''Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made'' is a nonfiction book written by

Andy Hertzfeld Andrew Jay Hertzfeld (born April 6, 1953) is an American software engineer and innovator who was a member of the original Apple Macintosh development team during the 1980s. After buying an Apple II in January 1978, he went to work for App ...

about the birth of the Apple

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

personal computer. The author was a core member of the team that built the Macintosh system software and the chief creator of the Mac's radical new user interface software. The book is a collection of anecdotes tracing the development of the Macintosh from a secret project in 1979 through its "triumphant introduction" in 1984. These anecdotes were originally published on the author's Folklore.org web site.

Content

The book focuses on the hardware design and software development by the original Macintosh team at Apple Computer, including sometimes technical details of ports and cards and code. It describes the Mac's introduction by Steve Jobs, and improvements made shortly thereafter. Steve Wozniak wrote the foreword. The author reveals that both Steve Jobs and

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...

had first seen the innovative

Graphic User Interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

at the offices of Xerox's

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...

Research Center ( PARC), which had prototyped the "desktop computer" concept by 1978.

References

Books about Apple Inc. 2004 non-fiction books O'Reilly Media books {{compu-book-stub