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Pong inventor made Steve Jobs work night shift because of his bad B.O.
New York Posr ^ | November 19, 2022 | Gavin Newsham

Posted on 11/19/2022 11:50:22 AM PST by nickcarraway

Allan Alcorn was desperate when he hired a young college dropout named Steve Jobs.

Atari, the fledgling computer games company he worked for, was scrambling to staff up after the sudden success of its first game, Pong. Now, here was a young hippie in sandals, waiting in reception and asking for a job as a technician.

“It was 1973 and there was this kid, maybe 18, who was just so passionate about technology – said his name was Steve Jobs,” Alcorn told The Post “So I hired him.” “He was kind of a pain to work with and he had this real problem with body odor, so we made him work nights,” Alcorn recalled of the man who would go on to found Apple

(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Computers/Internet; Music/Entertainment
KEYWORDS: allanalcorn; apple; atari; california; childish; gavinnewsham; gavinnewsom; newyork; newyorkcity; newyorkcompost; newyorkpost; pointlesstopic; pong; stevejobs; stevewozniak
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To: Salamander; gundog; SaveFerris

21 posted on 11/19/2022 1:00:29 PM PST by Larry Lucido (Donate! Don't just post clickbait!)
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To: Larry Lucido

22 posted on 11/19/2022 1:29:51 PM PST by gundog ( It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. )
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To: nickcarraway

I was in close proximity to Jobs once circa 1997. Didn’t notice this at that time. Generalizing from any specific anecdote doesn’t really work.


23 posted on 11/19/2022 1:55:00 PM PST by Mr. Jeeves ([CTRL]-[GALT]-[DELETE])
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To: nickcarraway
Did you say

PONG?

24 posted on 11/19/2022 2:08:57 PM PST by Don W (When blacks riot, neighborhoods and cities burnSeriouslyhites riot, nations and continents burn)
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To: NWFree

Playing the machine was boring for sure. The only way Pong was fun was playing with a friend and doing beer shots each point.

Of course when you’re a kid, incorporating beer into any game makes it more fun. LOL


25 posted on 11/19/2022 2:09:44 PM PST by LeoTDB69
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To: Levy78
Totally forgot about Video Professor. That ‘please buy my product’ bit is still stuck in my head.

LOVE IT that you remember! Ha ha! You might appreciate this, then...

Back in the mid 90s when I worked for him, John Scherer called me from his jet one afternoon and asked if I knew how to eject a CD from his new fangled laptop. We had just made the transition from VHS to disc format, so it was all still relatively new to us. After several minutes of my different iterations of advice from "Press this button...Find Root drive C:... Right click this, right click that... reboot... etc, etc, etc..." we finally figured out the issue...

I ended the phone conversation with "Well, I'm just glad nobody knows that the world's foremost computer learning expert and his top tech editor took only 25 minutes to finally figure out that THERE WAS NO DAMN DISC IN YOUR LAPTOP!"

26 posted on 11/19/2022 2:27:43 PM PST by LittleBillyInfidel (This tagline has been formatted to fit the screen. Some content has been edited.)
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To: LittleBillyInfidel

Truly LOL!


27 posted on 11/19/2022 3:00:36 PM PST by Rummyfan (In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. )
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To: LittleBillyInfidel

Great story. Positive = Job’s mother was single and people encouraged her to have an abortion. She was pro life, courageous and gave birth to Steve. Negative = Job’s was stubborn (”I am always correct about everything”) and tried to cure his pancreatic cancer all by himself with diet. Sad. And yes, pong was fun, because pong was an image on a tv screen that can be manipulated.


28 posted on 11/19/2022 3:17:57 PM PST by Falconspeed ("Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others." Robert Louis Stevenson.)
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Comment #29 Removed by Moderator

To: nickcarraway

Ha! That made me think of how the Brits use the word “Pong”:

Definition of pong
pong
noun

an unpleasant smell. Australian, British, and New Zealand slang.

What’s that horrible pong?

Why is there such a pong in the toilet?


30 posted on 11/19/2022 3:35:04 PM PST by sneakers (It's not the democraTIC party! It's the demoCRAT party! )
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To: Falconspeed
Steve Jobs might well be alive today if it had not been for those extreme fad diets he was obsessed with most of his life. He'd go weeks at a time eating the same food, such as only carrots or only apples, for instance.

His doctors actually caught his pancreatic cancer very early and he likely would have been easily cured with standard methods of treatment. But he decided to treat himself with a strict vegan diet with disastrous results.

Since he passed on, Apple really hasn't done anything new and exciting but they continue to make generate enormous revenue and profits on the products that were introduced during Jobs' lifetime.

I recommend the Walter Isaacson biography on him.

31 posted on 11/19/2022 3:46:28 PM PST by SamAdams76 (4,565,103 active users on Truth Social)
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To: SamAdams76

They have been developing a car - or so we keep hearing. If Jobs was still there maybe it would be in production.


32 posted on 11/19/2022 5:06:08 PM PST by lasereye ( )
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To: nickcarraway
Another thing I found interesting...

When I was a Silicon Valley brat, my boss had, at a previous job, been VP of a board house that made Atari boards.

They were approached by a scraggly 21 year old kid to make some boards for a new computer, the Apple I.

A few things about that:

1) They were reticent to do it at first, because the design was pretty close to the design of the Atari they were making boards for. They finally decided to go ahead, as their were enough differences to make a case that it wasn't illegal.

2) My boss had to show Jobs how to fill out a check.

3) My boss DID NOT proceed with work on the Apple I boards until the check cleared.


33 posted on 11/19/2022 5:52:15 PM PST by BikerJoe
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To: Levy78
It came on late night TV when I was in college in the late 90’s ALL THE TIME! How long of a run did that have? I’m sure he made a killing…. I loved his shameless pitch of “plz buy my product”.

I sooooo love that you remember this and are asking! John started out of a little office in about 1993. He grew quickly and acquired a modest shipping facility. The first year production team was one computer software expert as a writer, a camera pc screen grab guy and editor, and text graphics geek, and marketing company. A few years later, it was 3 writers, a pro graphics guy, a tech director for the product and commercials, a QC editor (me), a production manager, about 30 CSRs taking phone orders, and a huge warehouse to store and ship the product. When I joined, I gently nudged the (non tv experienced) Production Manager to let me take John in a less "cheesy" direction. His reply to me was "Oh, are you gonna tell John that??". I shrugged my shoulders and dropped it. I stayed in my lane and watched him stroke his ego on national tv. I left for greener pastures in 1998 and Scherer took it personally (which he should not have!). Three years later, the hypocrite sold the company to some idiotic foreign entity, which cost everyone else their jobs, immediately. That entity lasted about one year before bankruptcy. John still lives in a mansion stop a Denver metro mountain.

34 posted on 11/19/2022 6:24:21 PM PST by LittleBillyInfidel (This tagline has been formatted to fit the screen. Some content has been edited.)
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Comment #35 Removed by Moderator

To: nickcarraway; Salamander

Lordy, ain’t we showing our age.


36 posted on 11/19/2022 6:43:37 PM PST by Tijeras_Slim ( )
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To: Levy78
I would think with the cheesy commercials he would be low-ego and full of self-deprecating humor. Sounds like the ego was big? Leadership doesn’t have to do what the SMEs say, but very dangerous when leadership won’t at least hear them out. You recall what annual gross sale were while you were there?

He was a nice guy, but very much projected his First Class status of our little Titanic - and still does, as I am close friends with his liquidation manager (only out of pure coincidence). Anyway... I don't remember the exact numbers, but the revenues up to 1999 were mid 8 figures, annually. Don't remember what he sold out for, but wish I did. I do remember it was a foreign entity that collapsed very quickly. I think their play was to leverage the marketing and shipping process, not the product.

37 posted on 11/19/2022 7:15:44 PM PST by LittleBillyInfidel (This tagline has been formatted to fit the screen. Some content has been edited.)
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To: nickcarraway

Great story, especially about the guy’s wife. LOL


38 posted on 11/19/2022 7:49:42 PM PST by montag813
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To: rlmorel
...like boiled cabbage and despair...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

LOL!

39 posted on 11/19/2022 7:57:17 PM PST by Yardstick
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To: Tijeras_Slim

Best decade, ever.

/you can’t put a price on love

;D


40 posted on 11/19/2022 8:06:24 PM PST by Salamander (Please visit my profile page help save my beloved dog's life. https://www.givesendgo.com/G2FUF)
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