Flower Power and Blue Dalmatian to the rescue?
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 …
“Why does Mail have to be so fucking complicated?”
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 …
The reality distortion field and Mac OS X
I’m one of the few people that don’t believe in the Steve Jobs reality distortion field. While I believe there is some magic involved, there are three factors at play:
- Apple makes some really great products (and bad ones too)
- People are cynical about big companies and believe that if
When would Mac OS X ship?
In a normal company, milestones have dates assigned to them and ship dates are public knowledge, at least internally.
Not so at Apple. We can guess the ship date based on when our planned completion date is. But this is software. It’s perennially late, so you just never know.
One …
Except for getting punched by Steve Jobs…
This is not my story and I’m sure I’ll get a lot wrong re-telling it from a good friend it happened to. But it’s a fun little anecdote that I wish were mine.
On his very first day, he was heading towards a stairway to go …
Steve Jobs vs Me on my bicycle
Why I chose this photo will become apparent in a moment.
This is fairly well known, but at the Infinite Loop campus, Steve Jobs used to park his car in a small lot right next to the Infinite Loop 1, often in a handicapped spot.
One …
The little things Apple misses from Steve Jobs
There probably have been millions of articles written about the Apple of Tim Cook and how it differs from the Apple of Steve Jobs. I’ve always been hesitant to add to that.
Having worked at Apple for 12 years under Steve and 8 years under Tim, that gives me plenty …
The power of dopey ideas
…Steve used to say to me, and he used to say this a lot. Hey Jony, here’s a dopey idea. And sometimes they were. Really dopey. Sometimes they were truly dreadful. But sometimes they took the air from the room. And they left us both completely silent. Bold, crazy, magnificent
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. …