Early Apple Employee Bill Fernandez Shares Details on Steve Jobs, Creation of the Apple II, and More

[laurim]

We're talking about two differnt things. He denied stock options to a longtime friend who was instrumental in tbe creation of Apple. Thats a royally dickish move.
Yet ... snce he was polite to you on a single suoerficial chance encounter, you declare him to be a good guy.
Thats great you met him once, and a fine little story to tell, but hardly makes you a judge of who the real Steve Jobs was.

It's amusing and weird all you people who weren't there and didn't know Jobs trying to tell OTHER people their perspective of how Jobs was as a person is wrong because THEY don't know him. The article said the guy left because he found the work boring. If he found it boring, it meant he wasn't excited about what Jobs and Woz was doing so why would he get stock if he literally wasn't that invested in Apple in his mind? Seems like he was the classic type of employee who doesn't distinguish himself and therefore finds himself in a dead end job. Since NONE of us were actually there, it's impossible to judge whether he rightly deserved stock and since no one who wasn't an engineer got stock, it wasn't personal.

If you read the full length article, you would know that Fernandez left Apple for another computer startup and also didn't rise there, left THAT job, stopped doing technology altogether and left the country, came back to the USA and ask Jobs for a job and Jobs gave him a position on the Macintosh team. If Jobs was that big of a jerk, why would he rehire a guy who quit on him? On the Mac team, he was a jack of all trades so it wasn't like he had a central role Jobs needed. He was basically a worker bee, valuable yes, but not pivotal.

 

[Truefan31]

Again, giving people stock options wasn't really a "thing" until the '90s. I'm going to bet that's around when you were born so you're not really wrapping your head around the rest of it.

Even if that's the case the fact that woz had to give him his own shares is telling. Nothing from jobs at that point is telling. Even if it wasn't normal to do it initially, you can make it right later.

 

[laurim]

Even if that's the case the fact that woz had to give him his own shares is telling. Nothing from jobs at that point is telling. Even if it wasn't normal to do it initially, you can make it right later.

Well aren't we all just perfect when it's not our company, huh? If he made an exception and gave stock to him, a short-term, hourly employee who by and large just did basic tasks (one thing he took over was a job Job's sister was doing and was being paid more for so he was cheaper), how many other people would be unhappy then?

Woz didn't HAVE to give away his stock. That's just the kind of guy he is. Definitely not the kind of guy you would want in charge of your company's finances, though. He wanted to all his stuff to be open source from the beginning. Apple wouldn't exist if he had been in charge.

 

[Designer Dale]

Are you explaining to us what Japan circa 1970 was like, or what his house was like?

The user I quoted was making references to modern day Japan:

Because, frankly, it's extremely unusual to find a house decorated that way (aside from tatami mats) here in Japan. In fact, such a place would look just as out of place in modern Japan as it would in Silicon Valley!

I was just reminding him that we were referring to a different decade for the article.

Dale

 

[Truefan31]

Early Apple Employee Bill Fernandez Shares Details on Steve Jobs, Creation of...

Well aren't we all just perfect when it's not our company, huh? If he made an exception and gave stock to him, a short-term, hourly employee who by and large just did basic tasks (one thing he took over was a job Job's sister was doing and was being paid more for so he was cheaper), how many other people would be unhappy then?

Woz didn't HAVE to give away his stock. That's just the kind of guy he is. Definitely not the kind of guy you would want in charge of your company's finances, though. He wanted to all his stuff to be open source from the beginning. Apple wouldn't exist if he had been in charge.

This wasn't some unknown off the street employee. This was a childhood friend, an integral part of how Apple came to be. And no growth or even stock options? Woz is a nice guy, that's the point. He gave his own shares to him because it was the right thing to do, yet his other childhood friend offered nothing for stock. Hence my point that's a d**k move. He was employee #1.

You don't always have to be a d**k to manage finances. You take care of people that helped you, especially one that was with you in the beginning. You act like jobs offering him stock would be some financial disaster. Bill gates was generous with his stock offerings and other charitable endeavors, I guess he sucks running a company too huh?

Again the point is that jobs made a d**k move not offering stock to a founding employee and childhood friend.

 

[WardC]

I had a very similar experience in 2002 at the Tokyo Expo. (One of his last)

I told him that I ran a Mac Lab at a Tokyo International School. He and his colleagues were quite pleased to hear that. He even teased me about something I said. But in a very pleasant way.

On another note, I must say, I shook his hand just 10 minutes before he was to make a 90 minute presentation in front of about 5000 people and he was cool as a cuke.

I was impressed and also very happy I met him before the black cloud came to settle over his health. I saw him again at the WWDC 2006 in SF. His weight was all anyone could talk about. But he was still charming despite it all.

Yes, I shook his hand as well. Basically I stormed the stage after the Macworld 2000 keynote at around 10:00 in the morning....broke through a crowd of journalists (all wanted a question with him)...and I got right up front of the crowd...worked my way right near Steve. He had his back to me and was giving a short interview, then he finished and turned completely around and was right in front of me so I said "Steve! My name is Ward C...I'm 17 years old...I'm from Fort Worth, Texas, and this is my first trip to San Francisco"...and so I got to meet him and talked about what was in my previous post above.

So that was January 2000 when I was 17 years old, and I am 32 now. I was lucky to get to go to Macworld, I talked my Dad into letting me go...Apple and Macintosh were my passion for many years and I had always wanted to go to a Macworld Expo.

Yeah...so it WAS a big deal because Steve Jobs is known as the genius computer guru/businessman who founded Apple, and came back to save the company and build it back to the richest and most respected company on Earth...you could say he was one of most successful Entrepreneurs to ever walk the face of the earth. And I realize now how fortunate/lucky I am to have met him (while he was still alive). Nobody will ever have that chance again. And not many Apple fans outside of Cupertino have probably met him either.

So you are very lucky like myself to have had the chance to meet him...and we both know he's not pure evil or an arrogant SOB like some people here think he was....glad to hear you agree with me on that.

 

[kdarling]

Yeah...so it WAS a big deal because Steve Jobs is known as the genius computer guru/businessman who founded Apple,

Steve Jobs was not a computer guru. Not even close.

He could not design circuits, nor did he ever program a single line of code.

However, he was good at knowing what common users wanted, being one himself. And he was great at selling his vision of that, and taking credit for stuff he paid others to do.

 

[EightBitJoe]

I'm sorry, but, the first few lines of this article are typical Apple myth and revisionism. The Apple II was not the only serious game in town. The RadioShack TRS-80 family outsold it by a wide margin for quite some time, and the Commodore PET/CBM series did better globally. Each machine had its drawbacks and features that trumped the others', and none was perfect. The PET had no bitmap, but it had lowercase letters. Apple II had bitmap color (just barely), but the PET and TRS-80 came with their own monitors. The PET came with a reliable tape drive, but the Apple II had more robust internal expansion. There were trade-offs on each system.)

I'm sick and tired of people attributing the creation of the personal computer as we know it to Apple and Woz. Yes, Apple's very top-of-mind now. Yes, Woz's designs were brilliant (no more than, say, the work of Chuck Peddle, Bill Seiler, Steve Leininer, Lee Felsenstein, etc...).Yes, we get where this attention is coming from.

It’s one thing to base who was first on press release dates and the like. It’s even understandable to emotionally favor your own first computer over those of the competition’s. In the end, “firsts” are immaterial. But to say that the Apple II was the Wright Flyer I, comparing everything else to a “shoddy little plane” is the hight of arrogance, ignorance, and bald deception.

 

[Poisonivy326]

I'm sorry, but, the first few lines of this article are typical Apple myth and revisionism. The Apple II was not the only serious game in town. The RadioShack TRS-80 family outsold it by a wide margin for quite some time, and the Commodore PET/CBM series did better globally. Each machine had its drawbacks and features that trumped the others', and none was perfect. The PET had no bitmap, but it had lowercase letters. Apple II had bitmap color (just barely), but the PET and TRS-80 came with their own monitors. The PET came with a reliable tape drive, but the Apple II had more robust internal expansion. There were trade-offs on each system.)

I'm sick and tired of people attributing the creation of the personal computer as we know it to Apple and Woz. Yes, Apple's very top-of-mind now. Yes, Woz's designs were brilliant (no more than, say, the work of Chuck Peddle, Bill Seiler, Steve Leininer, Lee Felsenstein, etc...).Yes, we get where this attention is coming from.

It’s one thing to base who was first on press release dates and the like. It’s even understandable to emotionally favor your own first computer over those of the competition’s. In the end, “firsts” are immaterial. But to say that the Apple II was the Wright Flyer I, comparing everything else to a “shoddy little plane” is the hight of arrogance, ignorance, and bald deception.

Well, it's like this. There were internet search engines before September 15, 1997. Altavista anyone? I still remember being in college and hearing about this website from Stanford with the clever name. I didn't think anything of it at the time. But in everyone's collective conscious, Google became the first huge web-based behemoth -- I don't remember when I first started using Google maps, Google translate, gmail, Google images, blah blah blah ... I just know that before Google the internet was a somewhat fragmented place and then this company just sort of took over the world. In everyones' collective memory the Apple II was the first really successful PC.

I think this article is informative because it shows in a way why Jobs was successful in the early days. He surrounded himself with talented but low-key people who were not good businessmen. For the most part, these early Apple employees have faded into private lives, and that's how I suspect they want it. Woz occasionally makes an appearance now and then but he's also essentially a private person. This allowed Jobs to become the face of the company, and such a dominant figure.

 

[kdarling]

In everyones' collective memory the Apple II was the first really successful PC.

It wasn't even close.

The TRS-80, and later the Commodores and Ataris, are what brought home computing to the masses. They were far more affordable and available.

By the end of 1978, Apple had sold just over 8,000 Apple II computers, whereas over 250,000 TRS-80s had been sold.



By the time the Apple II finally started selling pretty well, the IBM PC came in and took over nearly the entire market.

 

[Retired Cat]

Early Apple Employee Bill Fernandez Shares Details on Steve Jobs, Creation of...

Woz seems like a solid guy.

Ok. He was employee #1. He introduced woz to jobs. They were childhood friends. It's a d**k move to not offer him a slice of the company. If he left after 18 months there's a reason. No growth, no options. It's messed up. If it wasn't then woz wouldn't have to give him his own shares.

I will have to disagree with some of the scathing comments above, from people who have never met Steve or ever even talked to him!



I have met Steve, and talked with him. I met him at Macworld Expo 2000 after he gave the keynote address...I broke through the crowds of media reporters, made my way to the front of the stage because I wanted to get a chance to meet him. When he was done talking to a reporter, he turned right around, and was right in front of me -- so...I introduced myself to him...



He was actually very friendly. He welcomed me to San Francisco, and said "I'm glad you could make it out here. This is a wonderful city." I told him that I was the Vice President of my local MUG and he told me "It's great to have young people like you who are interested in technology, We need more young people like you..." I told him about how we got my Dad his first computer, a Bondi Blue iMac and that he absolutely loves it. I told him about my computers, PowerMac G4 and that I was very impressed by the new designs since he became CEO.



Overall, he was more than kind, very friendly, and cordial. He even was smiling and joking around. Not a rude, arrogant man at all.



The thing is...Steve took business and his company seriously. He demanded excellence. He demanded things be done right, the right way. If it wasn't right, it wasn't right, and it wasn't good enough. He was brutal to employees, but only if they were not meeting expectations or performing up to exactly 100% -- because he demanded 100% at all times, and for the products that Apple developed to be on a level of sheer greatness...



And, that is why Apple is where it is today. If you accept mediocre and make mediocre products, you will be remembered as a mediocre company. And Steve wanted Apple to be remembered as the best there is...the best of the best.



So, please...do not go saying profane things about Steve. The truth is he was two different people entirely...the Steve at work at Apple and the man you meet on the street or at a coffee shop....Steve was not a bad person. I know this firsthand...he wasn't. So stop with all this.

I think we all should keep in mind that people can mellow as they get older and wiser.

Steve Jobs in 2000 was not the same man as Steve Jobs in 1980. By all accounts Steve was a mess in the early 80's. The experience of being booted from Apple and having to spend a decade in other ventures changed him. Arguably it's what allowed Steve to evolve and then save Apple when he returned.

I've met Woz, and I can believe he would give shares to deserving employees who otherwise might go unrecognized for their contributions to Apple. Woz is a kind, funny fellow and cared about others. He was an engineering genius in his day, but he needed Jobs to run the deal making end of their venture. I give both of them a lot of credit for their unique contributions to the company in the early days.

 

[monster620ie]

I enjoyed reading Woz's biography more than Job's. Obviously they are totally different kinds of people. It was a very kind act of Woz to do what he did for employee #3. Speaks a lot about Woz's as a person. Wish there were more people like that in the world.

 

[ChrisA]

It would have been really fun to work for those companies back then. Too bad it can never happen again. You can't just build smartphones in your garage. ...

You missed the entire point. The NEW company builds things that don't yet exist. So yes you could start a new company in your own house. You'd build something that is not yet invented.

OK how about a voice controlled interface to a surveillance camera network where you can ask it what it saw? yes that is well past current technology but YOU could figure it out and market it. The next Apple will not be making computers or smart phones Maybe a "smart hearing aid" that remembers what you hear and you can ask it later about things you heard but forgot and it tells you. Or send the sound ample you your buddies so they can hear it also.

OK those are not great ideas but you get the point, new companies make new stuff. Don't say "everything has already been invented."

 

[Tech198]

This looks like a Commodore 128 machine. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Commodore_128_002.jpg

 

[Mike Boreham]

I enjoyed reading Woz's biography more than Job's.

Which book was that? "I, Woz" ? (his autobiography) or is there another you recommend?

Thanks

 

[CFreymarc]

That was kind of Woz to give some of his shares to other people involved in the early days of Apple.

Woz gained massive Karma points for this. Jobs had some very strong opinions of some of the second rank "garage crew" not having the chops to grow with the company and hence no stock options.

The question you always have to ask when giving out stock options is, when this person cashes in, how will they use the money? There is an assumed rule in Silicon Valley that when you have a big score, you should reinvest most of it into new ventures and never "take the money and run."

Jobs, felt that several of the early Apple crew would run with the money and not keep the Silicon Valley game going. Hence, why he didn't give out options.

Now with the secondary "Woz-care" how many of these that Woz gave options to did invest back in the industry? Was it all blown in whiskey and women or just a part of it?

 

[CFreymarc]

So Apple employee #1, didn't get stocks? What does that say about Steve?

He is a good judge of character.

 

[Ubuntu]

ENOUGH with Jobs!!! The man was such a tool. Why do we still talk about him years after his demise. STEVE IS DEAD. D.E.A.D. Gone forever!!!

You don't talk about anyone after they've passed away?

 

[thekeyring]

It would have been really fun to work for those companies back then. Too bad it can never happen again. You can't just build smartphones in your garage. It requires million dollar factory lines with immensely small parts. There are all of these agreements that must be signed and most minimum orders are incredibly huge. There will never be another Wozniak-like character tinkering in a garage because the barrier to entry for technology is too high. You can't compete. You'd have to invent something completely different from silicon that you could easily produce yourself. Good luck with that! The industry is moving towards nano-scale graphene and I'd like to see anyone make that in their garage.

Thank goodness Steve and Woz didnt think like this.

 

[Bobby Corwen]

Like someone said, Woz sacrificing his shares was a passive aggressive thing towards Jobs.

It was self righteous intent.

Jobs was always the living legend in the spotlight and Woz was just the grunt who was passed up by the complexities of tech. Today there are thousands of engineers way beyond the intelligence capacity of Woz. He is nothing special, not worth celebrating or emulating.

Steve however was the most revolutionary salesman of this era and the history of tech. Immense power of will that is inspirational.

Woz is just insecure and has that insipid low brow underdog emotional immaturity. The innocent everyman worker ants are better than the King right?

 

[SirCheese]

Like someone said, Woz sacrificing his shares was a passive aggressive thing towards Jobs.

It was self righteous intent.

Jobs was always the living legend in the spotlight and Woz was just the grunt who was passed up by the complexities of tech. Today there are thousands of engineers way beyond the intelligence capacity of Woz. He is nothing special, not worth celebrating or emulating.

Steve however was the most revolutionary salesman of this era and the history of tech. Immense power of will that is inspirational.

Woz is just insecure and has that insipid low brow underdog emotional immaturity. The innocent everyman worker ants are better than the King right?

And yet, Jobs was nothing special either. And a living legend? Maybe in his own mind.

 

[Truefan31]

Like someone said, Woz sacrificing his shares was a passive aggressive thing towards Jobs.

It was self righteous intent.

Jobs was always the living legend in the spotlight and Woz was just the grunt who was passed up by the complexities of tech. Today there are thousands of engineers way beyond the intelligence capacity of Woz. He is nothing special, not worth celebrating or emulating.

Steve however was the most revolutionary salesman of this era and the history of tech. Immense power of will that is inspirational.

Woz is just insecure and has that insipid low brow underdog emotional immaturity. The innocent everyman worker ants are better than the King right?

U drinking the koolaid man. You act like jobs didn't have major flops.

Woz giving their first employee stock was the right thing to do, an act of appreciation. Jobs offering nothing was a d**k move.

 

[SirCheese]

U drinking the koolaid man. You act like jobs didn't have major flops.

Woz giving their first employee stock was the right thing to do, an act of appreciation. Jobs offering nothing was a d**k move.

Jobs even screwed Woz out of money when they first started. I really don't think Apple would have been around if not for Woz, he was the true genius behind Apple in the beginning. Jobs was a snake-oil salesman, nothing more.

 

[mdelvecchio]

It wasn't even close.

The TRS-80, and later the Commodores and Ataris, are what brought home computing to the masses. They were far more affordable and available.

By the end of 1978, Apple had sold just over 8,000 Apple II computers, whereas over 250,000 TRS-80s had been sold.

View attachment 518158

By the time the Apple II finally started selling pretty well, the IBM PC came in and took over nearly the entire market.

the apple ii was in production for 17 years. the TRS only four. thus it's fair to say that it was one of the first most-popular PCs in history and more popular and successful than any Tandy.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_series

 

[mdelvecchio]

ENOUGH with Jobs!!! The man was such a tool. Why do we still talk about him years after his demise. STEVE IS DEAD. D.E.A.D. Gone forever!!!

if I didnt know better, I'd think you were trolling. but ok assuming you aren't -- Jobs transformed several product categories and entire industries. much like Henry Ford or Walt Disney, whom we also still discuss to this day.