by Adam Fisher
An oral history about Silicon Valley gleaned from over 200 interviews, chopped up and re-organized by topic, making it read like a group chat.
The result is an insider's perspective, racy and insightful, its only drawback the number of times you'll have to refer to the 28-page Cast of Characters at the back of the book. Published in 2018, it logs in at 494 pages and includes 16 pages of colour photos.
Apple and Steve Jobs get the most coverage with seven chapters, Atari is next with three, and Google with two. Adding a gossipy flavour are mentions of George Lucas, Douglas Adams, William Gibson, Joss Wheedon, Wavy Gravy, R.U. Serious, the Duke of URL, and the names of people who attended the Stanford memorial service for Steve Jobs (and those who didn't).
Xerox PARC
"Everybody says Steve Jobs ripped off Xerox PARC. He didn't, Bill Gates did."
Atari
In 1981 the company's gross was more than the entire movie business in Hollywood. At one point they had 10,000 employees but only 200 by 1984.
"It was like the fall of Saigon. People were dropping equipment into the trunks of their cars from the second story."
Apple
The Apple I was "mostly made with parts from Atari."
General Magic
Despite the company's failure, "iPhones, social media, electronic commerce, it all came out of Magic."
Pixar
"But the Disney execs kept pushing us to make these [Toy Story] characters more edgy.... And so we ran into story problems along the way.... The characters, especially Woody, were just repellent. Woody was just awful, awful, awful!"
Wired
"Everyone was sleeping with everyone at Wired."
Netscape
"All of us who worked at Netscape in the early days were terrible to each other. We were all really abrasive people. We did most of our negotiation by screaming and insulting."
Cyberculture
“... about twenty-five pianos stacked against a part of the freeway, and at one point the pianos caught on fire and the Highway Patrol shut down the freeway because the flames got high enough that they were coming over the top of the freeway, fifty feet above us.”
eBay
Items offered for sale included a kidney, a rocket launcher, and someone's virginity.
“You show up in a suit? You're not getting hired.”
Napster
“Napster was the first case where you've got young founders, and the VCs came in with the 'adult supervision,' and it was an utter disaster.”
iPod
It “freed Apple from the PC wars.”
“Zuckerberg's first business cards read, I'm CEO...bitch.”
iPhone
“We're not making a phone. We're making a laptop killer.”
“It's as if they drove a clown car into a gold mine -- and fell in.”
Steve Jobs
His last words: “Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow!”
