A few of the adult guests wandered in, including Warhol and Haring. Warhol took one look at the computer program and turned to Haring in wonderment. “What is this? Look at this, Keith. This is incredible!” A few minutes later, Warhol asked if he could take a turn in front of the monitor. Jobs explained how the mouse worked, but the artist instead lifted it off the floor and swished it through the air. Finally, Jobs put his hand over Warhol’s and steered it along until he’d gotten the hang of it.

After a few minutes in concentrated silence, Warhol glanced up. “Look! Keith! I drew a circle!”

That night, Warhol recorded the episode in his diary. He’d told Jobs that a man had been calling him repeatedly, trying to give him a Macintosh, but Warhol had never followed up. Jobs replied, “Yeah, that was me. I’m Steve Jobs.” (The artist, famous for his neon-hued prints, also noted of the program, “It only comes in black and white now, but they’ll make it soon in color.”)

Intrigued by the potential of computer-assisted art, Warhol agreed in 1985 to be a spokesperson for Apple’s rival in the personal computing sphere—Commodore. The artist was to promote the company’s new computer, the Amiga 1000, and its cutting-edge multimedia capabilities: The Amiga could display a up to 4,096 colors at once, a revelation when most displays at that time were grayscale.