Posted on Tuesday 13 September 2005 - Popularity: unranked
Folklore.org is currently collecting stories from the time the original Macintosh computer was built. Many of the stories are written by the people that have worked at Apple on the Macintosh project back in the day. There are a lot of nice anecdotes about Steve, Woz, Andy and all the other crazy guys that brought us the Mac. Some examples:
“No, you’re just wasting your time with that! Who cares about the Apple II? The Apple II will be dead in a few years. Your OS will be obsolete before it’s finished. The Macintosh is the future of Apple, and you’re going to start on it now!”.
With that, he walked over to my desk, found the power cord to my Apple II, and gave it a sharp tug, pulling it out of the socket, causing my machine to lose power and the code I was working on to vanish. He unplugged my monitor and put it on top of the computer, and then picked both of them up and started walking away. “Come with me. I’m going to take you to your new desk.”
I thought Bud was surely exaggerating, until I observed Steve in action over the next few weeks. The reality distortion field was a confounding melange of a charismatic rhetorical style, an indomitable will, and an eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand. If one line of argument failed to persuade, he would deftly switch to another. Sometimes, he would throw you off balance by suddenly adopting your position as his own, without acknowledging that he ever thought differently.
Amazingly, the reality distortion field seemed to be effective even if you were acutely aware of it, although the effects would fade after Steve departed. We would often discuss potential techniques for grounding it, but after a while most of us gave up, accepting it as a force of nature.
“I’ve got lots of software experience”, he declared, “in fact I’ve personally written over 350,000 lines of code.”
I thought that was pretty impressive, although I wondered how it was calculated. I couldn’t begin to honestly estimate how much code I have written, since there are too many different ways to construe things.
That evening, I went out to dinner with my friend Rich Williams, who started at Apple around the same time that I did. Rich had a great sense of humor. I told him about the interview that I did in the afternoon, and how Bob Belleville claimed to have written over 350,000 lines of code.
“Well, I bet he did”, said Rich, “but then he discovered loops!”
Much more at the site, but be warned, it’s hard to stop reading after you’ve started, so maybe wait with a visit till you’ve finished your current project. 
Fredi
