Return to the Little Kingdom Read Free

the founders, and find out how their personalities came to affect the company. To a lesser extent I also wanted to come to terms with the conventional questions: Why? when? and how? “In the right place at the right time” clearly explains part of Apple’s success but dozens, if not hundreds, of other people who started microcomputer companies have failed.
    For some months I enjoyed a carefully circumscribed freedom at Apple. I was allowed to attend meetings and watch progress on a new computer. But the company I saw in 1982 was very different from the little business that filled a garage in 1977. Consequently, I have scattered these corporate snapshots throughout the book. This isn’t an authorized portrait of Apple Computer nor was it ever supposed to be a definitive history. Apart from documents that were leaked, I had no access to corporate papers. The name of one character who appears briefly in the narrative, Nancy Rogers, has been changed, and some of the people mentioned in the text have either left the company or assumed different titles. I discovered quickly enough that writing a book about a growing company in an industry that changes with dizzying rapidity has at least one similarity to the production of a computer. Both could always be better if every new and enticing development were included. But like an engineer I had to bolt down and ship. So this is about Apple’s road to its first one billion dollars.

“Can we ship your party?” Jobs asked.
    A large set of French windows rinsed the California sun. The filtered light, which had the long wash of fall, played along a rumpled line of suitcases, garment bags, backpacks, and guitar cases. The owners of the luggage were seated around a stone fire-place in generous crescents of straight-backed chairs. Most of the sixty or so faces fell into that blind gap that camouflages those between their late teens and early thirties. About a third were women. Most wore androgynous uniforms of jeans, T-shirts, tank tops, and running shoes. There were a few paunches, some occasional patches of gray hair, and more than the average run of spectacles. Some cheeks were unshaven and a few were still swollen with sleep. Several blue-brimmed polyester baseball caps carried the silhouette of an apple with a bite gouged out of the side and, in black lettering, the words MACINTOSH DIVISION.
    At the front of the group, sitting on the edge of a steel table, was a tall, slight figure in his late twenties. He was dressed in a checked shirt, bleached jeans, and scuffed running shoes. A slim digital watch ran around his left wrist. His long, delicate fingers had nails that were chewed to the quick, while glossy black hair was carefully shaped and sideburns crisply trimmed. He blinked a pair of deep, brown eyes as though his contact lenses were stinging. He had a pale complexion and a face divided by a thin, angular nose. The left side was soft and mischievous while the right had a cruel, sullen tint. He was Steven Jobs, chairman and co-founder of Apple Computer and general manager of the Macintosh Division.
    The group waiting for Jobs to speak worked for Apple’s youngest division. They had been bused from the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, across a range of pine-covered hills for a two-day retreat at a resort built for weekenders on the edge of the Pacific. Sleeping quarters were wooden condominiums with stiff-necked chimneys. The wood had been bleached gray by the wind and the spray and the buildings were set among sand dunes and spiky grass. Collected together in the clear morning light, the group formed the footloose confection typical of a young computer company. Some were secretaries and laboratory technicians. A few were hardware and software engineers. Others worked in marketing, manufacturing, finance, and personnel. A couple wrote instruction manuals. Some had recently joined Apple and were meeting their colleagues for the first time. Others had transferred