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“It was for sale outside,” Espinosa chortled.

“Can we ship your party?” Jobs asked sharply.

Espinosa blanched and settled down to business. He told his colleagues that he was having difficulties hiring qualified writers, that his staff needed more Mac prototypes to work with, and that Apple’s graphics department wasn’t geared to cope with some of his demands. “We want to make books that are gorgeous,” he said, “that you read once and then keep on your shelf because they look so great.”

The work sessions were broken up by coffee breaks and by walks along the beach, some Frisbee games on the grass, a few scattered poker games, and a fuchsia sunset. Though dinner was served at long canteen tables, it bore no hint of the mess hall. Clutches of Zinfandels, Cabernets, and Chardonnays stood on every table but the breadsticks disappeared more quickly. After dinner someone who looked like a demure orthodontist, with thinning silver hair and owl-eyed spectacles, performed what, in computer circles, amounted to a cabaret act. The figure wearing a Mac T-shirt over a long-sleeved dress shirt was Ben Rosen. He had turned a reputation gained as a Wall Street electronics analyst, the industrious publisher of an informative, sprightly newsletter, and host of annual personal-computer conferences into a career as a venture capitalist. Before he started investing in computer companies his comments had been sought as much as his ear.

For the Mac group Rosen worked from a casual script of observations, wisecracks, tips, and industry gossip. He gave a brief survey of some of Apple’s competitors and dismissed Texas Instruments as “a company for the case studies of business schools,” though by way of an afterthought he added: “They are supposed to announce their IBM almost-compatible computer in three weeks.”

“What price?” Jobs asked.

“Twenty percent under the comparable price,” Rosen replied.

He talked about low-priced home computers and mentioned Commodore: “I have a few notes about Commodore that I can tell in polite company. The more you know about the company the more difficult it is to be sanguine.”

Some of the frivolous rustle disappeared when Rosen started to talk about IBM whose personal computer had been providing severe competition for Apple. “One of the fears about Apple,” Rosen noted, “is IBM’s future.” He admitted to being impressed by a recent visit to IBM’s Personal Computer Division in Boca Raton and described what he thought were its plans for three new personal computers. Then he looked around the room and said: “This is the most important part of Apple Computer. Mac is your most offensive and defensive weapon. I haven’t seen anything that compares to it.” He quizzically mentioned another industry rumor: “One of the things going around Wall Street is an IBM-Apple merger.”

“IBM already said they weren’t for sale,” Randy Wigginton, a young blond programmer, shot back.

Members of the Mac group started to ask questions. One wanted to know how Rosen thought Apple’s stock would perform. Another was eager to find out when a personal-computer software company would turn a $100 million in sales, while one with a strategic inclination wondered how Apple could ensure that computer dealers would make room on their increasingly crowded shelves for Mac.

“We have a crisis looming,” Jobs told Rosen, from the back of the room. “We’ve got to decide what to call Mac. We could call it Mac, Apple IV, Rosen I. How’s Mac strike you?”

“Throw thirty million dollars of advertising at it,” Rosen said, “and it will sound great.”

Rosen was the one interlude in a string of presentations by every manager of a department at Mac. They provided an abbreviated tour of a computer company and numbed everyone with a welter of facts. The snappy presentations were interrupted every now and again by applause at some piece of good, or unexpected, news. The engineering manager, Bob Belleville, a soft-spoken engineer who had just come to Apple from Xerox, said, “At Xerox we used to say it was important to get a little done every day; at Mac it’s important