Would you like to know how the Mac first came about in Apple? Thankfully to a team of talented people and a person to back them up, some of us got to purchase and use it during the 90s.

Even with Steve’s talent and gift to nag and force a group of talented people to come out with great products, you’d still need the actual talent to be working the circuits behind the scene. So let us venture a bit into the story of Jef Raskin, one of the brilliant R&D engineers who helped set the building blocks of the Apple empire. A computer scientist at heart and a former professor at the University of California at San Diego, Raskin had the passion to create a machine that is small and inexpensive, something the market has yet to lay their eyes upon.

Jef Raskin during his days with Apple

With his fire and urge to realize his own product, Raskin quickly gathered people with the same interest and caliber. By the end of 1979, he had produced the first prototype and like any other inventor, it had to be named. That’s when the name ‘Macintosh’ came about, it was Jef’s favorite type of apple. As Raskin saw his creation gradually revealed itself, something hit him in his head which made him had the vision to bring the Macintosh to a whole new level, he wanted it to be a self-contained item. It would be following the concept of a toaster, a product of its own without any singular attachments and that a user can just flip a switch and by its own functional to the max.

The ‘concept’ machine was getting so much internal publicity that he got the attention of genius hackers Burrell Smith and Andy Hertzfeld. Burrell was the kind that came from a self-proclaimed artist, the capability was tested and proven when he designed the Mac’s first circuit board. By the time the hardware reached a stage when it could be assembled and ready for further programming, Hertzfeld spend only a few hours during one night, he was able to bring the Mac to display images onto a screen.

Second from Left: Andy Hertzfeld and Burrell Smith

It was only until the mid 1980s when an egoistic Steve Jobs was so farfetched in his own journey of completing his product-Lisa, that Steve wanted to cancel Raskin’s R&D line and the product along with it.

“No, you can’t do this.” said Jobs.

“This is wrong. Apple needs Lisa, and this will interfere.”

So why did the Macintosh still made it to the market? It was all thanks to Scotty, the Apple president kept the R&D project alive by hiding it from its nemesis, Steve Jobs. Scotty managed to conceal the group of enthusiast at the office suite where Apple first started, at a lot behind the Good Earth restaurant on Stevens Creek Boulevard. This was proof that Scotty had vision as well, the Macintosh became one of the first products the public got to know Apple.

A successful IPO led Apple to distribute stock options to its employees, Steve however used this opportunity to demonstrate his power and reign for his company.

Having a young and handsome figure for the IPO was a good idea after all

The sweetest thing about having money and lots of it? Power. Along with that came greed, something that the co-owner was good at utilizing. With the new found wealth Steve Jobs attained after his ‘stockcapades’, he intangibly gained authority over many things in the company, one rather significant area to bring out would be the dispersion of stock options to the Apple employees. Big problems arose for Apple when Steve denied the goodies to many old timers and those who even started the company with him, the heat got worse when these people found out that new employees were getting them instead.

Bill Fernandez, one of the first employees of Apple was one of the first victims and left quite soon after the dreadful incident.

“I felt I was doing all the donkey work and that I would be a technician forever.” Fernandez eventually came back.

Programmers Chris Episona and Randy Wigginton too missed out on the pie, finally a name so profound it was shocking news to know that such figure did not garner the options. Dan Kottke who was one of Steve’s longest friends and the only one who travelled with him to India during the Atari days was overly furious over the denial and confronted Steve over the matter, where he was given this response.

“He told me to go speak to my supervisor.”

This show of authority combined with selfishness really made it hard to think whether Steve goes for people who were loyal to him, or he plainly just doesn’t care at all. The fact that Jobs was so cold hearted that even Dan could not get a few of the options, all the actions plus this made Steve the person he wanted everyone to know him as, someone who has the authority to do pretty much anything under his organization.

A massively growing Apple resorted to a re-org and for the first time it made Steve into an ‘employee’, but the other significant role he played gained quite the ‘bling’.

Globalization was the word for Apple when it hit the year 1980, the company started to gain 200 employees, then 600 and then 1000. Plants and office spaces were spanning across the world in places like Texas, Ireland, Singapore and California. Apple became so large till there was a need of an organization restructuring, a secret one that is, let’s read on to see why such a move was necessary. It was all down to Scotty and Markkula to helm the management work on reorganizing the company as they purposely omitted Steve out of it, the results were a final three divisions Apple would have.

Markkula with an early variation of the Apple II

There was the Accessories Division, Personal Computer Systems Division and lastly a Professional Office System Division for Steve Jobs’ new flagship product, Lisa. Here comes the irony, being the only product for the division, Steve was not appointed as the head of the division. Instead they gave that post to John Couch, I forgotten to mention that all of these announcements were made in an executive meeting. For the first time Steve was slapped by his own company, he was very unhappy over the Stunt those two pulled without any warnings of heads up for the co-owner. Did you see what just happened? Steve was no longer holding any management role within his power, which means he has just lost the one thing he is great at doing – managing by inspiring and infuriating a group of extraordinary people to create wonders of results.

Steve was however not left to dry completely in his sorrows, Scotty and Markkula left a seat for him after all, a seat labeled Chairman of the Board. Both of them concluded that once the public stock offering happens at the end of the year, they would like to have a young and handsome 25 year old to be in the front cover of any media. Surprisingly Steve’s fortune turned for the better on the second week of December 1980, Apple’s stock became public and sold over 4.6 million after the first hour. Over that same night, Steve Jobs was worth $215.7 million thus making him one of the youngest and richest out there in his generation. Defeating all odds in the running, Apple achieved the goal of being listed in the Fortune 500 company within 5 years where it all started with two men who didn’t even have any colleague degrees.

Millionaire in the making

Steve was rich and he knew it all too much, he was ready to accept it.

“when I was 23, I had a net worth of a million dollars. At 24, it was over ten million dollars. At 25, it was over a hundred million.”

“There are tens of thousands of people who have a net worth of more than $1 million. There are thousands of people who are worth more than $10 million. But the number who have more than $100 million gets down to 100.”