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…
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 …
It used to be that when you dragged an item off the Dock and dropped it, the icon would disappear in a puff of smoke and make a satisfying noise. The animation was strangely primitive against the backdrop of the slick user interface of what used to called Mac OS …
This was a feature Apple prototyped but never shipped that was near and dear to my heart. The feature addressed two things.
First, people often remember the app they used to create a document or when they worked on it last. It’s harder to remember the name of the document …
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 …