Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything by Steven Levy

Author:Steven Levy [Levy, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Modern, 20th Century, Hardware, Infrastructure, Science, MacIntosh (Computer), Computers, General, Personal Computers, History, Business & Economics, MacIntosh, vl-nfcompvg
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2000-05-01T22:00:00+00:00

Steve Jobs was convinced that Macintosh was the final showdown at the Computer Corral. It was Apple versus IBM, to the death.

He was annoyed at having to defend Macintosh from industry pundits’ criticism that it was not compatible with software that ran on IBM’s disk operating system. In retrospect this complaint seems ludicrous, like criticizing tractors because they do not require oxen. But at that time, with many having declared IBM the unassailable leader in personal computing, the consensus was that launching a computer that did not run IBM-standard software was folly. Jobs, of course, had his own perspective.

“If we don’t do it, IBM is going to take over,” he said. “If having really great products, much better products than theirs, isn’t enough to compete with them, then they’ll have the whole thing. They’ll have the greatest monopoly of all time. It’ll be like owning every oil company and every car company in 1920. If we don’t do this, nobody can stop IBM. It’s kind of like watching a gladiator going into the arena. It’s really being perceived as Apple’s do-or-die.”

Jobs went on, talking about his motivation. “I’m not doing this for the money,” he explained. “I have more money than I can ever, hopefully, even give away in my lifetime. And I’m certainly not doing it for my ego. I’m doing it because I love it. And I’m doing it because I love the people. And I’m doing it because I love the idea of making a great ten-billion-dollar company. If we fail, that will mean my entire worldview is all wrong. And my judgment about people is all wrong. If this is another failure, then I should question my work, I should go write poetry or something, go climb a mountain.”

It was clear that Steven Paul Jobs did not expect be composing strophes or scaling K-2. He was already convinced that the battle was over. Apple had won. “Every bone in my body says it’s going to be great. And that people are going to realize that and buy it. You see, this job isn’t done until we’ve sold several million of these things.”

When do you think that will happen? I wanted to know.

“Eighty-five,” he said confidently. “I think we’ll break the cumulative two million total in 1985. Sure.”

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