1984-2024: the book you must have!

[DiTBho]

Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made
See here, thanks me later 

There was a time, not too long ago, when the typewriter and notebook ruled, and the computer as an everyday tool was simply a vision. Revolution in the Valley traces this vision back to its earliest roots: the hallways and backrooms of Apple, where the groundbreaking Macintosh computer was born. The book traces the development of the Macintosh, from its inception as an underground skunkworks project in 1979 to its triumphant introduction in 1984 and beyond.

The stories in Revolution in the Valley come on extremely good authority. That's because author Andy Hertzfeld was a core member of the team that built the Macintosh system software, and a key creator of the Mac's radically new user interface software. One of the chosen few who worked with the mercurial Steve Jobs, you might call him the ultimate insider.

When Revolution in the Valley begins, Hertzfeld is working on Apple's first attempt at a low-cost, consumer-oriented computer: the Apple II. He sees that Steve Jobs is luring some of the company's most brilliant innovators to work on a tiny research effort the Macintosh. Hertzfeld manages to make his way onto the Macintosh research team, and the rest is history.

Through lavish illustrations, period photos, and Hertzfeld's vivid first-hand accounts, Revolution in the Valley reveals what it was like to be there at the birth of the personal computer revolution. The story comes to life through the book's portrait of the talented and often eccentric characters who made up the Macintosh team. Now, over 20 years later, millions of people are benefiting from the technical achievements of this determined and brilliant group of people.

[ebastler]

The book has some nice anecdotes indeed, which give a flavor of how working at Apple must have felt back then. Most (all?) stories are also available here for free -- not a pirate site, but Andy Hertzfeld's own collection: https://folklore.org

[DiTBho]

the photos of the manuscripts, and how they got organized and printed, are *THE* added value 

[SiliconWizard]

Did you know that the "Mac" project was initially designed around a 6809?

[tooki]

Yep.

[rhodges]

Did you know that the "Mac" project was initially designed around a 6809?

Really? I programmed for the 6809 for a few years, and I was impressed with its access modes, but I considered it a good embedded processor. Not a desktop CPU...

I never did much with the 68K, but I respected it as a very capable CPU. I think Apple made the right choice.

[pqass]

Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made
See here, thanks me later 

There was a time, not too long ago, ...

Any mention of the Xerox Alto, WIMP/GUI tech, and the Apple Lisa that preceded it?
That blurb makes it sound like the Mac emerged from just one team; when actually it was a second attempt.
One that was at least marketable to a wider clientele.  See this brief history.

[ebastler]

Any mention of the Xerox Alto, WIMP/GUI tech, and the Apple Lisa that preceded it?

I can only comment on the folklore.org website, which actually contains more stories than the book. (Hertzfeld has continued to collect them after the book was published, and probably the editors down-selected a bit for the book.) Those anecdotes certainly acknowledge the heritage and influence from the Xerox Alto and Apple's Lisa team.

My favorite anecdote regarding Xerox is when Steve Jobs confronts Bill Gates about "stealing" Apple's GUI ideas, after Microsoft had announced Windows 1.0. Gates' response was: "Well, Steve, I think there's more than one way of looking at it. I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it." 

[SiliconWizard]

The story of the GUI-based computers at Apple is a bit more complicated than what most people have in mind, between the Lisa and Macintosh projects.
For instance, the Lisa is not as much a Steve Jobs project as many think. Even despite the name (which is thought to be his daughter's name, ironically). Sure he came back from Xerox with the ideas, but after that, things got awry.
He was actually set aside for its development, and embarked on the Macintosh project - that Apple didn't care much about at the time - as a kind of revenge, or second chance.

When Apple started to become big in the early 80's, Steve Jobs, despite being the cofounder, was not that well positioned at Apple. (And everyone knows he eventually got kicked out.)
It's a pretty interesting story, both for the technical and human aspects, so I recommend reading it as well!

As to Xerox, let's also recall that Niklaus Wirth himself spent a whole year at Xerox as a sabbatical, and also came back with ideas that would lead to the development of his workstations (like the Lilith).