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MACHINE DREAMS | PAGE 1, 2, 3
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Jobs has always aggressively and ostentatiously shunned the corporate suit. A vegetarian who clinched a 1997 entente with Microsoft on a barefoot walk through Palo Alto, he still prefers a uniform of black turtleneck and blue jeans. His most famous marketing coup -- the ad that introduced the Mac, in which a revolutionary individualist wields a sledgehammer to liberate a world of corporate drones -- said "up yours" to corporate America. And it did so with such adroitness that Apple's directors pulled it after a single showing during the 1984 Super Bowl.
From Apple's early days in his family's garage, Jobs set out to prove his mettle as a techno-visionary whose concerns and talents rose high above the messy muck of the marketplace. If Silicon Valley is full of passionate code slingers and chip creators imbued with the notion that their work is a higher calling, Jobs is responsible for giving them a high-profile role model. As Robert X. Cringely puts it in his "Accidental Empires," "[Bill] Gates sees the personal computer as a tool for transferring every stray dollar, deutsche mark and kopeck in the world into his pocket," whereas "Steve Jobs sees the personal computer as his tool for changing the world."
Jobs is, in fact, so closely identified with Silicon Valley's revolutionary techno-messianism that you can't help wondering whether it's a case of protesting too much. His famous challenge to Sculley, then, may not have been a simple invitation to join the cause; it also perhaps reflected Jobs' own fear that he, too, might go down in history, like Sculley, as "just" a Marketing Guy -- the computer-industry equivalent of a sugar-water peddler.
There was only one way for Jobs to avoid such a fate: He had to create something "insanely great" himself -- great enough that he'd be remembered as its father rather than Woz's salesman. That creation was, of course, the Macintosh.
But the Macintosh didn't begin as Jobs' baby; the revolutionary computer was an adopted child, like Jobs himself. (As an adult he discovered that his sister is novelist Mona Simpson, who loosely based the central character of her most recent novel, "A Regular Guy," on him.) The natural father of the Mac was an Apple employee named Jef Raskin, who dreamed of building an easy-to-use, cheap computer, an "information appliance" for the masses. Raskin's ur-Mac used a low-powered processor and had no mouse. The project kept getting canceled by Apple honchos, who were focused on the Lisa -- Apple's first windows-icons-and-mouse computer, inspired by what a Jobs-led Apple team had seen on a 1979 visit to Xerox's legendary PARC lab, where computer scientists were cooking up the interfaces of the future. But when the expensive Lisa failed to win over its intended business customers, the Mac borrowed a lot of its ideas and became Apple's last hope and savior.
Jobs, who'd been removed from the Lisa project by Apple's suits, had elbowed Raskin aside and taken over the Mac team. He egged them on with slogans like "The journey is the reward," "true artists ship" and "it's better to be a pirate than join the navy." He hung a pirate flag over the Mac developers' offices. (The tale is told in full in Steven Levy's superb history of the Mac, "Insanely Great.")
Building a computer, as Jobs himself has repeatedly declared, is a team effort. Jobs didn't design any part of the Mac. Its hardware was largely the creation of Burrell Smith; Andy Hertzfeld wrote much of the key software; other Mac team developers made central contributions. To what extent, then, can and should Jobs take credit for "the computer that changed everything"? If he is not an engineer and not a marketer, what is Steve Jobs?
N E X T_ P A G E .|. The last of the PC auteurs

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	C O L L E C T O R S ' C A R D S Brilliant postcards Send an electronic postcard with interesting facts about our Brilliant Careers subjects ___________________ Search barnesandnoble.com for books about Steve Jobs ___________________ R E C E N T L Y - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE BRILLIANT CAREERS ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - I N T R O Why we launched Brilliant Careers		MACHINE DREAMS \| PAGE 1, 2, 3 - - - - - - - - - - Jobs has always aggressively and ostentatiously shunned the corporate suit. A vegetarian who clinched a 1997 entente with Microsoft on a barefoot walk through Palo Alto, he still prefers a uniform of black turtleneck and blue jeans. His most famous marketing coup -- the ad that introduced the Mac, in which a revolutionary individualist wields a sledgehammer to liberate a world of corporate drones -- said "up yours" to corporate America. And it did so with such adroitness that Apple's directors pulled it after a single showing during the 1984 Super Bowl. From Apple's early days in his family's garage, Jobs set out to prove his mettle as a techno-visionary whose concerns and talents rose high above the messy muck of the marketplace. If Silicon Valley is full of passionate code slingers and chip creators imbued with the notion that their work is a higher calling, Jobs is responsible for giving them a high-profile role model. As Robert X. Cringely puts it in his "Accidental Empires," "[Bill] Gates sees the personal computer as a tool for transferring every stray dollar, deutsche mark and kopeck in the world into his pocket," whereas "Steve Jobs sees the personal computer as his tool for changing the world." Jobs is, in fact, so closely identified with Silicon Valley's revolutionary techno-messianism that you can't help wondering whether it's a case of protesting too much. His famous challenge to Sculley, then, may not have been a simple invitation to join the cause; it also perhaps reflected Jobs' own fear that he, too, might go down in history, like Sculley, as "just" a Marketing Guy -- the computer-industry equivalent of a sugar-water peddler. There was only one way for Jobs to avoid such a fate: He had to create something "insanely great" himself -- great enough that he'd be remembered as its father rather than Woz's salesman. That creation was, of course, the Macintosh. But the Macintosh didn't begin as Jobs' baby; the revolutionary computer was an adopted child, like Jobs himself. (As an adult he discovered that his sister is novelist Mona Simpson, who loosely based the central character of her most recent novel, "A Regular Guy," on him.) The natural father of the Mac was an Apple employee named Jef Raskin, who dreamed of building an easy-to-use, cheap computer, an "information appliance" for the masses. Raskin's ur-Mac used a low-powered processor and had no mouse. The project kept getting canceled by Apple honchos, who were focused on the Lisa -- Apple's first windows-icons-and-mouse computer, inspired by what a Jobs-led Apple team had seen on a 1979 visit to Xerox's legendary PARC lab, where computer scientists were cooking up the interfaces of the future. But when the expensive Lisa failed to win over its intended business customers, the Mac borrowed a lot of its ideas and became Apple's last hope and savior. Jobs, who'd been removed from the Lisa project by Apple's suits, had elbowed Raskin aside and taken over the Mac team. He egged them on with slogans like "The journey is the reward," "true artists ship" and "it's better to be a pirate than join the navy." He hung a pirate flag over the Mac developers' offices. (The tale is told in full in Steven Levy's superb history of the Mac, "Insanely Great.") Building a computer, as Jobs himself has repeatedly declared, is a team effort. Jobs didn't design any part of the Mac. Its hardware was largely the creation of Burrell Smith; Andy Hertzfeld wrote much of the key software; other Mac team developers made central contributions. To what extent, then, can and should Jobs take credit for "the computer that changed everything"? If he is not an engineer and not a marketer, what is Steve Jobs? N E X T_ P A G E .\|. The last of the PC auteurs - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - R E S O U R C E P A G E Click here for more information about the people profiled in Brilliant Careers. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.