Return to the Little Kingdom_ Steve Jobs and the Creation of Apple - Michael Moritz [77]
Ron Wayne was worried about more temporal matters. The size of the contract with the Byte Shops, which had gained a reputation for not always managing to pay bills on time, and the prospect of having to underwrite one tenth of any loss that Apple might incur, proved too much. Wayne left the partnership in the summer of 1976 and typed out a formal letter which he hoped absolved him of all responsibility. “I had already learned what gave me indigestion and I was beginning to feel the months running by. If Apple had failed, I would have had bruises on top of bruises. Steve Jobs was an absolute whirlwind and I had lost the energy you need to ride whirlwinds.”
Though they had lost Wayne, by the time they decided to build a second batch of a hundred computers Jobs and Wozniak had established some credit. The local bank managers still refused to place any faith in Apple but there were others who would. Wozniak had an informal credit line with his pal Allen Baum who had bailed him out of previous scrapes. Jobs and Wozniak explained their predicament and asked for a $5,000 loan which they promised to repay as soon as the computers were sold. Baum and his father, Elmer, stumped up the money and wrote up a loan agreement for a year with the provision that it could be renewed quarterly. Allen Baum considered his money safe. “I had no doubt that it would be repaid. Steve Jobs had this silver tongue that could talk anyone into anything.” Elmer Baum wasn’t quite so sure. “I did it because he was Allen’s friend. I was in pretty bad shape financially but Steve gave me a pitch. If I hadn’t known him, I would have thought he was really good.”
Most of the people connected with Apple were cautious, and contrary to the usual picture of small businesses, they were all wary of loss. Each had his own method for absorbing any risk that might crop up. Wozniak was supported by the regular paycheck from Hewlett-Packard. Ron Wayne decided he couldn’t afford to take any chances while the Baums insured their gamble by charging a hefty interest on their loan. Bill Fernandez made sure that he received a contract. Steve Jobs risked something else—devoting years of his life to the business and becoming consumed by Apple.
The tension between mysticism and the business of assembling computers was caught in a gently sardonic correspondence with Dan Kottke who had returned to school in the East. On one occasion Kottke mailed Jobs a mystical photograph and enclosed a note which read in part: “After performing an extensive prana to the lotus feet of suchness, gaze lovingly upon picture with cosmic thoughts of cosmic relevance and profundity until phone rings. Answer phone, haggle furiously and refuse to sell for less than 2.3 million.”
But there were some aspects of Apple that Jobs enjoyed. “I was getting a chance to do some things the way I thought they should be done. I felt I had nothing to lose by leaving Atari because I could always go back.” For Jobs corporations were large and ugly and like Lockheed. They bribed senators. They arranged kickbacks. They paid for three-martini lunches. Jobs recalled, “I didn’t want to be a businessman because all the businessmen I knew I didn’t want to be like. I thought that living in a monastery had to be different from being a businessman.” The private turmoil was the center of long discussions with those around him. Bill Fernandez padded along on midnight