Month: May 2020

Scott Forstall’s hair becomes a ski jump

Scott Forstall’s hair becomes a ski jump

You need go no further than Scott Forstall’s Twitter feed to find a picture of his hair that had the signature flip up in the front.

Some referred to it as a ski jump and apparently Steve Jobs took note in one high-level meeting. A strong caveat to this story. I was not in this meeting but a trusted source in the meeting related it to me.

The meeting

As part of this meeting, Scott was demoing some new technology from his organization to a group of people including Steve Jobs.

While trying to remain focused and serious on the task at hand, Steve was a bundle of energy, pacing around the room.

In at least this one meeting, when Steve passed Scott in the room, he lifted his hand above Scott’s head and swooped it down, then up, as if miming someone using his hair as a ski jump.…

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Confessions of a retired bug screener

Confessions of a retired bug screener

My good friend Anika, the ant bear

In the context of this article, “bug screening” means taking a bug report filed by an employee or developer or someone else. Then, doing any number of things:

  • Clean it up to make it more clear and understandable
  • Figure out if it’s already a known issue
  • Try to reproduce the problem
  • Send the bug report back if more information is needed
  • Route the bug to someone
  • Set a priority and perhaps a milestone where the bug should be fixed

Most of my jobs at Apple involved screening bugs and in one 30 month period I screened over 45,000 bugs. Not surprisingly, it was 100% of my job. The reason this is important to mention (other than it gives me a lot of credibility) was that 15 years earlier, the bug flow was small enough that it was only a small fraction of my …

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Becoming disabled while working a tech job

Becoming disabled while working a tech job

Tech workers believe that they have the best health insurance and all other types of insurance offered by their company. And they are probably right. I don’t have any data to prove otherwise.

What I do know from my own research and experience is that the disability insurance offered by Apple and other tech companies could leave you in dire straights much more easily than you know.

There are two types of disability: short-term (12 weeks), and long-term (indefinite with a big asterisk). A disability is something that partially or completely prevents you from doing your job. It could be anything from a serious physical injury to a debilitating mental illness.

Remember, this could be some terrible infection you get and end up in the hospital for months. Medical insurance covers the bills but your employer will only pay you via disability insurance. Same goes for an inherited mental condition …

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Desktop Pictures taken by Steve Jobs

Desktop Pictures taken by Steve Jobs

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Steve Jobs liked to take pictures. He was even taking a picture the last time I saw him. However, many people might not know that some of his photos shipped as Desktop Pictures in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

And here they are:

There were 3 other photos that I was unable to confirm (or remember) ever made it into a Mac OS X release, but here they are:

…

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