Grass is greener for Mac designer

Thirty-six years after working on a project that would change the world of computing, Jerry Manock is bringing his expertise to Grassometer, a Trinity College start-up which has developed a device to analyse grass growth for farmers, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON

JERRY MANOCK’S design work for one Steve in California is so elegant that it has earned a place in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Now he’s working with another Steve in Ireland, on a much smaller scale project, but one that he thinks will also have “profundity”.

Famed as the man who designed the original Mac (now in MOMA’s collection), the amiable and chatty Manock is bringing his design expertise to Grassometer, a Trinity College start-up founded by Steven Lock which has developed a device to analyse grass growth for farmers (see panel).

“The more I heard about it from Steve, the more interesting it sounded,” says Manock. “I’ve always been interested in projects with some profundity – projects that can help mankind. I immediately had a feeling that this could help farmers and help communities around the world. I thought, this is something I could get involved with.”

Some 36 years ago, he took a call from a different Steve, the youthful Steve Jobs, chief executive of a new company called Apple. “There were only five people in the company when he called in December ’76 and said he needed a computer designed – and would need to produce some as well – by the time of the West Coast Computer Fair in April. Of course, everyone else had said, ‘You’re crazy’. But I’d just started a design company and didn’t know any better, and said yes.”

The computer was the Apple II, the device that would launch Apple’s fortunes. For their first meeting, Jobs invited him along to a Stanford University gathering of the legendary Homebrew Computer Club. “I walked up and introduced myself to him. There were a number of others there, and Jobs would go in a circle, talking to people. And he’d come back to me and pick up the conversation at exactly the point where he’d left off. He had six conversations going at once – he was just so sharp.”

Manock successfully did the design and also was able to have numerous handmade models of the Apple II in time for the fair.

Everyone else’s computers looked like they were built from homemade kits, he recalls, while the Apple IIs had sleek, tooled covers and were lined up to evoke a production line.

Jobs wanted Manock to join Apple, but he decided he preferred to get his then-generous $20 an hour consulting fee.

“I could have been employee number six. I think when Apple went public, the guy who was employee number six made $75 million overnight.”