Return to the Little Kingdom_ Steve Jobs and the Creation of Apple - Michael Moritz [27]
After the Cream Soda Computer was completed, Wozniak started to exercise his control over it by writing a few programs. The programs were based on the semiconductor data sheets that revealed which instructions were needed to make the chips perform functions like addition and subtraction. He listed the bits, figured out the operating code, and wrote it down. All the instructions were executed within five steps and followed an intimate sequence that Wozniak muttered to himself: “Load; load the next byte of the instruction into the memory address register; put that through the alu into the alu output register; dump the alu output register into the next memory location.”
The timing circuit, which Fernandez designed, ensured that five signals were generated in the right order of every instruction. The programs performed actions like multiplying the values entered into four switches by the values entered into the other four switches and displayed the answer in the lights. Wozniak reflected on the importance of the results. “I cannot explain why that means so much to me. Multiplying two four-bit numbers by each other doesn’t sound like a lot. But being able to do something which you couldn’t have done without a computer is worth something.”
When the computer was almost complete, Fernandez invited his friend Steven Jobs to drop by the garage, take a look at the computer, and meet its designer. Jobs was, in his own way, impressed by the machine and by Wozniak: “He was the first person I met who knew more electronics than I did.”
Wozniak decided to reveal his computer to the world and called a San Jose Mercury reporter that his mother knew. The reporter, accompanied by a photographer, appeared in Wozniak’s bedroom for a demonstration. As Wozniak explained some of the subtleties of the ugly contraption that lay on the floor, smoke started to emerge from the power supply Fernandez had built. The computer expired as a stream of high voltage from the power supply blew out every integrated circuit on the board. Fernandez examined the power supply and found the fault lay in an unmarked chip he had earned by doing a gardening chore for one of the neighbors. He was miffed: “We didn’t get our pictures in the paper and we didn’t become boy heroes.”
“He sells goldfish,” Goldman said.
Inside a nineteenth-century red-brick building set among the antique stores, restaurants, and law offices of San Francisco’s Barbary Coast, a group of four men gathered to plan Apple’s advertising for the coming year. It was an afternoon of Indian summer and the conference room, which didn’t have any windows, was stuffy. The room belonged to Chiat-Day, a medium-sized advertising agency that was perpetually rumored to be on the verge of losing its largest client, Apple Computer. A couple of long-leaved potted plants sagged from the heat, a movie projector was concealed behind a sheet of smoked glass, and alongside a wet bar a refrigerator heaved like an iron lung. The four men were seated in plush chairs around a laminated conference table.
Henry Whitfield, Apple’s advertising manager, was in the greatest discomfort. Although he was only in his thirties, he already looked as if he had run through too many airports and the ghost of an older man appeared around his temples. The other three worked for Chiat-Day: Fred Goldberg, who had just moved from the East Coast and had taken charge of the Apple account fifteen days before; Maurice Goldman, an account executive who was balding and in his thirties; and Clyde Folley, another executive who was neatly turned out from his carefully trimmed beard to a pair of soft, tasseled shoes. The four were meeting to discuss Apple’s general image and to start work on a plan that would help buyers sort out the differences between the Apple II, Apple III, Lisa, and Mac.
Whitfield,