Apple & the Digital Revolution
23 unpublished manuscript notebooks by Del Yocam, Apple’s first COO, with entries dating from August 1983 through early 1995. The notebooks provide continuous, insider documentation of the tech revolution from before the launch of the Macintosh through the advent of the commercial internet.
The entries in the Yocam notebooks are unvarnished and were written as events were unfolding; there was no attempt to craft a narrative. As primary source documents, they are impeccable.
2868 manuscript pages. Unpublished. (1983-1995). All 23 volumes in fine condition.
The first 16 volumes date from October 1983 through February 1991 and document the bulk of Yocam’s tenure at Apple in 2326 manuscript pages . The 7 subsequent volumes, comprising 542 manuscript pages, (1991 through 1994, with one final entry from January 1995), document his tenure as President and Chief Operating Officer at Tektronix as well as his service as a board member of Oracle, Adobe, and AST Research, Inc.
Computation —> Communication
Pictured is page 7 of an extraordinary 10 page entry is from May 8, 1984, entitled “Pajaro Meeting.” In this entry we see Steve Jobs’ vision for the second phase of the PC revolution, the crucial shift from computation to communication. In Yocam’s thousands of entries a rapidly evolving communications and media landscape comes into view, culminating in the arrival of the commercial internet.
Reconsidering Jobs and the Macintosh
The Macintosh is widely remembered as Steve Jobs’ first product masterstroke—a beautifully designed, user-friendly computer that brought the graphical user interface to the masses. But the familiar version of this story tends to flatten what followed. The crisis that emerged after the launch of the underpowered Macintosh 128k is well documented. What Del Yocam’s notebooks reveal in riveting detail is how Jobs’ push toward connectivity—one of the most consequential shifts in Apple’s history—was born directly out of that failure.
Desktop publishing (referenced in the entry pictured here), was simply the first instantiation of a broader vision Jobs was already pursuing. Even before DTP took hold, his push for networking, device interconnection, media integration, and communication tools encompassed many of the elements that would later define the Internet Revolution.
Through Yocam’s notes, the details of this pivot come into sharper focus. It was not a secondary evolution—it was a fundamental reframing of the personal computer’s purpose. And in hindsight, it appears just as ingenious and arguably more consequential than Jobs’ embrace of the graphical interface itself. He pivoted not only from failure, but toward a new future—one in which the personal computer would no longer stand alone, but live as a node in a larger, connected world.
Apple’s first COO, Delbert Yocam
Yocam joined Apple in 1979 as Director of Materials. Four years later he was named General Manager of the Apple II division, and in 1986 he became Apple’s first Chief Operating Officer. After leaving Apple Yocam would go on to serve on the Board of Directors at Oracle, Adobe, and more than a dozen other corporations. He also served at President and COO at Tektronix, and Chairman and CEO at Borland.
In early 1985 overproduction of the Mac 128k plunged Apple into a crisis that resulted in Steve Jobs’ ouster, widespread layoffs, and Apple's first quarterly loss in its history. Given Yocam's successful track record leading the Apple II division, he emerged as the logical candidate to spearhead the company's turnaround efforts. It was during this period that Yocam began to garner attention from the industry press.