Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine Page #4

and I said,

"I know logic design,

and I know electronics of televisions."

"I'll use my home TV, snake a wire in,"

and I built myself a "Pong."

Steve came back from Reed College

and saw that I had built

my own Pong game.

And so that gave him the idea

to go down to Atari.

And he went down,

and he showed them the board

and he wound up with a job.

Steve came in and said,

in typical Steve Jobs fashion,

"I'm not going to leave

until you hire me."

And I really appreciated his intensity.

He had one speed. Full on.

I had one little project

that everyone kept turning down.

It was a project called "Breakout."

And finally I said,

"Steve, hey, do this for me."

In the back of my mind,

I knew that Woz was coming over all

the time after working at HP all day,

and I thought,

"OK, I'll put Steve on the night shift."

"Woz will come over. I'll get

two Steves for the price of one."

Steve said, "Nolan Bushnell

of Atari wants another game built."

But we only had four days, Steve said.

When a game is made out of chips

and it's not a program,

four days is, like, impossible.

This is months' worth of work.

I did the entire design,

and then Steve would breadboard

my design for a little while.

We were up four days and nights

non-stop. Both got mononucleosis.

And we got "Breakout" delivered

to Atari, and they paid for it.

Later on,

Woz and I were out to dinner.

He was talking about Breakout,

and I said, "Well, you know,

you guys got paid pretty well for it."

He looked at me puzzled, and I said,

"Yeah, I mean,

you did such a good job."

"I think there was at least

a $5,000 bonus that you guys got."

So, yeah, he was paid $7,000,

and he told me that we were paid $700,

and he wrote me a check for $350.

You know, and that hurts

because we were friends.

And do you do that to a friend?

If he'd said, "I need the money,"

I would have said, "Take it all."

I was happy to be on the project.

I think that Steve...

...was very driven

and would very often take

shortcuts to achieve his goals.

Then in time we'll tell who has fell

And who's been left behind

When you go your way

And I go mine

Apple was a sitcom.

It was a 30-year sitcom.

And Steve was the main character.

This was written in December 1976.

In fact it starts out saying,

"Who's Apple," so that was very early.

He and Woz came in.

Steve had long hair down his back.

He had a Ho Chi Minh beard,

cutoffs, Birkenstocks.

And Wozniak was maybe a little bit

upscale from that, but not much.

I used to like Intel's advertising,

So I called them up one day,

and I said, "Who does your advertising?"

They said, "Well, Regis McKenna."

"What's a Regis McKenna?"

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