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 …
Interviewing people at Apple was something I always enjoyed. It was a way to have a small, but important part of building the company.
I had a number of interview topics I liked to deploy. One of the most important to me was learning what software projects the candidate had …
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 …
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:
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 …
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 …