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with a standard power supply, a keyboard and screen, and a cassette tape for
long-term storage of data and programs. In addition, the computer would need
a high-level programming interface and, potentially, a range of application soft-
ware, including video games.
With this specification from Jobs, Woz set about creating the Apple II
while Jobs set about getting the plastic cases made and raising start-up money
( Fig. 8.10 ). Woz's design for the Apple II is recognized as a masterpiece of cir-
cuit design. It used fewer chips than the Altair, had good color graphics, and
was great for the interactive games that Woz loved to play. Taking a page from
the Altair playbook, Woz argued strenuously for the use of an open bus archi-
tecture with slots for expansion so that other companies could expand the
machine's capabilities in interesting ways. He also wrote a version of BASIC
for the machine. Meanwhile, Jobs had been introduced to Mike Markkula, only
thirty-four at the time but already able to retire from his job as Intel's market-
ing manager with a considerable fortune generated by his Intel stock options.
Markkula recognized the potential of the two young entrepreneurs and bought
a third of the company and helped them write a business plan and raise ven-
ture capital. The Apple II was a great success and the advertising campaign
claimed:
Fig. 8.10. When the Apple II was
released in 1977, it was promoted as “an
extraordinary computer for ordinary
people.” F3 The self-contained system,
user-friendly design, and graphical
display made Apple a leader in the first
decade of personal computing. Unlike
the earlier Apple I, for which users had
to supply essential parts such as a case
and power supply, the Apple II was
intended to be a fully realized consumer
product. Apple's marketing emphasized
its simplicity as an everyday tool for
home, work, or school.
The home computer that's ready to work, play and grow with you. . . . You'll be
able to organize, index and store data on household finances, income taxes,
recipes, your biorhythms, balance your checking account, even control your
home environment. 10
In reality, of course, there was no software to monitor your biorhythms, bal-
ance your checkbook, or perform any of these household applications at the
time; most of the software available was still only for playing games.
For application software to really take off the personal computer needed
a better and more convenient storage medium. Cassette tapes were slow and
awkward, and could not provide random access; a user had to scroll through
the tape from the beginning to reach any given point. These inconveniences
disappeared with the invention of the floppy disk by David Noble of IBM in 1971.
Floppy disks were flexible plastic disks coated with magnetic material that
could be used to store information. IBM introduced the initial eight-inch flop-
pies for loading the microcode for its mainframe computers. Alan Shugart, a
former IBM manager whose team had helped develop the floppy disk, realized
that this technology would be the ideal memory device for personal computers
and set up a company to manufacture 5¼-inch floppy disks and disk drives.
Although Apple purchased the drives from Shugart, Woz thought that the con-
trolling circuits were too complex, requiring as many as fifty chips in total for
their implementation. In another engineering tour de force , Woz redesigned the
disk drive controller using only five chips and was able to deliver a floppy disk
drive controller for the Apple II that was both simple and fast.
In 1979 the first “killer” business application for the personal computer
emerged -an application that the Xerox PARC team had missed. This was the
spreadsheet, a table used to present financial and other information. The first
spreadsheet program was VisiCalc ( Fig. 8.11 ), short for Vis ible Calc ulator. It was
the brainchild of Daniel Bricklin ( B.8.5 ), a twenty-six-year-old Harvard MBA
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