It's in that spirit of giving back that you'll notice as you came in today, commemorative merchandise available with proceeds supporting the inspiring children's foundation, an organization close to Steve and Janet's heart that is making a meaningful difference in the lives of young people.
We are especially great grateful that Steve has joined us as our commencement speaker for all three ceremonies and that his wife Janet has been here alongside of him. Thank you both for your generosity of time and spirit with our graduates and families.
At this time, it is my honor to invite Steve Watan to deliver the commencement address.
It's worth um uh complimenting Judy on her epic work. And I was just joking with you when earlier I said, "I believe in health so much. I make sure I see a doctor at least once a decade."
Well, you know, commencement or graduation, look at it two ways. Graduation for all the work, you know, 16 years or more putting into getting this far, getting to this point. And all along the way you wonder, you know, where am I really headed? And uh commencement means you're starting something new. You're commencing. And that's um very important to think where am I going in life cuz not everybody really knows.
I mean, I even remember getting out of college. I was thankful to be young because young you have a mind that can uh think so much and you have a body that can stay up late at night drinking coke to get projects done, not to mention all nighters in school.
Um, so where are we going? When am I going to find the life I want, the person I want to to share it with? When am I going to find my career? You know, and when am I going to become how important am I going to become? Where do I care? What's my personality?
I was listening to a YouTube song the other day. I still haven't found what I'm looking for. It's very memorable. I like it when songs give me feelings and emotions that I'm having inside.
I'm an engineer. What is engineering? How did I become an engineer? When I was very very young, like eight years old, seven years old, my father, I asked him what is what do engineers do? He was an engineer. He said they build things, you know, bridges and buildings and all that, but engineers also uh make appliances for the home that used to be hand labor like washing dishes and now we have a dishwasher, you know, and washing machines.
Ah, and I said, I'm going to be an engineer because I'll be helping average people in average homes, the normal people. And they became very important to me my entire life.
And I definitely, you know, when it came time for the start of personal computing, computers were big huge things or they were even smaller things, but nobody could afford it or it wasn't useful. I wanted to make that kind of device. Uh, taught myself. didn't learn computing in in university or school or how do you design computers? There were no books. There were no magazines in magazine stores back then. It was so ancient ago.
And uh all the computers, they have big big front panels and switches and lights and geeky. Nobody think you'd ever get close to them. And they were like more more further out than rocket scientist stuff.
And uh I but I started picking up little clues, things built on logic gates. Logic gates are like lumber. And an architecture of a computer is like an architecture of a building. And I started working on paper trying to figure out how to make bigger and bigger things out of these little elementary school science fair projects I did.
Um I was very advanced in electronics and digital. What's electronics? Many of you don't know these days. Electronics was all mathematics. how electrons would flow through certain devices and you could make radios and televisions out of it. Um so that was uh the old the old analog electronics and I was very skilled at that.
You know I knew how TVs were built inside and could design them with differential calculus but some accidents a little accident at designing breakout no sleep for 4 days and nights and I thought what if these arcade games our target was starting an industry the industry of arcade games.
You think you know what arcade games are today. back then. I looked at them. I said, "Wouldn't it be neat if someday these games are color or in color, not black and white? This is ancient times." And uh I but I saw Kong in a bowling alley and I said, "Oh my gosh, I've been teaching myself to design computer processors, but the input output is the hardest. Use a TV as the output device."
I knew how TVs work and I could unscrew the back of my TV and scope around and find the right signal point and send the right signals in to make balls and panels on a screen. I designed Breakout for Atari, by the way. And so games were a big big start for me. I thought, wouldn't they be color?
And here's what happens to your mind when you're a lot of time without sleep. Your mind is kind of dragged going off into these weird places that are out of the box. So I thought, what is color on a TV? And color on TV back then was a little wire with voltages. And the voltages might go up and down like a sine wave up and down up and down at the right speed and the right timing be a red dot on your TV.
And then I said there was a whole mathematics of all these complicated expensive parts and you know maybe $5,000 or more parts you know to build it and all the time to design it with mathematics.
And I said my head wondered. I said what if I took a little number out of my computer? Computer numbers are ones and zeros. Ones can be plus, zeros can be minus. If you put this computer number on the wire into the TV, every TV, I knew how they were designed. They would think it was color even though it violated all the rules.
Okay, you have to, some people let their minds go off in these other directions, you know, and some people just say, "No, the rules are the rules. The engineering is the engineering."
But some people want to be inventors. And that was the really the reason our first logo at Apple was five colors.
I told my dad when I was 6 years old I'd be an electrical engineer like he but the second I would be a fifth grade teacher like Miss Scrap, you put these things into your core values.
And eventually of course when I had kids and I was kind of like a school mom hang around the schools I did start teaching fifth graders for eight years, no press allowed so you might not even hear about it. I didn't want the the press near students and we had the most fun classes ever I learned it's less important that you teach realistic um um you know knowledge knowledge is one thing every teacher speaks every sentence is knowledge but if you can motivate get the kids if they want to learn they're going to find every answer and enjoy doing it and love doing it so we made made my classes very special I've always believed that everything you do that's productive should have an element of humor there things that are fun with it you should enjoy life right now my wife and I enjoy every single day together we are so lucky Um and uh today's our anniversary my design principles were to make things with fewer parts simpler, easier to understand. And my gosh, I don't want to do subtraction and division to figure out how many years we're married when people ask. So we just celebrate every single day as an anniversary. And this today today is 6,476 days. All we have to do is count. And I also um told my dad when I got really good at designing computers on paper, I could never afford a single part, but I sort of had books showing little logic elements and ways to draw pictures of them and make something complicated like an ad or eventually a computer. They're designing computers.
How do you get a design a design of a computer? What's in it? A manual. There were no manuals. There were no nothing like that in a bookstore. I'd go to the scientific bookstore in Palo Alto, Kepler's, and nothing on computers. And I wanted to learn more and more and design them.
But um so you think, my gosh, yeah, those were long times ago. But I started this how do you get the manual that describes a computer so you can sit down on paper and design what would make it
The top physics research place in the world then is Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Okay, it was like CERN today. And the smartest people in the world don't lock doors. Take that as a metaphor. They don't lock doors. I could drive in on a Sunday to Slack. And the main building, there'd always be at least one door unlocked and I could get in.
They had a library with the most exhaustive computer and technical information in the world. And it was really great. So I'd get a design of every all the IBM computers, varian computers, digital equipment computers, data general computers and and uh more and I would just sit down on the weekends in my room at home.
I was shocked. I didn't have any friends to do things with. I would sit there and just design computers over and over and over simplifying them as I said.
Um so I told my dad uh in high school or my first year of college, I told him, I'm going to own a 4K data general. a Nova computer. Why 4K? 4K was the absolute minimum. You could have an idea you wanted to solve and you could type in a program. 4K is the minimum.
Why did David general? They had an architecture who wasn't like somebody designed an architecture of a computer and then we'll hire the lumbers to go build it. No, somebody who knew all the parts, who was a builder, a constructor, designed for the best chips that were available, the best organization, the cheapest chips up to an architecture, and it turned out as good as all the other um mini computers coming out, but half as many parts.
So, I told my dad, I'm going to have this computer. And he said, it costs as much as a house. I shut up and I said, I'll live in an apartment someday in my life.
This was a deep core value to have a computer because I knew how they work and what you what you know how to do is what you call a value for the world. Um and I kept that in.
I eventually wanted to have my own computer and would um around the time we got into a group of people that were saying these small little microprocessor chips are going to make it affordable computers possible. not necessarily good affordable computers that could really do a job like even write a program but they were always trying to start companies based on the old idea of computer architecture
I had built that machine of my own 5 years before I was now working Packard on the hottest hottest products of of the world and I didn't have a college degree. But I knew all the answers so so it wouldn't matter. And um yeah it's really it's really interesting they called me in for interviews I could answer anything about computers. I didn't need to have the college degree three years done.
So I'm with Hewlett-Packard design all this stuff. But I love doing these things. I love designing. So I would do designs for people all over the country.
A guy came in from Hollywood wanted to build the first system ever with movies in a hotel room. Never been done before. And so I did it for them. I got to do it. And I would charge 5 cents. It's a sort of telling myself I'm doing it for the love of it.
I loved typing in those old days of real typewriters and I would type turn papers from midnight till 6:00 in the morning um uh for speak strangers that I'd never see again and I just charge 5 cents. And I was so proud of what I was doing. I would tutor tutor classes um in advanced mathematics and 5 cents is the charge. So that was a life I bet.
But um so I was doing that and a club started up. Now, Steve Jobs, I've met Steve Jobs five years before, but he was out of town at some commune up in Oregon. And this club's called, it's now called the Homebrew Computer Club, but it started happening.
I thought, oh, I'll show off this thing I invented to type to the Archnet. I can type on a keyboard that was ungodly expensive back then. And I could see it on my TV set and send signals over a phone line to a thing called the Archnet.
Today, it was called the internet. Back then there were only six computers on the ARPA then six universities UCLA Santa Barbara MIT and some others.
And I could get on I could read files and I could play games and run programs. This was so incredible.
So I took my little device down to the club thinking this club is starting for people that are into terminals and electronics and I'll show it off. Oh no, they were interested in this little thing called a computer little little box with switches and lights on the front just like I built five years before. and uh it was really way too expensive for a human being to use as a computer for things useful. There's reasons I can't get into right now.
So I went there and I was inspired by professors from Stanford from Berkeley talking about how society was going to change that once we had instant communication and education would be so much better because students could get a response right or wrong to an answer immediately instead of having to wait 12 hours.
If a dog poops on the floor, you don't slap it on the head 12 hours later or it doesn't work. It's confused. Why am I being slapped? The immediacy of reward and punishment um is necessary awkward condition um half of stuff.
So, so anyway, and the geek the geek who knew computers in our club, who knew what computers were, knew how to use them or something was going to be an important person in our club. So, I I designed the first computer. Steve Jobs wasn't around.
And you could type on a keyboard and see the computer output on a video screen. My own TV had to unscrew the back and run cables in knew where to put them and and I would type it and I'd start writing a computer language and it would run programs.
And Bill Gates was coming out that time. He had a basic language programming language for the Intel processor but I had a different processing um based on my um my own programming desires. I had a better one in my mind.
So, I ran into basic because you got to have basic. Why? There's books and stories about basic playing games. If people are going to have computers in their homes, they're going to want to play games. You better play good games.
And um so I gave away my designs. No copyright notices. Open sourced public domain. Build your own. Some people in our club built my computer and I helped others build them.
Then is when Steve Jobs came into town to see it. And it's unlike that movie with Ashton Kutcher where Jobs finds me as a geek in a basement and hauls me down to the club. I've been to every club meeting since it started. Steve Jobs had never been to one.
I took him. That's the story. And and I said, "Look at all the interested people looking over my shoulder. Every computers before that one had a big front panel, switches and lights, and every computer after that would have a keyboard and a video display. It was a change in the world."
I and I gave it away. Didn't own it or anything. Steve said, "We should start a company." I said, "One little problem. I'm going to be an engineer for life at my company, Hula Packard," which I love. I'm loyal. I'm a loyal Laker now.
Um, and you know, some of you believe that that's, you know, it's really important to think that way. So, I so I, I was um uh, I was going to be an engineer for life cuz Yelp was full of engineers and you didn't have to go up the order chart. I wouldn't go up the org chart because to me it was kind of like politics and I was non-political. I wouldn't even vote. I came to that conclusion 18-20 years old um during another one.
And anyway, um this uh I proposed it to Hewlett-Packard. I had to propose it to Hewlett-Packard and they had marketing people, engineering people. I described what it would cost, how it would work, and children might what I had. They turned me down for the first of five times. Hewlett-Packard turned down the personal computer five times.
All the other big computer companies said this was going to be nothing. Just a little hobbies movement, not worth many much money.
And uh I didn't really care about money. I didn't want to start Apple to get rich or to start a company or to start an industry. I didn't want my computer to get out. I wanted to start this company so that other engineers would see the incredible things I was doing that was so far ahead of the world. And uh and I got that over time. I got the respect from engineering groups.
Um anyway, when you come from zero and you have no money, you I could never raise my hand in the club to talk. I couldn't talk to people. I'm afraid of confrontation when I'm shy.
So I would set up my my television and my keyboard after the main meeting and other people would see it. Whoa. And they looked at it. Every computer since then had a keyboard and video display.
And uh meanwhile before that computer was done, that was the one Steve Jobs saw and we marketed it as an Apple one. But it really wasn't designed as a computer. I had a little terminal to talk to the Archnet and modified it into a computer by putting in the brains microprocessor and the right kind of memory.
And uh but before we ever shipped one of those, I had my Apple 2. That's the color machine I've been thinking about. The Apple 2 was just a computer, simple computer, and a little simple language called BASIC that 9-year-olds could use. You could cross colors and lines on the screen and you could write a program for a for an arcade game.
Back at Atari, arcade games were 150 chips and and thousand wires and engineers like me getting all the right signals on the wires and think up to a manure to create a new game and uh all of a sudden a 9-year-old could do it in one night.
Decent game on the Apple 2 computer. First time ever arcade games would come. That was a big step for gaming. The reason that product was our only source of revenue for the first 10 years of Apple moving up the ORC chart.
Our Apple 3 failed, our Lisa failed, and I know the reasons, but I'm not going to get into them right now. The Macintosh was our hardest failure of all. Uh boy, we had to move quick to save the company.
Anyway, um, when Steve and I talked about having a company, we wanted to use technology to make handicapped people equal to normal people, a blind person and a sighted person. We wanted to make them more equal.
Look how we've succeeded. Everywhere you go, look at the sidewalk. Look over on the sidewalk. Everybody's walking around looking at their iPhone, bumping into things. That's right. The side of the block.
Okay. Whenever you start a company, starting companies is the greatest thing in the world. Entrepreneurship, that's where new wealth comes from, not just replacing the wealth, not these zero sum games. And you want to be good to others.
So when I was young, thinking I read an article in a magazine, kind of my first year of college, and I was sitting in the hallway, and it was about a man named Sar Redstone, uh, CEO of Viacom, and he was flying in and out of cities every day. was buying or selling a company for a half a billion of today's dollars.
And I thought, whoa, would it be something to have that much power over wealth? But I stopped and I said, "No, when I die, I'd much rather be laughing about a prank my friends and I played."
So, uh, I said, "For me, life is not about accomplishment. It's about happiness."
What is my formula for happiness? Happiness equals smiles minus friends. S minus F.
These are feelings. How do you how do you have smiles? Oh, make jokes, play jokes, laugh at jokes, go to things you enjoy music concerts and sports events. In a lot of ways, you know, but you have to actually try. If you don't try, it doesn't happen.
And how do you get rid of frowns? Happiness equals smiles minus frowns. First, I started out, well, if somebody dents your car or steals your TV or something, you're just going to take constructive steps to replace it, to get it fixed.
And later on, I decided, no. Also, don't argue. Don't argue with someone. I got my set of reasoning comes to one conclusion. You got your set of reasoning comes to another conclusion. We both have sets of reasoning. We both have computers in our mind, and we're both good. So, um, just don't argue.
it led me to the belief that um if someone is bad to you, you're good to them. Always be good to everyone.
And I never had an argument with people in my life, no matter what, you know, the press might try to portray sometimes. Um it's just I was too scared actually to have to deal with people and be in conflict.
Now AI is the big term today and I'm you know there's so many ways you can't go and you take an hour to speak about AI fully but you all have AI, all have AI actual intelligence.
My entire life in the technical world I've been following people who were trying to figure out how to make a brain software, hardware, synapse chips. And I was at a company where the engineers figured out how to make a brain takes nine months.
Anyway, you what you do, what you go on do startup companies, you know, doing new things that hadn't been done before are just the heart and soul. It's what I love so much. The excitement gets you, forces you to work day and night, 20 hours a day. Um, and the hardest work in your life.
But when you're successful is the biggest joy. Even if you're not successful, biggest joy you ever have is looking back. The day you die, you're not going to remember things you learned in your class, formulas and all that. What you're going to remember is the good times you had doing things with other people, enjoying uh, you know, anything in life.
So, you know, anyway, what you do doesn't have to be solely for money. You can try to be good at least for a while. You know, it's really harder.
I mean, Judy's company is in public, and I'm so proud of that. So, once you have a public company, you go public. All of us would buy shares of stock. We only want one thing, stock up or down. We don't care how good the company is, but the founders can actually have a role. This is how my company's going to be, what it's going to do, and why it's going to do it. And uh and you could all be like that if you wanted. You should program yourself.
The thing is, uh, when I went back to college to get my degree, um, after, uh, an airplane crash, I went back under a fake name and my diploma says Rocky Raccoon Clark. Always have fun. And, um, and but I went back as a psychology major. I really did want to understand workings of the head and uh, um, and you know, and how does it come close and what is memory?
All I found out is we don't really know the head like we know circuits of electronics and we where are your memories stored think. You know, nobody knows all the finest books of memory back then, 40 some years ago and now. The strongest statement about where memory might be, I came up with 40 some years ago and nobody listened to.
It was sort of a joke to say we don't know where memories are. Our best theory is it's holographic, because we can't find a place for it. But um the what I came up with was, between the ages of six and 10 you lose two your childhood autobiographic memories and your teeth. And that was to make a joke that teeth we don't memories are teeth nowadays though.
Go use a search engine. I don't use the G word, and uh go use a search engine and look up teeth and memories you'd be shocked what you find. And the test for Alzheimer's gum and saliva gums and saliva.
So um you know where you go from here when if you ever get lucky enough to be involved in a position in an ongoing company, or starting your own little company, and you might have ideas if your ideas are better than others. Absolutely, go for the excellence. Don't just go to get something done.
I used to have homework assigned to me even in high school mathematics. I was a math wiz and uh they assigned oh do the problems 1 to 37 odd problems. Oh no, I would do 1 to 50 because I love doing it.
It's just like all those five cents. If you love doing something, um, you can put yourself into it. You are young and you have the physical energy and the mental energy and can get great things done if you don't throw away your time that you could be putting into a incredible future for yourself and for the world.
And I wish you all luck with uh with your degrees.
