Saturday, January 10, 2004

Wired News: The Macintosh's Twisted Truth

Wired News: The Macintosh's Twisted Truth: "Apple's CEO Steve Jobs and the Macintosh are inextricably linked in the minds of most people. So it may come as a surprise to learn the Mac wasn't his idea at all.
In fact, he actually wanted to kill the project in its infancy. Luckily for Apple, he wasn't successful.
The story of the Mac is a tale of one man's inspiration, another man's ego and the dedication of a small band of 'pirates' who forever changed the way the world computes. "

This provocative thesis pops up periodically; Jef Raskin has a big fan club. For a bit more balanced overview of where most of the underlying technologies came from (Xerox PARC), check out the classic Dealers of Lightning. Both Raskin and Jobs deserve a lot of credit for transforming the technologies into a market-altering product line, but synthesis and marketing != invention in this context.

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