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By Root 424 0

Their stuff couldn’t.” Jobs temporarily retired from renovating cars, which in the summer of 1976 were Nash Metropolitans, and set about altering the garage. He cleared a long brown workbench that he had salvaged, years before, from an office in San Francisco. Loose parts were tucked into small drawers carefully labeled, MACHINE SCREWS, WASHERS, TOOTH-WASHERS, COTTER PINS, and RUBBER INSULATED CLIPS. Bulkier items were stored in a small loft above the garage along with items like dismantled lasers. Jobs lined the garage with plasterboard, rigged up extra lights, installed an extra telephone, and rehung a framed certificate that commemorated his first crossing of the equator in October 1944. He refused to move one item: a sparkling, firehouse-red trolley crammed with wrenches, pliers, spanners, and screwdrivers.

Gradually the garage started to fill. A large schematic of the computer hung on one wall. Paul Jobs built a “burn-in box” the shape of a long, plywood coffin to test the computers. It was large enough to house twelve boards which could run all night long under the uncompromising gaze of some heat lamps. The younger Jobs bought a metal workbench with a neon light from the firm that supplied Hewlett-Packard, a dispenser for three-inch-wide filament tape for the packing cartons, and a top-of-the-line postage meter. Bill Fernandez examined the purchases. “Steve was always very, very tight with money. He always wanted to get the best value for the least amount of money. Steve always wanted to make things of high quality and have high-quality equipment. He always wanted to do it right.”

Clara Jobs, who scooted into the garage to use the washing machine, clothesdryer and sink, was recovering from a gallbladder operation. When her son occupied the kitchen table and turned it into a miniature office, she worked around him. When the answering service called with messages, she took notes or relayed them. When the doorbell rang she acted as receptionist, serving coffee to parts salesmen and prospective customers. She tolerated her son’s infatuation with carrots and cleared up Wozniak’s McDonald’s hamburger wrappers and soft-drink cartons after some of the frequent all-night vigils spent chasing elusive bugs in the computer. When Wozniak’s wife of six months called in tears, it was Clara Jobs who provided consolation. And when tempers flared in the garage Paul Jobs invariably provided some perspective. “What’s the matter?” he would ask. “You got a feather up your ass?” Eventually Paul and Clara Jobs started joking to their friends that they were paying the mortgage in exchange for kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom privileges.

Steve Jobs asked Ron Wayne to draw schematics of the computer that would be suitable for a small manual and also to produce a logo for the company. In his apartment Wayne balanced a light table on a living-room table and produced a whimsical pen-and-ink drawing that had the tones of a monochrome engraving for a nineteenth-century college calendar. It was a portrait of Isaac Newton, quill in hand, resting against the trunk of a tree bearing one apple wreathed in an ethereal glow. Wrapped around the edge of the picture was a scroll that carried a line from Wordsworth’s “The Prelude”: NEWTON—A MIND FOREVER VOYAGING THROUGH STRANGE SEAS OF THOUGHT, ALONE. Wayne also started work on a four-page manual using an IBM electric typewriter which, with careful reckoning, could justify text at both margins. This spawned an argument over the use of background tones, with Jobs insisting that a gray shade be used for parts of the schematic. When the gray obliterated some of the detail, Wayne said, “We’re both to blame. You for suggesting it. Me for listening to you.”

Jobs displayed a similar concern for appearance when Kottke and he drafted Apple’s first advertisement. The pair sat at the kitchen table with Jobs spitting out ideas while Kottke cleaned up the grammar. When the advertisement was set in type, Kottke recalled that Jobs was “meticulous about the typeface.” Kottke meanwhile tried to immerse himself in electronics,