Off the top of my head, I guess I'd just count myself among the ranks of the inventor of Cover Flow, the creators of Konfabulator, and the creators of Quicksilv

Off the top of my head, I guess I'd just count myself among the ranks of the inventor of Cover Flow, the creators of Konfabulator, and the creators of Quicksilver. It happens, and the best thing to do is just to double down and never stop thinking, exploring, and making. As disappointing as it might be, it would be an enormous validation. My experience with the Apple recruitment process didn't tell me much about the company's plans for the desktop (I didn't get far enough to sign an NDA), but I did learn something important: Their interaction designers, the concept guys whose explorations eventually filter down into shipping products... are also developers. Apple hires the best of both worlds, idea people who don't even stop to sketch ideas out on paper but head straight to XCode and an NSWindow. That's literally their process. The best thing that came of it was that it inspired me to set out to learn Objective-C and Cocoa. I'm not as far with it as I'd like to be yet, but it's opened my eyes to the possibilities of becoming a designer/developer. Even if, in the future, I'm still the archetypal designer looking for a technical co-founder, hopefully I'll be good enough that I can at least carry my own weight.