Mockeries of Rockeries

Steve Jobs story is great! Here’s the story told by Kotick himself:

“Steve Jobs heard about us as we were making software for Apple II hardware. He called me and said “Steve Jobs calling you…” and I was thinking it was actually one of those kids I was growing up with in Long Island and that is not even a good joke. And it was like in 1983.

I wanted to say “Hi, I’m Oscar Robertson. I was a big Nix fan, and he started to telling me that I need go to Cupertino and he really wants to talk about the software we are making, and I go. He showed us the prototype of a Macintosh. I never forgot this moment when he unzips this little blue bag and he takes it out and turn it on to see the screen with “Hello” on it, and I thought “this is unbelievable, this is going to change the computing, and I still get this <…> and then he says “show yours.

I logged this Apple II with 64Kb floppy disk drive, and then this mouse we designed, we put it on and I show him the mouse and he looks at it and “this is a piece of shit!” And he throws it on the floor. And he says “you are going to use our mouse, and don’t ever think about using two button mouse, you are going to use one button mouse.”

<…>

“Steve Jobs said that you are going to make a software for new Apple II J, and we are going to give you a contract. So he gives us a contract and he comes to visit us in our office above Burger King. The first thing he says is how the hell you work here, like the smells of burgers comes up the elevator.”

<…>

And at the ends of the meeting, he says “do you have any vegetarian restaurant around here that we can go to the dinner. And I like “I’m sure we do but I can’t go to dinner because I have a class.” and Jobs was like “What do you mean?” and I like “I have a class” and he said “In what” and I said “It’s a history of our makeup class” and he said “What are you making up for?”

<…>

“I need to go the class”, and he said “Why do you need to go to this class?” and I said “Well… I’m in college” and he looks at me and like “What are you talking about? You have a contract to make a software for an Apple computer, we have a deadline. You can’t in the college, you are already employed and you need to work full-time, get out of college.”

And I like “I can’t, I promised to my parents to finish the college” and he is like “No, you are not finishing college, I will rip <…> this contract right now if you don’t quit college,” so I quit.