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I came on board with the NeXT acquisition (or rather reverse acquisition as ex-NeXT often refer to)… So I do recall seeing a few times after we relocated to In

I came on board with the NeXT acquisition (or rather reverse acquisition as ex-NeXT often refer to)… So I do recall seeing a few times after we relocated to Infinite Loop, that Steve at first was just working as a consultant, and not as an employee. Thus at the time he didn’t have a badge to enter in IL1 (Infinite Loop 1: hold Apple HQ); many times when he was coming in the morning, he had to wait at the glass door to enter the campus, until some kind soul was letting him in (despite the policy only badged employees could enter or visitors with a printed tag). I saw it happening more than once while grabbing a coffee at the coffee booth in the IL1 building. Later on, after he came back officially as CEO (or iCEO), I remember clearly during a lunch with co-workers (at Café Mac, seating outside) watching at a distance Steve & Jony walking inside the campus, then seating at a bench and Jony opening some carrying case/luggage, and let Steve pull the content out of it, so he could look at it in the sun: it looked like a piece of plastic… at the time, we had no clue what it was, except the color was orange. Many months later, Steve introduced the first iBook (which was the first Mac with Wifi): when I saw the orange color of the iBook I made the connection with what we saw back that day; Jony was most likely showing to Steve the first shell of the future iBook. Steve otherwise at work was truly laser focus at a time on different projects: I was working on backend web services development with public facing web site, so usually every 2 weeks our boss was presenting to Steve our progress (every week or even more while closer to ship): our boss usually was always coming back with clear feedback on what was good or terrible, which we obviously had to improve for the next presentation… stressful yes, but truly enjoyable. More than once, Steve did cut some projects that were close to finish and you just had to go along since no one had a say in it, except Steve. Obviously I have a few more stories of that sort, since I spent close to 20 years at Apple (/NeXT). It was quite something to get the hard work you did for months presented on stage by Steve… I still miss the excitement from it even if it is more than 15 years ago. Edit: fixing a few typos

sgt 4y ago
I think there is a lot of interest in your stories, if you would be willing to write them down and post them back to HN.
mavsman 4y ago
> usually every 2 weeks our boss was presenting to Steve our progress (every week or even more while closer to ship): our boss usually was always coming back with clear feedback on what was good or terrible I worked at Amazon for a bit and remember this kind of thing in preparation for a release/conference (Re:Invent). I don't miss it at all.
agloeregrets 4y ago
> More than once, Steve did cut some projects that were close to finish and you just had to go along since no one had a say in it, except Steve. You know, this is actually a rather good thing. So many companies are just bloated with projects that they want to see through just to see them through and they make zero sense in the grand scheme of the company. If you have a single person responsible for everything that can just make the hard choices and be the bad guy it is much more healthy for the whole....assuming that person cuts the right things and makes the right choices.
- nr2x 4y ago
  This is why Sundar is a nice guy but shit CEO.
  - cloudking 4y ago
    Well he did cut Stadia, which had a sizable team working on it.
    - seabrookmx 4y ago
      The fact that Stadia even launched was a failure. The most basic of market research would tell you that in gaming, content is king. And with Google's track record of cancelling products, nobody would trust what they offered even if it was vastly technically superior.
      - tobyjsullivan 4y ago
        Honestly, I don't know if that's a totally fair take. I purchased exactly one game on stadia and have zero regrets (particularly since I'm apparently getting a refund - but that's a bonus, really). I was definitely the target market and it was, in theory, the perfect product for me. The only problem is I may have been the only person in the target market so that wasn't going to work financially... And even I was going to have an exceptionally low LTV at maybe one game purchase per year (or less). And if they charged a monthly subscription, I'd never do it. So, yeah, terrible business. But Google's track record wasn't a showstopper for me on a toy. It's different for business stuff like GCP.
JKCalhoun 4y ago
The one that sticks with me was the demo to the engineering team of "Aqua". A small team had been developing the new "lickable" user interface that was called Aqua. Before the release of OS X with the new UI, Jobs assembled the engineers that worked on the OS that would be tasked with carrying the UI throughout with their frameworks/apps. In typical Steve fashion he had a slide-preso for the reveal. He began with a kind of simplified history of the computer user-interface: starting with the command-line. His next slide showed the graphical user interface popularized, surprise, by his earlier Apple Macintosh. The NeXt slide (ha ha) showed, perhaps unsurprisingly, the NeXT user interface. A "boo" from one of the engineers in the crowd. Jobs froze and the showman tone of his voice was gone, "Who said that? Who booed?" He was clearly enraged. He stared into the audience, scanning the faces of the engineers. I think he followed that with some expletives and a claim that the NeXT UI was an amazing step in UI design but I was still kind of in shock myself.
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  I heard about that meeting from someone who was also there -- supposedly Steve also said in response to the booing something to the effect that "what the hell has Apple done in the last ten years?"
  - cutenewt 4y ago
    Sounds like a Jobsian version of Musk's "what have you done this week"
- diskzero 4y ago
  When I came back to Apple in 2000, I remember walking to visit a friend from Eazel (John Harper) who was working on CoreAnimation and seeing your office. I was totally star struck, way more than having to deal with Steve every week. I mean, you are the guy who wrote Glider!
  - JKCalhoun 4y ago
    Ha ha, and Harper is a fucking rock star. He's a quiet guy but I recall chatting with him once about music — I thought it was awesome that he was into Elliott Smith.

sgt 4y ago

I think there is a lot of interest in your stories, if you would be willing to write them down and post them back to HN.

mavsman 4y ago

> usually every 2 weeks our boss was presenting to Steve our progress (every week or even more while closer to ship): our boss usually was always coming back with clear feedback on what was good or terrible I worked at Amazon for a bit and remember this kind of thing in preparation for a release/conference (Re:Invent). I don't miss it at all.

agloeregrets 4y ago

> More than once, Steve did cut some projects that were close to finish and you just had to go along since no one had a say in it, except Steve. You know, this is actually a rather good thing. So many companies are just bloated with projects that they want to see through just to see them through and they make zero sense in the grand scheme of the company. If you have a single person responsible for everything that can just make the hard choices and be the bad guy it is much more healthy for the whole....assuming that person cuts the right things and makes the right choices.

nr2x 4y ago
This is why Sundar is a nice guy but shit CEO.
- cloudking 4y ago
  Well he did cut Stadia, which had a sizable team working on it.
  - seabrookmx 4y ago
    The fact that Stadia even launched was a failure. The most basic of market research would tell you that in gaming, content is king. And with Google's track record of cancelling products, nobody would trust what they offered even if it was vastly technically superior.
    - tobyjsullivan 4y ago
      Honestly, I don't know if that's a totally fair take. I purchased exactly one game on stadia and have zero regrets (particularly since I'm apparently getting a refund - but that's a bonus, really). I was definitely the target market and it was, in theory, the perfect product for me. The only problem is I may have been the only person in the target market so that wasn't going to work financially... And even I was going to have an exceptionally low LTV at maybe one game purchase per year (or less). And if they charged a monthly subscription, I'd never do it. So, yeah, terrible business. But Google's track record wasn't a showstopper for me on a toy. It's different for business stuff like GCP.

JKCalhoun 4y ago

The one that sticks with me was the demo to the engineering team of "Aqua". A small team had been developing the new "lickable" user interface that was called Aqua. Before the release of OS X with the new UI, Jobs assembled the engineers that worked on the OS that would be tasked with carrying the UI throughout with their frameworks/apps. In typical Steve fashion he had a slide-preso for the reveal. He began with a kind of simplified history of the computer user-interface: starting with the command-line. His next slide showed the graphical user interface popularized, surprise, by his earlier Apple Macintosh. The NeXt slide (ha ha) showed, perhaps unsurprisingly, the NeXT user interface. A "boo" from one of the engineers in the crowd. Jobs froze and the showman tone of his voice was gone, "Who said that? Who booed?" He was clearly enraged. He stared into the audience, scanning the faces of the engineers. I think he followed that with some expletives and a claim that the NeXT UI was an amazing step in UI design but I was still kind of in shock myself.

KerrAvon 4y ago
I heard about that meeting from someone who was also there -- supposedly Steve also said in response to the booing something to the effect that "what the hell has Apple done in the last ten years?"
- cutenewt 4y ago
  Sounds like a Jobsian version of Musk's "what have you done this week"
diskzero 4y ago
When I came back to Apple in 2000, I remember walking to visit a friend from Eazel (John Harper) who was working on CoreAnimation and seeing your office. I was totally star struck, way more than having to deal with Steve every week. I mean, you are the guy who wrote Glider!
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  Ha ha, and Harper is a fucking rock star. He's a quiet guy but I recall chatting with him once about music — I thought it was awesome that he was into Elliott Smith.