4 ms·

Jesus they had 3 months to do it.

by pier25 5y ago

refulgentis 5y ago
I _deeply_ appreciated a recalcitrant Serland's "Let's do it right this time, rather than rush a half-cooked story" was followed immediately by Jobs' "Sure, as long as its ready in 12 weeks" Of course, history shows it wasn't _actually_ rolled out till June (modulo direct 3P relationships Apple did earlier), but good to know managers are always managers and FAANG is always FAANG, 90% of the work gets done _in spite_ of the lack of planning
seidoger 5y ago
It ended up being more like 5[0], but still a crazy crunch. [0] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2008/03/06Apple-Announces-iPhone-2-0-Software-Beta/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2008/03/06Apple-Announces-iPh...
vbsteven 5y ago
Crazy indeed. Although I assume at that point they already had large parts of the SDK implemented for native internal apps and much of those 3-6 months have been spent on public documentation, signing infrastructure etc.
- chc 5y ago
  Yeah, people had already been using the private APIs on jailbroken phones. That's still a pretty ambitious timeframe even just to get out all the supporting infrastructure, though.
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  I presume getting it to work in XCode in a presentable way was also quite an undertaking. Perhaps the simulator already existed, I don’t know. But if it did it probably wasn’t anywhere near release quality.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
avgsizedpigeon 5y ago
Suddenly all my deadlines seem to be not as tight as I thought they were before.
giantrobot 5y ago
I was at Apple in SWE at the time. While three months for public APIs was a tight schedule, a lot of the frameworks already existed and it was shoring up public access to them. Apple tends to dog food their own stuff for a while before making it public. The iOS 1 apps were using common APIs even if they weren't public. The early iOS APIs were pretty limited and were typically a subset of everything in a framework. Subsequent releases added to public APIs or released new revamped APIs for the same purpose. So it's not like Jobs was asking for years worth of work in three months, maybe just six months of work in three months.

Jesus they had 3 months to do it.

by pier25 5y ago

Jesus they had 3 months to do it.

I _deeply_ appreciated a recalcitrant Serland's "Let's do it right this time, rather than rush a half-cooked story" was followed immediately by Jobs' "Sure, as long as its ready in 12 weeks" Of course, history shows it wasn't _actually_ rolled out till June (modulo direct 3P relationships Apple did earlier), but good to know managers are always managers and FAANG is always FAANG, 90% of the work gets done _in spite_ of the lack of planning

seidoger 5y ago

It ended up being more like 5[0], but still a crazy crunch. [0] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2008/03/06Apple-Announces-iPhone-2-0-Software-Beta/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2008/03/06Apple-Announces-iPh...

vbsteven 5y ago

Crazy indeed. Although I assume at that point they already had large parts of the SDK implemented for native internal apps and much of those 3-6 months have been spent on public documentation, signing infrastructure etc.

chc 5y ago
Yeah, people had already been using the private APIs on jailbroken phones. That's still a pretty ambitious timeframe even just to get out all the supporting infrastructure, though.
tinus_hn 5y ago
I presume getting it to work in XCode in a presentable way was also quite an undertaking. Perhaps the simulator already existed, I don’t know. But if it did it probably wasn’t anywhere near release quality.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

avgsizedpigeon 5y ago

Suddenly all my deadlines seem to be not as tight as I thought they were before.

giantrobot 5y ago

I was at Apple in SWE at the time. While three months for public APIs was a tight schedule, a lot of the frameworks already existed and it was shoring up public access to them. Apple tends to dog food their own stuff for a while before making it public. The iOS 1 apps were using common APIs even if they weren't public. The early iOS APIs were pretty limited and were typically a subset of everything in a framework. Subsequent releases added to public APIs or released new revamped APIs for the same purpose. So it's not like Jobs was asking for years worth of work in three months, maybe just six months of work in three months.