Part 1: On a cold winter day in Calgary, a peculiar book stood out on the airport bookstore’s shelf: The Macintosh Way by Guy Kawasaki. I was a young geophysicist and I devoured the book on the flight home to Houston. The computer industry sounded thrilling compared to the oil industry I was working in.
It seemed like a dream when, two years later, I walked into Steve’s office to ask him to give the keynote at Unix Expo in New York. It didn’t go well at first. I was nervous because I was new to the computer industry. Steve had a larger-than-life reputation.
His rapid-fire answer went something like this: “That’s INSANE! That’s a show for Unix weenies. They don’t get it. It would cost $25,000 to get me with desk and computer there. No!” And with that he pointed me to the door.
My new friends at NeXT—my co-workers—laughed because they had overheard his reaction and the response was vintage Steve.