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Comment by rmason | Hacker News Reader

Steve Wozniak was the commencement speaker yesterday at Michigan State. I had the pleasure of attending a meeting he held with engineering students after the commencement.

The biggest surprise I had was that the Woz was on the Macintosh team before Jobs was involved. He said that he, Jef Raskin and a few other engineers wanted to create a low cost version of the Lisa.

It was only after Jobs was banished from the Lisa team/building that he took over the Macintosh team. Also interestingly even though he was a co-founder Woz left the impression that the team leader was initially Raskin. I thought Jobs had founded the Macintosh team.

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The Macintosh was a very different computer before Jobs got in there and took the reins. If you can spare six hours, folklore.org has an incredible collection of stories detailing early Apple. You won't be able to stop reading.

Yes from what I've read it was initially closer to what later became the Newton.

Here's a link to the commencement address (13 minutes) if anyone wants to give a listen http://ht.ly/4P7M1

Please don't use URL shorteners on HN. If the URL is long (that one was not) you can use the footnote notation[1].

[1] http://spartanpodcast.com/?p=1510

Thanks for this! Fell asleep reading this last night and can't put it down this morning. This could be bad as I just tore down my engine last night and kinda need to put it back together today. Oh well.

What's interesting to me is just how early Jobs was booted off the Lisa project, way back in 1980 before Apple's IPO. That's what led to Steve's involvement in Raskin's Macintosh project, and what allowed it to move beyond the stage of research project.

It's been suggested that the Macintosh project was allowed to continue at Apple because it kept Steve Jobs out of everyone's hair.

Fast forward four years to 1984, the Lisa appears to be a failure and the newly-released Mac appears to be a big success (at least initially). The Lisa and Mac teams are reorganized into a single group called "Apple 32", with Steve Jobs at the helm of this new group. During the initial meeting of the new group, Steve's first words to the Lisa people were "You guys really fucked up."

Even more interesting, the guy who took over the Lisa project from Steve in 1980, John Couch, returned to Apple a few years ago as VP of Education Sales. He appears in the top-left corner of the org chart in the linked article.

Maybe you already know this link, but it's worth mentioning anyway:

— www.folklore.org

The whole story of the Macintosh, told by the people who built the Macintosh. A great read.

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