9781422270462

“I learned about serif and san-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great,” he told graduating students during a commencement address he delivered at Stanford. “It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life.” Or so he thought. A decade later, when he and his friends were busily working on designing the first Macintosh computer, he recalled this uncommon skill he’d picked up. “We designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography,” he said. A FRESH PERSPECTIVE After his early departure from Reed College in 1974, Jobs was hired at Atari (one of the first video game companies), where he helped create some of the era’s most popular games. Jobs met Steve Wozniak when he was still in high school, and the two remained friends through his time at Reed College. Wozniak, known as “Woz,” later co-founded Apple with Jobs. Jobs was adventurous, and he wanted to see new things. So, he joined his friend, and future Apple employee, Daniel Kottke, on a backpacking trip to India and came back with a shaved head and a new perspective on life. Jobs and Woz designed and worked with computers as a hobby, becoming part of a group called the Homebrew Computer Club. Then, in 1976, they decided to create a new kind of computer.

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To Infinity and Beyond