Steve Jobs blah blah blah

1984

Apple introduced the Apple IIc computer – which was always written as Apple //c – in April 1984, exactly 3 months after the first Mac came out. The Apple //c introduction event was actually much grander and more elaborate than the Mac intro. The Mac was shown during the Apple shareholders meeting. For the Apple //c, the company put on an entire show in San Francisco called Apple II Forever.

Apple //c was a portable computer, a slimmed-down Apple //. The c was for compact. The display was a separate unit, with standard and flat panel options. The system wasn’t portable like today’s laptops. You could put it all in a big bag, but you were probably not going to unpack it and set it up on an airplane tray table.

Apple //c with flat panel display (left). The less expensive and bulkier and much less cool standard monitor is on the right. These images are taken from the original App/e //c brochure at the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/the-apple-iic

The Apple II Forever event at Moscone Center in San Francisco consisted of presentations by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Del Yocam, John Sculley, and others, followed by a mini-trade show. A bunch of us were drafted or volunteered to come up from Cupertino for a couple days to work the trade show area, showing off the new stuff to folks attending. I was pretty excited because we got to wear polo shirts and khakis instead of the usual trade show uniform of coat and tie.

The day before the event, crews were setting up the space and everybody was getting ready. Naturally I took a few minutes to wander around and see what was going on. I walked into the auditorium and there were a handful of people milling around. There on stage, rehearsing his speech, was Steve Jobs. I guess in those days, nobody thought to close the room or provide security to keep things secret from wayward employees.

This is my badge for the Apple II Forever event, where the Apple //c was introduced. The person in the picture, which was also the Apple //c logo, is holding one of the new computers. The blue ribbon identified me as an Apple employee. I guess that’s why they let me in to the auditorium early, even though I had nothing to do with the presentation. Those were the days.

I always enjoyed a Steve Jobs presentation, so I sat quietly in the back row and watched Steve rehearse. His slides started with a review of the Mac, talked about the IBM PC, then introduced the new Apple //c. He was not filled with energy. He seemed bored by the whole exercise of rehearsal. At one point he stopped even reading through the slides. Instead, as each slide appeared, he would read the first word or two and then say out loud “blah blah blah” before moving to the next slide. When the last slide came up, it was blank, and Steve casually said “I’ll think of something great to say here.” And then he left.

I thought, oh no! He’s doesn’t really care about the Apple //c, and it shows. This is going to be a disaster!

Photo from the San Francisco Chronicle showing Steve Jobs with a slide. Generally, I think you want the bars in a bar chart to show some trend or comparison rather than a single value. Steve and Apple would get much better at this sort of thing in later years.

The next day we took our seats in the auditorium for Steve’s presentation. I was dreading it because of what I had seen at the rehearsal. The program started and Steve walked on. But this time, he was ON. The Steve Jobs charisma was radiating out from the stage in full force. He talked up the Mac’s success so far and told us why the IBM PC didn’t really matter. Then he introduced the Apple //c brilliantly. When he got to his last slide, it was still blank. Referring to Macintosh, Apple //, and IBM PC, he said dramatically “And now, there are three standards in personal computing - and Apple has two of them!” The crowd roared. He had thought of something great to say.

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Later that day during the trade show part of the event, a magnitude 6.2 earthquake hit Morgan Hill, California, about 70 miles from San Francisco. We felt it strongly at the convention center. The floor rolled and big hanging lights swayed, but there was no damage and nobody was hurt. When the shaking ended, we all felt relieved and a little giddy. And soon the joke was going around: “Wow, Steve arranged for an earthquake to happen at Apple II Forever!”