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This is a fun story, but also just reminded me of how destructively eccentric Jobs could be. All the shenanigans to pretend the author lived in the US, flying

by kelnos 2y ago

This is a fun story, but also just reminded me of how destructively eccentric Jobs could be. All the shenanigans to pretend the author lived in the US, flying him back and forth from Ireland, planning his interactions (or lack of interactions) with Jobs so the deception wouldn't be exposed, and everything. What a colossal waste of time, money, and stress just to cater to the ego of Steve Jobs. And then they threw all that work away, seemingly mainly because it was done out of the wrong office. Presumably the final Dock that shipped was significantly different from the author's version, but throwing away all the code and doing a full rewrite is rarely warranted.

rob74 2y ago
I assume that the Cork development team was built up before Jobs took over, which also explains why they were all laid off shortly after the author quit. Jobs probably wanted to have all (significant) software development happening in Cupertino? If he were still around, he would probably hate home office/remote work and join Elon Musk in the "people can have all the home office they want as long as they work 40 hours per week in the office" camp...
- leoc 2y ago
  One wrinkle here is that Jobs himself was by all accounts the person most responsible for Apple opening a Cork facility in 1980, and for whatever Apple and the Irish government promised each other as part of that deal. There's some indication that Irish governments were unhappy with what they got from it https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/state-papers-macsharry-objected-to-additional-support-for-apple-in-cork-1.3735662 https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/state-papers-... but it's hard to be sure exactly what happened there: Apple was probably not in the best shape to carry out ambitious relocation plans for much of the '80s, for one thing. While I don't have boundless love for either Jobs or RTO mandates, and as an Irishman I would very much rather not see Cork getting the dirty end of the stick, I have to defend Jobs' desire for centralisation a bit here. There's considerable evidence that having nearly all the central product and design people within easy reach of SJ stalking around 1 Infinite Loop did in fact work very well for Apple in the second Jobs era. Maybe it was still a wrong decision, despite appearances, but you can hardly say that it was an eccentric one. (And in 2000 the tools for offsite or multi-site collaboration weren't even as not-entirely-great as they are now.) It was other people who brought in the madcap element of trying to hide things from the boss, not Jobs himself.
  - jacobr1 2y ago
    All else being equal, for team-based, creative, knowledge work, having everyone collocated is more productive. But not all is equal. You can't necessarily attract the all the talent. It doesn't scale without extremely disciplined organizational and physical space design - working remotely in the office, is the more common norm. Your team is spread over different locations and buildings anyway so you aren't really working locally in practice. Strong communication and collaboration practices are what dominate - so just having people together in one place and expecting osmosis doesn't beat good async tooling and discussion practices (like those from the best OSS projects).
- kergonath 2y ago
  > Jobs probably wanted to have all (significant) software development happening in Cupertino? Looks like it. There were still people working on iSync, iCal (and presumably software for the first iPhone) in an office in Paris. I think that ended in 2005.
- eddieroger 2y ago
  In an alternate and very charitable timeline, after being healed of his cancer by top doctors, Jobs grows greatly in love with science and medicine, and faced with the covid pandemic, makes Apple permanently remote work (with office option for those who want it), and donates sums of money to bootstrapping vaccine production for all the world. A boy can dream.
pavlov 2y ago
> “how destructively eccentric Jobs could be” I miss Steve Jobs. He was clearly an asshole at close range, but at heart he was a humanist and a bit of a hippie. He made money but also left the world a better place. Such a massive difference to today’s crop of tech billionaires like Thiel, Andreessen and Musk.
- SteveSmith16384 2y ago
  History would suggest otherwise. Ripping Woz off springs to mind. And is giving the world expensive Apple products making it a better place?
- Clubber 2y ago
  I mean electric cars, solar panels, and rockets so we don't have to rely on Russia to get to and from space ain't nothin'. Then there's that torch thing. I can take or leave the other two. Netscape was pretty cool.
  - pavlov 2y ago
    As a customer I find a stark difference between Musk and Jobs. I have a Tesla and I was also a customer of Jobs’s Apple since 1999. The big difference is that Jobs never lied to me. Sure, he was an enthusiastic salesman, but the products actually did what was promised. (I even bought Mac OS X 10.0 in a retail box. It was rough but it showed that their new OS is delivering.) Apple products fit my purposes and I kept coming back to buy more. Musk sold me a very expensive feature that still does nothing, six years later. He knew that he was lying about the capabilities of the cars, but still took my $7,500 for a feature that was worth zero. I’m never buying anything from him again. The same approach of bald-faced lies is evident in most of the tech industry today. Cryptocurrency products don’t serve any purpose but enriching people like Andreessen. AI is almost as bad. And now these titans of misinformation are barging into global politics. They don’t care about empowering people and creativity like Jobs did, they just want more personal power.
    - euroderf 2y ago
interludead 2y ago
Maybe (I think so) it was more about aligning every detail with the standards Jobs had in mind...
yapyap 2y ago
> how destructively eccentric Jobs could be last thing he destroyed was himself, by going the bonkers “alternative healing” route on cancer. not saying he deserved it but he had an out and he chose to ignore it till it was too late, hard to feel sorry at all for him at that point. also I heard he was a massive twat irl
- euroderf 2y ago
  If he'd've gone into politics, the net total outcome could've been much much worse.
  - kergonath 2y ago
    Luckily there is no indication that he was interested in this sort of things. Contrary to…others.
  - alternatex 2y ago
    Insert Bill Burr on Lance Armstrong "just keep him on the bike" quote.
- stonesthrowaway 2y ago
  > last thing he destroyed was himself, by going the bonkers “alternative healing” route on cancer. People who tend to go the "alternative healing" route usually do so because the traditional healing route hasn't worked. > he had an out and he chose to ignore it till it was too late Did he? Guess you are the expert. Cancer treatment isn't an exact science. Millions of people who go the traditional route die. It's always the know-nothings who talk with such confidence of absolutes. > also I heard he was a massive twat irl Did you now? I guess it takes one to know one.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    It was widely documented at the time that Jobs chose non-medicine over medicine very soon after diagnosis, and then went through heroic real-doctor efforts once it was too late: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2011/10/24/steve-jobs-cancer-treatment-regrets/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2011/10/24/steve-j...

by kelnos 2y ago

rob74 2y ago

I assume that the Cork development team was built up before Jobs took over, which also explains why they were all laid off shortly after the author quit. Jobs probably wanted to have all (significant) software development happening in Cupertino? If he were still around, he would probably hate home office/remote work and join Elon Musk in the "people can have all the home office they want as long as they work 40 hours per week in the office" camp...

leoc 2y ago
One wrinkle here is that Jobs himself was by all accounts the person most responsible for Apple opening a Cork facility in 1980, and for whatever Apple and the Irish government promised each other as part of that deal. There's some indication that Irish governments were unhappy with what they got from it https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/state-papers-macsharry-objected-to-additional-support-for-apple-in-cork-1.3735662 https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/state-papers-... but it's hard to be sure exactly what happened there: Apple was probably not in the best shape to carry out ambitious relocation plans for much of the '80s, for one thing. While I don't have boundless love for either Jobs or RTO mandates, and as an Irishman I would very much rather not see Cork getting the dirty end of the stick, I have to defend Jobs' desire for centralisation a bit here. There's considerable evidence that having nearly all the central product and design people within easy reach of SJ stalking around 1 Infinite Loop did in fact work very well for Apple in the second Jobs era. Maybe it was still a wrong decision, despite appearances, but you can hardly say that it was an eccentric one. (And in 2000 the tools for offsite or multi-site collaboration weren't even as not-entirely-great as they are now.) It was other people who brought in the madcap element of trying to hide things from the boss, not Jobs himself.
- jacobr1 2y ago
  All else being equal, for team-based, creative, knowledge work, having everyone collocated is more productive. But not all is equal. You can't necessarily attract the all the talent. It doesn't scale without extremely disciplined organizational and physical space design - working remotely in the office, is the more common norm. Your team is spread over different locations and buildings anyway so you aren't really working locally in practice. Strong communication and collaboration practices are what dominate - so just having people together in one place and expecting osmosis doesn't beat good async tooling and discussion practices (like those from the best OSS projects).
kergonath 2y ago
> Jobs probably wanted to have all (significant) software development happening in Cupertino? Looks like it. There were still people working on iSync, iCal (and presumably software for the first iPhone) in an office in Paris. I think that ended in 2005.
eddieroger 2y ago
In an alternate and very charitable timeline, after being healed of his cancer by top doctors, Jobs grows greatly in love with science and medicine, and faced with the covid pandemic, makes Apple permanently remote work (with office option for those who want it), and donates sums of money to bootstrapping vaccine production for all the world. A boy can dream.

pavlov 2y ago

> “how destructively eccentric Jobs could be” I miss Steve Jobs. He was clearly an asshole at close range, but at heart he was a humanist and a bit of a hippie. He made money but also left the world a better place. Such a massive difference to today’s crop of tech billionaires like Thiel, Andreessen and Musk.

SteveSmith16384 2y ago
History would suggest otherwise. Ripping Woz off springs to mind. And is giving the world expensive Apple products making it a better place?
Clubber 2y ago
I mean electric cars, solar panels, and rockets so we don't have to rely on Russia to get to and from space ain't nothin'. Then there's that torch thing. I can take or leave the other two. Netscape was pretty cool.
- pavlov 2y ago
  As a customer I find a stark difference between Musk and Jobs. I have a Tesla and I was also a customer of Jobs’s Apple since 1999. The big difference is that Jobs never lied to me. Sure, he was an enthusiastic salesman, but the products actually did what was promised. (I even bought Mac OS X 10.0 in a retail box. It was rough but it showed that their new OS is delivering.) Apple products fit my purposes and I kept coming back to buy more. Musk sold me a very expensive feature that still does nothing, six years later. He knew that he was lying about the capabilities of the cars, but still took my $7,500 for a feature that was worth zero. I’m never buying anything from him again. The same approach of bald-faced lies is evident in most of the tech industry today. Cryptocurrency products don’t serve any purpose but enriching people like Andreessen. AI is almost as bad. And now these titans of misinformation are barging into global politics. They don’t care about empowering people and creativity like Jobs did, they just want more personal power.
  - euroderf 2y ago

interludead 2y ago

Maybe (I think so) it was more about aligning every detail with the standards Jobs had in mind...

yapyap 2y ago

> how destructively eccentric Jobs could be last thing he destroyed was himself, by going the bonkers “alternative healing” route on cancer. not saying he deserved it but he had an out and he chose to ignore it till it was too late, hard to feel sorry at all for him at that point. also I heard he was a massive twat irl

euroderf 2y ago
If he'd've gone into politics, the net total outcome could've been much much worse.
- kergonath 2y ago
  Luckily there is no indication that he was interested in this sort of things. Contrary to…others.
- alternatex 2y ago
  Insert Bill Burr on Lance Armstrong "just keep him on the bike" quote.
stonesthrowaway 2y ago
> last thing he destroyed was himself, by going the bonkers “alternative healing” route on cancer. People who tend to go the "alternative healing" route usually do so because the traditional healing route hasn't worked. > he had an out and he chose to ignore it till it was too late Did he? Guess you are the expert. Cancer treatment isn't an exact science. Millions of people who go the traditional route die. It's always the know-nothings who talk with such confidence of absolutes. > also I heard he was a massive twat irl Did you now? I guess it takes one to know one.
- kstrauser 2y ago
  It was widely documented at the time that Jobs chose non-medicine over medicine very soon after diagnosis, and then went through heroic real-doctor efforts once it was too late: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2011/10/24/steve-jobs-cancer-treatment-regrets/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2011/10/24/steve-j...