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> Then shut up and wait for him to crack. I don't know if this is what would happen. We don't know whether Jobs believed what he was saying about the fellow
by allochthon 13y ago
> Then shut up and wait for him to crack.
I don't know if this is what would happen. We don't know whether Jobs believed what he was saying about the fellow who programmed mainframes. But I suspect that Jobs was also playing upon the fellow's desire to do the project in order to better his own bargaining position.
- Stratoscope 13y agoI'm pretty sure Steve wasn't bargaining. He was simply so certain of his own opinion that mainframes and microcomputers were totally unlike each other, that it was inconceivable that someone who was an expert at one could ever bridge the gap to the other. There was some evidence for his position if you knew anything about the computing culture in the Cupertino area in those days, especially at Tymshare where I was working at the time. Tymshare had a profitable business going, selling dial-up access to their mainframes for $30/hour. They knew about these newfangled microcomputers, but one thing they definitely knew was that they didn't want to get involved in them. Because if they did, the microcomputers could turn into a threat to their mainframe business. And you know, it turned out they were right! The microcomputers were a threat to their business, but they didn't get in on it. Tymshare wasn't the only company like this. There were several little timesharing companies in the Bay Area, and they all must have looked like dinosaurs to anyone who was playing around with microprocessors. I had told Steve in our first conversation that I was working at Tymshare, so really the most straightforward explanation is not that he was negotiating, but that he thought I was just one of those dinosaurs.