Word: wozniak
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Despite such a string of successes, Hewlett-Packard has stumbled badly in personal computers. In 1976 one of its engineers, Stephen Wozniak, designed an early personal computer, but managers were scornful about its prospects. Wozniak thereupon left to help start Apple Computer. Finally, in 1980, Hewlett-Packard introduced its own personal computer, the HP 85, and followed it up with nine other models. But the products were aimed primarily at engineers, and since they were produced by five separate HP divisions, they ran different software, used three different keyboards, and were marketed in an uncoordinated manner. Result: they sold poorly...
Hewlett wound up supplying Jobs with parts for a frequency counter, a device that measures the speed of electronic impulses. This introduced Jobs to the concept of timing, critical for understanding a computer, and furnished him with a cornerstone that, according to Wozniak, he never bothered to build on. Says Wozniak: "I doubt Steve was careful down to the last detail, which is really the key to high-level engineering." Shape, not subtlety, was more in Jobs' line, foreshadowing what one Apple manager calls the "technical ignorance he's not willing to admit." It was the practical applications of technology...
Jobs turned from life science to applied technology. Wozniak and some other friends gravitated toward an outfit called the Homebrew Computer Club in 1975, and Jobs would occasionally drop by. Wozniak was the computer zealot, the kind of guy who can see a sonnet in a circuit. What Jobs saw was profit. At convocations of the Homebrew, Jobs showed scant interest in the fine points of design, but he was enthusiastic about selling the machines Wozniak was making...
...payment ("They'd say, 'Well, how's 30 days net?' We said, 'Sign us up.' We didn't know what 30 days net was"); Jobs who attracted a first-class industrial p.r. firm and a team of experienced managers; Jobs who organized the early manufacturing; Jobs who finally persuaded Wozniak to leave Hewlett-Packard; and Jobs who gave the fledgling company a name ("One day I just told everyone that unless they came up with a better name by 5 p.m., we would go with Apple"). In 1977, when the Apple II was introduced, the company receipts were kept...
Life at Apple has been tough for some to swallow. Following the initial problems with the Apple III, the company president fired some 40 employees and was in turn dumped by Jobs and current Apple president A.C. ("Mike") Markkula. Steve Wozniak drifted into conspicuous retirement and last year staged a rock concert in the Southern California desert. Some oldtime employees have not shared in the corporate bounty. Says one: "I wasn't obnoxious enough to make myself a millionaire." Jobs drives the staff hard, expecting long hours, high productivity and indefinite patience with his scattershot ideas. "He should be running...