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Tech Reflect

Reflecting on 25 years in tech

The power of dopey ideas

The power of dopey ideas

2020-07-15

After a protracted move to Portland (Oregon), I’m back to writing about parrots.

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

…

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Scott Forstall’s hair becomes a ski jump

Scott Forstall’s hair becomes a ski jump

2020-05-27

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. …

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Confessions of a retired bug screener

Confessions of a retired bug screener

2020-05-18
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
…

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Becoming disabled while working a tech job

Becoming disabled while working a tech job

2020-05-14

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 …

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Desktop Pictures taken by Steve Jobs

Desktop Pictures taken by Steve Jobs

2020-05-06

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 …

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12 things I’d change about auto-correct

12 things I’d change about auto-correct

2020-04-29

While auto-correct frustrates every iPhone user at one time or another, I imagine it’s an insanely complex feature to get right. After using it for 13 years now, I find that I have a list of small things I’d love to see change rather than a few number of really …

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Google vs Apple Maps

Google vs Apple Maps

2020-04-27

I ask myself the question why I bother writing this. There are hundreds of articles on the web comparing these two products but I may offer a unique perspective.

  • I used Apple Maps from long before it shipped until today
  • I was a Quality Engineer at Apple for 20 years,
…

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Manifestos

Manifestos

2020-04-21

In 20 years at Apple, I obviously saw a lot and was sometimes motivated to write long, laborious manifestos about things. Usually they were practices and processes I felt needed to change.

These were initially published on my internal blog at Apple. So if you love manifestos and have a …

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Why is my own data least important in search?

Why is my own data least important in search?

2020-04-20

All across macOS and iOS, when you search for something, the ordering of results in most cases is:

  • A top hit (unclear how this is generated)
  • Suggestions (unclear how this is generated)
  • Your own data that you spent valuable time entering

Maps

I’ll provide several examples. First up, Maps. Let’s …

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How I ended up in California

How I ended up in California

2020-04-15
  • Number of years of my life I wanted to live in California: 0
  • Number of years I lived in California: 24

Ancient history

One of my brothers went to Stanford and worked at Genentech, so I had a chance to visit the San Francisco quite a few times. Loved it. …

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25 years in tech. I like to write manifestos. I like to offer interesting tips. I like making fun of things. Everyone copes differently.

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25 years in tech. I like to write manifestos. I like to offer interesting tips. I like making fun of things. Everyone copes differently.

Contact Me

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  • Free Range Parrots
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