Apple announced they plan to celebrate its upcoming 50th anniversary over the course of the next few weeks by “recognizing the creativity, innovation, and impact that people around the world have made possible with Apple technology.” The company was founded on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ron Wayne, and was originally known as Apple Computer, Inc until the “computer” was dropped in January 2007.
Author David Pogue also hosted a talk event at the Computer History Museum on March 11th to coincide with the release of his new book, Apple: The First 50 Years. The event featured “guests from across the eras of Apple history, including former Apple CEO John Sculley, Senior Employee Chris Espinosa, former Senior Vice President (SVP) of Hardware Engineering Jon Rubinstein (via video), and former Chief Software Technology Officer and SVP of Software Engineering Avie Tevanian.”
Myself, I worked at Apple from the last third of the 90’s to the first third of the 2000’s (primarily the enterprise side with Mac OS X Server Rhapsody-Panther + Xserve (PowerPC G4)); I left that world of Silicon Valley (and Apple) as a “sanity check”. I do owe a lot to Apple for setting me up financially (personal investments prior to starting work there after the NeXT acquisition, compensation that included a healthy dose of employee stock options, and later additional personal investments once the iPhone was announced).
The years I was there was most definitely “living by the seat of your pants” which in hindsight, were the bits and pieces of the foundation that set the company up for future success (since the core operating system for every hardware product Apple now ships, has its roots in OS X).
Pogues book is an excellent look back (and serves as an insight to the companies DNA of looking forward); he was also allowed access to existing Apple personnel (which is not a common thing) but the thing that put a smile on my face was him speaking with a few of the earliest badged employees and setting the record straight on Jobs (being this complex person who did return much wiser from his time running NeXT and Pixar, but could still be an abrasive asshole) and reiterating what a great person Wozniak is (who couldn’t be at this event due to another speaking engagement).
We will see what events the company will have leading into April 1st (I’m just not expecting any sort of matching hardware product).
