The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 21 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Parrish: Apple Lost Over $1 Billion on Apple III, Subsidized by Apple II
“In today's money, they'd lost at least a billion dollars on the Apple III, all of it subsidized by the Apple II's success.”
Parrish: Steve Wozniak Sold Cheap Pre-IPO Apple Shares to 40 Excluded Colleagues
“He took his own shares and sold them at a deeply discounted price to 40 colleagues. Who'd been left out after the IPO. He was giving away shares to people he felt deserved them. He called it the Woz plan.”
Parrish: Apple's Official Apple III Fix Was Dropping the Machine Onto Desks
“When customers called about system failures, technicians would tell them to lift the front of the computer three to six inches off their desk and drop it. The physical shock might reset the loose chips. The official fix for the computer worth thousands of doll…”
Garry Tan: Apple opened RCS messaging in reaction to DOJ pressure
“Apple even today still, you know, they're opening it up a little bit more with RCS, but, you know, it's those are actually in reaction to the work of Jonathan Cantor and the DOJ.”
Andreessen notes that Apple continues to exercise significant gatekeeper control
“Apple, you know, opening up the iPhone and the App Store was a big step forward, but of course, even Apple continues to exercise a fair amount of control. I mean, they're far more open than Verizon was in those days, you know, but even still, like, you know, A…”
Wozniak reduced standard floppy controller design from 22 chips to two
“Of the 22 chips in the standard controller, only two were actually needed.”
Parrish: VisiCalc drove Apple sales from 1,000 to 10,000 units monthly
“Apple went from selling a thousand units a month to selling 10,000. Overnight, business people became 90% of their market.”
Parrish: VisiCalc initially ran exclusively on the Apple II by accident
“VisiCalc could only run on the Apple II. And this wasn't because of some brilliant strategy. It was completely accidental. The Apple II just happened to be the only computer with everything VisiCalc needed. Enough RAM to hold the spreadsheet, a proper keyboard…”
Gil: Major open-source technologies historically require giant corporate backers
“Almost every single major open source company has had a giant, ah, institutional backer. IBM was the biggest funder of Linux in the nineties as a counterbalance to Microsoft. And the biggest funders of all the open source browsers are Apple and Google with Web…”
Shah: Apple privacy changes hurt social media by reducing information asymmetry
“A lot of social media stock market tanked and revenue tanked when Apple announced a way to not be able to keep more information asymmetry, and boom, you can't predict many things about people, and therefore your revenue
Well, tank because you can't predict th…”
Isaacson: Steve Jobs delayed original Mac launch over circuit board aesthetics
“Something that he shared with Steve jobs who would hold up shipping the original Macintosh because the circuit board inside was not beautiful enough.”
Dixon: VC invests only $10B–$20B yearly, smaller than big tech R&D budgets
“This industry is actually, you know, it gets a lot of attention in the press venture capital, but it's actually a very small industry. So, you know, they're probably, there are a few dozen kind of firms that most people, you know, that, that, that constitute t…”
Wozniak's Open Systems Sustained Apple While Jobs's Closed Models Initially Struggled
“Yeah, so the open one that Wozniak had created where people could put their own components in, take it apart, that was keeping them afloat. And Steve's version of the computer, which was closed and sort of more controlled, which is a theme I think we're gonna …”
Parrish: Apple II Became First Computer to Sell One Million Units by 1983
“By 1983, the Apple II would become the first computer to sell a million units.”
Parrish: Steve Wozniak remains on Apple's payroll in a ceremonial position
“Steve Wozniak left Apple in 1985, and to this day he remains on Apple's payroll in this ceremonial position.”
Venture Capitalist Arthur Rock Helped Take Teledyne Public in 1961
“Teledyne stock went on the market in 1961 with Arthur Rock,
Who would later become famous for backing Intel and Apple, helping in the IPO.”
Isaacson: Steve Jobs engraved 30 engineers' signatures inside Macintosh case
“He asked the 30 engineers on the team to sign their names onto a whiteboard that they engraved on the inside of the case, where nobody would ever see it, nobody would ever know, but their signatures were on the inside of the case.”
Isaacson: Jobs designed Pixar and Apple headquarters to force serendipitous encounters
“Steve Jobs who designed the Pixar headquarters to make sure Everybody had to walk through the atrium and pump into people and exchange ideas to the Apple headquarters.”
Steve Jobs Held Over $100 Million When Forced Out of Apple
“He's got over a hundred million, I think.”