Steve Jobs, American hero
In 1979, a friend of mine, Emily Chronic, was working as an illustrator for Apple's Tech Pubs department. Her boss, Phyllis Cole, was looking for a technical writer. Emily recommended me, and Phyllis called me up.
I wasn't home (loooong before cell phones). She called a couple more times, but I was working and wasn't home. Finally she showed up at my house, banged on the door, and talked with my wife, who promised to have me call her.
One thing led to another and I wound up with a contract to work on a manual for Phyllis. Fast forward a few months, and I asked Phyllis for a full-time job, because I was having a good time with Apple.
Phyllis went to Steve and got me a job offer. I looked at it and said "How about a stock option?" because I had only just learned what a stock option was. She said, "I'll go ask Steve."
Steve authorized a stock option for me. It was the first time a tech writer at Apple had been offered a stock option. When Woz found out about it, he gave some of his own stock to the other tech writers. Or at least that's how I heard the story.
So I became an Apple employee, first as a tech writer and then as a software engineer, at a time when that transition was still possible for a guy with a degree in Literature. And I stayed with Apple for twenty-four years.
During that time, Jobs brought in John Sculley, the Pepsi guy, to be CEO. As far as I know, that was Jobs's only big mistake. Sculley's heart was in the right place but he was basically a merchant: he understood merchandising. He thought technology was something you went out and bought from other people.
Then there was Der Diesel, Mike Spindler from Apple Europe, the next CEO. A good guy but just not up to the challenge. Reportedly, he was found cowering under his desk when the action got hot.
And then we got Gil Amelio, from National Semiconductor. Another good guy but with no imagination whatsoever at a time when that was what Apple needed more than anything. And on his watch, Apple started looking for a new OS, because its own efforts had foundered in a shameful wallow of bad computer science, wretched management, and yes, EST. EST? Yes, EST. Oh my gawd.
So Apple went shopping for a new OS and there were a few candidates. Sun would have preferred to buy Apple. Be was interested. And NeXT was chosen. And with NeXT came Steve Jobs. The deal we heard about was, "Steve Jobs will be an advisor to Gil Amelio."
One of the old Apple hands, when he heard that, said "Steve's gonna f*ck Gil Amelio 'til his eardrums pop," and that's exactly what happened.
Then came three or four years of misery for us old Apple guys. The NeXT people assumed we were stupid, probably because Jobs told them so. But after that, those of us who survived had a pretty good run. I got to do some nice work that in the end came to nothing because it was nobody else's priority, but I've gotten over that now. Then I was laid off. Oh Well.
I knocked around for a few years, doing various contracting including tech writing, once again, for Apple. And when the iPhone SDK came out, I jumped on it like a dog on a bone and I've been an iOS programmer ever since. For a while that was slim pickin's since i'm not a games guy, but now I'm full-time with an education software company, doing their iOS application. Today my app came up Number 10 of free educational iPhone apps.
Thanks, Steve.
- - Prosecute, Prosecute, Prosecute 'em ALL!
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