Daniel Kottke

Daniel Kottke is an American businessman known for having been a college friend of Steve Jobs and one of the first employees of Apple Inc. He met Jobs at Reed College in 1972, and they trekked together through India for spiritual enlightenment and to the All One Farm. In 1976, Kottke realized his interest in computers when Jobs hired him to assemble hobbyist computer projects and then to be a part-time employee at the newly founded Apple Computer. There, he debugged the Apple II family, prototyped the Apple III and Macintosh, and endured the IPO where Steve Wozniak assigned Kottke some of his own stock. He was portrayed in several films about Apple.

Early life and education Kottke was born on April 4, 1954, in Bronxville, New York.

Kottke first met Steve Jobs when they were both undergraduates at Reed College in 1972. to visit Neem Karoli Baba at his Kainchi ashram. When they reached the Neem Karoli ashram, it was almost deserted because Neem Karoli Baba had died in September 1973. They then made a long trek up a dry riverbed to an ashram of Haidakhan Babaji.

After returning from India, Kottke transferred to Columbia University in 1975 as a literature and music major. He shared a house with Jobs and Jobs's girlfriend Chrisann Brennan near the Apple office in Cupertino.

Kottke spent another eight years with Apple debugging Apple II family printed circuit boards, building Apple III and Macintosh prototypes, and working on the design for the Macintosh keyboard. The Apple II gained popularity, eventually becoming one of the best selling personal computers of the 1970s and early 1980s. Kottke was one of the original members of the Macintosh development team and his signature is embossed inside the case of early production Macintosh computers.

After Apple filed IPO in 1980 to instant and significant financial profitability, Jobs refused to grant Kottke stock in the new company, stating that he "will give him zero". Therefore, co-founder Steve Wozniak later distributed a pool of worth of his own Apple stock to various early Apple employees, including Kottke. In her memoir of her life with Jobs, Chrisann Brennan states that she later asked Kottke about not receiving the stock options and that he replied: "Oh that ... Steve had offered me a job in marketing ... but I wasn't interested in marketing because I had something like a fever to understand the technology ... so I never pursued the marketing opportunity". Jobs (2013), with Lukas Haas as Kottke: In an interview with Slashdot, Kottke stated that he was consulted on early versions of the screenplay for Jobs and noted, "Ashton's very good. I have no complaints with him at all, no complaints with his portrayal of Jobs. The complaint that people would rightly have about the film is that it portrays Woz as not having the same vision as Steve Jobs, which is really unfair." He said that the early versions of the screenplay "were painful. Really painful. I forwarded the first draft to Mike Markkula because they wanted his feedback, and Mike took such a bad reaction to it, he wouldn't have anything more to do with the project. By the time it got to the fourth draft, it was okay. It wasn't making me cringe."

Steve Jobs (2015), mentioned in dialogue. In an interview with CNN, Kottke stated that seeing the movie was a bit of a shock to him and that he enjoyed it very much. "It took me a few days after seeing the film ... I was surprised to see what a dominant character Lisa became. I found that very gratifying to see. It was very much a caricature ... [but] Aaron Sorkin did such a good job."