This is the best and the definitive book about the development of the Mac 128K (and Apple's early years) and the people behind it.
Andy writes it with great competence.
A text that is so delicious to read that when you finish the book you'll be sad that you read the last phrase.

A must buy.

It's a good book for collection, but I can't say it's a great book as other reviewers say. It's better to see the book before purchase it.

Surely, it is 5 star book as concerns the theme and the general story. It is very difficult to find a book in which the protagonists describe step by step the creation of the first macintosh. A must have book that every mac fan and generally computer lover must read. But, why not 5 stars? Beacause the story could be more narrative and more "magical"

Mac lovers find out how the Apple Macintosh was born. A beautiful book with great photos and graphics, filled with juicy snippets of how it all came to be. It's a love story of sorts of a team of passionate young programmers led by the one and only Steve Jobs. I love thi book!

Mac lovers find out how the Apple Macintosh was born. A beautiful book with great photos and graphics, filled with juicy snippets of how it all came to be. It's a love story of sorts of a team of passionate young programmers led by the one and only Steve Jobs. I love thi book!

"Revolution in The Valley" is an entertaining history of the Macintosh. Andy Hertzfeld has collected stories from and about the original Macintosh team (which he was a member of). Most of the stories are brief, and told in a friendly and engaging manner.

I've read many biographies of Apple. Most are written by people that were not involved in the events, and most also ignore to a great extent the machines and the engineers that created them, instead focusing on Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. There is some of both Steves in "Revolution in The Valley," but the focus of the book is the Macintosh and the people that directly gave it life, as told by these everyday heroes, the Mac's collective parents.

I have rarely been so drawn into a book. The first time I read it, I went through it much faster than I normally read, and I continue to pull it down from the shelf, and revisit the stories.

The first thing that struck me about this book is that it's effectively written in hypertext - it's a series of vignettes about the development of the Mac from its beginnings as a tiny research project through launch and the eventual combination of the Mac and Lisa development teams. The non-linearity of the narrative can be a little distracting at times, but you get used to it.

Some of the vignettes are fairly technical - they might be more than the lay reader wants to get into, but each story is short (3-5 pages) so a non-technical reader can always skip ahead (or back, or sideways) to a less-technical narrative.

Hertzfeld doesn't gloss over conflict within the Mac team, but he also celebrates the fun times and shows why the Mac development team was a unique and very productive working environment. It's clearly one person's version of the story, but he never claims it's anything else.

All in all, I highly recommend this book for anyone who's interested in the Mac as a computer and Apple as a company.

An interesting format - a book made up of mini-memoir/essays written by various members of the original Macintosh team (mainly Andy Hertzfeld).

Although much of the material Hertzfeld and crew presents is covered in other books, (such as Levy's "Insanely Great"), this book gives us an intimate flavor to some of those old stories. There's nothing like hearing it from the horse's mouth.

Also, as one whose mind was blown by the original Mac, and currently makes a living as a computer programmer, I find the technical details, shots of original developer notes, and personal photographs to be fascinating.

Great book - highly recommended.

This great book is being recorded by Derek Warren as a freely (thanks to Creative Commons licenses) downloadable audio book from Macintosh Folklore Radio at folklore.trideja.com

Andy Hertzfeld's Revolution in the Valley is a great book to read. His writing style is fluid and the book grabs you. Hertzfeld uses vignettes of how the Macintosh team at Apple produced the graphical user interface that all computers now use. His stories bring out the intensity and excitement of the creative process. Hertzfeld has written a very straight forward account and is generous to others, giving them the praise they richly deserve. As a programmer and writer, Hertzfeld is indeed insanely great.

What can I say that hasn't already been said about this book. Andy really captures the euphoria that comes along with working in a small dedicated team that everyone feels will radically change the business.

Andy covers the story of the Mac from the first idea through shipping in short stories focused on one event at a time. This really allowed a greater focus on each event than other books on similar topics yield.

I think Andy hit it right on the head when he wrote about everyone's eventual departure from Apple. Having left organizations I cared about with people I would dearly miss I could really relate to the emotional descriptions he wrote about.

Fantastic book, I will definetly read this again.

Well, i admit this book is really cool and is well written. It's a collection of memories and histories by Mr Andy Hertzfeld. While reading this book , i felt i would like to be at that time, on that place.
It's a excelent picture if what was really happening at Apple , at those times. Also it helps me to make a better idea about who is who on Apple team.
If you like Mac history, you should read this book.

I've now purchased five copies of this book. After I finished reading it, I gave it to someone else and bought another copy for me. Gave that one away. And on and on. It's a fantastic account of folks who worked at something for the love of completing something never seen before!

If you're old enough to have been using computers when the Macintosh first appeared, you remember how you *knew* at first glance that it was something special. That's because it wasn't just another machine -- it would change the very way people thought about technology, doing the impossible in making a computer charming, fun and easy. Without the Mac, computing as we know it today wouldn't exist.

"Revolution in the Valley" is the story of that spirit, told in vignettes that illustrate the day-to-day struggles in making the Mac a reality.

Despite being heavily technical at times, "Revolution" is very readable, putting human faces behind the Mac and revealing how much thought and care went into its every detail. Everything from the "OK" button to the boot-up chime received careful planning. Nothing was left to chance -- perhaps explaining why the Mac model of computer navigation is so second-nature to us today. Such devotion comes only from those who know their work will change the world.

The other remarkable thing about this book is its revelation of how Apple -- long revered as one of America's most enlightened, progressive companies -- could, as a business, be just as dysfunctional and stupid as any Dilbert-like cubicle hell. Bad business decisions, clueless management and lousy treatment of employees early on sowed the seeds of the Mac's eventual decline and near destruction in the marketplace, leaving the likes of Microsoft to inherit the earth. The book shows how even Steve Jobs, the "insanely great" visionary that he is, was often blind to problems right before his eyes.

Finally, "Revolution" is not the work of a journalist or ghostwriter. Andy Hertzfeld was one of the Mac's driving forces, writing groundbreaking software the likes of which we take for granted today. Hertzfeld knows the story of the Mac because he not only lived it, he *was* it.

This is a great book for anyone who loves the Macintosh or that great phase in the early 80's where microcomputing was all the rage. The book is mostly text, but the few photos help to illustrate the story. It's done in journal style, with each entry lasting from one page to about five pages. This makes it easy to put down, remember your place, and resume from the next entry.
The only negative thing is that it's technical - very technical. There are times where even myself as a self-confessed computer nerd just found all the information way above my head. That said, this is only a small portion of the book, and those who are die-hard Mac fans will probably understand everything that is said.
It was exciting to read about how the Mac team gew, how Steve Jobs showed through in his personality, and what little things kept the Mac team going to get out a great product in 1984.

If you are old enough to have been around when the personal computer revolution first began, if you have an appreciation for the world changing work done by some of the people who founded the personal computer revolution, and especially if you are a fan of Apple Macintosh, you will love this book.

Written in short chapters, it's an easy book to read a little at a time or during a long sitting. It converted me to a Mac afficianado while reading it. I couldn't put it down.
The author has first hand experience with the material, and gives great detail into how certain technical details were developed.
An especially fascinating read if you have an inclination to software or hardware tinkering or design.

It's a cool but, but the thing for me is, it's written in bite-sized bits, so reading it that way is a lot more comfortable. Reading two or three tales at a time is a little better. It's fun, regardless, and provides an extensive insider's look at how the legendary Mac was created.

As an enthusiastic reader of books covering the history of computing, and a long-time Apple user/admirer, I cannot recommend Hertzfeld's book highly enough. Here is a well-written account full of heart from one of the key players in Apple's history. Hertzfeld does an excellent job of allowing the reader to feel the elation, dismay, and various emotions that he and his co-workers experienced. Moreover, he is able to convey the intracacies of his co-worker's characters: the reader feels as though he knows Hertzfeld, Jobs, and Burrell Smith (in particular) after reading this.

If you are wondering what the book is like, check out Hertzfeld's website [...] where these stories were first posted and read a few of them. Then go read this book, you won't be disappointed.

Apple is a special company and the Macintosh was a pivotal product that is still at the heart of its success today. Yet if you were to look inside the original Macintosh you would find something even more remarkable than technical innovation and creativity.

Past the intuitive graphical user interface, behind the first 3.5" floppy drive in a personal computer, and over the novel logic board was something that most users never knew was there. Inside the case of every Macintosh was a collection of signatures. Just as an artist would sign a canvas, the team that put together the first "insanely great" computer signed their masterpiece.

The Macintosh was a special product because of the amazing team that took it from conception to retail. Revolution in the Valley is the story of their achievement. It is a sturdy and attractive hardbound book with a modern and approachable layout, relevant illustrations, and highlighted summary quotes from team members and the minds that inspired them. Under the dust cover it is adorned with stills taken from the infamous 1984 commercial announcing the Macintosh.

Though the book touches on parts of the larger Apple story - such as the exile and return of Steve Jobs, the development of the Lisa, and the great initial success of the Apple II - it maintains its focus on the Macintosh throughout. It follows the project from Jeff Raskin's research project, to Steve Jobs' adoption as the future of Apple, and through the first time the world said "'hello' to Macintosh."

Rather than offering a "monolithic narrative," Revolution is presented as a compilation of short stories. Most are the work of Andy Hertzfeld, a key personality in the development of the Macintosh system software, but some are submissions from other team members.

The episodic approach makes the book accessible and easy to read, not to mention giving it a coffee-table appeal. Each is organized more or less chronologically, but overlap often - thankfully in dates much more than in narrative. In such cases there are useful references to the related story and the assortment of unique voices actually better illustrates the key personalities than a single-perspective account would.

Co-authors also contributed to the healthy collection of rare and unique photographs, original notes, and advertisements that are well placed throughout the book. Combined with the energetic layout, the illustrations give a lot of color to the lively tales of Silicon Valley's most famous pirates.

As can be expected in a book about a technical innovation, there is some jargon that may be lost on the average Apple fan, but those instances are few and sufficiently nestled in the story that their meaning is clear enough.

The market is full of books about Apple, but Revolution in the Valley offers a specific focus and an easy-going style. If you call yourself a fan, you owe it to yourself to peruse this book and get to know the people that birthed the Mac. For those who are looking to learn a little more about the roots of Apple's success, this is a great choice. It truly is The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made.

I am a Mac user, and I loved Apple products since I was a child but also like PC machines and I use it for games or work stuff.
I was very interested in this book because I though I will find the little stories that show you the steps that original computers engineers had to make to transform those big monsters computers to the now common user friendly computer that all of us are used to work with...
And the book didn't dissapoint me, almost all the stories are funny or has something that make it worth the reading.
Pros:
+ A lot of mac stories
+ Some stories are just great for mac lovers.
+ A lot of description about Steve Jobs and key apple engineers.
Cons:
- Very mac centric
- Very short, I read all the book in 2 days!
- Some stories deserve to be extended!

A Very Good Book. :) :) :) :) of 5

The heart of this book is about 90 short pieces (typically anecdotes) about the development of the original Mac. They are arranged, roughly, in chronological order. Together they tell the engaging story of the creation of the original Mac and also give a sense of the Mac culture at that time.

If you are a Mac lover or are fascinated by creative groups, why not just get this book?

If you are uncertain, I suggest going to the home page of folklore.org and looking around. That site contains the short pieces in the book plus. After I read the book, it was fun to look around the site. Another thing you could do is read my somehat longer review on the Oakland Perl Mongers site.

George Woolley of Camelot.pm and Oakland.pm

When I worked at Eazel (a startup that Andy Hertzfeld co-founded), some of my fondest memories was when Andy would start informally sharing anecdotes about the early days at Apple. We'd overhear from our cubicles or receive an IRC ping, and we gravitated towards his cubicle to hear more closely. (The occasional office visit from folks like Steve Wozniak and Bill Atkinson only heightened the surreality!)

This book contains most of those anecotes, and many more, written in a sincere, egoless, and often courageously introspective style. I admire and appreciate Andy for making this book possible, and for providing the added context of a tapestry of commentaries beyond his own narrative voice.

This book was an excellent snapshot into a revolutionary period in time at Apple. A complete reading yields a good picture of the environment where an older Apple was still trying to hang one to the revenues generated from the Apple ][ line while trying to build its successor the Lisa, all the while while a "renegade" team huddled together producing the true next generation computer for Apple, the Macintosh. This book is a collection of reflections upon the past events crafted as a series of essays from Andy. Interspersed are some excellent pictures and additional memories from other members of the team.

(...)


In the end, my recommendation is that one should probably just skip buying the book, read the stories from Folklore, and donate some money directly to Andy through PayPal. Unless, of course, your like me and like to read in the bathtub. (Perhaps someday I'll be able to browse the web while immersed in water without worry of electrocution.)

I'd have to give this book only two stars.

(...)

This book is fantastic. I bought it along with another book and this one is the crown jewel of my collection now. Andy has put together a masterpeice of stories involving Apple and the birth of the Macintosh. Very easy to read and enough technical info for developers to appreciate the problems they had to overcome. The little personal details put the icing on the cake. Photos throughout let you actually glimpse and feel just that bit more of the era. I love this book and it has taken its well deserved place on my Hackers Bookshelf. I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in Apple, Steve Jobs or the Macintosh or that era in general. Extremely well done Andy.

This book had lots of interesting facts about the creation of the Macintosh and the group that designed it. If you are a mac fan go out to your public library and borrow this. Its a good history of Apple Computer. Not bad at all.

This book is phenomenal, and really took me more inside of the actual development of the Macintosh than any other book I have read. It is told by Andy Hertzfeld who was on the original team, and brought in just as Jef Raskin was pushed aside by Steve Jobs who saw this as the future of the company.

It is told in a series of fairly chronological anecdotes that really bring a clear picture of the entire development of the original Mac, from it's origin as a sort of skunkworks to it becoming so large it had to have managers that actually forced many of the original and most talented members of the Macintosh team to leave Apple and move on to working elsewhere. And it ends with Steve Jobs oust from the Company by John Sculley from Pepsi who Jobs had brought in (Sculley would bring Apple to the point of collapse and made a deal with Microsoft that allowed them to make WINDOWS and force Macintosh into the small portion of users that it has today).

The book also has wonderful photos of the people involved as well as prinouts and photos of the early development of the programs and GUI for the Macintosh.

If you are a mac-head run out and get this book right now!!!

To hear somebody else tell the story is one thing, to hear it from somebody who was there in the middle of it all, somebody who lived it--somebody like brilliant Andy Hertzfeld from the original Mac team is something else entirely. Andy's deeply personal account of that "revolution" in that now famous valley is diamond sharp.

This is THE book for every Mac aficionado! Walk with those who were there through the birth of a truly historical product. This is a nicely designed hardback that fits well in the hand, is filled with wonderful photos and anecdotes from those most involved from the earliest days of the Macintosh. I have found most fascinating the copies of actual hand-written notes from the earliest brainstorming meetings, complete with corrections and revealing marginal comments. I will definitely keep this where I can thumb through it while on hold or wanting some entertaining distraction - and where it will be seen by my PeeCee buddies!

Evolutionary scientists are fond of emphasizing that the world as we know it is fundamentally an outcome of a random series of sequences involving biomasses, chemicals, bacteria, and other goodies heated at high temperature and simmered, like soup, over centuries, until it resulted in "us". In the late seventies and early eighties, there were the Apple Computer Company, the author and his inspired colleagues, Silicon Valley technology developments, a business economy open to new ideas, the vision and energy of Steve Jobs, and more. Occasionally, good things happen historically out of the random interaction of essentially unrelated components. This is how the Macintosh computer came to be.

The story is told in "Revolution in the Valley - The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made". This is a wonderfully-produced book written by one of the major principals in the development of the Mac, Andy Hertzfeld, a software engineer. The story unfolds in about 80 short recollections and anecdotes, mostly contributed by Hertzfeld, memoir-like. A small handful were contributed by other principals in the Mac's early development - Steve Capps, Donn Denman, Bruce Horn, and Susan Kare, the legendary graphic designer responsible for most of the enduring interface symbols.

The focus is primarily on the people who made the Mac. They were primarily young, enthusiastic, motivated nerds who possessed creativity and genius. There was no shortage of creative geniuses in the nascent computer industry at that time, but the group which created the Mac was special because the Mac was special. It was different. It was the first computer designed to be (relatively) easy to use. It was meant to be for everyone, not just the techno-nerds and corporate spreadsheet wonks, but for those others creative and cognitively nimble enough, to encompass the computer as a desktop metaphor with powerful and handy tools and features. It was meant to change the world. And it did.

Like the primordal, evolutionary ooze, the synergistic interaction of these people with the developments around them in computer technology, the idealism and vision of people in the Silicon Valley environment, and the shear dynamic force of the computer itself, created an outcome which clearly is significant to many people, and special to Mac fans.

The history of the early Mac is inherently of interest, but the presentation here makes it feel special. The production values of this book are topnotch. This is a hefty hardcover very well designed to not only convey the story, but to evoke the culture and ethos surrounding Mac history in both words and images. There are scans of contemporaneous personal notes and sketches by some of the engineers and designers. There are plenty of individual and group photos of the relevant personalities. There are photos of the work environment, the hardware, and the look of the software as it evolved. There are loads of illustrations of original graphics designs, icons and fonts, and screen images. The overall look of the book evokes the aesthetics of the time period with interesting use of colored text, page layouts, and fonts, together with graphics of early topical magazine covers, advertisements, and media presentations, and more. Except for the lack of music, everything is here and ready for a Ken Burns video production. Seriously.

Of course, the stories are most important and there are plenty of interesting and humorous memories of people and events. Steve Jobs is the chief character, of course, but Bill Gates and Mick Jagger play roles as well. The story of how a pirate flag was flown over one of Apple's design buildings reflects the attitude, in part, which inspired the Mac development team. For the nerdiest fans, the story of how the "marching ants" representation of a screen selection in graphics programs came to be, is a treasure.

This is an exceptional production.

How was the Macintosh made? How did it evolve? What are the stories of the people who created it? Revolution in the Valley is a series of anecdotes compiled by Software Wizard Andy Hertzfeld about the early days of the Macintosh.

Andy first began to tell his tales of the Mac's creation on his website, Folklore.org. Not long after, Tim O'Reilly approached him about the possibility of compiling the stories into a book. Browse Folklore.org and you can still read most of these stories online, but Revolution in the Valley presents them in a more comfortable, enjoyable format.

Every story Andy presents is an entertaining read, but most fascinating are the tales of chance. Luck and the determination of individuals working on scorned projects played a decisive role in the formation of user interface characteristics that we take for granted today.

The Lisa, for example, almost had an interface based on dialog boxes. It was the surreptitious work of Bill Atkinson and Dan Smith that gave us the icon-based Finder we use today. In another story, Andy tells of how the "OK" button was labeled "Do It" - until one user asked why his computer was calling him a "Dolt."

Equally interesting are the features that didn't make it. The original Macintosh almost had a slot (euphemistically called the "diagnostic port") until management realized what it was really supposed to be. On the more whimsical side, had it not been for limited ROM space, "Mr. Macintosh" would have appeared in a menu waving his hand, once every couple thousand times the user pulled down a menu.

Revolution in the Valley is a fascinating book which anybody reading this site [Applefritter] will enjoy immensely. Even if you don't buy a copy, at least head over to Folklore.org, where you can read many of the stories online.

This book and "Cult of Macintosh" are vastly different books but could be sold as a companion set. They look at the Mac from two perspectives that really mark its place in History.
Andy Hertzfield has done a wonderful job. The book leaves me wanting more -- Where are all these creative people today? What happened to them? What do they think about the world of technology today? I sure hope he plans another book.

Subtitled "The Insanely Great Story of How The Mac Was Made," this 291-page hardcover was written by the original Mac's brilliant software wizard, Andy Hertzfeld. That turns out to be this book's greatest strength and also its biggest weakness. Compiled from postings from Hertzfeld's folklore web site and augmented with the reproduction of original notes and historical photos, Revolution provides an insider's first-hand account of the Mac's creation, from Jef Raskin's 1979 conception through Steve Jobs' resignation in 1985. For the most part, it's a thoroughly entertaining read, though better editing could have eliminated much of the repetition in the piecemeal presentation and provided explanations of the technical hacks Hertzfeld recounts. Revolution's in-the-trenches vantage succeeds in making you feel you are part of the Mac team, but for the full story of what was going on at Apple and the industry at large, it's best balanced with additional reading. P.S. In the interest of full disclosure, please note that I am the author of Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful Company.

For those of you that have had a Mac from the beginnings in 1984 (like me), this book is for you. We have watched the development of the Mac from the "fantastic" 128k machines that came out in February, 1984 to the fantastic G5 machines that are available now. "Revolution in the Valley" tells us the pre-1984 story of the actual development of the Mac. It is written by one of the true insiders of the story, Andy Hertzfeld, a co-creator of the Mac. The book covers the period of August, 1979 to May, 1985.

The book is written in a diary format, with each entry being a separate story of one to four pages in length. A few times this gets a little cumbersome in that there is repetition where some simple editing would have prevented it. (There is cross-referencing between the stories also.) The writing style allows for quick reading most of the time. There are a few times that the technical details get in the way of the story but overall it is a very engaging read. If you are into human interest stories, this book is for you. You will find out the importance of having a mustache. The passion of everyone that worked on the Mac comes through loud and clear. You will read, first hand, about the personalities of the main players in the development of the Mac, Steve Jobs, Bill Atkinson, Joanna Hoffman, Jef RAskin, and Steve Wozniak, along with many others. There are LOTS of pictures, illustrations, graphics, copies of an actual lab book pages, and quotes. It is 291 pages long but reads VERY fast.

Upon seeing that many of the stories featured at folklore.org were now bound in hardcover, I immediately sought out this book. This book was a delightful read to cover the interesting history of the Macintosh in how it was formed over the course of around five years. Apple has been the maker of many revolutionary and different products over the years (Newton, Cube, iMac, iPod), and treading into new territory can be a thrilling and dangerous ride. The creation of the original Mac was probably not much different.

This book sits well with quite a few other books I've read over the past year or so, including The Cathedral & The Bazaar, Softwar, and Hackers: Heroes of the Revolution.

For those interested in computing/Apple history, this is an excellent book which details the creation of the original Macintosh computer.

Hertzfeld gives us a set of vignettes into the people who made the Mac. From 1979 to 1985, we get anecdotes of the development process and the personalities [especially Steve Jobs], from several of the core Mac team.

Being very episodic, the book suffers from an overall drift. As a standalone book, with little other information on the Mac, the disjointedness of the narrative leaves little context. The book is best read if you are already have some knowledge of the history of Apple. Enhanced perhaps by having used the Apple 2 or the Mac itself, and even to have seen the 1984 commercial.

Some portions of the text are best appreciated only by programmers, who can get some sense of the ingenuity of the team. For other readers, you should not worry about the obscurity of those sections. [You'll certainly know which they are, when you meet them.]

Try reading the book after going through other books on Apple that give a better and larger picture of the company.

Intriguing

This is the story of how the Mac was created from inception to finish, complete with sidebars about particular "inside stories" (such as the famous "1984" commercial), written by one of the people on the original design team. This is a story filled with lots of intrigue, suspense, colorful characters (both among the engineers and the management), and anecdotal stories. Steve Jobs is portrayed at times as a visionary, a clod, and most of all a man driven to put the best computer of its time on the market. The story of how Adam Osborne earned Steve's wrath by "insulting" the Apple employees at a trade show in 1981 just as an example describes Jobs in a nutshell. Although Jobs and Apple clearly had the last laugh on Osborne Computers.

The story begins with the team originally working in a small building near the Apple Computer campus, then eventually becoming so big it's eventually moved back to the main Apple campus. Stories of long hours, personality clashes, junk food and sodas abound in this book. It gives an insider's view not just of how the Macintosh came to be, but also how a software engineering team works together or works to put out a product in spite of obstacles that pop up along the way.

The author also discusses his personality clashes with his boss, one of the things that led to his eventually leaving Apple. There are differences of opinions plenty discussed throughout the book, but it seems to me everyone involved in creating the Mac and getting it out the door were passionate about completing the task.

This book is a fascinating look at the "history" of the Macintosh's creation.

Even if you have no interest is in Macs or Apple, if you want to see how a team can grow and prosper and make an awesome new product, you will benifit from reading this book. Andy Hertzfeld, who was there in the thick of the creation of the Mac, has created and collected a series of fascinating anecdotes that give real insight to the dynamics of a creative, brillaint and passionate team. As a team leader in an innovating startup company, I found real resonance and insight here. An excellent book.

This is the gratest book I have ever read about the making of the Mac. It is written by one of the last insiders: Andy Hertzfeld, one of the key members of the original Mac team. The book is full of very detail stories about the internal designs of the Macintosh and pictures never published before.

The book is not about the internal Apple power struggles of the 80s. It is a book written by an engineer for engineers. It is a must read for all the engineers that love the work well done

Thank you Andy for this book for the rest of us!
Carlos

What a great book! Much of what is written here can be found on the folklore website that Andy Hertzfield has put together, but this hardcover gem is just one of those things a Macophile has gotta have anyhow.

There's a lot of pointy-headed programming talk in here, which may challenge some, but even if you don't understand some of the references, the story they're being told against comes through every time. If you do, so much the better - these guys truly were/are brilliant, and their work deserves to be memorialized.

The portrait of Burrell Smith that emerges as such a focal point in the development of the Mac is particularly fascinating.

Great effort.

Written as a series of short blog-like entries, this book takes you on a unique behind-the-scenes look at what it was like building the original Mac. I found it a genuine and fascinating peek into both the "birth of the Mac" and the emerging personal computer industry as a whole. It's tough to fathom what it must have been like to write an entire operating system and applications with only 128K to work with.

Being in the software industry myself, I could identify with a lot of the programming situations and unique characters that end up in software development. It was oddly comforting to find that certain things haven't really changed that much. My favorite in this regard was a short entry about a management decision to "track progress" by entering the number of lines coded that week. One guy put down "-2000", as he had done some optimizing and was able to get rid of a lot of extra source code.

Great nuggets of information about how things came into existence. For instance, the "Command" key icon, the boot beep, and the original font names. A glimpse at what it was like to work for Steve Jobs was also captivating.

All told, a must read.

How wonderful is this book? That will depend on several factors. I've read a lot of books that claim to dish out the real dirt about Apple, and this book impressed me because Andy Hertzfeld didn't write all the anecdotes himself. Instead, he created a web site at www.folklore.org and encouraged any and all persons involved with the creation of the Macintosh to document their own recollections of how it all went down. Those essays, along with dozens written by Hertzfeld himself, are now the basis of this new book, mixed in with pencil sketches, historcal photos, and old ads. This book is not about grinding axes or settling grudges. It merely documents in an objective fashion how the whole team came together, and the many many ups and downs encountered in bringing this wonderful computer to life.

What I like about this book can be summed up in two phrases. First, none of the essays exceeds five pages (roughly the length of my attention span), so I easily breezed through ninety pages of historical material without losing interest. I found myself laughing outloud at times. Second, because of the way Hertzfeld collected these stories, I truly believe that this book is not an attempt to re-write history so as to exalt himself as the God of Macintosh. While I have seen reviews of this book describe it as a coffee table book, I don't view it as a coffee table book. The essays cover technical details about how the Macintosh was prototyped and debugged, and these technical details will be above 95 percent of the people who pick up this book. Not to mention there is a lot of text.

The anecdotes in this book read quite true to me. We follow Hertzfeld from his initial hire at Apple through to his maneuvers to get himself onto the Macintosh development team. Because the anecdotes come from a variety of sources, the book really seems to fairly depict each person's role in the development of the Macintosh. For example, we've all heard Jef Raskin claim that he was the creator of the Macintosh, but this book reveals that the form factor of the computer envisioned by Raskin was nothing like the 128k Mac that ultimately arrived at retail stores, and that Raskin was put on a forced leave of absence from Apple before the machine even shipped.

Having said all these great things about the book, who is the target market for this book? I happen to have been a Mac owner since the 128k Mac was released (I passed on the 128, and waited for the 512), so this book brought back many fond memories of how the Mac changed my life and of the adventures I have had with it since its introduction. But as the foreward of this book acknowledges, most people today are computing with Windows machines and in a sense "everyone is basically using a Mac," because all the concepts implemented by the Mac team are now available in one form or another on the Windows operating system. But I don't think a Windows user would find this book of interest, as they typically don't care how the computer works or what mountains had to be moved to make the graphical operating system happen.

The book concludes with Steve Jobs removal from the Macintosh team in 1985. It provides no insight on whether the "new Apple" after Jobs' return is anything like the "old Apple" chronicled in this book. This is, of course, due to the fact that Hertzfeld was only at Apple from 1979 to 1984, so here we are, twenty years later, still reminiscing about what it was like to invent the original Mac. Hertzfeld's departure from Apple came after a six-month leave of absence, and the magic he had felt before his leave had gone away (or "grown up") by the time he was scheduled to return. So he left amicably, and went on to found three separate companies in the years that followed. Revolution In The Valley is a wonderful book to read, but I'm thinking the only people who will want to read it are those who were Apple devotees in the early 1980's, or MBA students studying where Apple went wrong with its multiple reorganizations and management shakeups. I find the anecdotes in this book fascinating, and I can't put it down. Programming geeks or budding electrical engineers will find this book fascinating. These stories are the words of real ex-employees, many speaking out for the first time, and detail the day to day travails of the people who made it all happen. But I honestly don't think my wife or my sister would spend much time with this book at all. It's just too much of an insider's look at a company that is struggling to remain relevant in a world that is very different than the world in 1984. But if you are one of the people who bought into the whole Macintosh culture in the 1980's, I would definitely recommend this book.

It's easy to get discouraged as a developer. Time, features, quality, these all turn the thrill of inspiration into the cool slog of a job. But sometimes the fire gets through. That's what happened at Apple with the birth of the Macintosh. And that's what Andy Hertzfeld, one of the primary team members on the first Macintosh, chronicles in this book.

The summation of the folklore.org site, this book is a set of about 100 stories. Each running about 3-4 pages on average. Starting with Andy's first day at Apple and ending around the time when Jobs' was ousted in a palace coup. The stories run the gamut from the deep technical to the interpersonal. They are well written and engaging.

A must read for those inspired by the original Apple Mac engineers.