jobs made an enormous request of Commodore that Steve Wozniak thought
00:30:43 ◼ ► was beyond the pale. And then Steve Jobs said, "Forget about it. We're not interested." All while Woz looks
00:30:50 ◼ ► along aghast. And this is going to become a major issue in the relationship between the two Steves.
00:30:59 ◼ ► Steve Jobs: But at this point, clearly Jobs still believes in what they're attempting to do.
00:31:13 ◼ ► than to kind of just throw it all in for the only company that's interested in buying them, potentially.
00:31:19 ◼ ► Steve Jobs: Yeah, I think something must have changed in Steve Jobs's estimation of their potential.
00:31:25 ◼ ► Steve Jobs: At this point, because he could have made a lower offer, lower request to Commodore out of the gate,
00:31:31 ◼ ► Steve Jobs: And he didn't. And he felt confident in walking away before they could tell him no.
00:31:38 ◼ ► Steve Jobs: And that says something about how Steve Jobs feels about this. But keep in mind the dynamic
00:31:42 ◼ ► Steve Jobs, which we will explore soon, which is Steve Wozniak is the engine that's creating the assets for
00:31:51 ◼ ► this company, right? He's the creator of the computer that they're going to make or sell.
00:31:56 ◼ ► Steve Jobs is just like the front man, the hype man. So when he's asking for all that money,
00:32:05 ◼ ► Steve Jobs: He's making decisions for Steve Wozniak on his behalf, essentially, because now they're
00:32:09 ◼ ► a partnership. But Steve Wozniak is the one who's the motor driving this thing. And that dynamic
00:32:16 ◼ ► is not comfortable. And the shenanigans with Commodore, I think, lead them down some darker paths.
00:32:22 ◼ ► Steve Jobs: Well, you mentioned that Steve Jobs is a hype man. There are places where a hype man is
00:32:28 ◼ ► necessary and needed. And we're actually going to talk about one of those places on our next episode,
00:32:38 ◼ ► Steve Jobs: Oh, there was drama. There was drama and excitement in Atlantic City. We will discuss
00:32:43 ◼ ► that in our next episode, as well as the increasing difficulties between the young Steve Jobs and Steve