Return to the Little Kingdom_ Steve Jobs and the Creation of Apple - Michael Moritz [151]
Apple had received a warmer reception at the California legislature which had amended a local law, and Jobs said that the company would soon start distributing ten thousand computers throughout the state. “We’re in the right place at the right time with the right people to give something back. That’s kind of nice. Computers and society are out on their first date so wouldn’t it be great if we could make the date go great and blossom.” He added, “The race is on to improve the productivity of the knowledge worker. The personal computer can generate—at a crude level—free intellectual energy but the computer will dwarf the petrochemical revolution.”
In answer to some more questions he told the students, “The company that will most affect how we do is not IBM. It’s Apple. If we do what we know how to do well, we’ll leave everyone else in the dust.” After a student asked what it was like to run an empire Jobs replied, “We don’t think of it as an empire. We hire people to tell us what to do.” He dismissed the Japanese quest for a new generation of computer as having “a very high bullshit content. They don’t really know what they’re talking about.” He complained about the Japanese and the evils of protectionism. He also said it was no longer possible to start a computer company in a garage but suggested the students might still have a shot with a software company.
As the questions died down Jobs conducted his own informal poll. He asked what part of the country students came from and what they were studying. Most seemed to be enrolled in computer science. “How many of you are virgins?” he asked. There were a few giggles, but no hands were raised. “How many of you have taken LSD?” There were some flushes of embarrassment and one or two hands rose slowly. “What do you want to do?” he asked, and a student blurted, “Make babies.”
There wasn’t much hint that Jobs had acted through the script dozens of times, or had casually talked with friends about the possibility of running as an independent candidate for president. Jobs knew all the punch lines. It was the work of a corporate sorcerer with an actor’s sense of timing. After Jobs’s questions he was badgered again. A couple of students tugged at his cuffs. One just wanted to introduce himself as the owner of an Apple II, another wanted Jobs’s autograph on one of the Apple annual reports that were spilling out of a couple of cardboard boxes. A tall junior wondered whether he could get a tour of an Apple factory. Most of the students seemed pleased with the evening. “Well, at least he’s not a jerk,” one brown-haired coed said as she, in her Lacoste shirt, carefully pressed jeans, topsiders, and companion made for the door.
WELCOME IBM, SERIOUSLY -
The stock market provided the loudest applause for Apple Computer but there was plenty from other quarters. Small newspapers tracked the progress of Apple IIs all across America and greeted the appearance of these personal computers with charming, goggle-eyed astonishment. This was an updated version of the gasps that had followed the arrival of automobiles in muddy country lanes and of radios in quiet living rooms. But now the photographs were not of a family sitting upright in stiff leather seats with hats poking over the brow of a windshield, or knitting and smoking around a fireplace while ears were tuned to the wireless perched in holy splendor on a mantelpiece. The new trailblazers were pictured in hunched positions around a screen that glowed, their hands perched on a keyboard, and the heads that tilted