Category: steve jobs

How I almost worked directly for Steve Jobs

How I almost worked directly for Steve Jobs

This isn’t a very exciting story but definitely an interesting what-could-have-been thought experiment.

The job

When I worked in AppleCare in 1999, I worked with an engineer named Robert Esker. Years later, he became the technical support person for Steve Jobs. At the time, Steve was CEO of both Apple and Pixar and also kept a home office.

Robert’s job was to keep everything running smoothly and travel between all three locations as needed. He wasn’t on his own as there were people across the company that were familiar with getting the occasional contact from him to help resolve an issue with Steve’s systems.

As the support person for Mail, I was one of those people that Robert would contact. Unsurprisingly, Steve was a very heavy Mail user and also used Address Book (which I worked on as well) to keep notes for every phone call he made. It was … READ THE REST

Steve Jobs: “What an asshole”

Steve Jobs: “What an asshole”

When I worked in AppleCare, I worked across the hall from a team of people called Executive Relations. Among their duties was to field complaints from “important people” about Apple products that ended up in in inbox of Steve Jobs.

Executive Relations was tasked with placating these people. I’m unsure whether this organization still exists, but in those days, Apple was in dire straights. There was a fear that any small thing could blow up into a big thing. Remember the G4 cube that started showing up cracked? Even though the lines were aesthetic, surface scratches and were corrected early on, this reputation sunk the product, damaged Apple, and led to a one-day 50% drop in the stock price.

So, complaints from influential people were taken seriously and the people in this group had some latitude to make people happy, including replacing hardware or even giving out freebies.

Whenever the … READ THE REST

This icon is too horsey

This icon is too horsey

There used to be a weekly meeting with Steve Jobs to go over user interfaces and workflows for macOS. He would get together with the higher ups as well as members of the Human Interface team. Sometimes first level managers would be there or individual engineers might be there to run a demo or answer questions. They were held in a room called Diplomacy on the Infinite Loop campus and typically ran for many hours.

After this meeting, there would be a “debriefing” where one or more of the attendees of that meeting would report to the underlings. Sometimes that included people like me.

That’s the backstory to what’s actually a very short anecdote. What was fun about these debriefings is that they were like a game of telephone.

  1. Steve might say something in the weekly meeting
  2. Someone would jot down what they think he said
  3. The notes might get
… READ THE REST
Steve Jobs as a cockatiel

Steve Jobs as a cockatiel

I’m sure I’m not the only one that has wondered what Steve Jobs would have looked if he had been a cockatiel. I was recently looking at my favorite sticker pack, called Coco Bird Emoji Stickers. I found this emoji.

Steve Jobs the cockatiel about to unveil the iPhone 4

I shared this emoji with friends and they all agreed that if he were a cockatiel, he would probably look like this. My good friend Kris Shamloo (probably a made up name) doctored the emoji using his iPad Pro and Apple Pencil (product plug).

Steve Jobs announcing Mac OS X Jagwire.

I realized the original emoji was naked and blind so this updated version was much nicer.

Hopefully at least 3 or 4 people have now had their curiosities satisfied and everyone else has been scared away from this site forever.

Update

Steve Jobs cockatiel (aka Steve Jobsatiel) now … READ THE REST

The last time I saw Steve Jobs

The last time I saw Steve Jobs

I wrote this little anecdote shortly after Steve Jobs passed away. Despite it happening more than 5 years ago, it still is imprinted on my brain and does a great job of illustrating the person I felt he was.

I was leaving the main building on the Apple campus. Just ahead of me was Steve. This was not an uncommon sight despite being such a large company. He was often seen walking in the halls or in the courtyard in the center of all the buildings. He always seemed to have a spring in his step, like he was walking on his toes. And the glint in his eyes that you’ll see in photos. Sometimes he was seen eating lunch with Jony Ive, one of his closest friends.

On this day, though, the spring in his step was gone. I slowed down a little bit to match his pace. Although … READ THE REST