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Steve Wozniak has a little bit of fun at Gray Powell’s expense
- donw 17y agoI think that it would be stupid not to have him on stage as part of the introduction of the new iPhone. It's not like everybody doesn't know about it, and it would generate a lot of goodwill among developers and Apple employees. It's like the story of the Air Force commander and the mechanic: One day, a military big-wig took off in an Air Force transport, which almost crashed, and was forced to land due to mechanical failure shortly after take-off. Upon inspection, it became obvious that the mechanic in charge of the plane's engines had screwed up and been sloppy. Rather than berating him, the commander looked at him and said, "I trust that you won't screw up again. In fact, I trust you so much, that I'm putting you in charge of fixing it."
- starkfist 17y agoIf I were this guy I'd wouldnt want this joke to be dragged on for eternity, I'd want people to forget about it as soon as possible.
- rjurney 17y agoThat would be pretty cool having him introduce it, then Jobs comes out and takes over, shaking his head and doing the chastising father thing. PR gold, right?
- tptacek 17y agoThe iPhone accounts for five point four billion-with-a-B dollars of Apple's revenue. They don't have 30 different iPhone models. The iPhone they "launch" this year is probably going to be The iPhone. Why do you think this Gizmodo debacle is a joke? Am I crazy? Because from where I stand, there is exactly one situation where this is funny: if Apple planted a fake iPhone prototype to screw with Gizmodo. That seems vanishingly unlikely.
- rjurney 17y agoIts funny because shit happens, and I'd rather a promising young man not be destroyed over it. Better to address the problem and roll with it rather than crucify the guy. The gravity of the situation, and how simple a mistake it was to make is the reason to forgive. Woz got it. Why don't you?
- tptacek 17y agoOn the spectrum of "shit happens" running from getting too drunk and throwing up on your best friend's shoes all the way to having your house bombed by an F18 because you have the wrong President, this event, while nowhere near the "epic tragedy" end of the scale, doesn't land anywhere near "funny" for me. We agree on how we'd like things to work out for the engineer. Maybe, let's stop turning him into a punch line.
- wallflower 17y agoI've watched a lot of Steve Jobs presentations, and I can't recall any direct humor (aside from John Mayer and maybe Sam Altman rocking the popped collars). It just doesn't seem that they'd do something like this. It's not vaudeville night, it's the Reality Distortion Field.
- blehn 17y agoHow about this one? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIClAanU7Os http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIClAanU7Os
- ronaldj 17y agoOr this one? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl7xQ8i3fc0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl7xQ8i3fc0
- goatforce5 17y agoI actually LOLed when he did this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p4j0CODBX8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p4j0CODBX8
- wallflower 17y agoOK. There is humor. I stand corrected, and I still think they won't highlight Graw Powell. Macworld 1997 Boston Bill Gates (1984 ad reference) ~33:00 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEHNrqPkefI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEHNrqPkefI
- ugh 17y agoThere is some humor (Remember the reference to the tablet rumors when the iPad was introduced?) but hardly any self deprecating humor. I can‘t think of anything. Bringing him in would be a great thing to do but not something Apple does. Probably. He might at most get a spot in the first row or something like that :) Nevertheless I’m really looking forward to that Keynote. It will be really interesting to see how they handle that. We had the situation where blurry photos of new iPods leaked, Jobs only acknowledged that by saying something like “I think you may have seen that one before” and carried on like nothing happened. I don’t know whether Jobs can do that this time. That would be pretty ridiculous.
- rythie 17y agoThat would be great and it would show Apple has a sense of humour. Powell could walk out in a black turtle neck and Levis and talk about magical devices...
- WalterBright 17y agoThe thing to do is to have the chief mechanic along for the check ride.
- donw 17y agoOr just bring along the mechanic responsible for keeping the plane from becoming a twisted pile of metal and death.
- nearestneighbor 17y agoShort-term, it's a PR win. Long-term, what kind of message would it send to the employees?
- ja2ke 17y ago"This is the reason you want to still work here helping us make great stuff, instead of jumping ship because of perceived morale/culture death," for starters.
- tptacek 17y agoDouche.
- philk 17y agoIt's called having a sense of humor and it's not harming Gray at all.
- tptacek 17y agoStrong disagree.
- philk 17y agoWould you care to clarify why? Apple is either upset with Gray or it isn't. Woz wearing an irreverent shirt won't change it either way.
- tptacek 17y agoWozniak having a "sense of humor" about someone else's misfortune doesn't help that person. Meanwhile, there's the guy's name, plastered on a rich famous guy's belly, being mocked. I stand by my original comment and believes it sums the situation up precisely.
- Luc 17y agoAu contraire... He's making light of the situation because it doesn't deserve a heavy-handed approach, and the engineer in question will be just fine at Apple. Losing the prototype could have happened to anyone. It's good-natured ribbing. Besides, Woz doesn't have it in him to be mean, I reckon.
- tptacek 17y agoThere's not a single pair of subject and predicate in this comment that I agree with. That's fine. We can disagree. I think much less of Wozniak for joking about someone else's career.
- jws 17y agoThat is a nixie tube watch on his left arm. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nixie_Wozniak.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nixie_Wozniak.jpg
- elblanco 17y agoWhat beautiful devices.
- rikthevik 17y agoYeah, nixie tubes are the perfect blend of Soviet-era impracticality and elegance. Now that I think of it, it's pretty impressive that there's circuitry to get up to 120V or whatever it is to drive those tubes right on his watch.
- Luc 17y agoIt's all explained here: http://www.cathodecorner.com/nixiewatch/theory/theory.html http://www.cathodecorner.com/nixiewatch/theory/theory.html Battery life: approximately 4-6 months at 50 viewings per day. They've also GPL'ed the PIC firmware.
- ax0n 17y agoIt's not nearly as much power (watts) to drive, but many of the EL backlight panels in cheapo digital watches require 60-100vac to drive them.
- jacquesm 17y agoSoviet Era? Nixies were produced all over, it's just that the Soviet Union continued to produce them longer than the rest.
- sp332 17y agoIn this context, "Soviet-era excess" is a jab at the culture of the USA around the time of the cold war. Some of the time periods in US history are named for the war we were fighting around that time. Revolution era, Civil War era, WWI and WWII era, cold-war/Soviet era, Vietnam era.
- unignorant 17y agoThis seems to me rather insensitive -- more importantly, it's probably not worthy of Hacker News. Edit: Given the downvotes, I'd be quite happy to hear any legitimate grounds for disagreement. I consider the widely disseminated mocking of someone who hasn't knowingly signed on as a public figure to be insensitive (independent of how funny or clever that mocking might be, and independent of whether being insensitive will have any effect on the target's career).
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- anigbrowl 17y agoIf it were anyone else, I would agree. But Steve Wozniak being who he is, I think it's a signal of 'all's well that ends well.'
- tptacek 17y agoI'm really picking up an undercurrent of "Steve Wozniak being who he is in relation to Apple, this joke probably means that Apple has gotten over it". I don't see the evidence to back that argument up.
- jacquesm 17y agoI think the simple fact that Wozniak (who as far as I know is one of the nicest really rich people out there, by his deeds, not by his words) is willing to do this in a way suggests that it could have happened to anybody. Shit happens, prototypes get lost. Stuff happens to prototypes quite frequently, especially car prototypes that suddenly and unexpectedly highlight both the existence of the prototype and the unfortunate person in possession of it, you can't have the one without the other. Keep in mind that it wasn't Wozniak that released Grays name, effectively he's saying it could have been him, since he goes out drinking as well. Maybe I'm giving Wozniak too much credit based on his past, but I can't imagine him doing this out of malice.
- anigbrowl 17y ago
- marcamillion 17y agoI would not be surprised if Gray Powell felt good when he saw this pic. Hell...if it were me...I would be jumping for joy that Woz even knows I exist.
- philk 17y agoI would be thrilled and (assuming I hadn't collapsed under the stress) I'd shamelessly milk it by trying to get Woz out for a drink.
- tptacek 17y agoIt wouldn't surprise me either, and that doesn't make me happy. Even if the prototype had to get published once it was lost, there's simply no reason any of us needed to know this guy's name.
- zackattack 17y agoThe situation is funny, and it provides Gray Powell with an extraordinary opportunity for personal growth.
- defenestrator 17y agomy god that's a neat switch panel
- risotto 17y agoI have a new theory about life that hasn't let me down yet. It's a variant on Occam's Razor that I call Zoschke's Razor: The most boring explanation is usually the correct one. Let me apply it here... -- Gray has talked to his supervisors, and his job is secure because he's the same talented engineer today as he was last week. Gray's career options are unaffected by this because who wouldn't want to hire an iPhone engineer? Gray was scared when his phone was lost, embarrassed when it was found, but already back to business as usual, and actually even wiser than before. Gray isn't paying attention to any of the publicity, only to the laughs his personal friends are having at/with him. Jobs wasn't even caught off guard by this, he's seen it all before. Apple will not comment publicly on any of these events. Apple will release the new iPhone at a typical keynote in a few months, and will sell tons of them. No charges will be brought against Gizmodo. -- All the speculation, here and otherwise, wants this to be way more drama than these things ever are. We aren't talking about losing the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. We're talking about boring, corporate America that we all know too well. This is essentially the same as that one time your bug dropped an important table in the production database. Did you get shit canned? Did your company suffer insurmountable losses? Nope. Your company did damage control, you and your team fixed the problem, and everyone went back to business as usual the next day. Real life is boring, even for the seemingly larger-than-life Apple, Steve Jobs and the iPhone.
- qeorge 17y agoThat sounds incredibly reasonable to me, especially the first 4 points.
- jacquesm 17y agoGizmodo will not be charged, but they probably will be sued in civil court. Just to discourage 'repeats'.
- ErrantX 17y agoThe only slight hitch I see in your points is the police investigation; but I suspect it will come to nothing (from the perspective of - they had to make some form of response and the media seized on it because it was the story/scandal they wanted). At the end of the day; Apple are on such a high at the moment it will almost certainly have been "forgiven"