The early history of the Mac by those who were there

Last week, the Churchill Club, a Silicon Valley forum which attracts some of the biggest names in the technology industry as speakers, gathered together half a dozen people who played a pivotal role in the creation of the Mac.

Between them Larry Tesler, Andy Hertzfeld, and Bill Atkinson provided the inspiration and then the software for the first Mac. Regis McKenna marketed it and hired Chiat Day to produce the Big Brother advert in 1984 (Chiat Day and McKenna were also responsible for the following year’s disastrous Lemmings ad, but we won’t go there).

Also present was Jean-Louis Gassée the charismatic head of Apple France who arrived in Cupertino in 1985 to take over the Mac division from the ousted Steve Jobs, and later became Apple’s worldwide head of marketing. He also lost a power struggle with Michael Spindler and was sacked by John Sculley, but you can’t win them all.

Among the tidbits to come from the session was the revelation from Tesler that Apple had wanted to run the Mac on Intel processors even before Apple bought NeXT and paved the way for the return of Jobs. I say revelation, but in the mid-1990s Apple was such a basket case that nothing it did or considered doing should be a surprise to anyone.

The video of the event is below and well-worth watching if you’re interested in the people behind the Mac.