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I was there in 1999 as OS X was being developed, and the beta was just about to be released. I was building another product that was released at MacWorld in 200

I was there in 1999 as OS X was being developed, and the beta was just about to be released. I was building another product that was released at MacWorld in 2000 (and still exists today)! I have a lot of funny stories. Steve didn't like our data center rack mounts being silver, we had to pull them all out and spray paint them black, because silver just wasn't acceptable, in a datacenter. That was my first day at work. And no, I'm not a datacenter employee, everyone on the team did everything, there were just very few of us. We had to work from about 10am to about 3 or 4 am every day to make the deadline, we sometimes got Sundays off. There was a lot of rage and anger at many management levels. Steve would get a question about a two button mouse at every company meeting, he was super pissed every time about the question. We enjoyed trolling him. Steve's attention to detail was unbelievable. I once witnessed him make a team work overnight just to move an icon 10 pixels to the left. The guy had a vision that seems unparalleled. He was able to figure out the concept of "cloud" well before its time, and make a shift towards that. Of course, he was an supernatural presenter. I witnessed him present through some really messed up errors in live demos and no one I asked in the audience afterwards even noticed the errors. It was an insane work environment, never seen anything like it.

apeace 4y ago
> I was building another product that was released at MacWorld in 2000 (and still exists today)! Wow! What was the product?
- MaintenanceMode 4y ago
  iTools, or as it's known today, iCloud. It was supposed to be a dial-up service, if you can wrap your head around that. But halfway through the project he realized that doesn't make sense and pivoted. A timely, brilliant move.
codexjourneys 4y ago
> Steve didn't like our data center rack mounts being silver, we had to pull them all out and spray paint them black, because silver just wasn't acceptable, in a datacenter. This strikes me as funny because of all the canonically silver iMacs and Macbooks that came afterward. Is black even an option?
- MaintenanceMode 4y ago
  Somewhere in Steve logic somethings are black, somethings are silver, that's just the way it is.
  - spinlock 4y ago
    I think this is a huge part of his success. That clarity makes buying simpler for customers. You get the color that your device is supposed to be. Period.
    - nso95 4y ago
      Boy have times changed
      - spinlock 4y ago
        You ain't kidding. Jobs gave people the choice of good, better, or best. That was it. 3 options and you probably already knew which one you were walking out with.
      - sroussey 4y ago
        Now there are, what, six iPads? Not sure how people decide on anything not the cheapest or most expensive. There are four “middle” options.
        abudabi123 4y ago
        The techspec page for the product is buried on the Apple Store app. Personalities such as MKBHD on YT is who I rely on to figure out what the product is targetted at.
  - dehrmann 4y ago
    Now my iPhone is gray and my charger is white. What happened?!
    - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mbesto 4y ago
> The guy had a vision that seems unparalleled. Yet, he asked a group of software developers to paint a data center rack mount because "it wasn't acceptable" and made people work until 3am (even though numerous studies state that this doesn't make people more productive). One can call him "visionary" all they want, but the work environment he created doesn't sound exactly utopian. Do the ends really justify the means?
- mlindner 4y ago
  I've never worked in such an environment myself but I imagine it feels something like soldiers feel following a leader who feels like he knows what he's doing. It's the feeling of shared hardship and shared experience and it creates culture of driving to follow the leader. I imagine Elon Musk (at least used to, not sure if he still does) cause the same experience in employees. That's the sense you get when you read books like "Liftoff" that document the early days of SpaceX.
  - MaintenanceMode 4y ago
    For many of it was a life long dream to work at Apple, and to work with Jobs, but it didn’t take long to see it was not healthy.
  - mc32 4y ago
    Yep, Alexander and Genghis conquered huge ands because of their leadership, not because they were nice guys.
    - hajimuz 4y ago
      Genghis is a bad example here… He conquered for what?
  - maxbond 4y ago
    I don't think people spray painting parts no one in the public will ever see feel like their leader is on the ball. They probably feel like they're at the whims of an unreasonable narcissist who can erase their weekend and generally make them miserable for no reason whatsoever.
flutas 4y ago
Now I’m actually curious what the errors where that never got noticed. I’m sure the keynotes today will never have an error again, save a media server dying mid transcode and even then I’d expect there to be backups.
- MaintenanceMode 4y ago
  Jobs was a believer in the live demo. So when he was demoing a new product, the app actually crashed mid demo. He was so seamless in his delivery, it was like the audience was hypnotized.
lloydatkinson 4y ago
So what was his problem with two button mice anyway?
- rib3ye 4y ago
  Too confusing for a first-time computer user or a small child. Having two small kids myself, I agree one button would be better for learning.
  - tomcam 4y ago
    Except it gives rise to double-click, triple-click, shift-click, command-click, option-click, etc.
    - rib3ye 4y ago
      Double-click was always easy to teach, to my knowledge there isn’t a triple-click. There wasn’t command-click until OSX.
      - tomcam 4y ago
        OS X has been around for 21 years. Many readers of hacker news aren’t that old yet. Triple click is only a thing on iOS, apparently. Thank you for the correction: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204390 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204390 Double click is easy to teach but it’s sure as hell not discoverable. Whereas second and middle button advocates have, to me, semi convincingly claimed that they could also be taught through consistent application. In other words, not better but not worse.
garyrob 4y ago
Buried deep in this thread, ksec quoted Jobs: "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 on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.” It's also analogous to a batter who doesn't stop his swing right after the moment he hits (or misses) the ball; he follows through. Because having the attitude of always following through, even when it seemingly no longer matters, increases the number and range of hits. In response to the ksec's Jobs quote, maxbond said: "You're suggesting asking people to work into the night to make an aesthetic change that will benefit no customers, that will not make the workplace friendlier or more productive, and that you may never even lay eyes on again, is craftsmanship? I would suggest its authoritarian control for it's own sake." The proof is in the pudding. Jobs exhibited extremely unusual, 1-in-10,000, seemingly odd, useless behavior in making the painting demand. Is it really nothing but pure coincidence that the same individual had the extremely unusual, 1-in-10,000 achievement of taking a company that was on its deathbed, arguably in its last throes, and turning it into one of the largest, most successful and influential companies in the world? No, it is not. That doesn't mean it's worth it to the individual workers who had to do that work. Clearly, in many cases, including ksec's, it was not. But was it was worth it to the company and its shareholders? Yes.
- MaintenanceMode 4y ago
  Very well summarized. This really captures the dilemma. Did I mention every single Ethernet cable had to be cut to length and if any server moved all the cables had to be remade ? Lol. They finally hired a wiring company to do all that work because I think we all protested to programming during the night and cutting cables during the day or vice versa.
- ksec 4y ago
  Object Lessons. In his first public appearance after revealing he had surgery to remove a tumor from his pancreas in 2004, Jobs met with a handful of reporters at the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, Calif. to unveil a new 750-square-foot "mini" store design. Half the size of the typical Apple retail stores of the time, the mini design featured an all-white ceiling, lit from behind; Japanese-made stainless-steel walls, with holes around the top for ventilation that mimicked the design of the PowerMac G5; and a shiny, seamless white floor made with "material used in aircraft hangars," Jobs said at the time. Before the gigantic curtain draped across the storefront came down, though, Jobs was having a meltdown, refusing in the minutes before the unveiling to step outside and greet reporters. Why? Because the store design that looked so great on paper didn't stand up to real-world use. The walls showed off every handprint and the floors were marred by black scuff marks from the handful of people readying the store for the big reveal. Jobs was ultimately convinced to step outside, and the curtain was drawn before the small gathering of reporters. When I saw the floor, I immediately turned to Jobs, standing next to me, and asked if he had been involved in every aspect of the design. He said yes. "It was obvious that whoever designed the store had never cleaned a floor in their life," I told him. He narrowed his eyes at me and stepped inside. A few months later an Apple executive told me that Jobs had all of the designers return to the store after it opened on Saturday, and spend the night on their hands and knees cleaning the white surface. After that, Apple switched the floors to the stone tiles now prevalent in its designs.

apeace 4y ago

> I was building another product that was released at MacWorld in 2000 (and still exists today)! Wow! What was the product?

MaintenanceMode 4y ago
iTools, or as it's known today, iCloud. It was supposed to be a dial-up service, if you can wrap your head around that. But halfway through the project he realized that doesn't make sense and pivoted. A timely, brilliant move.

codexjourneys 4y ago

> Steve didn't like our data center rack mounts being silver, we had to pull them all out and spray paint them black, because silver just wasn't acceptable, in a datacenter. This strikes me as funny because of all the canonically silver iMacs and Macbooks that came afterward. Is black even an option?

MaintenanceMode 4y ago
Somewhere in Steve logic somethings are black, somethings are silver, that's just the way it is.
- spinlock 4y ago
  I think this is a huge part of his success. That clarity makes buying simpler for customers. You get the color that your device is supposed to be. Period.
  - nso95 4y ago
    Boy have times changed
    - spinlock 4y ago
      You ain't kidding. Jobs gave people the choice of good, better, or best. That was it. 3 options and you probably already knew which one you were walking out with.
    - sroussey 4y ago
      Now there are, what, six iPads? Not sure how people decide on anything not the cheapest or most expensive. There are four “middle” options.
      - abudabi123 4y ago
        The techspec page for the product is buried on the Apple Store app. Personalities such as MKBHD on YT is who I rely on to figure out what the product is targetted at.
- dehrmann 4y ago
  Now my iPhone is gray and my charger is white. What happened?!
  - 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mbesto 4y ago

> The guy had a vision that seems unparalleled. Yet, he asked a group of software developers to paint a data center rack mount because "it wasn't acceptable" and made people work until 3am (even though numerous studies state that this doesn't make people more productive). One can call him "visionary" all they want, but the work environment he created doesn't sound exactly utopian. Do the ends really justify the means?

mlindner 4y ago
I've never worked in such an environment myself but I imagine it feels something like soldiers feel following a leader who feels like he knows what he's doing. It's the feeling of shared hardship and shared experience and it creates culture of driving to follow the leader. I imagine Elon Musk (at least used to, not sure if he still does) cause the same experience in employees. That's the sense you get when you read books like "Liftoff" that document the early days of SpaceX.
- MaintenanceMode 4y ago
  For many of it was a life long dream to work at Apple, and to work with Jobs, but it didn’t take long to see it was not healthy.
- mc32 4y ago
  Yep, Alexander and Genghis conquered huge ands because of their leadership, not because they were nice guys.
  - hajimuz 4y ago
    Genghis is a bad example here… He conquered for what?
- maxbond 4y ago
  I don't think people spray painting parts no one in the public will ever see feel like their leader is on the ball. They probably feel like they're at the whims of an unreasonable narcissist who can erase their weekend and generally make them miserable for no reason whatsoever.

flutas 4y ago

Now I’m actually curious what the errors where that never got noticed. I’m sure the keynotes today will never have an error again, save a media server dying mid transcode and even then I’d expect there to be backups.

MaintenanceMode 4y ago
Jobs was a believer in the live demo. So when he was demoing a new product, the app actually crashed mid demo. He was so seamless in his delivery, it was like the audience was hypnotized.

lloydatkinson 4y ago

So what was his problem with two button mice anyway?

rib3ye 4y ago
Too confusing for a first-time computer user or a small child. Having two small kids myself, I agree one button would be better for learning.
- tomcam 4y ago
  Except it gives rise to double-click, triple-click, shift-click, command-click, option-click, etc.
  - rib3ye 4y ago
    Double-click was always easy to teach, to my knowledge there isn’t a triple-click. There wasn’t command-click until OSX.
    - tomcam 4y ago
      OS X has been around for 21 years. Many readers of hacker news aren’t that old yet. Triple click is only a thing on iOS, apparently. Thank you for the correction: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204390 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204390 Double click is easy to teach but it’s sure as hell not discoverable. Whereas second and middle button advocates have, to me, semi convincingly claimed that they could also be taught through consistent application. In other words, not better but not worse.

garyrob 4y ago

Buried deep in this thread, ksec quoted Jobs: "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 on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.” It's also analogous to a batter who doesn't stop his swing right after the moment he hits (or misses) the ball; he follows through. Because having the attitude of always following through, even when it seemingly no longer matters, increases the number and range of hits. In response to the ksec's Jobs quote, maxbond said: "You're suggesting asking people to work into the night to make an aesthetic change that will benefit no customers, that will not make the workplace friendlier or more productive, and that you may never even lay eyes on again, is craftsmanship? I would suggest its authoritarian control for it's own sake." The proof is in the pudding. Jobs exhibited extremely unusual, 1-in-10,000, seemingly odd, useless behavior in making the painting demand. Is it really nothing but pure coincidence that the same individual had the extremely unusual, 1-in-10,000 achievement of taking a company that was on its deathbed, arguably in its last throes, and turning it into one of the largest, most successful and influential companies in the world? No, it is not. That doesn't mean it's worth it to the individual workers who had to do that work. Clearly, in many cases, including ksec's, it was not. But was it was worth it to the company and its shareholders? Yes.

MaintenanceMode 4y ago
Very well summarized. This really captures the dilemma. Did I mention every single Ethernet cable had to be cut to length and if any server moved all the cables had to be remade ? Lol. They finally hired a wiring company to do all that work because I think we all protested to programming during the night and cutting cables during the day or vice versa.
ksec 4y ago
Object Lessons. In his first public appearance after revealing he had surgery to remove a tumor from his pancreas in 2004, Jobs met with a handful of reporters at the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, Calif. to unveil a new 750-square-foot "mini" store design. Half the size of the typical Apple retail stores of the time, the mini design featured an all-white ceiling, lit from behind; Japanese-made stainless-steel walls, with holes around the top for ventilation that mimicked the design of the PowerMac G5; and a shiny, seamless white floor made with "material used in aircraft hangars," Jobs said at the time. Before the gigantic curtain draped across the storefront came down, though, Jobs was having a meltdown, refusing in the minutes before the unveiling to step outside and greet reporters. Why? Because the store design that looked so great on paper didn't stand up to real-world use. The walls showed off every handprint and the floors were marred by black scuff marks from the handful of people readying the store for the big reveal. Jobs was ultimately convinced to step outside, and the curtain was drawn before the small gathering of reporters. When I saw the floor, I immediately turned to Jobs, standing next to me, and asked if he had been involved in every aspect of the design. He said yes. "It was obvious that whoever designed the store had never cleaned a floor in their life," I told him. He narrowed his eyes at me and stepped inside. A few months later an Apple executive told me that Jobs had all of the designers return to the store after it opened on Saturday, and spend the night on their hands and knees cleaning the white surface. After that, Apple switched the floors to the stone tiles now prevalent in its designs.