Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made (43 page)

Bo Derek, PC User

My former wife, Laura Bachko, had been a book editor in New York and had worked on a project with Bo Derek before we moved to California. One night when Laura and I were having dinner with Steve, Bo's name came up -- as did the factoid that Bo was a heavy duty computer jockey, albeit of the IBM persuasion. Steve took this as a personal challenge; he was going convert Bo to a Mac user -- and who knew what else. Clearly the computer could be a foot in the door. He persuaded Laura to make him an appointment with Bo.

And so one day shortly thereafter, Steve piled into his Mercedes, along with a Mac, and drove down to Bo's Santa Barbara ranch, which she shared with her husband John Derek. Bo was cordial but unimpressed; she accepted the computer but remained a PC user. And apparently she did not find Steve as dashing as Steve expected she would.

Several weeks later, Steve was complaining to Laura about the lackluster impression he had made. "Look," she told him. "She's married. And besides, I don't know any woman who would want her name to be Bo Jobs."

Vault of Horror

by Caroline Rose in October 1985

Proposed Inside Mac Cover
(Click to Enlarge)

Scott Knaster, who was in Apple's developer tech support group when I was working on Inside Macintosh (the Mac developer documentation), has a great sense of humor and is a comic book fan. So it was no big surprise when, shortly before the publication of the combined hardcover edition of Volumes I through III in November 1985, he gave the Inside Mac team a "proposed cover" for that edition that was based on the cover of an old comic book called the Vault of Horror. Scott had given a reprint of issue 20 of this comic (originally published in 1951) to Bill Dawson in Apple's production group and asked him to alter it in certain ways to make it apply to Inside Mac. Bill did this by cutting and pasting with scissors and glue, because in those days there were no other options, like scanning it in and doctoring it in Photoshop. I’ve included the original along with the doctored version in this story, so you can compare.

We cracked up at the parts of the Macintosh Toolbox Scott chose as the names of the three evil-looking characters stacked up on the left: the Control Manager, the Segment Loader, and the Trap Dispatcher. The coffin containing the vampire whose heart is having a stake driven through it was labeled "BIG BLUE" to show how Apple was going to wipe out IBM with the success of the Mac. More subtle was the change made to what’s being said to the man driving the stake: he's addressed as "Ed" because the group we were in was called User Ed (short for User Education). And in case the $100 price Bill added looks like a joke: it wasn't; it was an educated guess at what the humongous hardcover edition would cost (which ended up at $79.95).

An easily overlooked change appears in the upper left, in the "EC" logo: where it said "Entertaining Comics," Bill changed it to "Espinosa Comics," reflecting Chris Espinosa's role as the manager of User Ed.

Original Comic Book Cover
(Click to enlarge)

Apple of course didn't use this cover, but six years later, during my stint as editor in chief of
develop,
Apple's technical journal for Mac developers, I thought it would be fun to reprint the cover in an issue of
develop.
From the reverse of the cover I saw that the original comic was published by William M. Gaines, whose name I was familiar with as the eccentric publisher of MAD magazine. Gaines had been a hero of mine since childhood; in fact, I billed myself as the "editor in cheek" of
develop
and gave the journal as playful and irreverent a tone as I could get away with. So I contacted his office in New York and asked for permission to publish the altered cover. A few weeks later I received a call from someone who, in a tone that was more morose than professional, said he was William Gaines and was granting me the permission I requested. That the man himself should call me was quite a surprise and a thrill—and I'm glad he didn’t procrastinate, because he died not much later (in June 1992).

It turns out that there were people at Apple who objected to publishing the cover in
develop.
I think that by then they thought driving a stake (however metaphorical) through IBM’s heart would be impolitic. I'm happy that now I finally have a chance to show it to a wider audience.

A Rose by Any Other Name

by Caroline Rose in December 1985

When the Inside Macintosh developer documentation was finally published, it reflected years of work I’d done along with Bob Anders, Brad Hacker, and a few others. I’d guided the style of it, written most of it, and edited all of it. More recently, I’d supervised a nutty, charming young woman named Louella Pizzuti who was hired to convert the files from the Apple III over to the Macintosh. (Nearly six years later, she hired me to take over
develop,
Apple’s technical journal, but that’s another story.) Suffice it to say my life had been consumed by Inside Mac for three and a half years.

The product manager, Dan Cochran, oversaw Inside Mac through its production into print. He faced some difficult decisions regarding how to publish the first edition, and eventually it was decided that, in addition to separate softcover editions of Volumes I through III, the three volumes would be combined into one huge hardcover edition. (We jokingly referred to it as a coffee table book: big enough to use as a coffee table.) A combined preliminary “phone book” edition on flimsy paper had already been distributed, but I was of course eager to see the final printed version.

The hardcover edition was actually in hand by the end of November 1985—but not in my hands: I was told I couldn’t see it until a celebratory event that was scheduled for December 4. People at Apple aren’t usually big on formalities, but I could understand wanting to make a ceremony of this occasion. I was delighted to see that one of the three pixelated Mac images on the printed invitation to the event showed a red rose on its screen. I was often called “C. Rose” by others on the team, and I made no secret of how much I liked (and identified with) that flower. Seeing the rose on the invitation brought a big smile to my face.

From the invitation to the Inside Mac event

The event started with a few words about the Inside Mac effort, followed by a presentation to team members of crystal bookend-like plaques etched with an image of the Mac (the same as on the invitation, sans the rose) and a personal inscription. But the highlight of the ceremony for me was being handed the hardcover edition itself. Everyone else seemed all atwitter over this, I figured because they knew what a highly anticipated moment it was for me.

Upon opening the book, I saw that a row of Macs like the one on the plaque had been printed on the reverse of the front cover, all along the bottom, as well as on both sides of a stiff sheet inserted before the title page. As I began to thumb through the book, the others around me seemed impatient, and finally asked me to turn to the inside of the back cover; not surprisingly, the now-familiar row of Macs appeared there and on the sheet inserted before it. Then they asked me to lift up the dust jacket so I could see the last couple of Macs in the row, and that was when I saw it: a rose in the last Mac. Seeing
that
rose brought tears to my eyes, and made it a day—and a tribute—I would always remember. (I also received a small rhododendron bush from Dan, which is now flourishing in front of my house, so every Spring I have real flowers as an additional reminder.)

From the inside back cover of the hardcover edition

Evolution Of A Classic

by David Ramsey in March 1986

MacPaint 2.0's

I was hired at Apple in early 1986. Oddly, I was given nothing to do when I started, so after setting up my cube and getting my Lisa (all Mac programming was done on the Lisa back then) running, I wandered over to my manager's cube and asked if he had the source to MacPaint. He had-- he handed me a single Lisa diskette with all of MacPaint on it.

MacPaint was the first Mac program I'd ever seen; Bill Atkinson was demonstrating it at Computers Plus, a local Apple store run by Mark Wozniak and Dick Applebaum. I was completely awestruck at how fast the computer could "sling bits" on the screen. But there were still things I wanted to change: I wanted to be able to move and resize the image window, for example.

After a week or so of playing around I showed my manager (Gene Pope) what I'd done. I had just been killing time, since nobody had told me to do anything, but Gene asked me to add more features with an eye towards a "MacPaint 2.0".

And so it begins

At first I was nervous: Bill Atkinson is a hard act to follow, and I was also worried what he might think about some newbie hire taking over his baby. But he was tremendously supportive (and it probably also helped that he was deeply involved with his new project, Hypercard) and even took hours of time to go over his hand-optimized 68000 assembly language routines to explain how they worked. I still remember him peering intently at me, making sure I understood the importance of what he was saying: "Unroll the loops", "keep the registers full"...