Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made by Andy Hertzfeld Read Free Book Online
Authors: Andy Hertzfeld
corners? Can we do that now, too?"
"No, there's no way to do that. In fact it would be really hard to do, and I don't think we really need it". I think Bill was a little miffed that Steve wasn't raving over the fast ovals and still wanted more.
Steve suddenly got more intense. "Rectangles with rounded corners are everywhere! Just look around this room!". And sure enough, there were lots of them, like the whiteboard and some of the desks and tables. Then he pointed out the window. "And look outside, there's even more, practically everywhere you look!". He even persuaded Bill to take a quick walk around the block with him, pointing out every rectangle with rounded corners that he could find.
When Steve and Bill passed a no-parking sign with rounded corners, it did the trick. "OK, I give up", Bill pleaded. "I'll see if it's as hard as I thought." He went back home to work on it.
Bill returned to Texaco Towers the following afternoon, with a big smile on his face. His demo was now drawing rectangles with beautifully rounded corners blisteringly fast, almost at the speed of plain rectangles. When he added the code to LisaGraf, he named the new primitive "RoundRects". Over the next few months, roundrects worked their way into various parts of the user interface, and soon became indispensable.
Pineapple Pizza
by Andy Hertzfeld in May 1981
Our reward
When I began working on the Mac project in February 1981, there was still only one single 68000-based Macintosh prototype in existence, the initial digital board that was wire-wrapped by Burrell himself. It was now sitting in the corner of Bud Tribble's office, on one of the empty desks, attached to a small, seven-inch monitor. When powered up, the code in the boot ROM filled the screen with the word 'hello', in lower case letters and a tiny font, rendered crisply on the distinctive black-on-white display.
Dan Kottke and Brian Howard were already busy wire-wrapping more prototype boards, carefully following Burrell's drawings. In a week or so, I received the second prototype for my office, so I could work on the low level I/O routines, interfacing the disk and keyboard, while Bud worked on the mouse driver and porting Bill's graphics routines.
The next big step for the hardware was to lay out a printed circuit board. We recruited Collette Askeland, the best PC board layout technician in the company, from the Apple II group. Burrell spent a week or two working intensely with Collette, who used a specialized CAD machine located in Bandley 3 to input the topology and route the signals, eventually outputting a tape containing all the information needed to fabricate the boards.
Burrell and Brian Howard checked and rechecked the layout, which was tediously expressed as thousands of node connections, and after a day or two they decided they were ready to send it out for fabrication. We were hoping to get the first sample boards back before the weekend, but it looked like they weren't going to make it. Finally, around 4:30pm on a Friday afternoon, they arrived.
Burrell figured that it would take at least two or three hours to assemble a board, and then even longer to troubleshoot the inevitable mistakes, so it was too late to try to get one working that evening. Maybe they would come in on Saturday to get started, or maybe they'd wait until Monday morning. While they were discussing it, Steve Jobs strolled into the hardware lab, excited as usual.
"Hey, I heard that the PC boards finally arrived. Are they going to work? When will you have one working?"
Burrell explained that the boards had just arrived, and that it would take at least a couple of hours to assemble one, so they were thinking about whether to start tomorrow morning or wait until Monday.
"Monday? Are you kidding?", replied Steve, "It's your PC board, Burrell, don't you want to see if it works tonight? I'll tell you what, if you can get it to work this evening, I'll take you and anyone else who sticks around out for
"No, there's no way to do that. In fact it would be really hard to do, and I don't think we really need it". I think Bill was a little miffed that Steve wasn't raving over the fast ovals and still wanted more.
Steve suddenly got more intense. "Rectangles with rounded corners are everywhere! Just look around this room!". And sure enough, there were lots of them, like the whiteboard and some of the desks and tables. Then he pointed out the window. "And look outside, there's even more, practically everywhere you look!". He even persuaded Bill to take a quick walk around the block with him, pointing out every rectangle with rounded corners that he could find.
When Steve and Bill passed a no-parking sign with rounded corners, it did the trick. "OK, I give up", Bill pleaded. "I'll see if it's as hard as I thought." He went back home to work on it.
Bill returned to Texaco Towers the following afternoon, with a big smile on his face. His demo was now drawing rectangles with beautifully rounded corners blisteringly fast, almost at the speed of plain rectangles. When he added the code to LisaGraf, he named the new primitive "RoundRects". Over the next few months, roundrects worked their way into various parts of the user interface, and soon became indispensable.
Pineapple Pizza
by Andy Hertzfeld in May 1981
Our reward
When I began working on the Mac project in February 1981, there was still only one single 68000-based Macintosh prototype in existence, the initial digital board that was wire-wrapped by Burrell himself. It was now sitting in the corner of Bud Tribble's office, on one of the empty desks, attached to a small, seven-inch monitor. When powered up, the code in the boot ROM filled the screen with the word 'hello', in lower case letters and a tiny font, rendered crisply on the distinctive black-on-white display.
Dan Kottke and Brian Howard were already busy wire-wrapping more prototype boards, carefully following Burrell's drawings. In a week or so, I received the second prototype for my office, so I could work on the low level I/O routines, interfacing the disk and keyboard, while Bud worked on the mouse driver and porting Bill's graphics routines.
The next big step for the hardware was to lay out a printed circuit board. We recruited Collette Askeland, the best PC board layout technician in the company, from the Apple II group. Burrell spent a week or two working intensely with Collette, who used a specialized CAD machine located in Bandley 3 to input the topology and route the signals, eventually outputting a tape containing all the information needed to fabricate the boards.
Burrell and Brian Howard checked and rechecked the layout, which was tediously expressed as thousands of node connections, and after a day or two they decided they were ready to send it out for fabrication. We were hoping to get the first sample boards back before the weekend, but it looked like they weren't going to make it. Finally, around 4:30pm on a Friday afternoon, they arrived.
Burrell figured that it would take at least two or three hours to assemble a board, and then even longer to troubleshoot the inevitable mistakes, so it was too late to try to get one working that evening. Maybe they would come in on Saturday to get started, or maybe they'd wait until Monday morning. While they were discussing it, Steve Jobs strolled into the hardware lab, excited as usual.
"Hey, I heard that the PC boards finally arrived. Are they going to work? When will you have one working?"
Burrell explained that the boards had just arrived, and that it would take at least a couple of hours to assemble one, so they were thinking about whether to start tomorrow morning or wait until Monday.
"Monday? Are you kidding?", replied Steve, "It's your PC board, Burrell, don't you want to see if it works tonight? I'll tell you what, if you can get it to work this evening, I'll take you and anyone else who sticks around out for
Similar Books
Tropical Storm
Stefanie Graham
Bolitho 04 - Sloop of War
Alexander Kent
Triskellion
Will Peterson
Glasswrights' Test
Mindy L Klasky
Leviathan Wakes
James S.A. Corey
Three Rivers
Chloe T Barlow
Star Force: Evacuation (SF50)
Aer-ki Jyr
Sundance
David Fuller
Wife Wanted in Dry Creek
Janet Tronstad
The End
Salvatore Scibona