Ultra high volume email workflow

Ultra high volume email workflow

In my last years at Apple, if I had no workflow in place, it was not impossible to get over a thousand emails a day. When I would visit people’s offices, I would see two main workflows:

  • An inbox with 50,000+ emails in it, mostly unread
  • A hundred or more mailboxes, one for each mailing list, also with high unread counts

Sure, there is a ton of garbage emails, such as automated emails or irrelevant mailing lists you can’t subscribe from. But I developed a system that worked for me and I was able to never have an unread message and was able to always find the most important ones.

The very simplest version of it looked like this. For a smaller flow of email, it could work well, but I ended up beefing it up a bit.

The decision process I would go through was this:

  • Is the message
… READ THE REST
EyeCandy QA (2018-2019)

EyeCandy QA (2018-2019)

All in-depth articles about my Apple career:

This was the last job in my Apple career. However, I worked on the Eye Candy team before for 6 1/2 years, the longest job I held at Apple.

After the disaster of the Watch Hardware team, I really needed an anti-dote. I called up my old manager, John Louch, and asked him if there was a spot on the team. As incredible luck would have it, the person that replaced me 6 years earlier had just been fired.

I was back on the team!

There were two new members, both of whom I liked and respected greatly. They were working on … READ THE REST

Watch Hardware (2016-2017)

Watch Hardware (2016-2017)

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Whenever someone that doesn’t work at Apple asks me what it’s like, I always say “it depends on the team”—and it’s one of the truest things I could say. Some are amazing and wonderful and, in my case, one turned out to be a nightmare, starting with the very first week.

After being separated from the SwiftUI team, I was desperate to find a job and it took me six weeks to find one. It was my first job in Hardware Engineering and it was primarily responsible for Watch hardware.

The team

What this team did was utterly fascinating to me and … READ THE REST

SwiftUI (2015-2016)

SwiftUI (2015-2016)

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This was not only a challenging and intense project, but it was also very exciting new technology. For reasons I’ll explain later, I only worked on it at the very beginning of assembling the core team.

SwiftUI was entirely new UI framework, written entirely in Swift. It ran on every Apple platform. This was hugely beneficial because developers typically use UIKit for iOS, AppKit for macOS, WatchKit for watchOS, and so on. What a pain if you want to write a cross-platform app.

Applications written with SwiftUI not surprisingly were also written in Swift. I won’t go too much into the technical … READ THE REST

Calendar and Contacts (2013-2015)

Calendar and Contacts (2013-2015)

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Returning to Apple

I interviewed for two teams upon returning to Apple: The Calendar/Contacts team and the Siri team. In retrospect, I dodged a very large bullet by avoiding Siri!

The team I jointed actually had four apps: Calendar, Contacts, Notes, and Reminders. The final two got shortchanged due to the importance of the first two. And it showed.

As an aside, Notes and Reminders have recently moved to a new group and have both become quite nice applications. But it was a lesson in how hard it is to have important, critical apps worked on by the same engineers as less … READ THE REST

Magic Mailboxes

Magic Mailboxes

I worked on the Mail team from just before Public Beta thru Tiger. One of my proudest achievements on the team (and at Apple) was brainstorming with my team members and pushing an idea we internally called Magic Mailboxes and eventually became called Combined Mailboxes.

Some of the ideas came from my unique job which partly consisted of supporting everyone in Software Engineering on using Mail. And not everyone was an uber-geek engineer so I got to see what all sorts of users struggled with.

This feature was being developed in 2002 and shipped with Jaguar. I have to give my colleague Paul Marcos a lot of credit for brainstorming and being a strong supporter of the concept.

If you’ve ever worked on software that must be used by everyone from the most novice user to the most advanced, this may resonate with you. With Mail, it was … READ THE REST

The Black Dock

The Black Dock

In June 2006, Apple shipped the plastic MacBook, available in both black and white. I received a black model at work sometime that year.

It was plastic, but at the time I thought it was beautiful. Little did I know that, at around the same time, a redesign of the Dock was taking place.

Now, I actually don’t know for sure the Black Dock was inspired by the black MacBook, vice versa, developed in unison, or just a coincidence.

The look

Sadly, I don’t have great images showing the Black Dock, but here’s what I have.

If you ignore the overdone reflections, the look of the Black Dock is actually pretty nice. Sadly, I don’t have a movie, but imagine swiping over the icons and only having the icons moving, just dancing above the Dock.

The behavior

The best part of the Dock redesign was how it felt. The platform … READ THE REST

Flipboard interlude (2011-2013)

Flipboard interlude (2011-2013)

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Seed planted

My good friend Evan Doll left Apple around 2010 to co-found Flipboard, a very popular iPad application that was essentially a better version of Apple News (sorry Apple) with deep social integration.

It seemed like every six months or so, Evan would ping me and try to entice me to try out Flipboard. But I was happy where I was, working on the Eye Candy team. I was getting a little itchy, though, so his offer was always in the back of my mind.

Departure from Apple

I left Apple on July 1st, 2011. My initial plan was to … READ THE REST

The Smart Torch™

The Smart Torch™

When I worked on the Mail Team, we had this gorgeous styrofoam and paper thing we called the Smart Torch. It had a realistic flame on the side made out of a sticker. Here’s what it looked like:

Smart Torch, appropriately displayed on a native Sycamore bench.

I have no recollection who made it. The important thing was what it represented. It was conceptually brilliant.

Here’s how it worked.

  1. Someone was always the current keeper of the Smart Torch. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg thing about who the original keeper was.
  2. Whenever the keeper of the Smart Torch observed another team member doing something really smart, they awarded them the Smart Torch.
  3. Then, the cycle repeated itself.

Having the Smart Torch was a great honor, and of course, how long you had it was also a matter of great pride. I mean look at it. It’s … READ THE REST

Eye Candy QA (2005-2011)

Eye Candy QA (2005-2011)

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My longest job at Apple was about 7 years and there were many great reasons for it.

The unusual thing about my team is that my boss and other team members all worked out of home offices, while I worked out of Cupertino (and often at home).

How did I get on this team?

This is one of my favorite personal stories at Apple. When I first started on the Mail team, Scott Forstall was one level above the manager of the Mail team. Although we frequently butted heads, he was instrumental in my career.

I was wanting to flee the Aperture… READ THE REST