Return to the Little Kingdom_ Steve Jobs and the Creation of Apple - Michael Moritz [16]
“You’ve got to get some games on this,” Schweer agreed. “Goddamn! It’ll make the greatest flight simulator in the world.”
Ellen Nold, a thin woman from Apple’s training department, tried to assuage any fears about Apple’s commitment to its customers. “We assume when Crocker buys hundreds of Lisas you’ll want a training program.” She told them that training sessions would be specially tailored for the bank and that drill exercises would be based on the workaday subjects familiar to bankers. Wayne Rosing, Lisa’s chief engineer, fielded questions. The bankers wondered when Apple would be able to connect several Lisas together and swap information between machines. They worried about the difficulty of connecting a Lisa to IBM computers, to “the terminal world,” “the Bell world,” and “the DEC world.” One of the technical types wanted to know the speed at which data would travel between computers and whether software written for other computers would run on Lisa. Rosing leaned back in his chair and answered all the questions in a leisurely way. He explained, in answer to one question, why Lisa had no calendar. “We’re so far along that I had to say, ‘Darn it! We’re going to stop here even if this feature only takes a week because otherwise we’ll never get it out the door.’” As the afternoon wore down the bankers were asked for their impressions.
“I’m not sure you’re clear about who would actually use this,” said Betty Risk, a dark-haired woman who had listened and watched for most of the day. “Is it for the executive, or the professional, or the manager?”
“Your security’s tight,” Schweer remarked. “It could have been an abacus sitting there.” The flinty edge that hardened his early remarks had softened: “You guys have come a long way. This is the first time I’ve heard any company ask the right questions. Most companies say ‘We can do anything for you if you stand on your head and punch the keyboard with your toes.’”
Despite the compliments the group from Crocker was reluctant to make any promises about ordering large quantities of the Lisa. Apple was just one of several computer companies they would visit before deciding which machines to order. Nobody mentioned numbers and nobody mentioned dollars.
“Trying to speak for a bank the size of Crocker is difficult.” Schweer sighed. “You always bet your job when you propose a standard. It’s easier to pick several different makes.” He paused: “Of course, you could just put your hands over your eyes and pick, or get several and spread the blame.”
“And then get half your butt fired,” Lewin chuckled.
CARBURETORS AND MICROPHONES
When Steven Jobs was five months old his parents moved from the dank fringes of San Francisco to the iron cuddle of South San Francisco. There, Paul Jobs continued to work for a finance company as a jack-of-all trades. He collected bad debts, checked the terms of automobile dealers’ loans, and used a knack for picking locks to help repossess cars that were scattered about Northern California.
Paul Jobs looked like a responsible James Dean. He was lean, had closely cropped brown hair and tightly drawn skin. He was a practical, sensible man with a Calvinist streak who was self-conscious about his lack of formal education and would conceal his shyness behind chuckles and a tough sense of humor. Jobs had been raised on a small farm in Germantown, Wisconsin, but when it failed to provide enough for the two families it was supposed to support, he and his parents moved to West Bend, Indiana. He left high school in his early teens, roamed around the Midwest looking for work, and at the end of the thirties, wound up enlisting in “The Hooligan Navy,” the U.S. Coast Guard.
At the end of World War II, while his ship was being decommissioned in San Francisco, Jobs bet a shipmate that he would find a bride in the shadow of the Golden Gate. Nipping ashore, when port and starboard