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He knew. Below is a quote from Isaacson book. Fifty years later the fence still surrounds the back and side yards of the house in Mountain View. As Jobs showed

by gpas 5y ago

He knew. Below is a quote from Isaacson book. Fifty years later the fence still surrounds the back and side yards of the house in Mountain View. As Jobs showed it off to me, he caressed the stockade panels and recalled a lesson that his father implanted deeply in him. It was important, his father said, to craft the backs of cabinets and fences properly, even though they were hidden. … In an interview a few years later, after the Macintosh came out, Jobs again reiterated that lesson from his father: “When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood in the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”

mwcampbell 5y ago
On the other hand, when push came to shove, an arbitrarily chosen deadline trumped all else. Taking the original Macintosh as an example again, see chapter 7 of Steven Levy's book _Insanely Great_, which describes how the Mac software team scrambled to get a barely working version of MacWrite done in time so the Mac could be announced at Apple's yearly stockholders meeting and available in stores the day after.
crgwbr 5y ago
> “When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood in the back.” As a professional programmer and amateur cabinet maker, this is a weird quote. I get the point of what he’s trying to say, but the truth is that all the most beautiful wood goes to the veneer mill to make very expensive, very nice plywood. Plywood is not MDF or particle board and there’s absolutely no reason not to use it for the back of a cabinet.

by gpas 5y ago

mwcampbell 5y ago

On the other hand, when push came to shove, an arbitrarily chosen deadline trumped all else. Taking the original Macintosh as an example again, see chapter 7 of Steven Levy's book _Insanely Great_, which describes how the Mac software team scrambled to get a barely working version of MacWrite done in time so the Mac could be announced at Apple's yearly stockholders meeting and available in stores the day after.

crgwbr 5y ago

> “When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood in the back.” As a professional programmer and amateur cabinet maker, this is a weird quote. I get the point of what he’s trying to say, but the truth is that all the most beautiful wood goes to the veneer mill to make very expensive, very nice plywood. Plywood is not MDF or particle board and there’s absolutely no reason not to use it for the back of a cabinet.