Return to the Little Kingdom_ Steve Jobs and the Creation of Apple - Michael Moritz [94]
There was Jobs who, though he certainly liked money and relished power, virtually fell into Apple for want of anything else to do; Wozniak, for whom the binary difference between one thousand and one million was far clearer than the monetary, derived his chief delight from displaying the power of his machine; Holt, who had never owned thirty thousand dollars in his life, was attracted by the prospect of making a quarter of a million dollars in five years; Markkula, who could not conceal his interest in the computer or his desire to bolster a personal portfolio; and Scott who, more than anything else, wanted to be the president of a company that would leap over the moon.
“In China it could be marvelous,” Paola Ghiringelli exclaimed.
An Apple II, an Apple III, a Lisa, and a Macintosh were lined up in battle order on a pair of steel tables. Two Mac marketing managers, Michael Murray and Michael Boich, were sitting in front of the computers, putting the finishing touches to a presentation they were about to give to the Belgian-born artist Jean-Michel Folon. Some months before, Steve Jobs, in his role as Apple aesthete, had been impressed by the bridge between romance and surrealism formed by Folon’s work. He had decided to marry the European artist with the California computer and, for a time, wanted Apple’s advertising to reflect Folon’s image of Mac. Jobs had contacted Folon, attended one of his shows in New York, and invited him to Cupertino. For Jobs the triple combination of art, New York, and Europe was irresistible. Folon, in turn, had sent some sketches of his ideas, which Jobs had been keeping on a chest of drawers in his bedroom.
So it was no accident that Murray and Boich inhabited a Folonesque world. The gray felt walls of the conference room were draped with mock-ups of advertising posters, instruction manuals, and diskette sleeves devised by Apple’s graphics department from the slants, shades, and recurring figures of Folon’s work. A five-foot-high cardboard cutout of a Folon character with a melancholy demeanor, frumpy hat, and angular overcoat was propped against one wall.
Murray had decided to offer Folon a royalty of a dollar for each Mac sold which, given that Apple eventually hoped to sell over a million Macs a year, was a lucrative contract. Boich was playing with the Lisa when the screen suddenly became a jumble of scrambled letters and numbers. He took a look and said, “I’m going to see if we can do something about this; otherwise we’re going to end up with a dead Lisa when Folon arrives.” Murray glanced at the mess and muttered, “We have a history of messing up presentations at Apple. We want to get this one right.” He returned to the Mac where he finished drawing a miniature version of one of Folon’s characters with a cartoon bubble enclosing the greeting BONJOUR MONSIEUR.
When Folon arrived he brought a Parisian palette to Cupertino. A tall, rumpled man, he wore creased royal-blue painter’s pants, narrow crimson suspenders, a checkered Viyella shirt, a scuffed cotton jacket, and round, horn-rimmed spectacles. He was accompanied by Paola Ghiringelli, who was dressed in an orange corduroy waistcoat and fawn trousers, and Marek Millek, who worked as a graphic artist for Apple in Paris and was acting as Sherpa and interpreter. Folon immediately upset the carefully laid plans when he decided to investigate the computers.
“Oh, regardez!” said Folon as he spotted Murray’s drawing.
He was drawn to the machine and sat down for a demonstration of Macintosh and, as it turned out, a quick lesson in how computers worked, with Murray explaining things in short, clipped Pidgin English which Millek, in a Cockney accent, then translated into French. Murray started sketching some more.
“Go to his eyes and put some eyeballs in,” Boich urged.
“We can put freckles on his face,” Murray explained.
Folon sat down and started to draw with the mouse. He looked at the picture that appeared on the screen and winced. “Ah. He doesn’t know how to draw now,” Ghiringelli exclaimed in a husky Italian