I started school at a pretty exciting time in the history of computers. They were about to transition from being a tool for hobbyists, researchers, and the military to being something that could be brought into schools and even homes.
After finishing third grade, I took a summer …
Every year, there’s an announcement about new features and improvements in Siri. They generally consist of:
Easter eggs have been highly frowned upon at Apple for many decades now. Engineers would sneak them into products and sometimes fail to account for potential problems. An engineer (not at Apple) once inserted a seemingly harmless easter egg into an app that would reveal the names of everyone on …
Let’s say I have an upcoming event in Calendar. The location was snagged from my Contacts.
Now I’m driving in my car, and Siri wants to remind me of the event. After telling me the event’s name and time, Siri also tells me the address. Am I supposed to pull …
Anyone that has worked in software quality assurance (QA) will tell you it’s often a frustrating and thankless job. A former Association for Software Testing president pegs the average QA engineer career at only four years. The linked article offers some advice for trying to retain good QA talent, …
Every year I worked on macOS/iOS, I would get attached to a handful of features that would ultimately get axed. Over time, I grew de-sensitized to it, but sometimes a feature would come along that I would never be able to get over.
While Apple was busy transitioning to Intel…
At the start of 2001, Apple was (still) in terrible financial shape. Revenue had cratered to the lowest level since the late 1980s. For years they had been selling off assets—such as ARM Holdings—just so they could continue to tread water.
In February, my coworkers and I gathered in a …
I always joked that I didn’t work with Steve; I worked near him. This anecdote falls into that category. In the early days of Mac OS X (now macOS), Mail was prominently featured in keynote addresses because it was a good showcase of the new operating system. The week before …
When I worked on Mail in the early 2000s, every incoming bug report and feature request from users was processed and tracked by me. I also provided on-the-spot Mail support for everyone in macOS engineering. I was in a unique position of knowing the things people struggled with in Mail.…
