Act II. Apple: Director
THE STORY AS I HEARD IT WAS Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were high school friends. One liked to hack, one understood the eventual value of those hacks. Woz hacked, Jobs sold. They built the Apple I and put it in a wooden box. The reaction and reward were sufficient enough to fund the Apple II (stylized as Apple ][), and that changed everything. It was 1977.
Personal computers blossomed into existence, and the world took note. IBM especially. Shocking everyone (including IBM), Jobs and Wozniak took the core ideas of Apple and built their own version of a personal computer. At the same time, Microsoft licensed IBM an operating system it did not own. Other companies cloned the IBM designs. PCs flourished. Operating systems, too.
Meanwhile, back in Cupertino, Apple stumbled with the Apple III and the Lisa. Unreliable. Expensive. From these failures came the Apple Macintosh (Mac) and a clear vision into the future, where computers would become friendly and helpful rather than a glorious impenetrable hobby.
Slow to start, the Mac gradually gathered memory and applications, becoming the default tool for poets. The IBM PCs and clones invaded business. Microsoft looked at the poetry of the Mac operating system and developed Microsoft Windows, which, as with most Microsoft products, took three major releases to become not awful.
The Mac was inspired, but it was not selling to businesses. The Apple II was. Politics, ego, and who knows what went down at Apple, and ...
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