November 20, 1988

DUCK! Plenty of people in the Macintosh biz whacked their heads trying to get past Guy Kawasaki’s opinions of them when hewas Apple Computer’s head evangelist for third-party developers.During his tenure at Apple, Kawasaki became known for his brutally honest (and often hilarious) assessments of people and their products. Those who sustained injuries may gulp to hear that he has written a book.

Designed as an explicit guide for Mac product developers, the book is likely to become required reading for Mac cultists because of its rapier wit and liberal kiss-and-tell quotient. But the book is worth the price for its chapter on “How To Give Good Demo,” if nothing else.

Originally called, “The Reward is the Reward,” the title was an unsubtle play on “The Journey is the Reward,” an unauthorized biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. It’s now called “The Macintosh Way.” The title may be innocuous, but believe me being left out of this book is a good sign. “I will flatter you with my omissions,” Kawasaki says in the intro.

Anyone who knows the former jewelry salesman from Hawaii, now president of software company Acius in Sunnyvale (which markets the French database 4th Dimension), will not be surprised that the book opens with a seminal piece about the feud between him and Ed Esber, chairman of Ashton-Tate. “He drew first blood,” says Kawasaki.

There are also great jokes from inside Apple, this one from the old Apple II division: “Q: How many Macintosh Division people do you need to change a light bulb? A: One. He holds the light bulb up and lets the universe revolve around him.”

WHAT A NUT: During his introduction of noted physicist Carver Mead Tuesday night at the Exploratorium’s 12th Annual Awards Dinner, Apple Computer co-founder Mike Markkula revealed an amusing fact about the Cal Tech professor’s history.

After calling him “one of the da Vincis of our time” for his pioneering work in many fields, including custom chip design, Markkula revealed that Mead is also a hazelnut farmer. Markkula said the Cal Tech professor used to disappear around harvest time — much to the puzzlement of faculty and staff, until they solved the mystery.

Upon taking the podium, Mead corrected Markkula without missing a beat, saying, “I actually have two nut farms. One (is) down at Cal Tech.”

Mead was honored by the Exploratorium for his contributions to science, technology and education. He spoke of his work in “silicon neurocircuits,” which he is designing with fellow physicist Federico Faggin, a co-inventor of the integrated circuit. Mead’s presentation showed a chip that functioned like a small piece of retinal tissue — pretty heady stuff for future-trippers — and announced that he had donated the chip to the Exploratorium as an exhibit.

SNUCK PAST US: It’s surprising that we didn’t hear more noise about the revision to the U.S. Bankruptcy Code now in effect (signed by President Reagan Oct. 18). Pat Murphy, partner in the San Francisco law firm Murphy Weir & Butler, says the revision has special interest for start-up and established high-tech firms.
“In a nutshell, the problem was that a relatively small company might have an interesting technical development that it licensed to a third party,” Murphy says. “The third party would put time and money into developing it. Under the old bankruptcy law, the small company could then go into Chapter 11 (reorganization) and reject .Ž.Ž. the license of the technology.”

In other words, Small Inc. could tell Large Inc. that Large could no longer license the product — leaving Large holding a smelly bag of useless investment.

How pervasive was this problem in Silicon Valley? “I can’t reveal who we’ve worked for, but we’ve had high-tech companies that have contacted us because they were entering into licensing transactions and were worried about a (bankruptcy) filing by the party licensing to them,” Murphy says.

The revision came about because of a bankruptcy filing by a Virginia outfit, Richmond Metal Finishers. RMF licensed its metal-coating process to Lubrizol Enterprises, then went into Chapter 11 and successfully yanked its license back from Lubrizol. “If (RMF) rejected the license, they could get more money by re-licensing it to someone else,” Murphy says.

The revision makes technology licenses more analogous to real estate laws, Murphy says, since a leaseholder whose landlord is in Chapter 11 cannot be forced to leave the property.

“Lubrizol was not a shattering departure from existing law,” Murphy says. “The upshot was that the high-tech industry, which had been vaguely aware (of this section of the Bankruptcy Code), became more aware and so it was amended. It was a classic example of special interest legislation which is perfectly legitimate.”