Back in the day…

 This post by Andy Hertzfeld over on Folklore.org about the origins of the 1982 Mac’s famous boot beep (complete with downloadable 68000 assembly source code) is delicious fodder for more technical minded Mac fans, but this anecdote will appeal even to the more casual appreciator of Apple’s corporate mythos:

Charlie [Kellner] was pleased that he was able to make a significant contribution in his first week on the project. Inspired, he asked if he could take a prototype home over the weekend for testing. The next Monday he came into work very excited.

“I knew that something wasn’t right!”, he exclaimed. “The sound is being completely muffled by the case!. But I know how to fix it.”

…He drilled a hole about the size of a dime in a strategic place, which caused the measurements to improve dramatically.

He started demoing his modified prototype, showing how the hole improved the sound quality. The difference didn’t sound that significant to me, but it definitely was an improvement. He showed it to Terry Oyama, who designed the case, and asked him if he could add the hole.

The next day, Steve Jobs came by in the afternoon and asked to hear Charlie’s demo. He listened to the two Macs, and then decreed “There’s not enough improvement! There’s no way that we’re going to put an ugly hole in the case! Just forget about it!”

Charlie was pretty disappointed, and never got very enthusiatic about the Mac after that. A couple of weeks later, he transfered back to the Apple II group, leaving the boot beep as his only legacy.

Very recognizably Steve. Folklore has a lot of great anecdotes up by Andy about early Apple, Mac and Lisa development, including this hilarious one explaining why Apple went with “OK” over “Do It” for their dialog windows: people thought the software was calling them a ‘dolt’.

Boot Beep [Folklore.org via Boing Boing]