There are plenty of computer history books in which every arcane detail has been unpacked and elucidated for a mainstream audience.

It is to the credit of Hertzfeld and his editors at O'Reilly, a noted publisher of computer trade books that has been moving aggressively into more mainstream markets over the past half decade, that the stories in 'Revolution in the Valley' are never dumbed down. So, in other words, when listening to Jobs, ignore all the times when he says something is 'great' or 'awful' - the highs - and just try to focus on the gist - the low. This can be useful in cases where the high-frequency waves are likely to introduce random errors into whatever is being broadcast. And learn that if one is dealing with, say, the radio spectrum, a low-pass filter cuts out high-frequency waves, allowing only low-frequency waves to pass. You can guess, or you can do what I did and Google it. In 'Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made,' Hertzfeld's collection of tales about the birth of the Macintosh, the story that contains this anecdote continues merrily, making no attempt to define for the lay reader what the term 'low-pass filter' means. 'Well, just because he tells you something is awful or great, it doesn't necessarily mean he'll feel that way tomorrow,' software manager Bud Tribble tells Andy Hertzfeld, a leading member of the team that designed and built the first Macintosh computer. But how many have heard this advice on how to deal with Jobsian rhetoric? Most people with a passing knowledge of the history of the personal computer are aware that Apple founder Steve Jobs is famous for his 'reality distortion field': his ability not only to deny objective fact but also to convince anyone within his reach that black equals white and yes is no.

Andy hertzfeld book