Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made (31 page)

Here is an invitation to celebrate a ROM freeze at software manager Jerome Coonen's house. This wasn't the final ROM freeze, which took place in September, but the first of a series that led up to it. We had a party celebrating the final ROM freeze at Woz's house in Scott's Valley.

The Mac group worked hard, but we occasionally had parties thrown by Apple for the team, sometimes with unusual themes. The left most poster promoted our "Punk Party", which we were supposed to attend in "punk" attire and featured the local band "The Medflys". The poster on the right advertised a dance with music supplied by a DJ. Some of us were so disappointed with the music that he played that we drove to a nearby record store during the party to buy some better music to play there.

Steve Jobs was very visually oriented, and everyone knew that he reacted more favorably to material presented with nice graphics and high production values. Susan was recruited by the Finance team to use MacPaint to make attractive covers for the monthly financial reports. Here are some covers that she made for the June and July 1983 reports.

As we began preparing for the launch in the fall of 1983, Susan was requested to produce art for various marketing materials, to show off the kinds of things you could do with MacPaint. The frog on the left demonstrates how you might use MacPaint in a biology class. Susan also had a fondness for whimsical applications, as demonstrated by the one on the right.

Here are some examples that Susan created for marketing. The "Japanese Lady" on the left is a pretty famous one, since it was used in the original brochure. She started with a scan of a fine Japanese woodcut that Steve had procured. I think the detective agency letter on the right was also used in an advertisement.

Sports were another outlet to blow off steam between longs hours of working. In the spring of 1983, we managed to get facilities to install a basketball hoop in the back of Bandley 4, and usually played a half-court game every afternoon. We also had co-ed softball games once per month, which could sometimes get pretty intense.

Apple gave out brand new Macintoshes to everyone on the team right after the launch (see
the times they are a-changin'
); on the left is a certificate that accompanied each machine. On the right is a bottle of champagne, in honor of the launch, to complete the celebration.