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Stories of Steve Jobs in Safari Design Reviews (2014)
- jiveturkey 8y ago2014 tag would be helpful
- vkou 8y ago> Steve didn’t like the status bar and didn’t see the need for it. “Who looks at URLs when you hover your mouse over a link?” He thought it was just too geeky. People who don't want to be phished? People who don't have absolute trust that a hyperlink posted by some random schmuck on the internet won't take them somewhere they shouldn't go? This sort of background mentality of "Make the happy path look slick, and if the happy path doesn't work for you, good luck," has always turned me off from Apple stuff. But, of course, I'm not the target audience.
- atonse 8y agoYes because it is still true, that more geeky users that care about URLs and the status bar. Sure, nobody wants to get phished. But I don't know any non-tech users that pay attention to the status bar as a way to avoid it.
- bluedino 8y agoOne thing I miss when using Safari instead of Chrome
- olliej 8y agoThe status bar has never been a anti-phishing tech, and I would argue that if anything it aids phishing[1]. The thing that prevents phishing is the location bar. Also at that point in history phishing via fake urls was less of a problem - you could still trivially give the page a title (users only looked at the window title bar), and a copy of the verisign or thawte “secure page” graphic and you’d be set. [1] pretty much from day 1 of js existing IE allowed js control of the content of the status bar, click handlers on links can change the window location directly, etc. Even today the link for urls is still frequently javascript:... so what adding a status bar does do is add another thing that tells the user what a link is, leading to a false sense of trust a importantly a sense of trust that can lead to not paying attention to the one true thing in the window: the location bar.
- tcgv 8y agoYou can't rely on the hyperlink url, it's easily manipulable from JavaScript: https://jsfiddle.net/aeoktwL7/ https://jsfiddle.net/aeoktwL7/
- olliej 8y agoStory time with gramps!
- favorited 8y agoNot sure if you're getting downvoted for "gramps" – but in case people don't know: https://donmelton.com/2015/11/30/why-they-call-me-gramps/ https://donmelton.com/2015/11/30/why-they-call-me-gramps/
- olliej 8y agoWow yeah I hadn’t seen the downvotes but seriously anyone who has worked with him knows about “story time with gramps”. Shrug.
- qntty 8y agoAnyone else annoyed by how deferential the author seems to be towards Jobs? Like surely after knowing him for a bit you'd get over that.
- maxxxxx 8y agoThat seems to be the case with a lot of super charismatic leaders. Somehow these people can instill an extreme level of loyalty in people they meet. I don't want to compare Jobs to Hitler but when you read accounts from people who worked with Hitler they also had this sense of loyalty they couldn't overcome even while knowing that something was going wrong. Reagan may be another case.
- r00fus 8y agoDid you ever meet Jobs? Maybe he was just really really good. He comes off that way in most of his interviews/keynotes. Good, laser-focused, demanding.
- maxxxxx 8y agoI think he was very good. But from whatever I have read he was also a big jerk and could be very cruel to people.
- bryanrasmussen 8y agothere are also cruel jerks who are incompetent idiots.
- sjwright 8y agoI haven't read anything that suggests that Steve was cruel or a jerk for the sake of it.
- reaperducer 8y agoI read his biography, and in it he came off like a jerk. Not a cruel person. But yes, a jerk. I liked Steve Jobs a lot more before I read his bio.
- benwerd 8y agoThis is how I know I would suck in a company like this. Yeah, it's Steve Jobs - but I find the level of reverence on show in this piece to be a little hard to take. It's certainly revealing of the culture there at the time. > And when you can get the time for thoughtful reflection on your idea from a visionary like Steve — well, that’s a good day. Being humble is one thing, but forcing yourself into this kind of fawning emotional servility feels dangerous to me. He was smart; he was lucky; he was a human, like anyone else. I don't think this level of hierarchy is something that I would seek to build at any of my startups, or would hope to support in a startup that I invested in or advised. It just feels unhealthy to me.
- graeme 8y agoThere have been stories outside Apple of Steve Jobs giving incredibly good feedback in a variety of areas and people being glad to have it. Have you considered the possibility that: 1. Steve Jobs was a couple of standard deviations better at this than almost anyone 2. As such, people were glad to get feedback from him 3. Such ability is rare and hard to identify, and so trying to replicate that structure is nonetheless not a sensible idea. In other words, you're correct in your business practices, but possibly blinded to the fact that Steve actually was very, very good.
- tw04 8y agoLike insisting that notes look like a leather bound notebook? I'm confident he had good ideas. I'm also confident he had plenty of horrible ideas... Just like most intelligent humans.
- camhenlin 8y agoIt seems like most skeuomorphism was at the direction of Scott Forstall rather than Steve Jobs, although Steve certainly allowed it to happen
- reaperducer 8y agoLike insisting that notes look like a leather bound notebook? It served its purpose: It introduced millions of people to taking notes on a portable electronic device by making the use of the device familiar and welcoming. Remember, this is at a time when people had to be taught how to "swipe to open," how to scroll on a touch screen, and how to pinch to zoom. All of this was unfamiliar territory to the masses. If the iPhone's initial operating system looked like Android's current design, it would have been much harder to get people on board. (I still have my launch day iPhone. I fired it up a couple of weeks ago, and aside from the horrible pre-retina screen resolution, it was very familiar and comforting.)
- s3r3nity 8y ago> I don’t want those few and fleeting memories fractured and confused by other people’s interpretations. So you want to maintain dogmatic ideological views without subjecting yourself to an uncomfortable re-examining of how rose-tinted your glasses might have been? I was immediately turned off by this, and had a hard time finishing the post after reading that. Sometimes admitting that your idols are flawed human beings, but often trying their best nevertheless, can end in a better appreciation of the person.
- jimbokun 8y agoHe wanted to keep his first hand memories intact, and not be distracted by a dramatized or fictionalized account. Why do you need the interpretation of people who weren't there, of events you have directly experienced yourself?
- philwelch 8y agoI think that’s a little harsh. The human mind is very good at mixing things up and connecting them together in unexpected ways. I think the author is being genuinely more protective of his own memories than he is of Steve or even his opinion of Steve.
- sjwright 8y agoI had the exact opposite reaction. The fact that he cares so much about his own memories is under-appreciated these days. And he's not wrong—the stuff written about Steve is highly opinionated and often quite vividly written, exceedingly colored by how his blunt nature made that particular author react emotionally.
- PieUser 8y agoDisappointed. I was expecting at least some screenshots.
- misiti3780 8y agoim glad steve jobs did what he did, because i love my apple products as much as the next person, but everytime i read something like i realize there is no way i would have wanted to work for him even if i was "changing the world". life is simply too short.
- simonh 8y agoI’ve watched ride for some very challenging demanding bosses. Two in particular were very smart, very capable and I learned a lot from them. They really brought the best out of me. I don’t think either were Steve Jobs calibre though, I’d have loved the chance to work with the guy.
- philliphaydon 8y agoThis article is the first time I’ve read something abou Steve that makes me think, “I would totally love to work for Steve” It’s the parts about how Steve conducts reviews. I feel like too many people beat around the bush, when asked a question they get flustered and make stuff up. I actually kinda enjoy being put on the spot. Say I don’t have an answer or give my personal opinion, or be open and honest, or have to come up with ideas and such. I don’t get flustered or bothered if I’m yelled at. I’ve had bosses that I think are worse than what Steve is sometimes described as. But damn if I haven’t enjoyed those reviews or design sessions.
- foobar1962 8y agoI studied photography and one of the teachers was blunt about quality and talent to the point of rudeness. He'd tell people they wouldn't even make a photographer's arsehole, let alone a photographer. The day he handed back one of my photographs and said "Congratulations, you're now a photographer's arsehole" was a good one.
- seltzered_ 8y agoThere was also a muli-part interview with Don Melton and Nitin Ganatra in 2014: https://m.imore.com/debug-47-melton-ganatra-episode-i-demoing-software-steve-jobs https://m.imore.com/debug-47-melton-ganatra-episode-i-demoin... https://m.imore.com/debug-48-melton-ganatra-episode-ii-understanding-apple https://m.imore.com/debug-48-melton-ganatra-episode-ii-under...
- jrs95 8y ago> between rounds of Overwatch Ah, an Overwatch player. This explains everything ;) In all seriousness, WSL has improved A LOT and I use it frequently on my gaming PC so I don't have to pull out my MacBook. Performance is definitely a bit worse but I have a Ryzen 2700X and an NVMe drive, so it's still plenty quick enough despite the inefficiencies on the software side of things. I used to always dual boot Linux on my desktops, but I just don't have a need to do that anymore.
- rchaud 8y agoI used to think Jobs' Reality Distortion Field only worked on tech bloggers who loved Apple's story and narrative so much, they went overboard to praise their products, in spite of tone-deaf stuff Jobs would say in public like "You're holding it wrong". Turns out there were plenty of people right there at Apple who fell under that same RDF.
- fullshark 8y agoDid you really think the RDF as you say didn't apply to workers inside Apple? Almost always the biggest kool-aid drinkers for any company are the employees.
- Quintus_ 8y agoTalk about being brainwashed, this man sees Steve Jobs as a god.
- jsqu99 8y ago"As a manager, you should never share such things with someone who reports to you." Sharing a human moment (being upset that a superior is sick) w/ a subordinate is off-limits?
- goto11 8y agoThis is a weird and fascinating read since it says almost nothing about Jobs (good or bad), but is only about the fear and fawning and deference of the people meeting him. There is nothing in the stories that explains why they have this fear and fawning. Apparently Jobs made some silly practical jokes where the fun was that the victims were initially too afraid of him to acknowledge the joke. But no hint of why people would be afraid in the first place. Apparently Jobs asked how the IE bookmarks bar looked and this guy googled an image. And this was one of the must harrowing but ultimately triumphant moments of his life.