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Obsessing over small details like this can be illustrative of the company culture at the time. Knowing that Steve Jobs himself wrote the numbers means that they

Obsessing over small details like this can be illustrative of the company culture at the time. Knowing that Steve Jobs himself wrote the numbers means that they handled all parts personally to some degree. More bluntly, on a site devoted to a single computer model, every shared scuff mark on some part will get obsessed over by someone.

reaperducer 5y ago
Knowing that Steve Jobs himself wrote the numbers I have been repeatedly told by the Woz worshippers on HN that Jobs was nothing more than a salesman who has zero involvement with the actual machines. If I can't believe revisionist internet historians, who can I believe?
- suprjami 5y ago
  One of Jobs' first jobs was a board tech at Atari. He must have had some circuit-level skills to stay employed, even if he could only follow pre-made designs and the troubleshooting tactics of those around him. He could probably solder components on an already-designed board like any of us could if we put our mind to it. It seems correct that Jobs didn't have the skills to design a large circuit board from scratch then pore over IC datasheets to try and minimise the amount of components used, coming up with some beautiful triumph of electrical engineering. That was all Woz. (I'm not any sort of Jobs fan or Apple zealot, I just like tech history and truth)
  - bombcar 5y ago
    More importantly, it was the Steve Jobs of the time who wrote those numbers, not the Steve Jobs of billionaire Apple fame. When you've only a few employees and you need to ship, everyone pitches in.
- dhosek 5y ago
  The downvoting proves it: irony is dead.
Stratoscope 5y ago
"company culture" may be overstating it a bit. It was just Steve and Woz, and someone had to write the serial numbers. Ron Wayne had already come and gone, and Daniel Kottke didn't join Apple until the next year (although he had been a friend of Steve's for years). When I ran into Steve in June 1976 at Country Sun Natural Foods in Palo Alto (it's still there!) and he asked me if I could write a 6502 disassembler, it was pretty clear it was just the two of them. He wasn't even 100% sure on the company name yet, and tested it out with people he met. "My friend and I have this little company, we're calling it Apple Computer. Take a byte of the apple, get it?"
- scarface74 5y ago
  Out of curiosity and your story was interesting, I LinkedIn stalked you. You’ve had a long interesting career with a lot of overlapping jobs. Were you an independent contractor?
  - Stratoscope 5y ago
    Well thank you, I am flattered that you tracked me down. Yes, I kept bouncing back and forth between contract work and FTE over the years. It wasn't a grand plan to do one or the other. Since you're asking, I may as well tell more of this story. After Steve and I exchanged phone numbers, I thought the 6502 disassembler sounded like a fun project. So I went home and got to work on it. I didn't have a chip to test with, so I wrote out the code with pencil and paper and "tested" it by stepping through it mentally and writing the register and memory values at each step on a second sheet of paper. Kind of like what you would today call a "debugger". Then Steve called me: "Mike, I've thought about this. Your experience is all with mainframes. We're using a microcomputer, and it works on completely principles. It is nothing like those mainframes you've used. So I've decided that you couldn't possibly do this job." (It wasn't exactly a "job" at that point, like I said we were just a couple of scruffy hippies who ran into each other at the produce aisle, discovered we were both into computers and electronics, and got to talking.) I tried to explain that I'd coded in assembly and machine language on two or three different architectures already, and the 6502 looked like just another one to me, with a simpler instruction set. He said, "No, I've made up my mind. You couldn't possibly do this, so forget it." So I thought "Who is this Steve guy telling me I can't program? I will go visit this Apple Computer and show him my code!" I found their address at 770 Welch Road near the Stanford Barn, walked in and looked around. It didn't look like a computer company, all I saw was a row of switchboards and telephone operators. I asked one of them, "Where's Apple Computer?" She said, "Uh, this is their answering service." I thanked her and walked back out, shaking my head and telling myself, "These guys are flakes. They're never going to make it."

reaperducer 5y ago

Knowing that Steve Jobs himself wrote the numbers I have been repeatedly told by the Woz worshippers on HN that Jobs was nothing more than a salesman who has zero involvement with the actual machines. If I can't believe revisionist internet historians, who can I believe?

suprjami 5y ago
One of Jobs' first jobs was a board tech at Atari. He must have had some circuit-level skills to stay employed, even if he could only follow pre-made designs and the troubleshooting tactics of those around him. He could probably solder components on an already-designed board like any of us could if we put our mind to it. It seems correct that Jobs didn't have the skills to design a large circuit board from scratch then pore over IC datasheets to try and minimise the amount of components used, coming up with some beautiful triumph of electrical engineering. That was all Woz. (I'm not any sort of Jobs fan or Apple zealot, I just like tech history and truth)
- bombcar 5y ago
  More importantly, it was the Steve Jobs of the time who wrote those numbers, not the Steve Jobs of billionaire Apple fame. When you've only a few employees and you need to ship, everyone pitches in.
dhosek 5y ago
The downvoting proves it: irony is dead.

Stratoscope 5y ago

"company culture" may be overstating it a bit. It was just Steve and Woz, and someone had to write the serial numbers. Ron Wayne had already come and gone, and Daniel Kottke didn't join Apple until the next year (although he had been a friend of Steve's for years). When I ran into Steve in June 1976 at Country Sun Natural Foods in Palo Alto (it's still there!) and he asked me if I could write a 6502 disassembler, it was pretty clear it was just the two of them. He wasn't even 100% sure on the company name yet, and tested it out with people he met. "My friend and I have this little company, we're calling it Apple Computer. Take a byte of the apple, get it?"

scarface74 5y ago
Out of curiosity and your story was interesting, I LinkedIn stalked you. You’ve had a long interesting career with a lot of overlapping jobs. Were you an independent contractor?
- Stratoscope 5y ago
  Well thank you, I am flattered that you tracked me down. Yes, I kept bouncing back and forth between contract work and FTE over the years. It wasn't a grand plan to do one or the other. Since you're asking, I may as well tell more of this story. After Steve and I exchanged phone numbers, I thought the 6502 disassembler sounded like a fun project. So I went home and got to work on it. I didn't have a chip to test with, so I wrote out the code with pencil and paper and "tested" it by stepping through it mentally and writing the register and memory values at each step on a second sheet of paper. Kind of like what you would today call a "debugger". Then Steve called me: "Mike, I've thought about this. Your experience is all with mainframes. We're using a microcomputer, and it works on completely principles. It is nothing like those mainframes you've used. So I've decided that you couldn't possibly do this job." (It wasn't exactly a "job" at that point, like I said we were just a couple of scruffy hippies who ran into each other at the produce aisle, discovered we were both into computers and electronics, and got to talking.) I tried to explain that I'd coded in assembly and machine language on two or three different architectures already, and the 6502 looked like just another one to me, with a simpler instruction set. He said, "No, I've made up my mind. You couldn't possibly do this, so forget it." So I thought "Who is this Steve guy telling me I can't program? I will go visit this Apple Computer and show him my code!" I found their address at 770 Welch Road near the Stanford Barn, walked in and looked around. It didn't look like a computer company, all I saw was a row of switchboards and telephone operators. I asked one of them, "Where's Apple Computer?" She said, "Uh, this is their answering service." I thanked her and walked back out, shaking my head and telling myself, "These guys are flakes. They're never going to make it."