jamoche

I wrote my first Apple program in 1980, when I was 15.

I saw a prototype Mac in 1984 when Apple was sending them around to colleges to drum up interest. The college wasn't interested; I was.

I wrote my first Mac app on a Lisa, when Inside Mac was a frequently-updated looseleaf binder.

In 1991, when I was in Texas trying to get a Silicon Valley job on Macs, a computer salesguy I knew was pessimistic. "It's a Windows world," he'd say. I always answered, "So I'll change it." I ended up working for the people from Xerox who'd given that fateful demo to Steve.

I was an Apple employee very briefly. I was probably the last person to interview for Copland. I ended up in hardware instead. It wasn't a good match, but when I moved on to Javasoft it did give me the incentive to push Sun and Apple to work closer together on Java - so much closer that I had an Apple office for the next 4 years.

I was there when the reverse takeover began.

I met Steve twice (not counting the time he was knocking on the IL1 door because he'd forgotten his badge). The first time, he knew who I was already (see above).

The second time: I used to bring my Aibo robot dog in and let it run around IL1. One day someone came down and asked if I had 15 minutes free, next thing I know I'm showing off the Aibo to Steve. Now, an Aibo has two reactions when it's been tipped over and righted itself - one of them is a head shake very reminiscent of Luxo Jr. That happened to be the one it picked for Steve; he was definitely amused.