Who's that knocking at the door. It's all your friends. You've filthy horse, your husband's gone, and we've got books and a bottle of wine to kill. It's Hollywood, it's books, it's gossip. I'm sure it's memoir. It's Martini.
Celebrity poof Club. To read it while it's hot. Celebrity poof Club, Tell your secrets.
We won't talk celebrity books. No boys are a loud Celet say it loud and cloud Celebrity book Club.
Buzz me in. I brought the queer vow.
Hey, hey, best friend, how are you on this beautiful Thanksgiving week here in the United States of America?
Oh, all salute to that? You know what all salute to today is blackout Wednesday. It's the fucking drunkest day of the year when you go to the bath with all your old friends and see all the exes, the girls you never got with, and you do shots and.
Yeah, so to all of you out there seeing the one that got away who's now totally old and fat, and you're feeling awesome because you're fanning. You have an amazing career.
Yeah, and you're coming on to your small town that's actually like quaint and beautiful but still has like an iconic rough dive bar. And you walk in you're in a big cowl neck sweater.
And then there's that guy that you always overlooked in high school because like he was a genera, but like now he runs like a local business that's like masculine but artisanal, that's just like large scaled landscaping and like urban design for just like progressive city parks.
Wait, yes, this works because it's like your parents are like, oh, Liz, that's your name. We're thinking of like redoing instead of doing the normal you know, roses and gourds that we normally do, we're gonna put in a sustainable rock garden. And then he comes over to do your parents yard and you're like Chris.
Right, And then you're like, wait a minute, you were the kind of dorky guy I ignored at the bar reunion last night, Like you actually have this like really interesting sustainable business that's local.
And he brings you a coffee because you're so hungover, and it's like a maple coffee from your best friend who did stay home and open a second wave, third fourth wave maple. So if third wave coffee is like cold brew minimal lattes.
With like succulents. Yeah, and then like and then what.
I'm calling fourth wave and you may come for me is like suburbanification of third wave. So they like are taking the lattenus but then are making it like electric caffeinated Macha purple syrup.
You're saying that it's getting like Christian Girl Autumn and like cheesier and more live left love. It's the live last love of vacation of third wave. Yeah, Okay, I'm gonna agree with you, but I think it's almost a devolution more than evolution, and it's just more like the kind of everything congealing into the same mass market slop where it's just like becoming this slightly Amazon prime aesthetic where it's like there is a geodesic planter with a succulent and also like a live laugh.
Love signed together.
You know what.
It almost reminds me of how Apple computers used to be so cool and inventive, and now we all have the same Apple Watch that we don't even know how to use.
Right wow, mail on that had Mama, thank you for bringing that app. You know, I read actually a lot about that in this book that I happened to read this morning and finish. Thank you very much.
Wow are you talking about the three hundred page memoir by Say It with Me?
Steve was Niak also known as was at his amazing book, I was computer geek to cult icon, how.
I invented the personal computer.
Co founded Apple and had fun doing it. There's an awesome photo on the cover of him playing the Apple to computer like a guitar. Wait, oh, wait, I have a totally different cover. Oh you have the kind of third wave cover.
It says like I in an Apple way WAWS and then it's like the Apple colors of the.
Apple rainbow on the side. Yours is very like post iPhone, like tech space, you know, when Apples started embracing this kind of like minimalist space.
As I said, remember what Apple is. Wait, and yours is like him being so kooky.
Mine is definitely more first wave. Mine is more central perk. So it's this black and white photo of him looking not like your father.
Lily, Oh my god, No, I was the similarities between WAWS and like I mean, I think my dad was just like a tech head and was always buying like the new technology that failed, and this kind of like I'm a nerdy kid and like all I want to do is like reprogram like this Ham radio. Like, my dad made a censor in his nineteen fifties home so that he would know when his like father was like coming to his room.
Really so he would stop masturbating depictures of old movie stars.
No, I feel like he was reading Archie comics by like a small light and was like, uh oh, the sensor went off, Dada is coming.
I actually once did that because I had gotten some toy for Christmas that was like a weird robot that like was sensor activated, and at some point I was grounded for some reason. God knows what I'd done, you rasped, But I wasn't allowed to play video games, which was actually so rude, And so I set up this motion sensor robot in the hallway so I would know when my mom was coming into the like kitchen where the
wow was. So when I heard it like go off, I would then like hide the controller and like run and hide around the corner. She came in, and she had no idea that I was secretly playing video games all afternoon. Wait, wow, I know, so whah I was really was.
But do you think she also like knew but was kind of being like, haha, let you have this like.
Weird like she depended on because one time I wasn't fastened or whatever, and then she was like so disappointed, and I was kind of like, bitch, like you got played. Sorry, I'm not gonna feel fucking guilty.
We also, do you just like hiding with your like control being like.
Mah, yeah, I'm so pinking the brain.
No, which is so was And if you guys are more kind of familiar with Steve.
Jobs, yeah, then get a fucking clue. There was another man at the helm of Apple pouring secret ingredients into that brew, that cauldron that became the world's first trillion dollar company.
Apple was was like, and is he's alive? He is like this shorter, kookier, nerdier, like furrier, just like guy who basically him and Steve met. They went to the same high school in California.
Even though was five years older and was already graduated by the time he met Steve Jobs, and then was just kind of hanging out with this high school student. But he was like so autistic and nerdy and virginal that it wasn't weird because like he was basically like emotionally still like a high school student.
Yeah, so this book is like so cute and also just like completely insane. It was just like all about ram but like it's really written by a true nerd.
It is the most like positive hunky dory book. It's ky running with Elvira's book where I was just like girl, like wipe the fucking grin off your face for two seconds.
But even like stukier because even when in this book he's like kind of talking about like the drama between him and Steve Jobs, like he's just being like, well, like sure Steve did actually hide from me that he got a couple more thousand dollars for our first video game. Sure, I was mad, but I moved on and we both made a lot of money later.
That was super shady of Steve Jobs. He references, you know, the differences in their personalities like a few times, but he's pretty coy about it. It's pretty subtle, pretty diplomatic. He's like really not trying to like make waves, but if you weep between the lines, yeah there is.
But just to give you a little bit of background, like WA was was from California what we now call Menlo Park, which is the heart of Silicon Valley. Baby, it is.
So funny that it's like these guys were actually like from there, literally from It's not like people came from the world to like go to California because like, oh well, like Stanford is there, like cal Tech. It's like he grew up in Silicon Valley, like Steve jobs al super Pysilicon Valley, Like they just happened to be there. And his dad, although I guess it's also like dad thing.
I don't know who Steve jobsad would, but Waz's dad was an engineer and so like got him into like programming in radios and like tech and was like helping him be such a nerd at the Science Fair at age seven. So it's like, I guess maybe Waza's dad was living there so that he could do engineer style.
His dad worked for Lock, Keith and Martin. He worked in the missile program, and he grew up in an Icler home.
Yes, famous mid century designer who made these like gorgeous mid century houses that were so indoor outdoor living and like you know, you would pay like millions of dollars for a now but originally designed to like be for the perfect middle class family. Eh. And he was just like, don't worry, darling, very don't worry, darling.
Men come home for their martinis after their job at the missile office.
Yeah, it's the condurver thing. Got your martini, like from missile to Martini missiles. And then like he's like splaining somebody apricots and having this like most idyllic nineteen fifties childhood, like driving around on his tricycle like reprogramming ham radios with his other like autistic friends.
And they all like sneak out at night to like program ham radios. He's like, I actually don't know what we did, which is also so fifties, like they were sneaking out. He never did drugs because he was just like nerdy and like wasn't into drinking because he literally saw his dad be so mean and Marchini and missile and his dad was being so mad men and angry.
Yeah, there's this interesting thing in the beginning where he's talking about how like TVs used to work, and you will see how positive he is in this, so like people would take their TV tubes out and have to like go to the grocery store to repair them. When I was growing up, everybody who owned TVs and radios literally had to replace the bad vacuum tubes inside themselves. Grocery stores had the giant tube testers that everyone in
the family, kids, parents, everyone knew how to use. He's being so like, from Grandma's to aunties, from cousins to kids, we all knew how to go to the grocery store. I mean, we knew that when the TV went bad, you opened it up and took all the tubes to the grocery store where you'd insert them into that machine. There was a meter on it that would tell you
if the tube was good, weak, or bad. You could buy replacements for the bad tubes right there in the grocery store and take them home to reinsert your TV.
This shook me not to be so like republican, being like when things used to work. But I'm just like, it isn't saying then the fifties just like we were straight up all like opening the TV, going to shop.
Like new technology, people don't know how to troubleshoot their technow. I mean, I think that's what you're getting it. It's like if you had something you learned at least the basics comatics of kind of like how it functioned and like how you could replace things. And I do feel like even as technology you progress, it's like our knowledge
of it has really minimized. And obviously AI is like the kind of the final conclusion of that of like no one having a single piece of information in their brains anymore, because I feel like there's done some studying by some study. I mean, I think I heard about an article once that I'm not sure if it's true, but it was like I don't know if someone was talking about trying to like do computer class with like kids these days, and it's like they don't even know
like where files are on the Mac. It's like the Mac is already so simple the way I have.
I've read a tweet about that article, and like it's very our, like that's our new boomer thing, Like millennials are so like did you hear kids don't even know how to use word, They can't organize a desktop, they don't know what a desktop is. But I feel like it's like this rise and now which Apple.
Is responsible for the absolutely and fantilization of the consumer and.
I think like what Steve was did was like make the Apple computer so people there was a time when people were like way more techy and knew everything and like we're really good at computers, and Apple helped them do that. And then Apple went further to take that away from everyone.
And you see this kind of like just later on in this TV tube section, he goes, I remember wondering what it would take to build a tube that wouldn't burn out, or a TV that didn't need tubes to work at all, how much easier they would be for people. So you see as this kind of like almost like socialist, I want to change the world aspect of like we're going to make people's lives so much easier. Technology is going to able all of this freedom for the consumer,
which obviously it has to a large extent. We're talking, you know, look at us right now, we're recording a podcast. In two different phrases actually reveal we're remote for this episode, which we rarely are.
We like to be in person, yes.
And nothing replaces in person chemistry. Yes, and Apple and their incredible.
Technology chology has helped us.
But it is also incredibly alienating, and it's also I think made a lot of people stupid. It's taken away our lives from us, It's taken away our attention, and now we are sort of trapped in a cycle of addiction.
You could say, though, on the reverse side of like technology is like what is cool? I think about the youth because I'm actually like super in support of the youth and like I'm not here to knock them down. Is like it's made like certain youth also like amazing video editors. They're like able to create like websites and apps and just like you know, do things that but I don't know how to do.
What are some awesome youth created websites that you love?
Oh my god, I actually have such a huge like.
I would actually argue that websites have never been worse. I feel like any website I go to today there's eighteen thousand pop up ads, like embedded video playing inside the pop up ad, like inside the article. I can't even look at a stor.
Tell me more about video editing. And just like kids on TikTok.
Okay, but like, isn't the secret of TikTok too it is they're actually spending so long editing those videos I don't know if they're any better at it than people were ten years ago.
They're taking definitely a long time, but they're also like doing it like I remember taking this like classic camp where we like edited VHS's like real to real VHS.
Oh, it was actually exec.
Insane dope machine.
All your video art in college was being so eight millimeter.
Yeah, and they really tried to be way more reverse in old school and taught us how to tape the film together, like caught at literally whis scissors and tape it. But I just got it transferred to digital and just like it looks so from the past.
Because Okay, so you were kind of being this badass kid as like, no, dude, I'm gonna put it on digital, but make it look old.
Yeah exactly, and then it did.
Teacher's mind's gonna be fucking blown. But I think you see at this point, though, like the sort of seeds of the switch of him and Steve Jobs are being planted where it's like he does have this more like positive view of what technology should do, whereas Steve Jobs like is more of like a technofascist migl at maniac in the like Zuckerberg musk realm, who's just like I a want to make a gazillion dollars, Like, yes, I want to like push technology forward, but like I'm imagining
in a world where people become completely addicted to our products they cannot live without them. And also we designed them to like fail after three years. You need to buy anyone all the time just.
To jump ahead. I feel like now that you brought it up the first time, like Steve Waws discovers that Apple was like trying to make products to fail is around the time he was like, I actually kind of
want to leave to back it up. Steve makes when he's working at HP, the first ever the Apple, where he like, you see letters on the screen and he gets inspired by the game Pong that he sees like at a pizza parlor, which I thought was so cool, and I was like, it's actually blew my mind that I was like, wait, video games were pre home computers.
And Steve Jobs worked at Atari. So while Steve Jobs is at Atari, Waws is over at HP and that all of the guys were meeting up in their garages and being so like it was called the Homebrew the Wild West at the Homebrew of like the early days technology, like a lot of them were working for video game companies,
Like that's where it all went down. It also makes sense though, because it's like that is the fusion of like inputting something with some sort of device and then it's showing up on a screen because those original apples, they didn't even have screens. We had to hook them up to like a screen of your own choosing.
Yeah, you had to buy one. And so like when Steve Waz sees he's out like a pizza partner with his first wife, Alice, and it is crazy at this point that he's like getting girls.
Well he gets one girl, but.
Then he gets married again, and then he's married four times and dated Kathy Griffin.
Okay, but he's the kind of guy where it's like because he meets her when she calls into that hilarious dial a joke thing, which he starts doing because he gets obsessed with phones because he reads an article in GQ magazine about people like hacking payphones and like being able to call anywhere in the world by like tricking the operator.
This is so iconic, it's called the phone freak community. And so when Waz reads this article, that's like a fictional article called the Blue Box that's about people hacking telephone lines. Not a fictional article, no, no, no, no, babe, it was fiction.
Captain Crunch exists find but okay, did you.
Read the book book it's a fictional article. And then he breaks into a library to test what they're saying in the fictional article is real, and then it is and it blows his mind. I'm kind of imagine how you can open up Cosmo and there's a fictional article about a slutty girl at college. Right, it was like meets a guy and then becomes a nun and it may just be inspired by true of him.
Right, Okay, I get it was probably built as fiction because they didn't want to get these people in trouble.
Yes, And like when he reads this article, he's like, I had literal chills, and he's like, so I called Steve Jobs instantly, and we put together eight hundred mz with a twelve hundred m Z and we tapped it together and dialed five five five.
Because this whole time this Blue Box thing is happening, he's basically being such a cop and he keeps being just like, I would never use this bar to make a free phone call on the phone company's dime.
This is not just how fucking like nerdy Steve is.
Okay, but see even though he's like a cop and Nott whant to pay money. When he does get arrested for putting a fake bomb in his friend's locker a school with like a metronum device that would tick and would tick faster once you open the locker, so people think go back to explode, and like a teacher like trying to like disarm it. He gets rested, he teaches the other prisoners in jail how to shock guards with electrical wires by like electrocuting the bars of the cell.
I was like, okay, you're being so ab. No, he You're like, oh, steal from the phone company because that's not ethical.
Around this time, also he becomes like very like anti Vietnam War and he's like, well, my Martini missile dad told me like we had to go kill him in the Vietnam War. And then he's like, well, then I started reading about it and it didn't make quite sense to me, just like there should be peace in the world, yeah, and just like actually, why should they disarm them? And
then he becomes like this. It's like very his personality where he's like, well, I was anti Vietnam, warn I loved like Bob Dylan, but like he is just such like this nerve He's like, but I didn't connect. And I was wearing just like a button up Oxford shirt and khakis and like, yes, I had like a slim little headband. Yeah, but I wore but like which also my dad did. He had like one little leather headband.
Oh, I know the photo of your dad you're talking about.
Yeah, yeah, But also was like so nerdy, I feel like and not.
Doing drugs and like no, Waz was like not really like getting to hang out with any of the hippies, even though he was like from a logic standpoint, understanding that the Viennam Moore didn't make sense and that the Gulf of Tonkin was just like completely faked with this CIA as like a pretense for war and like that's fucked up and I don't believe that from an ethical or logical standpoint. However, also do not want to do drugs because I want to be smart my own and I'm afraid and.
I want to like tap and deal with ram. So basically it's like him and Steve become phone freaks. But then he goes to college and like he also has like such an insane like college wild ride. But then in some years when he has like discovers this like video game, he drops out of college with Steve jobs to make the Apple computer and is like almost doesn't do it because he's like, well, I have this job.
At HP, Like why should I because he's so just like the ethical thing to do is continue to make job. And then I couldn't believe when he was so desperately trying to get HP to like sign out. He was like, well, everything that we've thought of while I was working at HP is technically HP's property, So I need to tell HP about all our ideas. And he like tells them multiple times about like their designs for the Apple one.
And he literally is arrest me, arrest me, and they're like, you're not copying actually anything from HP. It's like fine, And he's like basically going to HP like at night and is like fiddling with so many motherboards to like create the computer.
It's like he's literally trying to give HP Apple on a platter, and they're being like, sys, we're good, like go off into your thing, like it's so random and nerdy, and also like it's just kind of like I don't know personal computers. It's like not really our thing. It's not really gonna work, Like.
We don't do that, like your calculator asks can like move on.
It's so funny because wow, HP, they didn't have the vision then, and they still don't. They still they're still just making fucking printers.
Right still like in the corner at Staples collecting dust mama. But I mean I guess like they're still going.
They still exist, and people still need printers, and like I just feel like most of HP's business at this point is like selling like a really big printer to just like whatever the like.
I think it's corporate sales.
Whatever the like kazakhstanding equivalent of the DMV is and they're just like they're always just having to go repair.
I mean printers. I'm staring at my printer right now, Like printers are the biggest scam in the entire world, honestly more than Apple, because like printers are just gonna stop working, and like.
I'm sure half their business is just repairing.
Yeah, I just want to put a pin and dial the joke right before, or kind of as Steve was is like creating the Apple computer. He literally runs a dial a joke line where he bought a book of one thousand and one the most popular joke book in the country then, which was two thousand and one Italian and Polish jokes, and you dial the number and like, he reads a Polish joke and then the Polish embassy was like, stop, this is racist, and he was like, but I'm Polish and he was like, well, can I
do Italian jokes? And they were like yes, And then he's like, years later, the Polish Embassy actually gave me an a word for me an accomplished pull up. And then that's how he meets his wife and then his other like completely insane scam even though he's like so for like ethics is he creates did a fake PanAm phone line where people called him and he made up ridiculous flights for them and they booked them with him
and they were fake flights. He was like, so, I tried to think of the craziest worst time someone would fly and give that the cheapest number. And he was like, at one point I asked people do you want to ride Cargo.
Sere is this other scam in college. He first goes to college in Colorado, which he was totally enamored by because when he went there was snowing. They didn't really have you know, intense snow and Menlo Park at that time. And he does this scam where he figures out how to kind of jam the TV reception a little bit
and like vary in a phone way. Like there was only like one TV before, so like all the dorm kids are all watching TV together and then he would be in his pocket with having this like little like device that he created that could like make the TV staticky, and then he would like turn it on and then somebody would slap the TV and he would like turn
it off. So then he started like getting them to do like increasingly like ridiculous things with their bodies, like the stand on one leg and like they were kind of falling for He was like, Oh, is this amazing experiment with these like guinea pigs. I was getting people to like behave like total weirdos trying to get the TV to work like all while he's sitting in the back of the room.
And everyone's banging and screaming TVs and he's being so like nerd like and be like, ah, but it isn't in a evil I'm a nerd and I was bullied way. It's in a more like how ridiculous is logic? How someone would be happy to hitto TV? But not a person?
Yes and no, because I do think there is something profoundly antisocial about that, because he's basically sitting at the back of the class, like not talking to people, like fucking with this TV and being like it's funny to me. But it's like he only ever told one other person about it. He's actually not even friends with any of these people. He's just like kind of pulling the wires from behind, and you know, he talks about how shy
he is. There's this part early on we talked about how like really worn the porn.
When he moves into his like first college dorm and he's like my roommate who was named Randy weird name, and he is like he put Playboy posters up.
On the wall and he was like he was a little more advanced than me, and he brought even a Mormon girl home one time. It's like, this guy's so much game and Waz was just like so nerdy and like jacking out in the back of the class, like while like fucking with TVs. Like this is what I'm saying. It's like, I do think there's something really anti social about it. Like, even if it's not.
Absolutely, I just wonder if he's so nerdy to this point of not even having this self awareness that he sense people with social skills.
In an in cell way. Yes, I think obviously this book would not express that resentment, but I wonder if it's there in his private life. He goes from our elementary school on even after starting Apple and Beyond, I used my clever designs as an easier, more comfortable way to communicate with others. I believe all of us humans have an internally desocialized In my case, it came up mainly by doing impressive things like electronics and incredibly showy
and clever things like pranks. It was probably the shinest thing that in sixth grade and afterward put me on the hunt for electronics journals. That way I could read about electronic self without actually having to go walk up to someone and ask questions. I was too shy to even go to a library and ask for a book on computers called computers, And because I was too shy to learn the ordinary way, I ended up getting what was to me the most important knowledge in the world accidentally.
And so here he is the inventor of the personal computer, who was profoundly shy, saying that he wanted to invent these devices that could enable communication. And of course they do. And yet I also wonder if because all this technology was invented by these like insane autists, I'm like, does technology also enable shyness? Because of course today we look at the absolute autism epidemic we're living through and the
way the technology could be so alienating. I wonder if it's almost the original sin of like the shy nerds who invented it being kind of passed down and it's like some of that like in cel jealousy, maybe that you're reverencing that secretly there has like been almost wetted in to the motherboards and has been passed down in motherboard motherboard.
And I think technology just on a broad scale of you know, the shyness and you know, like social outcast thing. It's you know, it's not black and white. But I think on the good side is like it's brought so much community to people like the Steve Waughs, who would not be able to make friends otherwise, and like, you know, who can find community that way and be like, wait, there's another friend who likes this game and they're like in London, and I'm just like I'm in Calgary. Yes,
you know. But then of course there's a devil aside to it, which is it keeps you in the room.
Yes, I but I say, wonder if even in that television example, like was was like, yes, he found community with other nerds, but he still then retained this kind of antisocialness. So I wonder if even once you find community, it doesn't actually help you socialize any better. And then if we look at the nerds of today, you know, you go back to me going on MySpace when I was like fourteen and like going on video game message boards, like I was doing that. I don't know if that
was helping me become a more social person. I think was helping me become a more social person was meeting other people in real life. And you and me like going to the movies as kids as teams.
Well that was beautiful, And I think we're literally vol I think we're lucky to meet other LGBTQ folks like each other who had the same interest in middle school. And I think like some people that really weren't that lucky, and like you do have to go on you know,
the message boards. And I think with Waz it's like things that also helped him become actually more social were like kind of practice in a way, like having to work with these people, having to like then like once he got money, like making a music.
Festival, yes, the US festival, the US. Was so excited to meet van Halen later on.
And then he realizes overpaying van Halen. But we talk about antiocial. I mean, he really boils down the difference between him and Steve Jobs, like quite plainly, where he's like I am someone And this is when like Apple was, you know, going public, and he basically was like, I don't want to be like a CEO. I want to stay an engineer, Like I want to be the guy I like mixing up motherboards. And he says, I'm the type of guy who likes to have fun with a
couple of friends in a garage working on projects. I do not want to manage people, and I like fun and joke. Steve Jobs is the type of guy who basically wants to manage people, wants money, like wants power.
And of course you know the two of them. The company would never existed without Steve Jobs. Yeah, you needed Steve's marketing genius. I mean Steve Jobs like came up with the word apple because he had just been like at an apple orchard that weekend.
That was wasn't that crazy?
Yeah, just can be so simple, he goes, believe it or not, it was a couple of slater We came with a name for the partnership. I remember I was driving seat back from the airport along Highway eighty five, Steve coming back from a visit to Oregon to a place he called and quote apple orchard. It's like a place he called an apple orchard. It's just like that's a thing that exists. Was an apple orchard? Is in quotes in the book.
Well let's take it back.
Well, then he goes, it was actually some kind of a commune. I guess he's saying that.
Like I think it was so seven d's and maybe he was going to some sex retreat and being like, sure, Jobs, it was an apple it was.
An apple orchard. Okay, like so nerdy, and he's only had sex with his like married wife once, and he's like, by the.
Way, he tries to save his marriage to Alice, he joins the Freemasons to spend more time with his wife, but it doesn't work. I feel like she's like, I'll do anything to get away from.
Your probably because he was just like playing pranks on the Freemasons, like with like his weird just like remote control motherboard in the back of the room instead of doing their weird rituals or whatever.
And then he's like, well, I hated religion, but I still like became this freemason. And then he's like, and then we did get divorced, but I guess I'm still a Freemason. But he gets married again, and like he gets married four times, and his second wedding sounds so dope. Emmy Lou Harris plays.
Yeah, by that time, he's like rich and famous and he's just like Emilily Harris, one of my good longtime friends. Anyway, if I could just finish the Apple story, he goes, Steve's just in a name Apple computer. The first comment out of my mouth was, what about Apple Records. This was and still is the Beatles' own record label. We both tried to come up with technical sounding names that were better, but we couldn't think of any good ones. Apple was so much better, better than any other name
we could think of, so Apple it was Apple. It had to be. And Steve didn't think Apple Records would have a problem since it was probably because it was a totally different business. So there's two things here that I think are really true. One, if you have the same name as a company but it's a totally different industry doesn't matter. I think that's great too. It's like trust your gut. They didn't sit around thinking like we should call it like next Gen or Infotech or like
some other kind of cool high tech sounding name. They were just like, this just has this really beautiful, rounded, simple quality to it that feels so positive. But obviously the Isaac Newton Association. They were just like, it has to be this, and it's like, don't fight it.
They'd never thinking. I also think they're beginning yang is that, like Steve Waz says, like they would get in fights. But I think, like Steve was also like trusted jobs vision of more like social aspects, which I would call like naming things.
Yes, and I think consumer facing, but it makes sense.
It's like there was so much out there, like IBM existed and everything was being so info ram Ham operator. But yeah, they were inventing their first personal computer. So make it something everyone eats personal personal baby Apple a day.
And like all good companies, the only thing you really have to do is stick with it, and then it becomes the thing I always tell people Google sounded silly the first time someone heard it. Sounded like baby, look at it now, So sim and Steve. I was just saying,
very different people, very different people. They one of their first things, like they were building this computer for Atari, and Atari had wanted them to try to make a game, and like Waz was really good at making things with less chips, like that's how he basically ended up being able to design a computer that would be smaller because someuntil then computers were massive, and like my mom was always talking about computers being like, oh, at Stanford's a
computer it took up an entire building and it had punch cards. You had to put in the punch card to run the program. And so they designed this like racing game for Atari that's much smaller. They both got mono like staying up all night building this game. The whole thing used forty five chips, and Steve paid me half the seven hundred bucks he said they paid for him. They were paying us based on how few chips I could do it in. Later I found out he got paid a bit more for it, like a few thousand
dollars than he had said at the time. But we were kids, you know. He got paid one amount and told me he got paid another. He wasn't honest with me, and I was hurt, but I didn't make a big deal about it or Yeah, it's like what esex always mattered to me. And I still don't really understand why he would have gotten paid one thing and told me he gotten paid another. But you know, people are different, And in no way do I regret the experience at Atari with Steve jobs. He was my best friend, was
what and I still feel extremely linked with him. I wish him well and it was a great project that was so fun. Anyway, in the long run of money, Steve and I both ended up getting very comfortable money wise from my work founding Apple. Just a few years later, it's retainly didn't a d up too much, like.
Such crazy tea, because this is their first project together, like before the Apple one computer, and this is early on the book and he's kind of laying it out for everyone, being like yeah, no, no, no, he got paid four thousand and I got seven hundred. I'm cool and we are linked.
We are linked, and obviously we're both incredibly wealthy from our work founding Apple, which you've may have heard of. However, he obviously is a snake in the grass and I would never try. It's like, wow, that is so shady.
It's so shady, and it's like.
I can't even wrap my head around how shady it is.
It really makes you think about when people are starting out and that first paycheck, that first view of fame. It feels like that's the only thing you're gonna get. Yeah, people show you who they are, believe it.
I just you know, because you and I are always starting businesses together, and like we're honest about money. We never lie, and like it's like if I thought that I should have more money than you, I would just tell you. I'd be like, listen, Lily, I got a check from four k for Atari. I'm taking three k ultimately that's what's happening. But here's your one K. I thank you so much for the work that you've done.
You know, my mother always says, you know, the main thing in a marriage, you need to be able to talk about finance its finances. And if I can skip ahead for a second, this is when Walls doesn't quit because he says he still works at Apple, but you know, they're making the Apple two, they're making the Apple three. There's drama. He's like, can I just go back to like making something? And he has all these devices. He has his laser disc player now in his big Santa
Cruz mansion. He has his Bang and Olsen record player, which I held, so is the record player I grew up with your dad and was was. And he's like, I wish I just had one remote for everything. Oh and he wants to create a universal remote, which he does, but he's like, I have to leave Apple to do this, so he leaves Apple. They're like, it's fine.
I'm saying that he leaves Apple to create a universal remote, which to this day is still just like not really.
You such an as seen on Team such.
An as Tevy thing that actually just doesn't work, and like, yes, we all need them, and it's like we all know what happens when we go home to our parents' homes. There are six remotes. They can't figure around anyone.
They're scared of them, and they're like, don't touch that one because like actually that will ruin everything.
Will ruin everything, And it's like they still haven't figured it out. I mean, I guess we just all stream now, that's how how they solved the problem. Was streaming was just having it all come out of one TV and now we don't have other objects, and then we.
Have we're streaming Spotify to our Bluetooth, so you don't have need a remote to turn on your subword.
I guess technically it's like my Rokum does control my Sono soundbar. Thank you to Roku for kind of solving that issue.
But like was walked so Roku could run, Like.
I don't think they were pulling up his old designs for his Universe remote and they like, oh, but come.
On, I mean, like they wouldn't even have the idea of was didn't and the idea of having one remote.
The idea of one remote, no I mean it was huge. I couldn't believe that other guy, Ron Wayne, who they founded Apple with, who had ten percent of Apple and they bought him out for eight hundred dollars.
Eight one hundred dollars. Wait before I get into the Steve jobs remote tension, ISA was is so lit and basically like when right before they went public, the board of Apple wanted to be like, well, only executives get their first ticket shares and Waz was like, no, that's not cool, Like let's be more socialist about it, like it should be the engineers, it should be the secretaries. And they were like, you're crazy, You're losing so much money.
And he let them all buy his shares. He said, group blocks of his shares for five dollars to various employees, and only like forty employees took him up on it. But I'm sure they're all millionaires now.
Thank you to literally millionaires. It's also this thing of him being like he'd already had a lot of money. He was like, how much money do you need? Like my passion is making remotes in a garage. I don't need to hoard.
The man wants to tinker, he doesn't need a bigger and bigger and bigger house.
Whenever, like I feel like, you hear about some random person having money and they're like, oh, well they got Apple stock.
Really it's always that's always like, oh, she was actually the in house massuse for Apple in the early days. Now she's a billionaire.
So they go public money money money they're making like the Apple X three or whatever. He's just like, well, this makes no sense because the Apple two is what's selling.
Yeah, he's got such a be in his bonnet about the Apple three not being good. It's like, because the Apple three had a screen. It's like, honey, at some point, we're gonna have to put a screen on this computer. When did you first get like an Apple commit Did you guys have a computer before you had like your iMac?
I think when I was like nine, I remember my dad having the thickest Apple laptop, Apple laptop literally Apple. He was like an early Apple laptop and it was like gray and like nine hundred pounds and I want to say that was like ninety six or something. And then we had also like a huge Apple computer.
So that's my mother about this. She texted me, did not have Apple at the beginning in the eighties. Hancock, this is the company she worked at, kept to PCs and huge IBM mainframes. We had quote dumb terminals at our desks which could access the mainframe. They were not portable. Then we got PCs which were portable and then plugged into a home base that had a big screen back in the office. My first work PC was a Toshiba. Of course, you're at the dial up to get a connection.
You also had to insert floppy disk for word processing in spreadsheets. I had a big modem in the sewing machine room. Oh, in our house. Okay, Then she's sending this photo of this Toshiba T eleven hundred. She goes, the Toshiba was my first laptop. You were not even born yet, so she had.
A Toshiba laptop in like eighty five.
This thing is basically a word processor. The screen is like it's just text where.
It's like you could send it to a printer. I remember using a word processor as a kid and just like writing random stuff.
What were you.
Probably like weird stories and stuff. Sorry, I tinker, I'm weird. I'm literally walls. I was probably just like. There was a gangster living in Cambridge. His name was Frankie the rat Y.
Wow, that's wild. Oh wait, I wanted to ask because he did so many science fairs. Did you do science? I think you must have because you were in middle school with me. There was a science fair. Yeah, what was your science project?
I was so bad at science. Yeah, Like I don't remember. I'm like, I must have done something with This book really brought made me think of was like the robotics class I took in college, where I really like, it's like theoretically, like it would be so cool to be like tinkering and wires and like I always did love going to radio shack, but I'm also so not tech brained at all.
You found it really gender affirming to be in a radio shack.
But yes, and like I love just circuit boards, and I feel like I was always like taking part of circred boards to like put it on my wall in more of a collage mixed media space.
Okay, because you were also being like, it's so like Hacker. You were kind of into like Hacker in like a Berlin aesthetic way.
Yes, it was a Cocker aesthetic and like the greens of it and the switches. I thought that was so cool so I took those robotics class and it just like the guy who thought it was such a walls and it was like just assumed you knew a certain like a little bit of code, and he would just give these assignments and I'd be like we but dial it back, like literally what? And I feel like he just kind of felt bad for me. And I tried to like put two wires together, but nothing really happened there.
And did you pass robotics?
I passed. I think I tried okay, and I had like a partner, but I didn't really it didn't click. What did you make in the science fair?
I mean I kind of ripped off some girl from who I'd seen done it the year before. But I did this thing that was like testing senses, and it was like to see which of your senses was the was powerful. I called it common sense. And I did like this whole experiment where my parents were friends with this guy who worked at Marty's Liquors in Newton, and so I set up a table outside the liquor store and I would blindfold like random pedestrians what with my
mother's velvet scarf. I remember that velvet scarff and I would like, feed them a pair while holding an apple under their nose, and nine times out of ten the person would think they were eating an apple.
Sorry, this is the craziest thing in the entire world. You're outside a liquor store Newton, blindfolding people with a velvet scarf. It's like, okay, can play.
It was actually really kinky and.
You're feeding them fruit.
What is that? And I learned. I learned that smell is a very powerful set, more so than taste.
Wow. Yeah, that's what they always say.
And they are right.
We have to go to segments and we haven't even talked about well, I mean, it's not featured in the book that Waws and Kathy Griffin dated, which is how I kind of had heard of.
Was I'm saying because we watched him on Life on the d List and he's just always riding his segue and she'd be like, there Isa was with his segue and they actually.
Only did for a year, but there's such a cute couple and she's always just being so like, here's my billionaire boyfriend. In the episode I watched that she takes him to a bear convention and like takes him to the bear mall and is like showing him so many floggers.
I know it didn't work out, but.
Then they broke up and she said they actually never slept together.
Yeah, I was gonna be my guess because I just feel like he actually is not verosexual and he's ace.
Well, he got married right after they broke up, to some woman that he's.
Still married to, and you think they're fucking.
I think he does fuck. I think in a weird way. Sure she has tons of.
Sexual hang ups own like so many like weird fetishes. I honestly think that like you rub up against wahs and he premature ejaculates and it's over.
Or he's like maybe he's watching, or it's more of just kind of a petting scenario.
I just don't think that he is rogering anyone. I don't think he's giving anyone the business.
No, I don't think like was is giving like Janet his fourth wife the business, or he gave Alice his first wife the business.
Yeah, but he's sweet and he has a good I.
Think he's very sweet. I mean, he has three kids, so he's made love three times. We know that. Okay, just before we wrap this up, of just This is this crazy Steve Job story where Steve Jobs is mad that WA was is using this design company, the same design company that Apple uses to create his remote. Turned out Steve Jobs is over at Frog for some reason and saw a CL nine prototype. From what I heard, he threw it against a wall and put it in a box and said send it to him, as if
Apple owned it. The Frog guy told me that Steve Jobs told him they couldn't do any work for us because Apple owned Frog. Not true, I never knew it, but Frog told us they felt uncomfortable doing without Apple's permission. Apple was a big customer, so then we're going to do it.
Well.
I wasn't gonna argue. I don't truly know what the real story was, but I thought, good, fine, we'll go somewhere else and we did.
Well that's that.
Yeah, it's you to be completely like so like dramatic movie and like throwing a remote and send it the fuck back to him, that short fat loser and was is like, hmm, well you actually don't own Frog the design company. More on.
I mean, the fact that Steve Jobs was threatened by Universal Remode is also a little insane. It's like Jobs.
Simmer, you're about to make the iPods. What does she wear?
What does she eat? How does she live? How does she live? Do you think he still lives in a gorgeous like mid century Eicler home or well?
He describes his favorite home as his first house, which sounded a little more like rustic California.
With the naughty wood, the naughty pine.
But it also has like a mural of dogs. So I think his home is more like beautiful yeat imported naughty pine and it's like gorgeous woods.
I think that's not true. I think he was reminiscing about the beauty of that home because the current one is just a boring McMansion and he lives in just Sunny Vale or Menma Park or where he just lives in Silicon Valley in a boring Berry Luckerberg like five bedroom new McMansion.
I guess right, he's wishing for his knotty yes, because like that's how they make housles now, and like yes, there's indoor outdoor like sliding doors that lead up to the pool in the grill, but it still looked pretty new. I think his bed is like a huge four poster like cedar bed.
Hmmm, that's interesting.
Like I think he's folding onto he I think he's holding onto wood in some way. Also, he is someone who loves technology, so I think there are like so many silly things where it's like this side of the wall actually is a cooling wall.
Yes, but I do think it's a kind of in this early two thousands way. Like the kitchen like has like one of those hoods that's like the curved glass hood m. There's a lot of like maroon like kitchen cabinetry and like.
Yeah, like I don't think he has that fridge with the TV that like can charge your phone in it.
No, but he has a fridge that like has that actual voice. Yes, it has like a voice. I think it is ice activated fridge, Hello Steve. Yeah, it's more the dream of what technology is. And he's like programming his garage door opener to like play like Kukaracha, like be silly.
Definitely, which was my dream always as child, was like I'm gonna have an apartment and when I walk in the door, there's gonna be a censor that plays Sinatra.
O babe, we can do that?
Which happened for you to do that?
Yeah?
What does he eat? I mean he like literally I think he just like loves like pizza. He's so like nineteen seventies, like in this like Toastino's pizza rolls.
Because it's like, oh, late night program, I mean like we have to eat pizza.
Yeah.
Yeah, although don't you think his third wife is being more like I'm worried about cholesterol role, Yes, I mean I'm worried about this cholesterol.
Right, it's salmon and salads. And then he's like sneaking a pizza, being like I was bad today.
Yeah, but they're also having just like a huge kind of like because he's so like warm Buffett and like I only have moneyn things that I need, Like he is Costco membership and they are massive like tub of like off brand cheese doodles that he's like dipping into, oh.
In the pantry, and his hands are so orange.
Yes, yeah, he's been caught orange handed.
And then like he's randomly thinking some snack is so cool because it's modern like a keen watchip and he's like spends a week eating it, being like have you seen these things they're made? Get this out of pasta?
Yeah? Okay, what does he wear like golf polos big pants.
In his bear trip doctors, he looked a little less sloppy than I had remembered. He was in like a sweater polo and just like big doctors. Yea, and then he was wearing a huge straight to Hell Kathy Griffin tor T shirt.
So cute.
Okay, who are you in the book?
Do you think I'm Steve Jobs? Because I'm brandy genius.
I kind of thing like I'm was your Jobs.
And you're tinkering away, But like I'm.
Not obviously like Steve was, because I like literally like I know it ram.
Is, but like coming back to this original sin thing though, I'm kind of like you are like so social and you're not like playing pranks on people as a way to like interact with them because you don't know how to interact with them.
No, Ultimately, I think like I am someone he's hiring to like help with one of his rock festivals.
Yeah, you're Emilu Harris.
Yeah, and I'm just like sure I'll play your wedding. Wait, actually that is me. I guess I was like wads because I'm just like silly, but I don't have the tech expertise to like make a dial a joke like phone line.
But I'm not jobs because I wouldn't lie to my best friend about money.
You're not that evil, Like yeah, like you would come home from a sex orchard and be like, Lily, I haven't get this. It's so simple. It's just Apple, and.
I'd be like, wait, I mean like that's it, we're going with that. Sorry, that's that done.
Like sorry, But like I don't think you're also like lying about the three thousand.
So maybe I'm more like van Halen's wife.
Yeah, who's like Heather Lockler. Yeah, yeah, because it's like are you throwing a calculator being like send it back to him?
Like kind of but just for the drama, I really hope I'm not the guy who sold his Apple stock fore hundred dollars.
No, you're not that.
No, I'm holding.
You're absolutely holding anyway.
I don't know. I give this book like I don't know two out of five motherboards, Like it's really upbeat in a way that's almost like shocking. I'm sure there like is some Mad for TV movie about the founding of Apple that's so like the social network.
I was gonna watch it the night did there's the Ashton Kutcher movie.
About Steve Jobs. Yeah, it's like, I'm sure if you were writing that movie and you're sharking or whatever, like, I'm sure you would find it really difficult to be inspired by this book.
I give it two point nine pongs out of pong. What I liked about this book is it, like is very different from stuff we've read in the way that it's like literally about like a nerdy guy, like talking about Ram and being a phone freak and like starting phone lines, which it doesn't follow kind of the norms of that, Like, it's much more in this nerdy guy's brain.
Was I skimming the parts about Ram, Yes, But that's also why I like the book, because it literally is just a memoir about Ram and like making remotes.
And I thought there were some nice descriptions, like you know, about how computers work and binary code and how it's a series of switches and everything. You know, there is some beauty to the way he's fucking freaks minds works.
We're fucking nerds, like we're also known of those books. Sorry, dudes, we're not fucking nerds like ham Radio. Sorry take me to the Mall and it's like he's so nerdy in the way that it's like there is just these little bits of tea about like his drama with Steve Jobs. But at the end of the day, he is just like the Segue billionaire who's so random and positive.
If there's one lesson in this book, it made me think, like, you know, the joy he has towards the iPod and like towards yoursual computer, I'm like, I did have that joy about technology when we were younger, and yeah, and like when our family first got a G four, I
thought it was so fine. It was like so cool and exciting, and like, I don't know, I feel like I so rarely have those moments because it's so embedded in our lives, but like every now and then, like I just downloaded some new software for able to the other day, this cool new plug in, and I've been enjoying using it and all the sounds on it, and I'm like, you know, if we can just find a way to recapture the joy of tech in your life, And it may be obviously about having, you know, using it less, I.
Think having it less and then finding specific things.
But appreciating it more and be like, wait a minute, it is incredible that I can talk to my friend in France on this device that I keep in my pocket, you know, like reserve some joy for that, but like put it away it gets to be too much.
No, I don't think I've ever been rocked as much as I was when I got my first iod.
That was insane, being on the fucking tea in.
Boston, literally being on.
Michelle Branch in my headphones.
Crazy swirling around, going with that to Michelle Brand Yeah, wild times. Yeah, wow, now chic, it was the white It's beautiful.
All right. You guys, find your joy.
Find your joy in tech and like be happy in Tinker, whatever you tinker with Tinker.
Best best our producer on this show is the very talented hand and beautiful excuse me, Darby Masters, whose serial number is F nine six G four l x W nine.
This episode of Celebrity book Club Program with Stephen and Lily was made with eight hundred megabytes of RAM that Christina Everett found, who was the executive producer. Our supervising producer, Abu Zafar I met in a Hammer radio class. Well we just got along really well. We didn't hang out much outside in our freedom time, but we got along very well in class.
Our engineer who does work with a X eighty six based operating system is Beheed Fraser. He is very, very talented. Please hire him. We're all of your bits and bobs.
Our musician who made our theme song performed at my cool music procival that I imitated from Woodstock. His name is Stephen Philpschorst.
We originally created this podcast on a NCR Doss Software Bus three point zero DCP seventeen hundred computer, which of course they do not make anymore. That was recorded at Prologue Projects and we wish them well
Absolutely, I wish you all the RAM in the world.