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Joining Apple Computer (2018)
- JKCalhoun 1y ago> Inspired by a mind-expanding LSD journey in 1985, I designed the HyperCard authoring system that enabled non-programmers to make their own interactive media. Watching some YouTube about the Beatles and, of course, their LSD trips. More recently the history of Robert Crumb — on his big acid trip he more or less created a large part of his stable of comic characters. Somewhere along the way, someone said that LSD alters your mind permanently.... It caused me to wonder if we'll never get the genius of Beatles music, Crumb art without the artist taking something conscious-altering like LSD. Of course then I have to consider all the artists before LSD was "invented" — the Edvard Munch's, T.S. Eliot's, William Blake's, etc. (Tried acid once in college. That was enough of that.)
- nine_k 1y agoAll traditional practices of use of psychedelic substances emphasize the importance of preparation, having the right state of mind, right stimuli / environment, and sitters in un-altered state of mind nearby. LSD is not known to permanently alter brain; for that you need psilocybin.
- j_bum 1y agoYou had me up until your last clause… If you understand that LSD doesn’t permanently alter the brain, why do you think PY “permanently” alters the brain? It does alter the brain (like LSD; see the plethora of research on PY altering neurogenesis and functional connectivity [0]), I’m unsure of what you mean by “permanent”. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07624-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07624-5
- TechDebtDevin 1y agoIt permanently changed my buddy's brain when we were in college doing it. He thought he was talkng to God and blew his brains out. Not worth it for me now.
- j_bum 1y agoI’m sorry to hear that. I know that there absolutely are people who shouldn’t take it based on their mindset and underplaying predispositions. There is certainly a point to be made about psychoactive (and other) drugs inducing episodes of psychosis. This is something on the uptick with marijuana legalization in the US [0]. And I think am plainly wrong about my understanding of these effects not being “permanent”. I suppose I was thinking about this too much from a “neurotypical” angle, and not from the angle of how substances can alter the neurological trajectory of people with predisposed sensitivity. [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/marijuana-induced-psychiatric-disorders-high-potency-weed-psychosis-rcna146072 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/marijuana-induc...
- asveikau 1y agoIf you've known a few people who suffer psychotic symptoms and get to know the pattern of how they developed, drugs can appear commonly but it's much less cut and dry whether the drugs are responsible. For example college age, like your buddy was at, is very typically the onset time for schizophrenia even without drugs. And schizophrenia itself may make people gravitate towards drugs.
- nine_k 1y agoAFAICT there exists no conclusive biomedical evidence of permanent physiological effects of LSD. This may mean we're just not looking hard enough, but there's no certainty. For psilocybin, there is plenty, e.g.: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8376772/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8376772/
- j_bum 1y agoFirst, you’re cutting an in vitro study. Second, “permanent” is a serious claim that bears a large burden of proof. I think defining “permanent” would first be useful. The brain is extremely plastic. Beyond that, OP comment was referring to psychosis effects. See his comment below.
- pyinstallwoes 1y agoPretty ancient practice probably. See the history of drug use in cultures and spirituality/art. Soma, etc.
- paulryanrogers 1y agoSurvivorship bias? Plenty of brilliant people smoked tobacco. I didn't think more smoking will produce more brilliance.
- tough 1y agoNeither does smoking alter your conscioudness in any remarkable way further than irritability or cravings due to whitdrawal symtpom at least acid doesnt make sense to consume daily because it stops having the same effects the more you consume it
- JKCalhoun 1y agoSurprised he was only at Apple for 12 years. A wild ride, I'm sure. When I moved out to "the Valley" in 1995, the apartment I picked out turned out to be right next to General Magic (on Mary Ave.). I knew it as a "spin off" of Apple but at the time did not know the luminaries that were there. It was just a cute rabbit in a hat logo — lit up when I got home late and was turning off to my apartment.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- plentysun 1y agoa wild ride definitely!
- Waterluvian 1y agoIt feels a bit like he wrote his own obituary with this.
- bravesoul2 1y agoMaybe he did. We are all going to die. And if you have an interesting story (of interest to many) it's good to share it.
- duxup 1y agoI find myself, as I get older, telling stories that have a similar perspective flow. It happens.
- mehulashah 1y agoLegend. I still remember first putting my hands on a Mac, and the joy of computing that ensued in high school. I could get lost in the computer for days. Thank you, Bill.
- JKCalhoun 1y agoYeah, I think it was MacPaint actually.
- 9d 1y agoI had that feeling too. How do we get it back? How do we share it with others? There has to be a way.
- paulryanrogers 1y ago> How do we get it back? Time machine. > How do we share it with others? Just like the church, capture them in their most formative years.
- 9d 1y agoNo. There has to be a way.
- WillAdams 1y agoI am looking forward to trying to make use of a Raspberry Pi 5 as much as is feasible once I get a small tablet shell for mine. If it works out well, I'm going to see about getting a Wacom One display tablet with touch.
- jonstewart 1y agoI have been thinking about this more, about how I spent hours and days exploring everything of my family’s new Mac SE, and then HyperCard, and creating with it. There is an aspect of creativity that comes from being inspired, taking off from others’ ideas. But there is also an aspect of creativity that’s more ascetic, and requires being bored—when there’s nothing else to do, turn the computer into a toy, to play with it, so you are not bored. And I am increasingly of the opinion getting to that state, at least for me, requires turning off the internet.
- 9d 1y ago> It was exciting working at Apple, knowing that whatever we invented would be used by millions of people. I admit it is exciting to make something you truly believe is good and helpful. And that it's disappointing when that thing isn't used by anyone. It's even worse when it turns out it's just not that useful. But in the end, everything is replaced anyway. So I guess it's fine.
- walterbell 1y ago> whatever we invented would be used by millions of people Two billion active Apple devices in 2025.
- roughly 1y ago> I admit it is exciting to make something you truly believe is good and helpful. I want to double down on this - I’m lucky enough to have worked places where I truly believed the world would be a better place if we “won,” and not on the margins, and it really, really makes a difference in quality of life. I’ve worked at other places, too, and the cognitive drag of knowing that your skills and efforts - your ability to change the world - is at best being wasted is something you don’t truly feel until it’s gone.
- 9d 1y agoI've wasted countless years on pursuits I thought were good but later determined to have been bad, and therefore deeply regretted. I don't wish this on anyone. I've also wasted countless years on pursuits I still think were good but overall never truly helped make the world better. This was less bad and seems inevitable.
- acheron 1y agoI was wondering recently about where the original sin of “light mode” came from. Guess it was him! > The Apple II displayed white text on a black background. I argued that to do graphics properly we had to switch to a white background like paper. It works fine to invert text when printing, but it would not work for a photo to be printed in negative. The Lisa hardware team complained the screen would flicker too much, and they would need faster refresh with more expensive RAM to prevent smearing when scrolling. Steve listened to all the pros and cons then sided with a white background for the sake of graphics.
- monkeyelite 1y agoThe real sin is having both.
- throwanem 1y agoI don't get it. I grew up with green and amber CRTs and I don't miss those days at all. What makes it mean so much, to you kids who never knew those days to miss?
- floren 1y agoLooks cooler, and you tell yourself that you're saving your eyes as you sit in your blackout-curtained hacker den... but the pitch black hacker den is also part of the desired aesthetic. Real Hackers didn't use rgb dweeb keyboards though
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- throwanem 1y agoOh, I see. In my day we smoked cigarettes, compared with which RGB keyboards seem like a pretty clean win. Literally a clean win; the main reason for keeping the lights off and the windows covered, as I recall it, was to hide all the filth that constantly accumulates in such an environment. Not to say I don't look back on it fondly, but when I actually look back on the photos I still have of how I lived then, it sort of makes my teeth itch, if you know what I mean.
- dedicate 1y agoI'm always blown away by the vision behind stuff like HyperCard. It was all about giving non-techies the keys to the kingdom. But looking at today's tech landscape, with its walled gardens and app stores, I can't help but feel we've gone backwards.
- ronbenton 1y agoApparently we need to be doing more LSD
- criddell 1y agoI wish safe, tested sources were generally available. I’m 55 this year and would like to try it, but I’m not going to buy street drugs nor am I capable of producing it. Is there a pharmaceutical version of LSD available somewhere in the world through legitimate channels?
- LoganDark 1y agoNot exactly LSD, but psilocybin clinics have been legalized in certain locations, such as the US state of Oregon. Psilocybin is of the same psychedelic class (tryptamines), so it is not an entirely dissimilar experience, although for me it's less stimulating than LSD, so YMMV. I understand though that clinics aren't the ideal for many (they are for some), since you aren't allowed to have the trip at home or leave the clinic until it is over.
- mrcwinn 1y agoJust had a flashback to the thunk sound of turning on Apple Lisa! Grateful for all his work.
- duxup 1y agoWhat a wonderful read. I find myself pining for a lot of the "old days" when anything seemed possible and it was open and exciting. You could DO surprisingly, not a lot, but everything still felt possible. Now everything seems trapped in advertising dominated closed box. Login and live in this limited little space... The internet is still there, I can still put up a site that isn't covered with ads. I wish I could surf just that internet and so on.
- 9d 1y ago> I wish I could surf just that internet and so on. You just solved it for me. I've been wondering what to use 90s.dev for. That's it.
- promiseofbeans 1y agohttps://kagi.com/smallweb https://kagi.com/smallweb
- duxup 1y agoThank you.
- zaptrem 1y agoI'm around the age these guys were during this story. I feel the exact opposite way. I spent middle/high school feeling similarly, only pining for the 2000s ("wow, with smartphones and the internet the industry was wide open with opportunity, anything was possible. Now it seems like everything's been done and giants rule the world"). However, the GenAI boom completely changed my mind. I feel like we're the most lucky of all the generations of engineers so far considering how many crazy things are now possible with just a few determined individuals.
- TechDebtDevin 1y agoWhat is now possible that wasnt before, other than writing really really bad code fast?
- swyx 1y ago> Inspired by a mind-expanding LSD journey in 1985, I designed the HyperCard authoring system that enabled non-programmers to make their own interactive media. I'm interested in how to do "good" journeys vs non-good ones...
- gyomu 1y ago"I worked at Apple for 12 years, making tools to empower creative people [...]" I think this was the hook that got many of us to admire Apple as a company (and more broadly, to get excited about computing as a discipline/industry). For a long time, that was arguably (one of) their primary mission. I suspect to what extent it could still be considered to be the case today would be subject to much debate.
- tilne 1y agoIs it even up for debate that that’s definitely not what their primary mission is? Their market cap sits at 3.5 trillion, ranking them third behind Microsoft and nvidia. Unlike those other two, Apple makes most of that on selling iPhones and the like to consumers.
- dagmx 1y agoThat’s not really at odds with the goal of empowering creatives. A significant chunk of every iPhone and iPad release is features specifically for creatives. This specific site doesn’t cater to creatives and will often be full of developers comments bemoaning those things, but I really challenge anyone to look at any of their Mac/iOS product releases in the last decade and point out how creatives aren’t still a big component of their DNA.
- r0m4n0 1y ago> I left Apple with Marc Porat and Andy Hertzfeld to co-found General Magic and help to invent the personal communicator. It’s always wild to me how many of the people that are the beginnings of these large prodigy companies and the connection to other powerful rich people. You look up some of these people and see the relationships and it’s wild. Like the name Porat rang a bell so I look up Marc and oh? That’s Ruth Porat’s brother. The ex CFO of Morgan Stanley and current CIO and president of Google. Is it truly talent that drives these leaders to the top of these organizations or is it connections to other crazy powerful people? Maybe both. Sometimes I feel like I’m over here building cool stuff with talent galore but nothing ever gets what it needs financially. It’d be nice to know these types of people I suppose
- wnc3141 1y agoAccess to capital/other's talent and/or access to your market (users) is the primary competitive advantage among those talented enough to design and build a product.
- 0xCE0 1y agoThe General Magic movie/document (2018) is amazing and underrated. Always getting teardrops while watching it (watched it ~3 times). A true old-school startup story. And the soundtrack is also beautiful.
- piyiotisk 1y agoI totally agree. I watched it 3 times as well. One in London with a panel of the general magic employees. It was an amazing experience
- 0xCE0 1y agoOh wow, that must have been magical. Have you seen "Halt and Catch Fire"? These two masterpieces are my top 2 watchings. Both so amazing but generally unknown/underrated.
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- tonyedgecombe 1y ago"In 1990, with John Sculley's blessing, I left Apple with Marc Porat and Andy Hertzfeld to co-found General Magic and help to invent the personal communicator." Sculley really wasn't the right person to lead Apple. He should have been begging them to do it in-house.
- eschneider 1y agoSometimes the smart think is to encourage folks to do their thing, and if it's successful buy it back in-house.
- KerrAvon 1y agoThat has never really worked in the long run for anyone who’s tried it. (Counterexamples welcome; I can’t think of any.)
- KerrAvon 1y agoI don’t disagree with that assessment of Sculley but I’m not sure if that would have helped anyone. What the movie makes clear is that General Magic very badly needed adult supervision (all these “geniuses”! doing absolutely nothing of value! together!), and I’m not sure Apple of that era would have been capable of providing it in a productive way.
- twoodfin 1y agoWhat the film makes clear (to me at least) was that General Magic desperately needed a product person. They had the right tech, maybe a hair too early, but manageable, and the smart folks to build on it & iterate. What they were missing was anyone who could take the freedom of wireless and marry it to the constraints of mid-90’s hardware & networks.
- tiffanyh 1y agoSculley also joined the Board at General Magic too ... and them missing out on the web/internet, in hindsight, was the death nail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic
- adwawdawd 1y agoIf the two year lag is still true, the state of the SwiftUI SDK is even more ridiculous.
- FabHK 1y ago> my code accounted for almost two thirds of the original Macintosh ROM Respect. RIP.
- khazhoux 1y agoThe last 15 years I'm nagged by this thought that we don't let software developers be software developers anymore. Between sprint planning and JIRAs and project managers and constant meetings and "stakeholders" and senior engineering leadership who confuse progress-tracking for progress... when the hell are people supposed to do the amazing work?? I know it's beating a dead horse to pick on these, but it's a real problem. I look back at how productive we were with tiny teams up until right before 2010, and the main thing that stands out compared to today is all this goddamn overhead.
- leyka 1y agoThank you Bill. Rest in peace
- kristianp 1y agoThis story skips the detail of why a Neuroscience Phd student would be hired to write code. This [1] link has an interview with him and Hertzfeld with some info about their backgrounds. [1] https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2013/05/102658007-05-01-acc.pdf https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20...
- Alex_001 1y ago[dead]