Phone Phreaks.

In spring 1970 Steven Jobs was a fifteen-year-old sophomore at Homestead High School near San Jose, California. He already had a reputation as an arrogant, intelligent "wire head" whose knowledge of electronics never quite matched his ability to talk about the subject. Jobs's genius was in impressing his visions upon people. When it came to demonstrating that vision, he turned to his friend Steve Wozniak, a true electronics wizard. While Jobs was in high school and Wozniak was at Stanford, Jobs and Wozniak conceived, Wozniak built, and Jobs sold electronic blue boxes used by "phone phreaks," as they were called, to make free long-distance telephone calls illegally. The pair made a small profit before fear of criminal prosecution inhibited their enterprise, but Jobs had seen a blurred image of the future.

Preparation.

By 1975 Wozniak had graduated from Stanford and had a job as...