On January 22, 1984, the Los Angeles Raiders crushed the Washington Redskins, 38-9, to win Super Bowl XVIII.
Who was the game's MVP? (Marcus Allen). Did you remember? No.
What famous TV ad ran during the Super Bowl XVIII? (Apple's "1984" ad for the Macintosh, directed by Ridley Scott and not-so-subtly at IBM.) Everyone remembers this.
The next weekend I went to see the Macintosh in a Macy's department store. I was immediately struck by the typography fonts "“ "New York" and "Geneva" were two I recall. Wow — you could chose your font! You could size the the fonts to your liking! As an advertising copywriter, I found this idea intoxicating and liberating. No longer would I be chained to the illiterate jerk in our office who spec’d the typography.
I bought my first Mac in May, 1985. For $2,495 it sported a whopping 512 kilobits of internal memory and had no hard disk drive. I then ordered a copy of Aldus PageMaker, the first available desktop publishing program to run on the Mac. My serial number was 446. The underpowered Mac was so slow it took many minutes just to turn one page of a PageMaker document. But I was in business, a publisher! Free at last to set my own type.
In 1987 I went all in "“ literally, with all the money I had. I bought a Mac II (which cost $5,500 with a 20-megabyte hard drive and large monochrome monitor), an Apple Laserwriter ($6,700, though I purchased one in a parking lot from an Apple employee who had bought it from the Apple employee store for $3,700 and sold it to me for $4,200), QuarkXpress ($995), and some Adobe fonts. That's about $30,000 in today's Bernanke Bucks. That is a lot of money now, and it was then — all I had.
A year later, a friend named Tony Perkins and I started Upside magazine, Silicon Valley's first periodical covering tech startups and venture capital. We launched Upside with four Macs, two laser printers, one full-time employee, and two college interns. (One of the interns was a Stanford Law School student named Peter Thiel. That Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal and early Facebook investor.)
Upside became insanely (but all-too briefly) profitable in the late 1990s, along with other tech and Internet magazines "“ Wired, Red Herring, Industry Standard, Business 2.0. (Only Wired is left now.) By then I was at Forbes, Steve Forbes having recruited me to join his company and start a tech magazine of its own, called Forbes ASAP. We launched Forbes ASAP in 1992 using the Mac as our production platform, which took some explaining to the guys in New York.
Here in 2011 I am still at Forbes, the best company I could have ever worked for, writing today's post on a MacBook Pro.
Steve Jobs changed my life for the better. He’ll be in my prayers tonight.
See Also:
What Happens To Apple’s Stock If Steve Can't Return?
Apple Is More Than Just Steve Jobs
The Medical Mismeasure Of Steve Jobs
Jobs, Apple and the Strategic Landscape
Secretive Steve Jobs In His Own Words, For 119 Pages
Media Should Stop Invading Steve Jobs' Medical Privacy
Complete Coverage: Steve Jobs
's Categories: Business, Digital Rules, Op/Ed, byline=Rich Karlgaard
Steve Jobs: American Living Treasure Award. WHY NOT President Obama?
May I suggest:
1. We have witnessed one of the most exceptional lives ever created in America.
2. Steve Jobs should have been designated, an American Living Treasure long ago.
3. Steve Jobs would never search for an honor, another reason the honor is richly deserved.
4. The Steve Jobs life story is truly remarkable, and should be made Disney productions into a New TV Miniseries or Movie.
5. Steve Jobs has prepared the Mac world for life beyond his lifetime, and hand picking Tim Cook says a lot. We shall support Tim Cook just as ardently.
6. Thanks Steve. Short the AAPL at your own peril.
7. As Mark Twain said however in reading his own obit: “My Demise has been greatly exaggerated”. We hope for a few more good months or years for Steve.
Why not President Obama announce to the World, Steve Jobs a Living Treasure of USA?
You must be logged in to post a comment
Log in with your Forbes account
Create an account to join Forbes now
I am the publisher of Forbes, have written a column for the magazine since 1998, and have blogged for Forbes.com since 2005. In 2004 I wrote a book, Life 2.0, which was a Wall Street Journal business best-seller. I travel 200,000 miles a year on the speech circuit and am regular guest on Fox News Channel's Forbes on Fox and a semi-regular one on CNBC's Kudlow & Co. Steve Forbes recruited me in 1992 to start Forbes ASAP, a technology magazine. Before that, I had co-founded two companies (Garage Technology Ventures, in 1997; and Upside Magazine in 1988) and one civic organization (the 6,500-member Churchill Club in 1985). I am currently an outside director for two tech companies: Intelius, a search provider; and Flow Mobile, a broadband wireless company.
Read Full Article »