“Revolution In The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made”
Authors: Andy Hertzfeld & VVAA
Publisher: O’Reilly
Other info: 320 pages of text with pictures; also available in ebook form

“Revolution In The Valley” is the most authoritative text on the origins of the Macintosh: it is fundamental reading, and also a funny one. This may sound like excessive praise but the fact that Andy Hertzfeld and the other authors were all Apple employees and part of the original Mac development team, is the first clue that this is probably a must-read book if you are an Apple historian, fan, or long-time user.

The textual contents of the book have been originally published online, since 2003, on the Folklore.org website. The project started with Hertzfeld’s recollections, written in the mid-90s, about working at Apple on the Macintosh project, and was later expanded.

Unlike other journalistic works about Apple, folklore.org and its printed version, “Revolution In The Valley”, are basically an attempt at choral storytelling, penned firsthand by many of the people who created the hardware and software of “computer for the rest of us”.

Alongside Hertzfeld (who wrote the bulk of the material) you will also discover contributions by (among others) Steve Capps, Donn Denman, Bruce Horn, Bill Atkinson, Susan Kare, Daniel Kottke, and Caroline Rose, all adding to a mesmerizing and vivid patchwork of tales and tidbits about groundbreaking hardware decisions, managerial dead-ends, personality clashes, crazy jokes, cool hacks, eureka moments and days and nights of heavy work under impossible deadlines by a group of insanely talented people.

Among my favorite stories are two that offer a mix of behind-the-scenes insight and humor: “I Still Remember Regions”, where after a serious accident Bill Atkinson strives to assure Steve Jobs that he still remembers a key programming solution he devised, and “Quick, Hide In This Closet!”, a group effort to go behind Jobs’ back and make sure a new (and better) technology will work with the Macintosh.

The book, of course, has a conventional table of contents and lacks the hypertextual nature of the website (which is very handy) and leaves to the reader the task of putting the whole picture together after reading the many stories. On the other hand “Revolution In The Valley” is a beautifully designed object and also offers some extra content, most of all an expanded iconographic component. In its pages, alongside the texts, you will find sketches, pixel-art, ads, screenshots, Susan Kare’s internal flyers done with MacPaint, nice full-resolution pictures of the authors, and some rare and eye-opening images such as a series of Polaroids chronicling the evolution of the graphical interface of the Lisa.

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