Becoming Steve Jobs digs into this pretty well and how Steve had changed over the last ten years so he would succeed when he returned.
Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?
311–320 of 322 posts
Re: Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the people that were being interviewed by Jobs quit after he asked what they were doing? Or were there others hired to walk around and gather information that quit after interviewing employees? In either case, why were they quitting?
Sounds more like they were fired.
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Re: Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the people that were being interviewed by Jobs quit after he asked what they were doing? Or were there others hired to walk around and gather information that quit after interviewing employees? In either case, why were they quitting?
Sounds more like they were fired.
Sounds more like they either were hung-up on formal hierarchies ("Steve's not my boss, what's the benefit to getting him involved?"), or just didn't have a good answer for what they were accomplishing, or both.
Re: Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
Relating your work to something on Steve's agenda is kind of what I was describing. As another pointed out, there were some amazing technologies that came out of ATG. It is impossible to know if they would have been interesting to Jobs though at the time.
Right. If I have to be honest, I don't think I have recovered from the PTSD caused by all of those Thursday Steve UX meetings. Oh the stories that could be told...
I do hope you'll tell them one day. Mind sharing one or two that stand out?
Re: Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right. If I have to be honest, I don't think I have recovered from the PTSD caused by all of those Thursday Steve UX meetings. Oh the stories that could be told...
I do hope you'll tell them one day. Mind sharing one or two that stand out?
I think I need more counseling to share a lot of them. Let me just say that Steve could be quite brutal. His level of brutality seemed to increase with the level of expectation he had of you. I never saw him be mean to any employee he randomaly encountered on campus. In fact, I saw him open doors, let people ahead of him in the salad bar and cashier line at Cafe Macs and be generally pleasant. It was in those closed door meeting or in rehearsals for MacWorld or WWDC events that you would experience the full wilting blast of scorching invective. Not fun!
Re: Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had a friend interview at "Big Nameless Corp" a few years ago. He said when he saw that the engineers interviewing him all had Windows laptops, he knew immediately it wasn't an engineer-friendly culture. I always thought that was funny.
I don’t really see how that’s relevant given that WSL exists.
WSL in Windows 10 is almost useless. Also for embedded and people working on kernels etc it is really painful.
Re: Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t really see how that’s relevant given that WSL exists.
WSL is a business checkmark used to keep engineers quiet. It's not a pleasant surrounding ecosystem and the implementation isn't as high fidelity is the real thing.
Exactly. It is painful in Windows 10. Nothing beats running natively.
Re: Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had a friend interview at "Big Nameless Corp" a few years ago. He said when he saw that the engineers interviewing him all had Windows laptops, he knew immediately it wasn't an engineer-friendly culture. I always thought that was funny.
>"He said when he saw that the engineers interviewing him all had Windows laptops, he knew immediately it wasn't an engineer-friendly culture." "Friend" should have his head examined. This kind of snobbery attitude does not do any good
It is not snobbery and you are taking it the wrong way.
It is more about having plenty of mature developer tools at your finger tips to get the job done with lots of automation. Also having source of everything allows you to check how something is architected and designed and also improves your own code.
It is very painful to work on Windows laptops when you don't have access to proper dev tools which is the case in most of the corporate setups where they want to uniformity of images to make administration easy.
Re: Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Boy have times changed
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.
Re: Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?
#320I did not work there, but I had a copy of this iconic June 1997 issue of Wired Magazine and managed to lose it somehow: https://www.wired.com/2008/03/bz-apple-ourbad/
The Internet Archive has your back[0]. [0] https://archive.org/details/eu_Wired-1997-06_OCR
Lots of Apple ads in there. One for Power Macintosh and one for Messagepad 2000 (that I had never heard of / or I forgot about it).
Also, the ads tell a story of a consumer world that has changed since then. From professional life focused (back then) to indulgence and quick consumption focused now. Maybe WIRED knew their audience back then, and have a wider one on the internet now..