Inside the "field of distortion of reality": A former Apple employee told us how Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were his bosses (AAPL)

Joe Shelton

• Joe Shelton joined Apple in 1979, when the company had fewer than 100 employees, and his office was 30 feet from founder Steve Jobs. He was the first product manager for the original Mac.
• Shelton told us what it was like to treat Jobs' infamous "reality distortion field". In truth, says Shelton, Jobs was not the master of mind control that many people argued.
• And Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Jobs, was like a "big boy" who was hiding behind office cubes.

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Joe Shelton joined Apple on April 30, 1979, when the company had fewer than 100 employees. "I fell into it" after six years in the US Navy, he told Business Insider

"They were making something called" personal computer "and my mother said," I do not know why someone One would like a house. "But," I jumped all over the job because it seemed like it was going to be a lot of fun, "he said.

He was right. For a few years, Shelton's office was at 30 feet from that of the late founder Steve Jobs.He also worked with Steve Wozniak – the other founder of Apple who contributed most of the brilliant programming in the early years of Apple.

And, with the two Steves, he also met with a young Bill Gates, of whom Microsoft provided part of the operating system for early versions of the Apple II computer. together until Jobs and Wozniak leave the company in 1985. Shelton left the company in 1992.

Business Insider asked Shelton what it was like to face the Jobs' infamous "reality distortion field" ambitious projects even when they Had no meaning, depending on the intensity of his personality. In truth, says Shelton, Jobs was not the master of mind control that many people argued.

Shelton was initially hired as a marketing analyst but soon became the product manager of several early versions of Apple's software. , like Apple Writer, the word processing application for Apple II

In 1981, few people were writing software applications for the Apple II. Shelton was concerned that the Apple Publishing Publishing Group was promising impossible sales figures at the expense of quality. So Shelton decided to resign. "I had already written my resignation letter with my opinions on the direction of the company and I had given it to one of my chiefs, the leader of the Apple Group II and III, and I had 39, had given a copy to Mike Markkula, chairman of the board, vice president of marketing – when I came across Steve. "

Standing in the hallway at Cupertino's head office in Bandley Drive, Jobs asked: "So what are you doing?"

Joe Shelton

Shelton said, "In fact, I think we're going into the wrong direction and I leave the company. "

Jobs replied," Come with me. "

The founder took him to the Bandley 4 building and showed him what Steve's secret group was working on later: The Mac prototype .C was the first computer to use a pointer-type interface. click, with a mouse, and drop-down menus for commands and functions.

The machine was revolutionary: it scanned computers that used lines of text as commands and replaced them with a visual environment that included folders, icons and trash cans – things that people have recognized in real life.The reason your laptop looks like it's doing today is because of the Mac.

"Would you like to be the product manager?" Jobs Requested Of course, Shelton said yes.

Joe Shelton

"Everyone in the Mac Group loved Steve, "Shelton said, even on days when J obs was wrong. [19659007] A key feature of the Mac was its 128K capacity. This small amount of memory was a big problem in his day. But even during the development phases of Mac, he threatened to become a limit. One day, Jobs brought together the Mac team – about 40 people – in Bandley's atrium, which featured a Bosendorfer piano, a ping-pong table and a 500cc BMW motorcycle. He wanted to respond to his decision to set a 128K limit in the new Mac. The 128 KB limit meant that users could not run programs that required more than 128 KB of capacity – including the operating system.

Joe Shelton

Standing in front of his employees told them, "we want developers to write a small and effective code, not a Microsoft code." His logic was that he would metastasize everywhere. The limit would become the advantage of Apple by forcing developers to do more with less margin.

The staff seemed to like the logic – the reality distortion field of Jobs at Work – but Shelton was not convinced. "I was the only person who did not accept it because I knew how operating systems were developing, how software was developing." Jobs thought developers would reduce their applications, "but that was not going to happen like that," says Shelton.

<img src = "http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5b506318a0374028008b46d5-1440/apple-joe-shelton.jpeg" border = "0" alt = "Although the number of employees of Shelton was 345, because of the staff churn rate, there were only about a hundred people at Apple when he joined in 1979. [19659007] Shelton so visited a colleague of the Mac development group, Andy Hertzfeld, the main software architect on Mac. "We can not do that," Shelton told him, referring to the 128K limit. "It's really stupid, we do not can not conceive a stop on the software. "

Hertzfeld replied," I agree, we will not do that. "

But did not Steve Jobs insist on a 128K? Hertzfeld told Shelton, " Steve will do what he wants to do. We will do what Steve needs us except when we We must do what we have to do. "

It was at this point that Shelton realized that the reality distortion field of Jobs had shortcomings. The Mac was not, in the end, wired in a 128K limit although many believed it. He had a capacity beyond, although Jobs employees did not initially inform their boss that the Mac was more powerful than what the company was officially saying.

"Steve eventually figured it out," said Shelton

. Unlike Jobs, Shelton says. Jobs saw itself as the North Star of the company, a leader who stood up in front of all Mac group staff and announced a difficult decision. But Wozniak – who preferred to build and code – sometimes lost responsibility for management.

Shelton recalls trying once to get Wozniak to make a decision as Wozniak walked through the office. Wozniak was not the tallest person in the room, but he had distinctive bushy hair, which Shelton could see swinging between the cubes that separated each office

"Hey Woz," Shelton shouted.

disappear when he went down [behind the cube walls] because he did not want to deal with you. "

Apple became public in 1980, making Woz a rich man." As soon as he received money, Woz was mentally out of it, "says Shelton. new toys and gadgets.He bought a single-engine plane with his new wealth (which he crashed in 1981). "Woz loved his business," says Shelton. "Woz was, and still is, a child of heart [and] There are not enough adult children in the world. "

Joe Shelton

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