{"id":14046,"date":"2016-04-02T11:18:54","date_gmt":"2016-04-02T15:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=14046"},"modified":"2016-04-02T11:18:54","modified_gmt":"2016-04-02T15:18:54","slug":"regis-mckennas-1976-notebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/02\/regis-mckennas-1976-notebook\/","title":{"rendered":"Regis McKenna&rsquo;s 1976 Notebook"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fastcompany.com\/3058227\/regis-mckennas-1976-notebook-and-the-invention-of-apple-computer-inc\">Harry McCracken<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=11402548\">Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"http:\/\/www.fastcompany.com\/3058227\/regis-mckennas-1976-notebook-and-the-invention-of-apple-computer-inc\"><p>Once RMI decided to sign Apple as a client for its advertising and public relations services, McKenna became one of the very first people in the world to take a stab at understanding the company and its products. Then he went on to play an instrumental role in helping the rest of the world do so. Fortunately for us, he&rsquo;s an obsessive notetaker, and enough of a packrat that he kept many of the notebooks he&rsquo;s filled throughout his career&mdash;including this one, which contains his jottings from when he began to formulate a marketing plan for the Apple II in December 1976.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>Selling the new computer, McKenna felt, would require explaining it to the uninitiated. &ldquo;I told that to Wozniak, and he got pretty inflamed about it. I said, &lsquo;There&rsquo;s nothing I can do for you. Goodbye.&rsquo; He left, but Steve [Jobs] came back.&rdquo;<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>Then there was IBM. McKenna referenced it and Hewlett-Packard, but only to note that they cater to engineers with machines that cost $5,000 to $10,000, far afield from the Apple II&rsquo;s intended market. The first IBM PC, which would prove an epoch-shifting success when it arrived, was more than four years away&mdash;not yet on IBM&rsquo;s radar, let alone Apple&rsquo;s.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>&ldquo;I kept on bringing up the Apple Stores because there was no outlet,&rdquo; McKenna says. &ldquo;It only made sense that you would sell them through your own stores.&rdquo; The concept proved rather successful once the company tackled it in earnest a mere quarter of a century later.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>His secret weapon turned out to be Steve Jobs. &ldquo;I took Steve and put him on a plane with me to go all over,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;His personality was what captured people. They didn&rsquo;t know if he was real or not, but he was smart and articulate and enthusiastic. He was a different kind of person than the president of IBM.&rdquo;<\/p><\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Harry McCracken (Hacker News): Once RMI decided to sign Apple as a client for its advertising and public relations services, McKenna became one of the very first people in the world to take a stab at understanding the company and its products. Then he went on to play an instrumental role in helping the rest [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[38,58,101,295,663,173,779],"class_list":["post-14046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-apple","tag-appleretailstores","tag-business","tag-history","tag-marketing","tag-stevejobs","tag-steve-wozniak"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14046"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14047,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14046\/revisions\/14047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}