0:00

Coming up on this week's show a

0:02

budget Mega Drive flash cart arrives. An

0:05

amazing new Contra-like game is set to

0:07

launch and we chat to one of

0:10

the creators of the Macintosh, Apple legend,

0:12

Andy Herzfeld. And

0:22

the Retro Owl podcast is brought to

0:24

you each and every week with our

0:26

lovely friends at Bitmap Books. Now have

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but you can check it out in the

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You can get an instant quote right

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now for your project at pcbway.com. Hello

1:20

and welcome to the Retro Hour podcast

1:23

episode number 440, your weekly dose of

1:25

retro gaming and technology news with me

1:27

Dan Wood. Me Ravi Abbotz.

1:29

And me Jo Fox. And very nice

1:31

to be joining us for our first

1:34

episode of August already.

1:36

Does you realise only 60 episodes

1:38

away from episode 500? Oh

1:41

man, yeah literally just over a year

1:43

away from episode 500. That's crazy. Where

1:45

do the weeks go? But we

1:47

have got a podcast this week to focus on before we get

1:49

to episode 500. Yeah so nice

1:51

to be joining us of course, this is a

1:53

show that comes out every single Friday and brings

1:55

you up to speed on all the big happenings

1:57

in the world of retro gaming and from

2:00

over the last week. We always say it's a show

2:02

of two halves really, isn't it? First half of the

2:04

podcast is when us nerds geek out

2:06

about what's been happening in the world of retro

2:09

gaming and tech from over the last seven days.

2:11

And we're the guys that keep an eye on

2:13

all the blogs and the social media sites, because

2:15

we know everyone's busy. So we give you basically

2:18

the headlines of what's been happening over the last

2:20

week. And then the second half of the show

2:22

is when we welcome on an industry veteran to

2:25

tell us their story. And

2:27

I've got to say, they do not come much

2:30

bigger than our guests this week. Now we're going

2:32

to be talking to Andy Hertzfeld, who is

2:34

a name that, if you've studied the history

2:37

of personal computing, it might not be a

2:39

name that instantly jumps to mind. I mean,

2:41

you know, you normally think like Steve Jobs,

2:43

Bill Gates, but he was very important. And

2:45

actually I'd been reading his website, folklore.org,

2:47

which if you haven't seen that,

2:49

it's got some incredible stories about

2:52

the early days of Apple, because

2:54

Andy was actually one of the

2:56

original developers of the Apple

2:58

Macintosh. So he joined Apple back in 1979, he

3:01

was a systems programmer, and it quickly became

3:03

a core member of the original Mac team.

3:06

And the thing about it is back then,

3:08

I mean, you think about the history of

3:11

personal computing. Today we're all used to graphical

3:13

user interfaces, for example, you know, if I

3:15

think of even using a DOS PC back

3:17

in the day, the fact you had to

3:19

go on and, you know, type in commands

3:22

to navigate your files and folders. It wasn't

3:24

very user friendly, was it? Not

3:26

at all. And I mean, you know, not even just talking about

3:28

DOS PCs over here in the UK, when we had stuff like,

3:30

you know, the ZX Spectrum and the

3:32

COVID-19 64, that early wave of

3:35

home microcomputers, they dropped you

3:37

into BASIC when you first turned them

3:39

on. So it was assumed that the user would

3:41

have at least a basic knowledge of programming or

3:44

be able to read the manual and memorize commands.

3:46

And obviously the graphical user interface came along and

3:48

that's been the de facto way of using computing

3:50

ever since. So that was a lot

3:52

of the stuff that Andy worked on at Apple. It was

3:54

really making sure that the

3:57

machine was a user friendly computer

3:59

for the end. user and it really made

4:02

the you know personal computer become accessible. Yeah

4:04

and it was a really interesting time so

4:06

you know we talked to Andy in this

4:08

interview about when he joined and it was

4:11

the Apple 2 which was a great kind

4:13

of expandable machine and then of course going

4:15

into the Apple Lisa and you

4:17

know that was one of the first

4:19

machines with a with a GUI that was a

4:22

home computer and it cost ten thousand dollars and

4:24

it cost quite a lot yeah and

4:27

then into the Apple Macintosh which you

4:29

know we've seen lots of films about

4:31

Apple and the history of Steve Jobs

4:33

and hearing about those times and the

4:35

kind of changes that happen within the

4:37

company. Some people love Steve,

4:39

some people weren't the biggest fans of Steve

4:41

so we hear Andy's kind of personal

4:44

views of this and I remember

4:46

seeing Andy also in Michael Fassbender's

4:50

Steve Jobs film as well. Oh the Danny

4:52

Boyle one. Yeah and Andy said it was

4:54

nothing you know it

4:57

wasn't related to how it happened that

4:59

that film was not aiming for realism

5:01

really but it's really

5:03

interesting to hear his story especially

5:05

during that time because he worked

5:07

at General Magic later which were

5:09

absolutely fantastic company that were pushing

5:12

technology and you know helping create

5:14

the basis for stuff like the

5:16

iPhone you know they were researching

5:18

emojis there was all

5:20

sorts of kind of crazy projects

5:22

coming out of that company and

5:25

it's really interesting to hear about

5:27

when Steve Jobs left and

5:29

when John Scully came in yeah

5:31

it's a really fascinating interview. Yeah

5:34

I mean I think hearing about those early days at Apple

5:36

because I mean he runs a website I mentioned folklore.org I'll

5:38

put in the show notes where you can read a load

5:40

of anecdotes about that time and the fact that they were

5:42

you know the hours they were working to

5:45

get the Macintosh launched I mean this famously these t-shirts

5:47

they wore that said 90 hours

5:49

a week and loving it you know

5:51

it was said that they wanted an idea. It starts

5:53

at the crunch there isn't it? Yes it's like you

5:55

know just insane the work they went through to get

5:58

this machine on the market and then how Steve

6:00

Jobs suddenly came to him just before the launch after

6:02

I think he'd been awake 48 hours and said you're

6:04

not finished yet We need a demo to launch the

6:07

machine with so you hear all about that

6:09

and of course Steve Jobs

6:11

famous Reality distortion field we

6:14

get and these thoughts on that and like you

6:16

said when he went to work for general magic

6:18

basically Making what was you know the smartphone back

6:20

in the early 90s? Yeah, and how

6:22

that kind of fell apart so and how different things could have

6:24

been so Whether you're

6:26

an Apple fan or not or whether you just want to hear

6:28

some of this History how things

6:30

became how they are today a really interesting

6:32

guest Andy Hertzfeld is our special guest And

6:35

he'll be on the podcast in around half

6:37

an hour from now Now

6:39

I did say first half of the show that's when

6:41

we have a bit of a chat a bit of

6:43

a roundtable about what's been happening in retro from over

6:45

the last week and This

6:47

headline I thought was really interesting and I must admit

6:49

I'd like to know a bit more about this story

6:51

because that this is Krix who

6:53

I'm sure many people in the the

6:56

console scene are familiar with Krix

6:58

He's a guy behind those ever drive cartridges

7:00

of which I'm looking now There's at least

7:03

three of my machines in front of me without his cartridges

7:05

in and these are basically

7:07

flash cards So you download ROMs,

7:09

which I'm sure you legally own

7:12

There's a little disclaimer and put these

7:14

ROMs on an SD card You then put

7:16

them into the top of a cartridge into

7:18

your original console You get a big

7:20

list of games and you can play them on

7:22

original hardware as if you're running off

7:25

the original cartridge But the only thing about them is

7:27

I mean, you know, they generally cost around

7:29

100 to 150 dollars. Hmm, but

7:32

this is something new from him that he's

7:34

calling a budget ROM

7:36

cart for the Mega Drive Which

7:38

is gonna be $40 the three

7:41

of us are actually debating this for

7:43

about half an hour For a good half

7:45

an hour before we started recording. It

7:48

seems very very interesting and very affordable

7:50

as you say Dan $40

7:53

this one's gonna be But there

7:55

is a statement on the official product

7:57

page. There are no fancy features that

7:59

modern cartridges usually have. So don't buy

8:01

this device unless you are sure you

8:03

understand what it is. So

8:06

I was a bit like, oh brilliant, Dan and Ravi will know what

8:08

this is. And

8:11

as we would have it, I'm not saying that we

8:13

don't know what it is, but we've all kind of

8:15

got a little bit of a different

8:17

opinion on what it is. But what it looks like

8:20

to me is, it's

8:22

a very basic Everdrive

8:24

cartridge, so it doesn't have any

8:26

FPGA on there. Yeah,

8:31

I think all the other ones did other

8:33

features, didn't they? So they had like, you

8:35

know, you could play games that weren't available

8:37

for the system that would be

8:39

powered, like you know, Sega

8:42

CD games, 32X and

8:45

stuff like that. And they also had quite

8:47

a hefty price tag with that

8:49

as well, didn't they? Yeah,

8:51

absolutely. Yeah. So this looks

8:53

to us, it's a basic one, which

8:56

uses its own memory. So

8:58

it doesn't have its own processor on there or

9:00

anything like that. It uses the memory of the

9:02

cartridge and the memory of the Sega Mega Drive.

9:06

But it does have an SD slot on there,

9:08

which you would think, okay, you put all your

9:10

games on the SD card and then you stick

9:12

it in there. But the way it's reading in

9:14

terms of the product notes is, it does only, we're

9:17

not too sure, this is where we want to find

9:19

out, maybe somebody can help us with this one. Does

9:22

it only put one game on the cartridge?

9:25

Yeah, because that was my initial thought was when I

9:28

saw this is going to be $40 and a lot

9:30

of the comments are saying that if you look through

9:32

the thread on X, unfortunately, Krix hasn't answered anyone. He's

9:34

asking about this in the thread that I was reading.

9:36

People are saying, I assume this can only run one

9:38

game at a time. And I thought, is it something

9:40

like, there's like a skunk board that you can get

9:42

from the Atari Jaguar, but where basically you've got to,

9:44

you've got to flash the onboard memory with just one

9:47

game using a computer by USB.

9:50

Then you put that cartridge into your Jaguar and

9:52

it loads up one game that's in memory. But

9:54

like you said, the fact that this has got

9:56

an SD card slot on there, that

9:58

is leading me to think that, well, Surely

10:01

you can put more than one game on there and have

10:03

it launching from any like this is

10:05

what I personally think I'm trying to read between

10:07

the lines with some of the stuff that I

10:09

think it hasn't got all that support it hasn't

10:11

got stuff for SRAM saves as

10:13

well for multiple games. It

10:16

won't have any support for the special chips

10:18

or anything. It's your bare bones basic one.

10:21

But also that doesn't mean you can

10:23

go through a menu quickly select them

10:25

load up one load up the other.

10:27

I've read online that it could

10:29

take at least a minute for it

10:31

to kind of go on to that. So

10:34

I think maybe you can have multiple games on the

10:36

SD card load them up

10:38

takes a minute for them to load. And

10:41

then they're in the RAM of the system you

10:43

can play on them if you want to do

10:45

another one probably a hard reset

10:48

on your machine and then load up

10:50

the next game like that but do

10:52

it very like slowly and manually. I

10:55

mean if that is the case and $40 for that

10:57

you know basically if you can have all your Mega

10:59

Drive games on a cartridge on an

11:02

SD card load them straight around I think

11:04

that is an absolute game changer. If

11:06

it's $40 for something that can only store one game at

11:08

a time though I can see

11:10

that there's going to be a market

11:12

there for Homebrew developers. Yeah I

11:15

can't see I guess you have one SD card

11:17

for every game. Yeah huge like

11:19

stack like floppy. That wouldn't make any sense but

11:21

literally all the comments on X and I'm going

11:23

through people are like I assume it can only

11:26

have one game at a time. Maybe they'll probably

11:28

have this answered by the time we release the

11:30

show as usual. A

11:33

lot of people are asking it so that is

11:35

definitely someone would like clearing up because I think

11:37

you for example you Joe you haven't got any

11:39

flashcards for any of your systems which always amazes

11:42

me but then I do understand that they are

11:44

very expensive for what they are. I mean I must admit

11:47

I did kind of get a lot of mindset as review

11:49

units on my YouTube channel like 10 years ago but

11:51

yeah I mean for someone like this that is you know $40

11:55

would this be something that would get you into the world

11:57

of flashcards. If it does what.

11:59

Ravi thinks it's going to do in

12:02

terms of game changing and in terms of, you know, you

12:04

load one game into it at a time, but they're all

12:06

there on the SD card and it just takes a minute

12:09

or whatever. Then yeah, like

12:11

you say, it's a lot more

12:13

affordable. But then it's so confusing

12:15

because on the time extension article

12:17

here, this cart will allow

12:20

homebrew developers to produce physical cartridges cheaply,

12:22

either for sale or testing purposes. So

12:24

then that alludes to what

12:26

your worry is and it is just a

12:28

one game. But then also it's open

12:31

ed. So it's open source, which is really cool

12:34

and made a new creating as well.

12:36

And I was just thinking like

12:39

open ed means this can develop,

12:41

you know, maybe it will start off

12:43

as a slower smaller thing. More people

12:45

contribute to the project. There'll be, you

12:48

know, new firmware that can go on there or

12:50

or they can flash it in a certain way that

12:52

will start to do other things and have new

12:55

functions. And I think that's the cool

12:57

thing about open source projects as well.

12:59

Yeah, I think if this is going

13:01

to allow people to basically play their

13:04

list of games off an SD card on

13:06

their Mega Drive using a $40 flashcard, I

13:08

think that is a real game changer. And

13:11

I think, you know, it will open up the market to

13:13

a lot more people. So fingers crossed. That

13:15

is what it is. Like we said, details are very

13:17

scant at the moment. But if you want to read more about

13:19

that, I think like you said, Ravi, the fact that it is

13:21

totally open source as well. Imagine even if it can't do that

13:23

at this stage, you probably won't be long until someone makes a

13:26

version of it that can, if I'm honest.

13:28

So if you want to check that out, we'll put that

13:30

out. What we know so far, just dropped it the day

13:32

that we record this, we'll put that in the show notes

13:34

at the retro hour.com and on your podcast app. Now,

13:37

I bet this is a game that you're eagerly

13:39

anticipating. This is a new Contralight game that

13:42

is coming out on modern platforms.

13:45

This is called Iron Meat. And

13:47

this is set to land. It's September 26th. I thought it

13:49

was ages away. Next month. Next month. Yeah, so we did

13:51

touch on this back in May 2023, when it

13:53

was first announced. released,

14:00

and it was meant to launch October

14:02

last year. So, been eagerly

14:04

awaiting this one. This looks like a

14:06

really pumped up modern

14:08

version of the original

14:11

Contra games and Contra,

14:13

modern Contra games, you

14:15

know, they're not the greatest games, unfortunately. There

14:18

was one that came out earlier this year,

14:20

I've not checked that one out, but they

14:22

tend to get a bad rap. This Iron

14:24

Meat looks absolutely fantastic. Well,

14:27

like Contra NES style gameplay by the

14:29

looks of it. Yeah, more like Contra

14:31

NES gameplay, maybe more like Alien Wars,

14:33

the third one, but a

14:35

Super Nintendo. Really, really,

14:37

really nice modern pixel art.

14:40

Looks absolutely brutal,

14:42

like really gory, kind of gameplay

14:45

wise, fighting monsters,

14:47

aliens, etc. All

14:50

very bio-organic mixed with metal,

14:52

etc. with a real

14:54

pumping metal soundtrack, which really gets me going

14:56

whenever I watch the trailer. It looks very

14:59

turikiny to me as well, you

15:01

know, with some of the spinning attacks

15:03

and stuff. I didn't play Contra as

15:05

much, but, you know, it

15:07

also looks a bit like Broforce. Yeah,

15:10

you might actually be a bit closer with turikin there,

15:12

because I always found turikin a little bit faster, and

15:14

this is a little bit faster than Contra, I would

15:16

say. And the way that he's

15:18

kind of aiming the weapons, but also when

15:21

it's zooming out, you know, some of the

15:23

graphics are absolutely gorgeous. And that kind of

15:25

huge play field that you

15:28

had with Broforce as well, it's got

15:30

that kind of vibe. This is a

15:32

good thing about these modern titles, they

15:34

can really push it, can't they? Yeah,

15:37

absolutely. It is going to

15:39

be on everything, like Dan says, PS4, PS5,

15:41

Xbox, Steam, Switch,

15:44

Epic Games, GOG, everything in

15:48

September. So yeah, only a month and a

15:50

half, two months for this one. And it's

15:52

RetroWare, isn't it? Yeah, RetroWare as well, being

15:55

developed by, oh god, I'm going to

15:57

ruin this, Ivan, Villa. Verevich,

16:01

Sivilrov or Ivan Meat,

16:03

which I love. Stick with that,

16:05

Geoff. He's the lead

16:07

program on this. I'm going to keep an eye out for some of

16:09

these games because this looks absolutely fantastic. I'm going

16:11

to be picking this one up. It

16:14

is also going to be coming out on...

16:16

Is it coming out on physical? It

16:18

is, yeah. Strictly limited. I'm going to

16:20

be really... Don't come play this because

16:22

he's a vegetarian, but... Strictly veg away

16:24

from that version. But

16:26

I mean, one thing I love about it as well,

16:28

I mean, you've got the multi-phase boss fights in there

16:31

as well, like the classic run and gun titles. There's

16:33

also a multiplayer couch co-op as well.

16:35

So for these kind of games, I mean, it looks

16:37

like it could be a tough one. I think having a

16:39

friend on the couch with you playing it, particularly for

16:41

me, would be quite handy. You see, I'm

16:43

desperately trying to find co-op games to play with my wife

16:45

at the moment because we've just

16:47

played everything to death. So whenever a couch

16:50

co-op game comes out, we're like, yeah, brilliant. This

16:54

could end the divorce, this one. This does look

16:56

tough. I'm not going to lie. It could end

16:58

with me screaming out. So

17:01

yeah, that lands at the end of next month. You haven't got long to wait.

17:03

So I'll link up the trailer if I want to check that out as well.

17:06

Now this is interesting. Now, obviously,

17:08

the Sega Dreamcast, the

17:11

VMUs were always quite an interesting concept.

17:14

The little memory cards that you got in there. And you know,

17:16

back in the day, it was often said

17:18

that you could play games on

17:20

the VMUs. But they were very simplistic games back

17:22

then, weren't they? I mean, you know, it's kind

17:24

of like little Tamagotchi that you could take around

17:26

the battery. I remember them running out really quickly as well. However,

17:30

if it was able to do this back

17:33

in the day in full colour,

17:36

this would have been something everyone

17:38

would have wanted in the school playground, I imagine.

17:41

Someone's actually modded a VMU to

17:44

play Mega Drive games. Yeah, this

17:46

looks really cool. So like you say, the

17:49

original had the black and grey screen,

17:51

little LED screen. And you

17:53

know, you could play the Chao Garden

17:55

game on there from Sonic, Sonic Adventure

17:57

2 and stuff like that. very

18:00

safe games as well. Yeah. You

18:02

know, it was there to save your games and look

18:05

at you. You get quite good

18:07

graphics on there and recently they released

18:09

the VMU2 as well, which

18:12

is kind of an upgraded version that

18:14

was quite expensive, but it did a

18:16

lot of interesting things as well. But

18:18

this is one of those kind of

18:20

mods, isn't it? Yeah. So

18:22

this is a Mega Drive inside

18:25

of the VMU. And for those who aren't

18:27

familiar with the VMU, they're about the size

18:29

of a matchbox, probably about what?

18:31

An inch and a half tall by about

18:34

half an inch wide, maybe a little bit bigger than

18:36

that, aren't they? Not very big at all.

18:38

And this has been created by Modder

18:41

G Gear Tarot. I'm

18:43

most impressed with the sound quality that's coming

18:46

out of this thing. So obviously he's, I'm

18:49

assuming there's a Raspberry Pi in there or something,

18:52

running these emulated Mega Drive games

18:54

on there with obviously fitted with

18:56

a brand new modern screen in

18:58

there. Because the tweets in Japanese

19:00

isn't it? So getting details of what it is. Yeah.

19:02

So it doesn't show any sort of like information of

19:04

them building it or anything like that, just him playing

19:06

it. And in the two

19:08

very short clips, he plays Streets of Rage

19:10

and then Space Harrier 2, and

19:13

they play perfectly. And I'm really impressed with

19:15

the sound that this thing's putting

19:17

out. It was to put a speaker on

19:19

the back of it or something you don't actually see

19:21

in the video. It's the only sound I remember the

19:23

original VMU is making is that eeeeeeeeeeeeee. Yeah,

19:25

when you load it up and

19:28

stuff. So he is

19:30

crammed a lot into

19:32

this tiny little VMU device.

19:34

Interestingly, the Mega Drive had

19:37

three face buttons. It had A, B and C.

19:40

Whereas the VMU only has the D-pad,

19:42

the very tiny D-pad, and then the

19:44

A, B and then sleeping mode. So

19:47

I imagine mode maybe getting used as

19:49

the C button there and then sleep

19:51

as the pause button. I don't think

19:53

it's the nicest thing to play on.

19:55

And probably Game Gear games will probably

19:58

be more suited. Yeah. So

20:00

that kind of screensize, I think. Yeah,

20:02

I remember the buttons on the VMU

20:05

being quite rubbery. Yeah, they're a little

20:07

bit spongy. Yeah. But

20:09

I think, yeah, I think this is wicked. I think

20:11

just for novelty. It's a nice

20:14

legacy, you know, you've got Sega

20:16

Dreamcast and then you're going back to the

20:18

Mega Drive and that kind of era.

20:20

So it's a nice little nod

20:22

back, isn't it? Absolutely. I think

20:24

that, yeah, this is nothing that you're gonna sit down and,

20:26

you know, if you wanna play Streets of Rage, this

20:29

is not the way that you choose to play it, admittedly.

20:32

They're definitely better ways. But this is the kind of thing

20:34

that if you pulled out, like, you know, a retro gaming

20:36

convention in the bar afterwards and were like, hey, look at

20:38

this. People are gonna be impressed. Yeah.

20:41

Yeah. Imagine that in a nightclub. Hey, baby,

20:43

what a place to play some Mega Drive with my VMU.

20:45

I've tried worse chat of lines than that joke in the

20:47

past, just for you. So yeah, this

20:50

is a very cool, we always love to see

20:52

these ingenious little mods. So top mugs for creativity.

20:54

If you wanna check out those very short videos,

20:56

I'll put those in this week's share notes as

20:58

well. Now, this is an interesting

21:01

little project that you spotted, Ravi, because obviously we're gonna

21:03

be talking all about the Mac in

21:05

just a moment. And I've seen quite a few

21:07

of these recently. People are actually doing clone

21:10

motherboards of retro

21:13

computers. And this is a

21:15

clone of the Apple

21:17

Macintosh Plus. Yeah,

21:19

so I've got Apple 512K here and,

21:23

you know, absolutely nice machine. I've

21:26

always wanted a Macintosh Plus as

21:28

well. It's

21:31

really interesting, because these machines are old. You

21:33

know, they're gonna start to die. And

21:36

having these recreations of the boards, pretty

21:39

fantastic. I've seen some with the Amiga ones.

21:41

And the whole idea is, you know, that

21:43

you kind of get the original chips, you

21:46

put them in this new board, and then

21:48

you've got fixes in there. It's

21:51

gonna last a lot longer. Interestingly,

21:53

there was stuff incorrectly

21:56

labeled, which usually

21:58

happens with these boards. manufacturing, you

22:00

know, real fans will kind of look

22:02

down into it and they'll be like, oh, yes, this

22:05

is incorrect. And some of those corrections

22:07

can actually be made. There

22:09

can be some additions as well. I've

22:12

seen improvements, newer

22:15

kind of hardware getting added as

22:17

well, which can bring some extra

22:19

life into it. This

22:21

is really cool as well, because he's using

22:23

a Raspberry Pi Pico scan converter as

22:26

well, which works with the Macintosh

22:28

Plus. And I

22:31

think it's amazing that the

22:33

Raspberry Pi can be used

22:35

as pretty much anything nowadays

22:37

and can be used as

22:39

upscalers and converters and

22:41

kind of help with your video source

22:43

from a vintage machine. I've

22:45

been to computer events, in

22:48

particular your Robin Hood Amiga group, Ravi, and there's

22:50

people have opened up Amiga 500

22:52

and there's been like four Raspberry Pies inside

22:54

them. Yeah, all kinds

22:56

of different things. Yeah. But yeah,

22:58

I do like the idea of this. This is a

23:00

guy called a Quinn Dunkey who previously actually did a

23:02

clone of the Apple Lisa, but this one

23:04

actually looks really cool, though. It is a clone of the 1984 Macintosh

23:07

Plus, the first clone of it in 34 years. One

23:11

megabyte of RAM, expandable to four megabytes of memory as

23:13

well. And it is completely compatible

23:15

with all the original software and hardware as

23:17

well. And it looks like it is

23:19

literally a drop in replacement inside the case.

23:21

So I think, yeah, like you said, there have been a few

23:23

of these. I've seen the Amiga ones as well. There

23:26

is a there's an A4000 Amiga

23:28

board that's come out recently, isn't there? Well, basically, because

23:30

a lot of these boards, I mean, they get damaged

23:33

from capacitors leaking or some of them have like onboard

23:35

batteries. Yeah, they can obviously spew acid all over the

23:37

boards and eat away traces and that kind of thing.

23:39

So I think having a modern

23:41

version of the board where you can basically transplant

23:43

the original ICs in there and

23:45

basically have a new computer that

23:48

is compatible with the original case and should

23:50

hopefully last you many years to come is

23:53

very cool. Yeah. And it's got issues, you

23:55

know, they were saying that that Raspberry Pi

23:57

Pico Skank of can actually work with it.

24:00

even though it's reported to. So

24:02

they ended up using Apple

24:05

Talk, you know, the remote

24:07

control software, and Timbook 2

24:09

to actually access it, which

24:13

is pretty amazing that you could

24:15

still kind of use that and get a

24:17

display out of it. You

24:19

know, I can imagine that this is going

24:21

to grow, they're going to, you know,

24:23

add some extra features in there. It's

24:27

great to see that this is the first one and,

24:29

you know, hopefully we're going to see some more once

24:31

it's all kind of fixed up and,

24:34

you know, all the glitches and all this kind

24:36

of stuff has been sorted. He's

24:38

likely to release the

24:41

schematics and, you

24:43

know, hopefully people will start producing these boards

24:45

and duplicate them as well. I

24:48

think the only thing about these though is it would be great

24:50

when it gets to the stage when you could

24:52

basically build, and there are projects

24:54

where you can do this, you can build a

24:57

whole new computer using all new

24:59

hardware. I think some people have got Commodore 64s now that

25:01

are doing that. You know, basically it's a

25:04

new motherboard, it's replacement chips that are in

25:06

there as well, FPGAs, replicated projects. A

25:09

lot of them aren't getting made anymore.

25:11

So, yeah, you know, the traces go

25:13

and then it's when will the chips

25:16

go. So yeah, having those replacements. Hopefully

25:19

you can keep using these machines that

25:21

you love for years. Yeah,

25:23

well that last us, I'm sure. So I

25:25

just want to check out that the clone of the 1984 Apple

25:28

Macintosh Plus, I'll put that in the show notes as

25:30

well. Now that's one last story to talk about before

25:32

we check to this week's very

25:34

special guest going inside the world of Apple with

25:37

Apple legend Andy Hertzfeld in just a

25:39

second. And now this, I must know that

25:41

I wasn't familiar with this game, but this is an unofficial

25:44

sequel of a game called Kenseeden,

25:47

which apparently is a bit of a cult

25:49

classic for the Sega Master System, but someone's

25:51

actually made this an unofficial sequel of this,

25:53

spiritual sequel for the Mega Drive. I

25:56

am also unaware of Kenseeden. I'm

26:00

not very familiar with many Master System

26:02

games, to be perfectly honest. It's a

26:04

system I really want to get into more

26:06

because obviously I love the Mega Drive, the San. Do you have

26:08

a Master System? I have a Master System. I have a one.

26:12

Funny enough, I have the Master System one. I don't have the two. I

26:14

have the two and the other one. There we go.

26:17

Swap for a weekend. And I have

26:19

about 10 games for it because I went for

26:21

a small phase of trying to get like games

26:23

that came out on the Mega Drive and the Master System

26:26

to kind of compare them, but realized quickly

26:28

that it'll be a really big feat because of

26:30

actually quite a lot of them came out on

26:32

the Master System as well. But

26:34

anyway, have you got any? Well, we're talking about my

26:36

system model one. Have you got any of the games

26:38

that came out on memory cards? I haven't. No, my

26:40

friend Jason has them all. He

26:43

has the whole set of the card

26:46

games because I think it was only about 10. It's

26:49

not too hard to get the entire set. But

26:51

yeah, this is Hayato's Journey,

26:54

which looks absolutely fantastic. It

26:56

is the first Mega Drive game, complete

26:59

Mega Drive game to have been

27:01

made on the Scorpion engine and

27:04

it's been made by a developer called

27:06

Master Lin Kuei. There's a six

27:08

minute trailer. The game is

27:10

already out for download, so you can download

27:12

this now and go grab it. It

27:15

looks absolutely phenomenal.

27:18

This game does. It looks absolutely

27:20

fantastic. Like the soundtrack for this

27:22

is so like it's so Mega

27:24

Drive in terms of gameplay. Very

27:28

similar to Shinobi. But

27:31

I would say a little bit faster, the Shinobi

27:33

Mega Drives, a little bit

27:35

more floaty, maybe a little

27:37

bit more user friendly in terms of like

27:39

jumping around and fighting, etc. Watch

27:41

the whole trailer. And I noticed a few

27:43

assets from other games. So

27:46

I actually went and took a little bit

27:48

of a dive. And interestingly, the sprite work

27:50

and stuff that he's used in the game

27:52

actually come from many other games in different

27:54

systems, such as

27:56

Atrazer, which was actually a Super Nintendo game, as

27:59

well as. Revenge of Shinobi, Shinobi

28:01

3, Super Empire Strikes Back, Star

28:03

Wars game for Super Nintendo, Willow

28:06

as well, which I think was an

28:08

arcade game, might have been on SNES

28:11

as well. So lots of

28:13

different elements from different games, but I think

28:15

graphically this looks absolutely,

28:17

it looks so good, it looks so so so

28:19

good and it just kind of shows what the

28:21

Scorpion hit pop people are doing. Yeah, you

28:23

know we've talked about the Scorpion engine before that

28:26

really, you know, on the Amiga in particular. Episode

28:28

326 we had, Iraq on. Yes,

28:30

we did yeah and it's basically

28:32

a game development tool isn't it for

28:34

retro systems, started on the Amiga, works

28:37

on other 68k platforms as well,

28:39

including obviously now the Mega Drive as well and

28:42

just the things they're doing with this. I mean there's

28:44

a comment here on the article that the Scorpion engine

28:46

is the gift that keeps on giving and

28:48

I think it's just been such a game changer for retro

28:51

development. The games that we're seeing coming

28:53

out on this now, I mean if these had come out on the market

28:55

when these machines were in the heyday

28:57

30 years ago, it's like you know

28:59

it would have expanded the life of them I think

29:01

a few years wouldn't it after the

29:04

PlayStation came out. Yeah, absolutely. There's

29:06

talk of it coming out on the Amiga as well

29:08

as well as the Neo Geo. I

29:10

think graphically this game, if you saw

29:12

this running on the Neo Geo and you just assumed it was

29:15

an old school Neo Geo game from the

29:17

90s, you would just, it looks

29:19

that good. I think you would just go

29:21

yeah that's a Neo Geo game, not a

29:23

Mega Drive game, absolutely fantastic. Yeah

29:25

the things they're doing with the Scorpion engine and you

29:27

know these talented developers now, never ceases to amaze us.

29:30

It's one of those name your own price games as

29:32

well so you know pay

29:34

what you think it's worth but yeah looks like it should

29:36

be a great little blast if you want to play over

29:38

the summer. So I'll link that up and of course everything

29:40

else we talk about in our show notes at the retro

29:42

hour dot com. Now we did

29:45

have a great patrons hangout over the weekend, another

29:47

fantastic chat. If you haven't heard of these before

29:49

these are something that we do every single month

29:52

with our patrons and we did two this month actually didn't

29:54

we? On the start of the month one at the end

29:56

as well where we all get together on a Sunday night

29:58

for a couple of hours and basically just have a massive

30:00

geek out about anything and

30:02

everything. Yeah, man. It always

30:04

starts off talking about some retro games,

30:07

etc. But the one we did this

30:09

Sunday just gone. I

30:11

was loving it. We're all talking about horror films

30:13

that traumatized us. Yes. Nightmare

30:17

on the street watching that when I was eight

30:20

years old. Yeah, that was that was a really

30:22

watershed down. That was one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah,

30:24

man. Like it's just like hanging out

30:31

with friends. Like sometimes I wish we could just do it in

30:33

the pub. Yeah, but we will

30:35

one day we will one day but hopefully

30:37

we'll be able to in Norway. Yeah, people

30:39

from all over

30:42

the world. You know, come on and

30:44

it's just absolutely fantastic. I love it.

30:47

Yeah, so that is one of the perks that we

30:49

give our patrons who support the podcast and help us

30:51

keep the lights on and help us bring new episodes

30:53

out every single week. If you like what

30:55

we do, you know, think of it as a little tip

30:57

chart really helps us out with all the running costs and

30:59

everything as well. We give you extra perks as well. You

31:01

are sometimes get the episode early if I can get edited

31:03

in time, you get it ad free as well. And also

31:05

we do an extra 10 to 15 minutes of

31:08

new stories on every single episode, just for our

31:10

patrons. So patrons stand by that's coming up for

31:12

you in just a minute. But if you'd like

31:14

to join our patrons community and help us out

31:16

with the running cost of the show, all the

31:19

details are at the retro hour.com. And

31:21

speaking of people who help us out with

31:23

the podcast, let's just take a quick second

31:25

to give a massive shout to our longest

31:27

running sponsor, a company that we

31:29

love working with six years we've been working

31:31

with our incredible friends at bitmap

31:34

books and it is a partnership that

31:36

we've absolutely thoroughly enjoyed. I mean, we're

31:38

really behind the incredible books that they

31:40

put out and you know, it just seems like every book

31:42

that bitmap books put out is even better than the last

31:44

one. Incredibly. They're like a piece

31:46

of art, you know, when I read one, I'm like,

31:48

I need to wash my hands and sit down. Open

31:50

it slowly. Yeah. And I

31:54

think that's quite good that they give a

31:56

free PDF as well with the hardback book

31:58

because I'm like, right, I can and

32:00

use this on my tablet, look at it, piece,

32:02

because it's really like, you know, kind

32:04

of therapeutic to sit there with this thing with

32:07

the beautiful visuals and just take it all in

32:09

and, you know, enjoy reading again. Yeah, absolutely. And

32:11

keep the original in nice condition and look at

32:13

the PDF in your tablet. Although I've got to

32:16

say, opening their books and that smell, you know,

32:18

this freshly printed smell, it comes off the pages.

32:20

Oh, I love that. But their new one though,

32:22

and again, you know, it's been a very Joe

32:25

Fox heavy episode this week. This looks right at

32:27

your street though. This is a history of

32:30

on-foot shooters called Run and Gun. Yeah, man,

32:32

this looks absolutely incredible. Almost 500 pages

32:36

this book is, starting with the

32:38

humble beginnings of Gunfight in 1975 and

32:41

then covers the next 40 years of

32:44

Run and Gun foot

32:46

shooters. There's just so many

32:48

games in here, but it covers all the Mega Man

32:50

games, all the Metal Slug games,

32:54

you name it, it's probably going to be in there.

32:56

All the way up to modern games, such as one

32:58

of my favorites, Cuphead, and also

33:00

the Hotline Miami games are in there

33:03

as well. Turrican, Contra, Super Star Wars

33:05

games, Smash TV. There's so

33:07

many games covered in this. And

33:09

what I love about the Bitmap books is

33:12

it's not too much. It's not over the top.

33:14

You get some really nice, lovely images and artwork

33:17

of the games. And then a page or two

33:19

about the game as well, which I think is

33:21

absolutely fantastic. If you just want to pick it

33:23

up and just read a few pages of it

33:25

every time, it really is a coffee table book.

33:27

Yeah, they're really accessible. And I've got

33:30

some contributions in there from our industry

33:32

legend, Sega Lord X, Grey Mason, Chris

33:34

Gillians in here as well. And like

33:36

you said, covers over 300 games across

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496 gorgeous pages. So

33:42

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And have a look at the rest of their

33:50

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you. Always really helps out the podcast as well.

33:54

Support our sponsors. Run and Gun, a history of

33:56

on foot shooters available right now at bitmapbooks.com. Thank

34:00

you for checking out the news on this week's podcast.

34:02

Of course, all the stories we've talked about will be

34:04

in your show notes. Have a look on your podcast

34:06

app, or you can click through directly from our website

34:08

at theretrorower.com. Right, then stand

34:10

by. We have got a true legend

34:12

on the podcast. Next, a veteran of

34:14

the computer industry with Apple superstar Andy

34:17

Hertzfeld. It's next on the Retro Hour

34:19

podcast. You're

34:24

listening to the Retro Hour podcast, and it

34:26

is time to welcome on this week's very

34:28

special guest and anyone who knows anything all

34:30

about Apple. And of course, the history of

34:32

personal computing. I'm sure we'll be familiar with

34:34

our guest this week. He's known for a

34:36

pivotal role in the development of the original

34:38

Apple Macintosh, joining Apple in 1979. And

34:42

that quickly became a core part of the

34:44

Macintosh team, contributing to the implementation of the

34:46

system software in particular, and later went on

34:48

to join and co-found one of the most

34:51

innovative forward-looking tech companies ever, General Magic. So

34:53

we'll get into all of that, I'm sure,

34:55

with our guest this week, Andy Hertzfeld. How's

34:57

it going, Andy? Good. Thank

35:00

you for coming on, and hopefully doing some reminiscing

35:02

with us. I'll bring back some memories of those

35:04

early days at Apple over the next hour or

35:06

so. But I'm interested, it's a question

35:09

that we always like to ask our guests at

35:11

the start is basically what started your interest and

35:13

your passion. I mean, do you remember initially

35:16

what got you into computers and technology,

35:18

where that journey began? Yeah,

35:20

there was a class in high

35:22

school in 10th grade. They

35:25

didn't, in those days, of course, computers were

35:27

pretty hard to find, but they had a

35:29

terminal that was hooked

35:31

up into a GE time-sharing system

35:34

about 10 miles away. And

35:36

I took my first class

35:38

and just fell in

35:40

love with computers and programming. You

35:43

ended up studying at UC Berkeley as

35:45

well. That's a grad

35:47

student. Yeah, and what kind of machines

35:50

were around there? UC

35:52

Berkeley then, it was PDP 1170, was

35:56

the main computer used by

35:58

the computer science department. But

36:01

while I was there, they switched

36:03

over to a Vax, which is

36:05

also digital equipment, a later, more

36:07

powerful computer. No personal computer,

36:09

though, at all in 1976 there. When

36:13

did you kind of first hear of Apple and

36:15

when did you decide to get an Apple II?

36:18

Well, the first time I saw it, Apple

36:20

II, was when it debuted at the First

36:22

West Coast Computer Fair in April 1977. I

36:28

saw it at the booth and it

36:30

was immediately drawn to it because of

36:32

its color graphics, its innovative

36:34

design in so many ways. As

36:37

I was saying, I didn't have enough money

36:39

to afford one in those days. When it debuted there,

36:41

it was $1,800 for a 4K machine and that was

36:44

more than I had in the

36:49

bank. But later in January

36:51

1978, they had a $400 off sale for

36:54

the Apple II, for $16K Apple II.

37:01

I was able to afford that, so I

37:03

got one and immediately became obsessed with it.

37:05

I thought it was the best purchase I've

37:07

made in my life. I still think that

37:09

today. What kind of things were you doing

37:11

with your Apple II at home then when

37:13

you first got the machine? Well,

37:16

I was obsessed with getting to the

37:18

bottom of how it worked. So

37:21

I started writing little assembly

37:23

language programs. One

37:25

of the main catalysts was there was a users

37:28

group that I was a founding member

37:30

of starting in April 1978. It

37:34

met once a month and before each

37:36

meeting, I stayed up for hours and

37:38

hours into the morning getting

37:41

whatever programs I had

37:43

written that month in good enough shape to give

37:45

to the club for free. When

37:48

I started out, there was no

37:50

market for personal computer

37:52

software, but it wasn't even well

37:54

understood if there would ever be

37:57

a market. So I was just

37:59

doing it out of fun and

38:01

passion. and curiosity. And it was

38:04

amazing, as you guys probably know.

38:06

Well, Steve Wozniak's design was incredibly

38:08

innovative, imagination bursting out

38:11

of every socket. You

38:13

know, it was just a... And that was

38:15

a formative experience for me when I saw

38:18

and understood Woz's work. I thought, well, that's

38:20

the kind of work I want to do.

38:23

Well, you went to work for Apple very early in

38:25

1979. So tell us your journey from, you know,

38:28

been an Apple II enthusiast and been at

38:30

the club to actually working for Apple itself.

38:32

And do you remember what the interview was

38:34

like? Yeah. Well, what

38:37

happened was, as

38:40

I said, I started developing programs

38:42

that I gave away to the

38:44

users group that gradually got more

38:46

ambitious until finally I

38:49

wrote a systems program that

38:51

overcame one of the detriments

38:54

of the Apple II. Believe it or

38:56

not, the original Apple IIs did not

38:58

support lowercase letters. Hard

39:00

to imagine these days. And

39:03

so I realized I could use what

39:05

was called the high res graphics screen.

39:08

Today, you know, the Apple II

39:10

screen resolution is about the

39:12

same as an icon. It was

39:14

too easy by 190K. But those

39:17

days, we called that high resolution.

39:19

But you could use the graphics to

39:22

draw whatever you wanted, including

39:24

lowercase letters. So I

39:26

was able to figure out how to plug

39:28

it into the system and gave it lowercase

39:30

letters and color letters, a few

39:32

other things. Usually what I

39:34

had been doing up to that point

39:36

was when I wrote a program that

39:38

I thought was interesting enough, I'd send

39:41

it to magazines like Dr. Dobbs journal.

39:43

There were all these little tiny

39:46

magazines springing up

39:48

to support the nascent personal computer

39:50

revolution. Anyway, I just, you know,

39:52

the highest thing I could think

39:55

to do with my

39:57

programs was getting them published in the magazine.

40:00

but I showed my lowercase letter program

40:02

to a friend and he

40:04

said, don't give it away like that. You could

40:06

sell it and make tens of

40:08

thousands of dollars. I said,

40:11

I don't know how to sell anything. I could

40:13

never do anything like that. He

40:15

told me, well, don't worry about it. You just

40:17

do the programming, I'll do the rest and we'll

40:19

split the money for it. So

40:21

that's what we did. We started

40:23

taking my little character generator

40:25

program around to the different

40:27

tiny little companies that were

40:29

publishing PC software and

40:32

everyone we took it to loved it and

40:35

wanted to publish it. So we thought, well,

40:37

you must not be big enough. These were

40:39

little two, three person companies until

40:42

eventually in December of 1978, we

40:46

had an appointment to show it to Apple, which

40:49

I worshiped by then in

40:52

particular to show it to Steve Jobs

40:54

at Apple, who at that time, his

40:56

title was Vice President of New Products.

41:00

And so we had some trepidation though.

41:02

I was friends with Chris Espinoza, who

41:04

had taken a leave from Apple to

41:07

get a degree at UC Berkeley. I

41:10

met him because I was his teaching

41:12

assistant in the introductory programming class. I

41:15

told him we were going to take my

41:17

character generator program down to Apple and

41:20

show it to Steve Jobs. He said, watch

41:23

out, if he doesn't like your program, he'll bite

41:25

your head off. Yeah. I

41:28

remember he said exactly that, but I

41:30

wanted to keep my head attached to my neck.

41:33

But I thought, well,

41:36

we'll give it a try. And we

41:38

showed it to Steve and he

41:40

was incredibly kind and welcoming to

41:43

us. He liked my character generator program.

41:46

We left that day with a deal for

41:48

Apple to buy it. But

41:51

then Steve's assistant called me back a

41:53

week later saying they changed their mind.

41:55

Apple never did buy it. They had

41:57

a pretty good excuse though, which is

41:59

my purpose. was intended for one of

42:01

the empty ROM sockets in the Apple

42:03

II. Apple II

42:06

had 6K of ROM and it only

42:08

used 4K. Maybe

42:11

my numbers are off because I haven't thought

42:13

about this for decades. Apple

42:16

was already planning the Apple II

42:18

Plus, which had Microsoft Basic in

42:20

those ROM sockets instead

42:22

of Waz's brilliant integer Basic.

42:25

So they didn't have a slot for it

42:27

anymore. So the guy told

42:29

me, well, reluctantly, we're

42:32

not going to buy your program, but we'd like to hire

42:34

you. I was pretty excited

42:36

about that, but I had

42:38

already put three years into a PhD

42:40

program at UC Berkeley. I thought, well,

42:42

I should get at least a master's

42:45

degree. So I delayed interviewing and starting

42:47

at Apple until the school year was

42:49

out. But that delay

42:51

cost me a four-to-one split in Apple

42:53

stock shares, so it was not a

42:56

prudent thing to do financially.

42:59

So I went down, interviewed at Apple,

43:01

met some of the people, loved everyone,

43:03

and started work there

43:05

in August of 1979. How

43:09

important do you think the expandability of the

43:11

Apple II was as well to its success?

43:13

Oh, it was crucial. It

43:16

was crucial. Sort of the biggest single factor

43:19

in Apple II's early success was

43:22

the disk drive, was this brilliant

43:24

design for the disk drive. That

43:27

couldn't have been done if there weren't slots. Another

43:30

thing was the time came when

43:32

Apple had to expand the memory in an

43:34

Apple II. And so

43:36

slot zero for the language card,

43:38

if we didn't have that, we

43:41

couldn't have gotten sophisticated software in

43:44

the midlife of the Apple II. So

43:47

the slots were crucial, especially

43:49

because personal computing was still

43:51

evolving so rapidly. The

43:53

slots gave it a chance to keep

43:56

up with whatever was

43:59

demanded. When you initially joined

44:01

Apple, do you remember the first things you

44:03

were working on then when you first got

44:05

there? Yeah, I was thrilled actually when they

44:07

told me the project they had me slated

44:09

for, which was a small

44:12

graphic thermal printer called

44:14

the Silentype. I

44:17

wrote all the firmware for it. What was

44:19

so thrilling about it was that printer project

44:21

was doing the exact very similar

44:23

thing to what Woz did with the disk

44:25

drive of the Apple II, which

44:28

is remove a lot of electronics

44:30

from the device itself and

44:32

just use the microprocessor in the

44:34

Apple II to implement things, which

44:36

not only made it more flexible,

44:39

but you could make it faster.

44:41

It could get better and better

44:43

over time because the key functionality

44:45

was in software, not in ROM

44:47

chips. So it

44:50

was thrilling to do a

44:52

very similar thing to what

44:54

Woz did. Printing is fun

44:57

because I've always loved graphics.

44:59

So the little graphical printer

45:02

was a great first project for me. Very

45:04

well received as well, wasn't it? I know

45:06

that's considered one of the finest bridges in

45:08

the area. Yeah, at the beginning, they sold

45:10

tens of thousands of them. What

45:13

was great was a lot of projects like

45:15

the Macintosh, for example, I worked on for

45:17

over three years before it saw the light

45:19

of day. Whereas with

45:21

that printer, I started working on

45:24

it in August and it was

45:26

shipping by December, just a few

45:28

months. So that was great

45:30

to be able to get a product out

45:33

into the world when I

45:35

was only working at Apple at that point for

45:37

like five months. Well, we'll get onto

45:40

the Mac in a moment. Obviously, such an important

45:42

product for Apple, completely changed your company. But before

45:44

that, there was the Apple Lisa, which

45:46

was the first Apple machine to feature

45:48

a graphical user interface after those famous

45:51

Xerox Park meetings. I mean, what memories

45:53

have you got of those early days

45:55

of when you first saw a

45:57

graphical user interface and was there much

45:59

buzz around Apple in general about the

46:02

Lisa project and the GUI? Yeah,

46:04

definitely. It was considered to be one

46:07

of the pillars of Apple's future. First

46:10

time I saw a graphical user interface,

46:12

I remember pretty clearly it was in

46:14

the pages of a magazine. The

46:17

September 1977 issue of

46:19

Scientific American, had a

46:21

long essay by Alan

46:24

Kay detailing a

46:26

lot of screenshots of

46:28

the Alto's graphical user

46:31

interface. So that was a

46:33

thrilling glimpse of the future. But

46:36

when I started at Apple, I was

46:39

there a week or two when Bill

46:41

Atkinson, who was the main person doing

46:43

the UI and the graphic software for

46:46

the Lisa, came by my desk. He

46:48

had heard that I was really interested

46:50

in fonts, proportional fonts. I had written

46:53

a proportional font editor for the Apple

46:55

II, and I had downloaded

46:58

some fonts that were developed at MIT.

47:01

And in those days, it was really

47:04

rare to find good proportional

47:06

fonts. So Bill came by and showed

47:08

me the work he was doing

47:10

on the Lisa drawing with proportional

47:12

fonts. I gave him some of my fonts

47:15

to use as well. But

47:17

that was my first glimpse of it. I

47:19

was still working on the Apple II, but

47:22

I thought Lisa was an

47:24

incredible advance. Lisa was

47:27

way too expensive, was sort of

47:30

Achilles heel. What the Macintosh

47:32

was doing in large part was

47:34

an affordable version of

47:36

Lisa's, a version that could

47:38

be truly personal. Lisa

47:40

came out, ended up costing about $10,000 when it came

47:43

out. That's not

47:46

very personal. Most people couldn't

47:48

afford that. So the Macintosh

47:50

was, we called it the computer

47:52

for the rest of us. Not

47:55

only was it affordable, but it was

47:57

easy enough for an ordinary person to

47:59

use. Well, when did you

48:01

first become aware of the Macintosh project

48:03

and how were you bought on board?

48:06

Well, I became aware of it

48:08

when Bill showed me the prototype

48:10

software he was working on. I

48:13

came on board when Apple, a

48:15

famous day in Apple's history was

48:17

called Black Wednesday, when Mike Scott,

48:19

the CEO of the time, fired

48:21

about a quarter of the Apple

48:23

II group suddenly, because he felt

48:25

that Apple had made some bad

48:27

hires and it was getting bureaucratic.

48:30

But my boss was fired, essentially,

48:32

so I was sort of freed up. I

48:35

had already become friends with Beryl

48:38

Smith, who did the hardware for

48:40

the original Mac, and Bud Treble,

48:42

who was working on the software. And

48:44

so I thought, well, maybe this mass

48:46

firing is my opportunity to start on

48:49

the Mac project, which only had

48:51

four people working on it at the time. I

48:54

was pretty disillusioned by the mass

48:56

firing, especially because they fired a

48:59

few people I thought were excellent

49:01

engineers. But Mike Scott,

49:03

who did the firing, heard that I was

49:05

disillusioned. He called me to his office and

49:07

said, well, we don't want to lose you.

49:10

What can we do to make you stay? And

49:12

I said, well, maybe I could work on the

49:14

Mac project with Beryl and

49:16

Bud. Later that afternoon,

49:19

Steve Jobs came by, who had just

49:21

taken over the Mac project. And

49:24

he asked me if, or I had

49:27

a conversation with him. The first thing he said to me,

49:29

are you any good? We only want

49:31

people, great people to work on the Mac. I'm

49:33

not sure you're good enough. He

49:35

went, though, and talked to Beryl and

49:38

Bud. And they

49:40

said, oh, no, this guy's pretty good. So

49:42

he came back to my cubicle late on

49:44

a Thursday afternoon, like maybe about 5 p.m.

49:47

And he said, congratulations, you're working on

49:49

the Mac now. I said, well,

49:52

just give me till Monday. This was on a

49:54

Thursday, late Thursday. I wanted to

49:56

get just the project I was working on in

49:59

order enough for Steve. someone to pick it up so

50:01

that the work wouldn't be

50:03

wasted. But Steve said, I told

50:06

him I was working on this new operating system for

50:08

the Apple II. When he

50:10

asked, he goes, the Apple II,

50:13

you shouldn't work on the Apple II. The Apple II

50:15

will be obsolete in a couple of years. You

50:18

got to start on the Mac. I said, just give me

50:20

a day. He goes, no. And

50:22

he went and pulled the plug on my Apple

50:24

II, lifted it up, and

50:26

started walking away with it. All

50:29

I could do was follow him. It's amazing.

50:32

He got into his car. He put

50:34

the Apple II in the trunk. We

50:36

drove to a little building, just a

50:38

few minutes, about four blocks from the

50:40

main Apple building, took the computer

50:43

out of the trunk, walked up to

50:45

the second floor and dropped it on a

50:47

desk, saying, here's your new desk. Then

50:49

he just sort of disappeared. I

50:51

started looking at the desk and

50:53

it had, its previous

50:55

owner hadn't moved out of it yet.

50:58

The drawers were filled with all kinds

51:00

of interesting little things like model

51:03

airplanes and radio controlled

51:06

cars, toy cars.

51:08

But it turns out he had put

51:10

me at Jeff Reskin's desk, who he

51:12

had just fired a day

51:15

or two before. That

51:17

was my start on the

51:19

Mac project. What were the team

51:21

dynamics like? Because I heard you know there was

51:23

famously an us and them kind of

51:25

attitude around the Mac and the rest of the teams at

51:27

Apple. Well, actually, yeah,

51:30

it developed into that. But at the

51:32

beginning, there wasn't that. No one believed

51:34

in the Mac project. The Mac project

51:36

was a skunk works. It only had

51:38

a few people. By that time,

51:40

the Lisa team had like 50 people.

51:43

The Apple II team had

51:45

probably like 70 people. We

51:48

were just a very small group. Even

51:51

though it was led by Steve, he

51:53

didn't have nearly the reputation that he

51:55

had today. People

51:57

thought really that Woz was.

52:00

the genius behind Apple

52:02

and Steve was lucky. Actually, one

52:04

of the first biographies or stories,

52:07

books written about Apple called

52:09

Steve, The Accidental Millionaire, it

52:12

shows he wasn't that respected

52:14

at the time. But then as we

52:17

made progress on the Mac and got

52:19

more things going and we had a

52:21

run of 50 prototypes built

52:23

that we gave out to various places

52:25

in the company, I would say by early

52:28

1982, the Mac sort

52:30

of got more on people started believing

52:32

in it more. And that's when there

52:35

was a little bit of contention

52:37

between the different groups. The Mac

52:39

was priced like an Apple 2

52:42

with the features of Lisa. So

52:44

both of those bigger groups had

52:46

reason to not want

52:48

the Mac to succeed. But

52:52

we just kept moving

52:54

forward and eventually, the

52:56

Lisa came out in January of 1983. By

53:00

the middle of 1983, it was

53:02

clear that it wasn't going to

53:05

live up to expectations. And

53:07

so the Mac became more

53:10

of a central focus of Apple in

53:12

the last year before it shipped.

53:15

And so, you know, there were still little

53:18

atomosities, but as more and more

53:20

of Apple believed in us

53:22

and counted on us, we

53:25

became more mainstream at

53:27

Apple. How did

53:29

Steve Jobs' reality distortion field

53:31

influence the Macintosh project? Well,

53:34

Steve could convince anyone of almost

53:37

anything. And that was an incredible

53:39

asset to have. But of

53:41

course, Steve also

53:43

could be a pretty

53:45

hard taskmaster. Steve's

53:47

relationship to the project, he had corporate

53:50

responsibility. So he ended up coming to

53:52

the little building with the Mac team

53:55

in the late afternoon, early evenings.

53:58

We'd always show him what we were were working on,

54:00

he'd tell us gossip

54:03

or stuff

54:05

that happened that he thought

54:07

we should be interested in. But

54:09

he'd be very critical of the work you were

54:11

doing. Sometimes he

54:13

was kind of binary, either it was

54:16

incredibly great or it was awful. There

54:19

weren't very many points in between

54:21

that. But he

54:23

certainly spurred people on to doing

54:25

their best possible work. The

54:28

first thing that I heard,

54:30

Bud treble coined that phrase,

54:32

reality distortion field, and

54:35

he explained it to me

54:38

on my first day of work that Steve would,

54:41

well, actually it was for the schedule.

54:43

Bud was telling me what

54:45

the planned schedule was. This was in February

54:48

of 1981. We

54:51

were supposed to finish and ship

54:53

by early 82, like eight,

54:56

nine months, which was clearly

54:58

preposterous. I said,

55:01

Bud, that's ridiculous. We'll never be

55:03

able to do that. He said, I know. I

55:06

said, you know? Well, how come you don't

55:08

fix the schedule if you know that it's

55:10

way off base? And he

55:12

said, well, it's Steve. Steve had

55:14

a reality distortion field. He

55:16

could make things happen out of sheer force

55:19

of will. And

55:22

so the reality distortion field, which is

55:24

really just a fanciful name

55:26

for Steve's amazing

55:28

powers of persuasion. But

55:31

that helped us transcend our limitations

55:34

and work harder than ever. And

55:37

finally, Steve wanted us to do

55:40

the greatest thing possible or even

55:42

greater. And we

55:44

did it, more or less. He

55:47

had a huge charisma. Yeah,

55:49

charisma. And

55:52

he's also creative and

55:54

inventive, had

55:56

a great sense of humor, but

55:58

could also be really tough. How

56:00

do you describe your working relationship with

56:02

Steve? Was there any kind of encounters

56:04

that really stand out from that time?

56:06

Any memories that you've got? Yeah, I

56:08

always got along with him pretty

56:11

good. The only disappointment

56:13

was I ran, as the Mac

56:15

team grew, we hired some

56:18

managers and one of

56:20

the software manager didn't

56:22

like me partially because I had

56:24

a good relationship with Steve and he felt

56:27

Steve was interfering by coming around to

56:30

the software group and talking to them

56:32

every night. He couldn't

56:34

manage us that well. He couldn't stay

56:36

late because he had a young child

56:38

at home. He ended up

56:41

giving me a bad review for the time period

56:43

I was doing key work on

56:45

the Macintosh because he thought I

56:47

was insubordinate. Steve

56:50

had promised to, when Bud Tribble,

56:52

who was the first software manager

56:54

on the Mac project and Bud

56:56

was incredibly great, great to work

56:58

with. He'd always be able to

57:00

improve, give me suggestions to improve

57:02

whatever it was I was doing.

57:05

We were really disappointed. Bud had to leave at the

57:07

end of 1981. He

57:10

was in an MD-PhD program

57:12

at the University of Washington.

57:15

He had to leave to keep up his

57:17

standing in the program. When

57:21

Bud left, Steve promised he would, I was

57:23

afraid we'd get a bad boss. Steve

57:26

promised to protect us from that,

57:29

but later didn't fulfill that

57:31

when that situation actually arose.

57:34

That was some friction I had with Steve. Bud

57:37

I stayed friends with Steve through

57:39

the years. I used to see him at least

57:41

a few times a year. I

57:44

was fine at getting along with

57:46

him, mainly because we just had a common

57:48

goal of doing the greatest thing we possibly

57:50

could do. Well, I

57:52

was wondering how the concept of the

57:54

GUI evolved, especially during the

57:57

development of the Macintosh. Well,

57:59

we didn't believe in designs on paper,

58:01

we had to prototype things to see

58:04

how they worked. And

58:06

so we just, you know, sort of one

58:08

step at a time, each new thing we

58:10

added would fit into the

58:12

system and give you other ideas

58:15

of things to do. So

58:17

just over time, we

58:20

made it as good as we possibly could.

58:22

All kinds of little discoveries on the way.

58:25

Whenever we thought of a better way

58:27

of doing it, we scrambled to get

58:29

things in there. Even

58:31

though we had these onerous schedules, it

58:34

was even more important to just make

58:36

the best possible thing we could. And

58:39

of course, the team grew over time. I

58:42

was the second software person to work on

58:44

the Mac after Bud. By

58:46

1983, we had almost

58:48

a dozen programmers

58:50

or so. And obviously,

58:52

a big selling point of the Mac initially was

58:54

that it was a computer that was

58:57

friendly to use. I mean, there was that famous

58:59

quote from Bill Gates when he was developing software

59:01

for the Mac that it was the only machine

59:03

he'd let his mother use. Yes.

59:06

Alan Kay had a great quote

59:08

about Macintosh, which it was the

59:10

first personal computer that was worth

59:12

criticizing. Right. Nice.

59:14

But even stuff like the Finder now today, we still got

59:17

the smiley Apple face. Was that a

59:19

real core design element then to make the

59:21

machine friendly and accessible? Yeah.

59:23

Well, we were trying to make it

59:25

as friendly and unintimidating

59:28

as possible. Susan

59:30

Kerr, who was my friend from high school

59:32

who we hired to do graphics for the

59:34

Mac. She

59:37

started January 1983. And

59:40

one of the things I loved about

59:42

Susan, not only her intellect, but her

59:45

sense of humor. I just said, oh,

59:47

we need a little icon to

59:49

display as it's booting to show

59:51

that it passed the hardware

59:53

tests we do on boot. And

59:56

she came up with the smiling

59:58

Macintosh and the sad Mac. back as

1:00:00

well. That was two sides

1:00:02

of the same inspiration.

1:00:04

We actually loved

1:00:06

anything that would

1:00:09

make it more fun. Because you bear

1:00:11

in mind the competition at the time when you had

1:00:13

the PC, you turn it on, you landed at the

1:00:15

DOS prompt, so computers really weren't accessible for many people.

1:00:18

Yeah, we were pretty critical

1:00:20

of the PC. We were

1:00:23

trying to make something that was

1:00:26

truly great and would be

1:00:28

accessible to everyone. I

1:00:31

would say Microsoft had very

1:00:33

different values than Apple. The

1:00:35

goal of all the work that

1:00:38

Microsoft did was to make as

1:00:40

much money as they possibly could. Whereas

1:00:43

Steve Jobs viewed himself as

1:00:45

an artist, encouraged the team

1:00:47

to think of themselves as

1:00:49

artists, so we had more

1:00:51

artistic values. Not so much

1:00:53

maximizing our profit, but maximizing

1:00:55

the greatness of our product,

1:00:57

trying to do the best

1:00:59

thing ever. Microsoft wouldn't

1:01:02

even care to do the best thing

1:01:04

ever. They just wanted to make

1:01:06

the most money ever. Whereas

1:01:09

Mac really was motivated

1:01:11

by just making something

1:01:13

that people would adore. Well,

1:01:15

after the legendary 1984 commercial

1:01:18

during the Super Bowl, was

1:01:21

a precious step up to delivery even more.

1:01:23

I was also wondering when you first saw that advert,

1:01:25

was it the Super Bowl when you first saw it?

1:01:28

No, no, we saw it as it

1:01:30

was developing. They asked me to write

1:01:32

a little software that was used in

1:01:34

the commercial to flash numbers and letters

1:01:36

on the side of the screen. We

1:01:39

heard about it

1:01:41

from the very beginning. Try

1:01:43

it day, the advertising company

1:01:45

responsible for it that Apple

1:01:47

worked closely with. They had

1:01:49

already done a series of ads for

1:01:52

the Apple II and stuff, but one

1:01:54

of the concepts when brainstorming with them

1:01:56

about what should the big intro ad

1:02:00

be, they had come up for

1:02:02

their Apple II work with a slogan, why 1984 won't be

1:02:04

like 1984. We

1:02:08

thought that was a great concept.

1:02:10

They did a storyboard. They hired

1:02:14

really good people to shoot

1:02:16

it. I was

1:02:18

busy working on the software. I wasn't that involved

1:02:20

with it, but they had a shoot for the

1:02:22

ad, I think in

1:02:24

August of 1983. Shortly

1:02:31

after that, they made a rough cut. Steve

1:02:33

showed it to the team. Most

1:02:35

of us just loved it, but

1:02:37

they showed it to the board of directors

1:02:39

who hated it. They thought it wasn't

1:02:42

product oriented enough. It didn't hardly

1:02:44

mention the Macintosh till the very

1:02:46

end. And so they said, sorry,

1:02:49

you know, we're not going to spend

1:02:51

a million dollars on this. And

1:02:54

they instructed Shai at day to sell

1:02:56

the Super Bowl ad time back. They

1:02:58

originally were doing two versions, a

1:03:01

30 second version and a one

1:03:03

minute version. And they

1:03:06

sold the 30 second version back, but

1:03:08

Shai at day essentially lied

1:03:10

and say that they weren't able to at

1:03:12

this late date to sell the one minute

1:03:15

time slot. So we had to run it.

1:03:17

And of course, it was a sensation. It was

1:03:20

an allegory, a brilliantly shot stage creative.

1:03:22

And I guess now it's considered one

1:03:24

of the best ads of all time.

1:03:26

Well, there is a great image as

1:03:29

well on your website, folklore.org.

1:03:31

Obviously, we'll talk more about the website and the

1:03:33

stories on there soon. But I'm just looking at

1:03:35

an image now of the the t-shirts and the

1:03:37

hoodies that you had made up the the 90

1:03:40

hours a week and loving it. Which

1:03:42

we were actually working these amount of hours.

1:03:44

And I mean, what do you remember about

1:03:46

that time then and the intense amount of

1:03:48

hours you spent in the office getting the

1:03:50

Macintosh? Well, it involved a lot

1:03:52

of time. I

1:03:55

always work late. I

1:03:57

would but trouble did too. So a lot of the.

1:04:00

Max software development was done

1:04:02

after dinner. But

1:04:05

as we got more and more people and

1:04:07

as the deadline drew closer, people were staying

1:04:10

later and later. Ironically, the

1:04:12

people who made that

1:04:14

sweatshirt were the finance team who really

1:04:17

didn't work anything close to 90 hours.

1:04:20

They were more like 40 hours a week and

1:04:22

loving it. But the software

1:04:24

team, especially in

1:04:27

the last few months before shipping, really

1:04:29

did work 90 hours or more.

1:04:31

I have a funny story in my book about

1:04:34

how Burl Smith, when

1:04:36

he finally quit Apple, he took

1:04:38

some masking tape and crossed

1:04:40

out the nine. So

1:04:43

his sweatshirt said zero hours a week and

1:04:45

loving it. Nice. I thought it

1:04:47

was a clever way to resign. Well

1:04:50

at the Max launch, Steve

1:04:52

Jobs revealed the machine and had

1:04:55

it introduce itself with a speech

1:04:57

synthesizer. So how has that

1:04:59

idea reached things? I know you worked on that. Yeah.

1:05:04

Just before like a week or

1:05:06

maybe a week and a half before

1:05:09

the launch, we had

1:05:11

some software developers come in and we

1:05:13

had seeded them with an early Mac.

1:05:16

I forget the name of the company, but

1:05:18

I remember the name of the engineer, Mark

1:05:20

Barton. They had done a

1:05:22

speech synthesizer for the Apple II. And

1:05:26

we commissioned them to do

1:05:28

it for the Mac. They

1:05:31

finally came in with a demo right

1:05:33

before it shipped and it sounded great.

1:05:36

And when Steve heard it, he goes, I

1:05:38

want the Macintosh to be the first

1:05:40

computer to introduce itself. And

1:05:43

so my job was to integrate

1:05:45

the software. All the hard work

1:05:47

was writing the speech engine. I

1:05:50

had to plug it into our demo,

1:05:52

make it work. And so I had to figure out,

1:05:54

well, what should the Mac say? Introducing

1:05:58

itself. It was beyond

1:06:00

me to figure out something like that.

1:06:03

But Susan had the brilliant

1:06:05

idea of calling Steve

1:06:07

Hayden, who was the advertising

1:06:10

writer who had conceived of the

1:06:12

1984 commercial. We

1:06:15

asked him, well, what write us some

1:06:17

words that should be the Mac's first

1:06:19

words introducing, and he did a great

1:06:21

job. Say beginning, hello,

1:06:23

I am Macintosh. It sure is great to

1:06:26

get out of that bag. You

1:06:29

know, it was in a bag on

1:06:32

stage the whole time Steve was talking.

1:06:34

But anyway, the intro demo story was

1:06:36

we had worked, you know, if we

1:06:38

had worked 90 hours a week on

1:06:40

average, the last couple of weeks before

1:06:43

we shipped, we were probably working 120

1:06:45

hours a week. The

1:06:48

last three days, I got no sleep

1:06:50

at all. And finally we

1:06:52

got the system disk done, and

1:06:56

it was driven off to the

1:06:58

factory to be mass reproduced. We

1:07:01

were just lying on the

1:07:03

floor, sighing with relief.

1:07:05

After working the hardest we ever worked

1:07:08

in our lives, we

1:07:10

were finally finished, at least for

1:07:12

the first release. But

1:07:14

then while we were like lounging around on

1:07:16

the floor, Steve Jobs came and said, get

1:07:18

up, you're not done yet. And

1:07:21

we thought, well, sure, we were done. What

1:07:24

else could we do? But he goes, we need

1:07:26

a great demo to introduce the Mac with. And

1:07:30

so we sort of sighed

1:07:32

and were exhausted, but we also were

1:07:35

attracted to the challenge of making a

1:07:37

great demo. We only had

1:07:39

like five or six days to do it. One

1:07:42

of the things at the end was

1:07:44

the speech demo we were just talking

1:07:46

about, but we also had various

1:07:49

other graphics demos, and a

1:07:52

slideshow of Mac

1:07:54

applications and stuff. But

1:07:57

during the rehearsals, the demo,

1:08:00

occasionally crashed. What

1:08:02

it really was was the huge letters

1:08:04

we had scrolling across the screen pushed

1:08:06

the memory limits of the

1:08:08

128K Mac. So

1:08:11

we had the idea in those days

1:08:14

when the Mac shipped, there were prototype

1:08:17

512K Macs, just

1:08:20

two of them we had in all

1:08:22

of existence, but we thought

1:08:24

let's use one of those for the

1:08:26

demo to make it so it wouldn't

1:08:28

crash. I was wondering then after

1:08:30

the launch, did you have your chance to

1:08:33

let your hair down? Yeah, after

1:08:35

the launch was just in

1:08:38

ecstatic catharsis, the culmination

1:08:40

of over three

1:08:42

years worth of work. So we were just

1:08:45

sort of in an exhausted

1:08:47

haze, but in heaven that

1:08:49

hey, we did it, we got it out to

1:08:51

the stores. One of the things I did right

1:08:54

after the introduction

1:08:56

ceremony was I wanted

1:08:59

to buy, it was supposed to be on

1:09:01

sale. Not only was the Macintosh announced that

1:09:03

day, but it was supposed to be available

1:09:06

that day. So I set

1:09:08

my goal well to go around to the

1:09:10

computer stores and actually buy one just to

1:09:12

prove to myself that you

1:09:14

could do that. But it turns out

1:09:17

none of the stores around had them

1:09:19

yet. And finally

1:09:21

I found one that was willing to sell

1:09:23

it to me even though it didn't have

1:09:25

it delivered to me for another month. And

1:09:28

so I did achieve my goal about at

1:09:30

least buying it on the day of introduction.

1:09:33

And of course, I already had a few of them that

1:09:36

we were using for development, but just

1:09:39

I just made it more real to be

1:09:41

able to go into a store and actually

1:09:43

purchase it. How were

1:09:45

the sales of the Mac after launch? They

1:09:49

started out great by the

1:09:51

summer. Steve set a goal that

1:09:54

he mentioned during the

1:09:56

introduction of selling 50,000.

1:10:00

Mac catoshes in the first hundred

1:10:02

days and we exceeded that.

1:10:04

We sold about 60,000 and

1:10:06

into the summer it was still doing

1:10:08

well, but in the fall of 1984

1:10:12

the computer industry experienced one of

1:10:14

its downturn

1:10:17

periods and the sales

1:10:19

of the Mac started drying up till by

1:10:21

the December month. We had forecast 80,000 to

1:10:24

be sold in December of 1983 and in

1:10:26

fact it was selling more like

1:10:33

6,000 instead of 80,000, a huge shortfall. The

1:10:40

beginning of 1985 people

1:10:43

started panicking, what can we do to fix

1:10:45

it? I was on leave of

1:10:47

absence from Apple by then, but

1:10:49

there was a lot of pressure that

1:10:51

hey, the Mac's not selling, what

1:10:53

can we do? Ultimately

1:10:56

that led to Steve getting kicked off

1:10:58

the Mac team, which I would

1:11:00

have said prior to that that

1:11:02

was impossible to happen. Steve was the

1:11:04

heart and soul of the company, leader

1:11:07

of the Mac team, that seemed like a very

1:11:12

precarious times for Apple. Do you remember the

1:11:14

reaction to that from the team? That must

1:11:16

have been like having the heart and soul

1:11:18

of the Mac team. It

1:11:20

was mixed, Steve, because Steve was

1:11:22

polarizing. Steve

1:11:25

could be the greatest boss you've ever

1:11:27

had and the worst boss you've ever

1:11:29

had almost

1:11:31

simultaneously. Depending

1:11:34

on how you felt about Steve, you

1:11:36

either thought, oh, Apple is going to

1:11:39

get professional management now or

1:11:41

you thought that Apple was going to

1:11:43

become a shadow of itself without Steve

1:11:45

as the driving force. You

1:11:49

said you had a leave of absence as well

1:11:51

in April 1984. I

1:11:54

was wondering why you decided to leave. Because

1:11:57

I had the bad boss I

1:11:59

alluded to. a little while ago,

1:12:01

I had a boss who gave

1:12:03

me an awful review for the

1:12:05

time period. I was working harder

1:12:08

than I've ever worked before, creating

1:12:10

the Macintosh user interface toolbox, but

1:12:12

he gave me a bad

1:12:14

review because I didn't count

1:12:16

out to him enough. And

1:12:19

at that time, you know, with the

1:12:21

better, I thought, I can't work for this guy.

1:12:24

So I'll, I'm going to quit. But

1:12:27

then, second thoughts, I thought,

1:12:29

well, I can't quit. I put too much of

1:12:31

my life into the Mac. It's too important, not

1:12:34

just to me, but to everybody.

1:12:38

And so I'll stay until it launches.

1:12:41

And after it launched, and things

1:12:43

quieted down a little after the

1:12:45

launch, someone suggested to

1:12:47

me not to quit, but just go and

1:12:49

leave. So I'd have the option of coming

1:12:52

back. And that's what I did. Ended

1:12:55

up not coming back because six

1:12:57

months as my lead was expiring, things

1:13:00

were still in bad shape there,

1:13:02

in my opinion, which

1:13:05

was probably borne out by

1:13:07

Steve getting fired just a few

1:13:09

months after that. I

1:13:12

still did approximately what I would have done

1:13:14

if I was still there, writing the

1:13:16

first multitasking environment for the

1:13:19

Macintosh Cult Switcher. I

1:13:21

developed a commercial product during that time

1:13:24

called ThunderScan. So

1:13:26

I was still very, very much

1:13:28

an Apple developer, even when I

1:13:31

was no longer an employee. Well,

1:13:33

obviously, that time was a tumultuous time at

1:13:36

Apple, but kind of going forward, you know,

1:13:38

a few years, because you did actually work

1:13:40

with Apple again when you founded with

1:13:44

Bill Atkinson and Mark Porat at the

1:13:46

company General Magic. There's an amazing

1:13:48

movie that came out about it a couple of years ago. And

1:13:51

the tagline to that was, the company who

1:13:53

saw the future too soon. Of course, you

1:13:55

know, it's some incredible innovations there. So

1:13:57

I'm curious about how the idea for General Magic... came

1:14:00

about and what the vision was for it

1:14:02

initially. Well, it was really Mark Peratt was

1:14:04

the visionary. He hired on

1:14:06

at Apple in 1988, where his job

1:14:12

was to figure out what's the

1:14:14

next thing beyond personal computers. He

1:14:17

went and interviewed many

1:14:19

Apple employees and other

1:14:21

industry luminaries and

1:14:23

put together this

1:14:26

big, thick, red book of

1:14:28

designs to pursue and

1:14:32

did such a great job. He got a lot

1:14:34

of people excited about it. And

1:14:36

anyway, I got really excited mainly

1:14:38

because it was a chance to work with Bill again.

1:14:40

Bill called me up and

1:14:43

said, oh boy, I ran across this

1:14:45

incredible thing. It's going to be the

1:14:47

future of the computer industry. Come

1:14:49

back to Apple to work with me on it.

1:14:53

And I said, oh, that

1:14:55

sounds interesting. The next day, Mark Peratt

1:14:57

came over to my house and showed

1:14:59

me his models. One of the brilliant

1:15:01

things Mark did to make it real

1:15:03

was to make a plaster models of

1:15:05

what it could like. And

1:15:08

they looked very similar to the

1:15:11

original iPhone. But with

1:15:13

these models, you could

1:15:15

really taste the potential

1:15:17

and the future. And

1:15:20

so I kind of signed up and was I

1:15:23

was not a very big John Scully fan.

1:15:25

And so I was pleased when in

1:15:28

the spring of 1990, General

1:15:32

Magic separated from Apple

1:15:34

was it became its own little

1:15:36

startup company funded by Apple, as

1:15:39

well as the original investors in

1:15:41

General Magic were Apple, Sony and

1:15:43

Motorola. All three

1:15:45

very strategic Sony because

1:15:47

they were the best consumer electronics

1:15:50

manufacturer in the world. Motorola,

1:15:52

who had the best wireless

1:15:54

networking, Apple who had the

1:15:57

best user interface expertise.

1:16:00

Those three together were the

1:16:02

initial investors, but also

1:16:05

customers of General Magic. Yeah.

1:16:07

General Magic, they created products

1:16:09

and innovations. They were really ahead of the

1:16:11

time. One of the

1:16:14

major ones was the MagicCap operating

1:16:16

system. Right. What was the idea

1:16:18

behind that? We

1:16:20

wanted to make it as easy

1:16:22

as possible to learn and to

1:16:24

use, very much like the

1:16:26

Macintosh, but even more so

1:16:29

because we had a broader consumer

1:16:31

ambition. Again,

1:16:35

the way you make something new

1:16:37

is you just try things out.

1:16:41

It evolved over a period

1:16:43

of three or four years. We

1:16:46

came up with using, essentially

1:16:48

building on top of the desktop

1:16:50

metaphor from the Finder on

1:16:52

the Mac, we had a spatial

1:16:54

metaphor where a lot of your

1:16:56

tools were on the desk, but we also had

1:16:59

a hallway of doors

1:17:01

to expand into and a

1:17:03

street, quote unquote,

1:17:05

where commercial services would

1:17:07

be available. We also

1:17:09

wanted it to be uniquely

1:17:12

customizable. Of

1:17:14

course, as always, we wanted

1:17:16

to make it as fun and

1:17:18

enjoyable and as lovable to use

1:17:20

as we possibly could. What

1:17:23

mistake we made was we probably took

1:17:25

too long doing it. We

1:17:27

were both early and late. It's

1:17:30

very, very important to get feedback

1:17:33

from your intended users as you're doing it.

1:17:36

That's why it probably

1:17:38

would have made sense to do

1:17:40

a more stripped down version first and

1:17:42

build on top of that. On

1:17:45

the other hand, General Magic was so

1:17:48

many years ahead of the core

1:17:50

technology it would need to really

1:17:53

make a difference. We

1:17:55

were too early. We could have

1:17:57

if we started a few years.

1:18:00

years later, we probably would have had a

1:18:02

better chance to succeed. And

1:18:05

then Apple decided, even though

1:18:07

they were our benefactor and

1:18:09

progenitor, they wanted to

1:18:12

do their own thing with Newton.

1:18:14

Newton was in development for

1:18:16

two or three years before General Magic

1:18:19

started. They were building

1:18:21

something very different than General Magic.

1:18:23

We were building, wanted to build

1:18:25

something that fit in your pocket

1:18:27

and was based on networking,

1:18:29

communication was the center of

1:18:32

the design. Whereas

1:18:34

Newton had a full page

1:18:36

display. General

1:18:38

Magic's target price was about $500.

1:18:43

The original Newton I'm talking about was more

1:18:45

like $5,000. It

1:18:49

was inspired by the

1:18:51

Dynabook, whereas General Magic was more

1:18:53

inspired by the cell phone. But

1:18:56

then when some of their

1:18:58

plans, Newton's plans didn't come

1:19:01

to fruition, they made the fateful

1:19:03

decision to switch

1:19:05

gears and build something very much like

1:19:07

what General Magic was building. Something that

1:19:10

could fit in your pocket, something that

1:19:12

had a stylus. And

1:19:14

that, of course, put us at odds with

1:19:17

Apple. They were

1:19:19

not as upfront as perhaps they should

1:19:21

be. We were just blindsided. We didn't

1:19:23

know they had changed the Newton to

1:19:26

be directly competitive with

1:19:28

Magica. But they

1:19:30

did. And that was disappointing.

1:19:34

If Apple ended up joining forces

1:19:36

and working together on something,

1:19:39

it would have a much

1:19:41

better chance of succeeding. Both

1:19:43

Newton and General Magic suffered

1:19:45

from what happened. We

1:19:47

could have got the iPhone maybe a decade ahead of when we got

1:19:49

it maybe. Yeah, except there

1:19:51

were so many enabling technologies that

1:19:53

weren't ready yet. You couldn't

1:19:56

have the capacitive touch screens back

1:19:58

when we were doing it. it,

1:20:01

they came five years or more later. We

1:20:04

had resistive touchscreens where you can't swipe

1:20:06

as nicely. It just couldn't have as

1:20:08

good a feel as the

1:20:10

iPhone. Plus, the processors

1:20:13

weren't fast enough that the

1:20:15

wireless networking was barely existing.

1:20:18

It's like orchestrating ballet or

1:20:20

something, putting all the pieces

1:20:22

together, the six

1:20:25

or seven different crucial technologies and

1:20:27

having it all come together in

1:20:29

the right time for shipping when

1:20:31

you're planning. You

1:20:34

can't really pull that

1:20:36

off perfectly, although I guess the iPhone

1:20:38

came close to doing it. Well,

1:20:41

Andy, I'm conscious that you've already been extremely generous with

1:20:44

your time, and we could talk to you all day,

1:20:46

the amount of incredible stories that you've

1:20:48

got. Obviously, we did touch on the fact that you have an

1:20:51

amazing website that's been going over 20 years now,

1:20:53

called folklore.org that documents a lot of

1:20:56

Apple history and a lot of the

1:20:58

people involved as well, all in great

1:21:00

short anecdotes too. So what

1:21:03

did the idea of doing that come from

1:21:05

then, setting the website up? Well, I was

1:21:07

interested. This was in, when did

1:21:09

I start that? 2003,

1:21:12

I had the idea to

1:21:14

work on something that would

1:21:16

allow collaborative storytelling.

1:21:20

I had seen other books about Apple

1:21:22

and they were all biased by the

1:21:25

position the author was in.

1:21:29

I wanted to come up with a

1:21:31

way to document important projects that

1:21:34

wasn't biased. And so the

1:21:37

idea I had was I

1:21:39

called a collective historical storytelling

1:21:41

or something like that, where anyone

1:21:44

could or group could write, each

1:21:48

person could write their own little stories that

1:21:50

would add up to the big story. And

1:21:54

so I developed the website or started

1:21:56

developing the website when I thought, well,

1:21:58

what story can I make? I used

1:22:00

to develop this with. And the obvious

1:22:02

thing was the development of the Macintosh,

1:22:04

which I was already really close to.

1:22:07

So I started building the site and inviting

1:22:11

key contributors to the Macintosh to

1:22:13

submit their stories. I

1:22:15

ended up with stories from

1:22:17

Susan Care, Steve Kaps, Bruce

1:22:19

Horne, Don Denman. What

1:22:21

I later found out, I thought

1:22:23

the valuable thing of what I

1:22:26

was doing was a software framework

1:22:28

for collective storytelling. But

1:22:30

the real value ended up being the

1:22:32

stories themselves that I wrote. That's what

1:22:35

people resonated with. In

1:22:37

a way, the project was

1:22:39

a failure because I never

1:22:41

got traction with many other

1:22:43

stories like I initially intended.

1:22:46

On the other hand, the Mac

1:22:48

stories were worthwhile. We ended up spinning

1:22:50

it out into a book, which

1:22:53

I'm really glad happened. The book

1:22:55

ended up being beautiful and a

1:22:57

great thing to have. Yeah,

1:23:00

well, some news, I guess, not

1:23:02

that much news. But late last

1:23:05

year, I got the

1:23:07

Computer History Museum to take over the

1:23:10

maintenance of the folklore website. I started

1:23:12

thinking, hey, I'm 71 years old. I

1:23:17

don't know how much longer I'll be

1:23:20

around if I got it under the

1:23:22

auspices of an institution. It'll

1:23:24

last longer than I will. So

1:23:28

I had to, in some ways,

1:23:30

disembowel it to get acceptable

1:23:33

to the History Museum because

1:23:36

they needed it not to have

1:23:38

any maintenance. Because then I might

1:23:40

not be around. If

1:23:43

you do anything too fancy on

1:23:45

the server side, it almost certainly

1:23:47

will become obsolete in a few

1:23:49

years as the rest

1:23:51

of the site develops. So

1:23:53

I had to freeze it. I had to

1:23:55

take away the ability to add new stories,

1:23:58

add comments, and ratings. things.

1:24:02

But in that frozen state, it

1:24:04

was ideal for the Computer History

1:24:06

Museum. So I'm glad

1:24:08

that worked out. Yeah.

1:24:10

I think it's in safe hands with them,

1:24:13

absolutely. And people can read the

1:24:15

book, actually, I'm looking at the Kindle versions

1:24:17

available right now on Amazon, Revolution in the

1:24:19

Valley, with the forward by Steve Wozniak. Are

1:24:22

the hardbacks still available for it? Yeah, you can

1:24:24

get them used. Just search

1:24:26

for it. They're all over the place. But

1:24:29

yeah, it's not a print. I'll put a link to the

1:24:31

Kindle version in the show notes so people can buy it

1:24:33

on Amazon. Yeah. I want to check it

1:24:35

out. And of course, folklore as well. That will be in the

1:24:37

show notes too. Yeah. Andy, it's been

1:24:39

an absolute pleasure talking to you and what, you know,

1:24:42

some incredible stories that you've shared with us. So thanks

1:24:44

again for coming on and doing some reminiscing with us.

1:24:46

It's been an absolute honor to talk to you. Okay,

1:24:48

great. Thanks.