One weekend in 1995, Steve Perlman tested his theory
that the Web could look as good on a TV screen
as it did on a computer monitor. In 3 days of roundthe-
clock effort, he built a thin client for surfing the
Web, using a television as a display. He invited his
friend Bruce Leak over to see what he’d built, and
they knew right away it was a big enough idea for a
startup.
It was a natural project for Perlman, by then one
of the leading experts on display...

that work. We took the video decompression technology, developed it, reduced
it to just a software algorithm, and that was turned into a product by Bruce
Leak and his team. A whole bunch of other things grew out of it—some of the
video products from Apple and so forth.
Then, at General Magic, I went to work on a PDA—but I worked half-time
at General Magic and half-time I was still working on how to make inexpensive
delivery systems on a television for interactive TV, and work with video and
games and things...

get some REMs. As soon as the dreams come, it resets your brain a little bit and
you’re able to work again. We were sleeping at our desks. People would bring in
pizza. My wife would sometimes cook some turkey meatballs and spaghetti in a
big pot and then bring it over, and everyone would just chow down.
Livingston: Surely your wife was nervous about you sleeping only 4 hours every
2 days?
Perlman: She was. She got one of those fold-out futons that would fold under
my desk. She didn’t like me...

and I didn’t know him very well outside of work, but, when I left, he said,
“They’re shutting down MagicTV. So what are you going to do?” I said, “I don’t
know. I had an idea for this thing I wanted to do with video games.”
Steve Perlman 175
I had figured out a way to make existing video games work online—you
know, a two-player game like NBA Jam—we hacked it so the software, instead
of looking to the second controller, actually would set up a link through the
dialup connection to another...

because that’s when stores would open: Jameco Electronics would open at 9:00
a.m. in California, which is noon in Connecticut. So what’s the point of getting
up before noon, right?
I’ve always been a hobbyist, and it’s one of the reasons I kind of seamlessly
go between software, hardware, networking, and material science. I don’t
care—it’s whatever it takes to make the damn thing work. I don’t have much
formal education in these things, but you learn. You build enough stuff; after a
while, you see it. And if you reverse-engineer enough things,...