💾 Archived View for tilde.cafe › ~stack › gemlog › 2023-02-26.steves.gmi captured on 2023-07-22 at 17:24:08. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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The story of Jobs and Wozniak soldering away in a garage is such an iconic tale... It inspired me greatly, actually shaping my entire life. I scraped, borrowed and stole money to save up for my Apple ][+, and in the 80's I actually tried (not realizing it at the time) to re-live this story, dropping out of high school and taking on the role of Jobs, suiting up for meetings by day (East coast) while coding and wielding a soldering iron by night...
I didn't get to stop and think about it much back then, or even try to verify the legend until the 90s (and I was on the East coast, away from the action). It was a big shock. I was an Apple fanboy until then -- putting up with the closed architecture and the insanely high prices (as a developer I was forced to buy a couple of multi-thousand-dollar Macs every year).
This was not the same Apple Computer Inc. I knew something went terribly wrong. I just didn't know it was Jobs.
Every now an then, recounting some memory of coming of age in the 80s to my kids, elicits a response like "This is toxic and abusive!" or even "Oh my god, you were raped". Looking at Jobs manipulating Woz through their eyes puts the relationship clearly into abusive territory.
Consider the well-documented early Breakout story, where Jobs keeps most of the bonus money after Woz ghost-engineers an amazingly compact and cost-effective circuit. This is typical of their relationship - Woz does the work for next to nothing while Jobs takes credit and gets paid (and often lies to Woz about the amount). There are many, many stories like this one.
Look at Woz. Clearly he is on the spectrum, and quite deeply into it. Who stays up all night secretly building a computer as a kid? (well, I did but that just proves the point...) Listen to his pre-rehearsed stories, repeated almost verbatim in different interviews. It's nearly impossible to get him off-script. Note the OCD component - repeating numbers, squares and cubes, remembering hotel room numbers from the 70's while unable to differentiate faces (never mind reading emotions).
Woz is honest to a fault, and has a deep sense of right and wrong, often correcting Job's exploits by personally paying for them. Being exceptionally smart, he does his best to cloak and fit in, and is terrified of confrontations as he knows that he can be easily checkmated. And besides, all he wants to do is dick around with electronics anyway.
Look at Jobs. Clearly a sociopath with a broken childhood and parents who rejected him. Consider his chameleon-like ability to switch modes - from a hippy to boy-genius to charismatic businessman. Listen to his famous 'it's not the consumer's job to know what they want' quote. Look at how he loves to separate and manipulate people. Observe his ability to deny his fatherhood and refuse to help his single-mother ex-girlfriend even after becoming one of the wealthiest people in the world, while narcisistically naming his pet project after his daughter's name!
Apple started out as Woz's brainchild. An open computer for the people. Woz built Apple I because he wanted a computer. Woz built Apple II because he wanted a computer with graphics powerful enough to play Breakout. Woz added expansion slots, published schematics and engineering notes to allow people to interface to the machine.
Jobs - what did he do? Take credit for Woz's work. Pretend that he was the one to take Woz to the club meetings. Pretend that he was actually useful for being more than an accidental middleman. Lie to Woz to 'motivate' him to create and improve while trying to grab what he could.
Jobs was a complete failure at everything except self-promotion. Once Markkula was in (pre-incorporation!), Jobs was completely a third wheel, and a month after incorporation, Markkula hired Michael Scott (from Nat Semi) as CEO - as the two Steves were 'inexperienced'.
For the remainder of his life, Jobs acts as Cuckoo Man (look it up if you don't know). His main skill is getting in the way, offending people, and screwing up projects. He forces engineers to make bad design choices (such as removing fans and closing vent holes). The most consistent effort of his life is trying to kill the Apple II line - at the time, the only profitable product of the company, and succeeding, nearly bankrupting Apple. He attempts to kill the Mac to promote his Lisa project, and when that fails he pivots and takes over the Macintosh division, eventually taking full credit. He cripples the II GS because it's much faster and cheaper than the Mac.
And so Apple becames a toxic company. Jobs is briefly ejected, but slithers his way back in -- not surprisingly; things get even worse.
This is an American Psycho story, set in roughly the same period.
First, as a participatant, then, stepping back, as a reluctant observer of the new order, I watched the world become more and more toxic -- and Apple was at the forefront. The turtlenecked man in $1000 glasses led the way to oblivion. Stories of abuse started leaking, occasionally tarnishing the 'brilliant visionary' image carefully cultivated by Apple's PR firms.
Equipment became more and more closed. Apple pioneered the way in potting circuits, developing custom chips to obfuscate devices and make them not repairable, and litigating anyone who resisted. Glues and strange 'vandal-proof' security screws requiring special tools were employed.
Even when good products came out - say the iPod, extreme measures were taken to make them less usable -- hiding music files, obfuscating filenames, locking to particular OSs to assure control. Apple showed more and more contempt to their customers, creating intrusive end-user-licenses and using coersion and psy-ops to control the masses.
Amazingly, it all worked. Sheeple followed, even emulating Job's garb. Idiots lined up outside Apple stores, the churches of the new consumer religion, even sleeping on the sidewalks for a night or two -- just to be the first to plunk down a thousand dollars for a new phone of the year.
Shameless self-promotion and lying to get what you want became the norm, reinforced by new media promoters and influencers.
I've actually lost friends for saying that Jobs was a terrible person. Otherwise normal people get incredibly hot defending Jobs (and telling their kids to follow his smoking footsteps directly to hell)... I've learned to keep my mouth shut (most of the time).
I am not sure why the whole thing bothers me. Perhaps it's because it was a monumental disillusionment for me - a kick in the pants, so to speak. A man whose image I tried to shape myself into - leading me to lying and cheating in the process -- is a liar and a cheat.
Luckily my first venture failed miserably - or perhaps I too would've turned into a total asshole with no chance of redemption. The failure caused me to re-examine the premises and adjust my behavior a bit. Also to realize that to play the game of screwing the next guy, one has to cheat and lie -- a realization that made me want to leave the game as quickly as possible (sadly not immediately as I didn't have that option).
In the end I still love my Apple II, perhaps the best old computer made from off-the-shelf parts. Sometimes I wonder what modern computers would look like if Jobs never existed...