This story is important to me because it was the first software I ever wrote that shipped to more than just a few friends or colleagues. What started as some scripting turned into Cocoa development, which is not something I ever expected to find myself doing. It never became a …
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 …
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.…
I pitched a number of ambitious ideas when I worked on Mail in the early-2000s. Most didn’t get very far, with Magic Mailboxes being the notable exception. When we were considering adding threading to Mail, I pitched the idea of using a column-view interface.
I have …
When I worked on the Mail team, everyone in Software Engineering was “compelled” to use Mail as a way to help work out bugs in the early days of Mac OS X (now macOS). Some of the higher-ups in other organizations also were also using it.
Part of …
The typical timeline of interviews at Apple was: (1) a candidate was interviewed by one or two employees at a time, and (2) feedback was discussed afterwards in a conference room or sent to manager and/or recruiter via email. Each approach has its own benefits and drawbacks.
In …
I interviewed over 200 people at Apple. I pretty much had a stock set of interview questions that I rotated around. Since I’m gone now, I can tell you what they were. Most commonly, people gave very technical interviews, so I tried to focus more on who the person was …