The Apple Employee You Have Never Heard Of: Bill Fernandez
It gets me every time to think about this: Only 30 years ago, there was no such thing as a PC, a “personal computer”. There was the vision of this shiny new piece of tech that would change the world (it did, as we know today), but until the Apple II was released by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, Apple wasn’t Apple. The Apple II was the iPhone of its’ era, the PC that shaped every machine that came after it. But what, and who, led up to this event?
Apple I
FROM NERDCAVE TO COMPANY
Back in 1977, Apple was a mess, a nerdcave: Daniel Kottke, one of the company’s first employees, said “[In 1976] the Apple II did not even work. Woz’s prototype worked. But when they laid it out as a circuit board, it did not work reliably… It was unacceptable. And Woz did not have the skills to fix that… But, it was even worse than that. They did not even have a schematic.
Apple had just hired Rod Holt as the first engineering chief, and this was the biggest problem he walked into: Woz’s prototype wasn’t much more than a pile of chips and wires in a cardboard box. Holt knew the company had a tiny team and had to get this concept machine to a manufacturing stage.
So Rod Holt had a job for technician Bill Fernandez. Let’s go a couple years back.
IMPORTANT FRIENDS
Regarding computers and electronics, very few people had a better understanding of Woz’s mind that Fernandez. They have known each other since childhood, lived in the same neigborhood and went to the same school. He eventually introduced Steve Wozniak to a kid called Steve Jobs. “We were both nerdy, socially inept, intellectual,” said Fernandez about his relationship with Jobs, “and we gravitated towards each other. We both also were not at all interested in the superficial bases upon which the other kids were basing their relationships, and we had no particular interest in living shallow lives to be accepted. So we didn’t have many friends.”
Later, Woz picked up a bunch of electronics and took them to Fernandez’ garage, where the pair built there own working computer that was way ahead of its time. Eventually, Fernandez also helped Woz to get a technician job at Hewlett-Packard, arguably the biggest “perosonal technology” company at the time. Knowing Woz very well from that time in his life, Fernandez said: “When Woz designed something, most of the design was in his head. The only documentation he needed was a few pages of notes and sketches to remind him of the overall architecture and any tricky parts. What the company needed was a complete schematic showing all the components and exactly how they were wired together.” Holt and Fernandez had to take Woz’s prototype and make it stable and suitable for mass production. This was not easy: There were almost no industry standards for connectors, chips, drives, everything had to be soldered manually, the list goes on.
WOZNIAK AND JOBS
As we know today, the Apple II from 1977 was a huge success and got the “personal computer” into the heads of the average consumer that had little to no technical items other than TVs and toasters. The world looked up at Wozniak and Jobs as the godfathers of the computer, but little did they world know about the man that turned Wozniak’s notes and sketches into the actual product.
“What I really respected the most about Bill was his mind. He was so clear-headed.” — Steve Wozniak
A while after Fernandez introduced Wozniak to Jobs, the pair started collaborating on technical projects and finally founded a little company called Apple. Jobs recognized that Woz’s first computer, the Apple I, could be shipped to enthusiasts. Jobs was way more into the company than Wozniak in the early stages. Wozniak was happy with his job at HP, but things turned quickly: HP didn’t include Wozniak in the team that would be responsible for HP’s first personal computer. Wozniak wasn’t sure if he wanted to leave HP yet, as he wasn’t sure if a little company like Apple could compete against the behemoth HP.
After the Apple I and Fernandez came on board after quitting HP in 1977 as well, Apple Computer, Inc. was officially formed. Having Mark Markkula as the first investor on hand, Bill Fernandez became Apple’s first full-time employee. “Bill was really in that early circle of founders at Apple. He was part of the family. He [later] got badge number four, but we really brought him in before Mike Markkula [who got badge number three]”, Wozniak said looking back.
“There was a palpable sense that magic was in the air. […]There was the sense that anything was possible” — Bill Fernandez
Apple was still in the very early stages. Fernandez put it like this: “Jobs and I used to take turns going over to each other’s garages, typically, and hanging out there and working on things, I’d bicycle down there, and he’d bicycle over to my house. But now I found myself in my little yellow Datsun pickup driving over there and going to work in the garage, which was kind of funny. And as things happened, we built things, we built boards, we brought in processor technologies to look at.”
Wozniak was still working at HP and while the Apple I was impressively successful for a small company like Apple, the Apple II turned into a runaway success. Apple quickly needed more space and purchased a little office space on Stevens Creek Boulevard in Cupertino. Steve Wozniak quit his job at HP and came to work at Apple full time.
Unfortunately, this is were Fernandez story at Apple stops. As Apple grew to the company we know today, he was one of the many forgotten key figures in Apple’s history. By 1978, Apple employed a 100 people, and Fernandez was still working for Holt. The word got out that Apple was giving away stock options to their employees, but Fernandez realized quickly that he was out of luck. After asking Holt for new opportunities and being stuck at his “mind-numbingly boring” job, not comparable to the involvement in Apple II, he quit after just 18 moths at Apple.
I hope you learned something new, and be sure to share if you enjoyed!
Originally published at techsational.com on April 28, 2015.
