by Jason Snell
The earliest days of Apple
Harry McCracken has put together an amazing oral history of Apple’s earliest days. You should read the whole thing, but this anecdote from Chris Espinosa, who still works at Apple after all these years, is the part that made me laugh the most:
I was sitting there in the Byte Shop in Palo Alto on an Apple-1 writing BASIC programs, and this guy with a scraggly beard and no shoes came in and looked at me and conducted what I later understood to be the standard interview, which was “Who are you?” I said, “I’m Chris.” … Steve Jobs’s idea back then of recruiting was to grab a random-ass 14-year-old off the streets.
The rest is history!