Love the transcription errors: "Phat 32", "little NDN".
"Gooey"
Apple 2001
31–40 of 50 posts
Re: Apple 2001
#32I'm reading the transcript and it's interesting. There must be a transcription process done by someone who is not one of the participants of the conversation. Perhaps automated but (roughly) vetted by a human afterwards. > When the iPod shipped originally, it only worked on _max_ and it used the HFS plus file system, which was Apple’s file system. And then at some point they said most of the world uses Windows. And s…
Hi, podcast host here. I got the transcript done through rev.com and didn't proof read it because usually they are pretty solid. That was a mistake, I am fixing it right now.
Re: Apple 2001
#33People currently at Apple, is the culture of working 80 hours a week to hit unreasonable deadlines year after year still a thing?
I never understood how you get teams to work that much but one of the factors at least in this case is not wanting to let your team down.
Re: Apple 2001
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ha, I noticed this too. "You use one less gate, if you do it little NDN rather than big NDN and so Intel and I guess arm chose little NDN because it used slightly less hardware" NDN obviously supposed to be 'endian'.
The weirdest part about the translation is that elsewhere, the translation has no problem with "Macs" or "endian".
Some transcription services will slice your transcription and distribute it... it's just horizontal scaling!
Re: Apple 2001
#35> This was the first time that I was aware of Apple had shipped a little Endian processor. FWIW, the LaserWriter 16/600 PS (introduced 1994) uses an Intel 80168 as I/O processor for AppleTalk serving etc. So Apple did develop for and ship little endian CPUs way before the iPod.
The MOS 6502 powering the apple II was as far as i know also litle endien. Most PPC chips would actually run both big or little endian and but im not sure weather MAC OS Clasic ever ran anything other then big endian.
I've always found it interesting that the 6502 was little endian given that members of the team that designed it worked on the 6800 before, and that was big-endian. I keep meaning to comb through Chuck Peddle / Bill Mensch interviews to see if they comment on what led them to go little endian on the 6502.
EDIT, found it in this forum post on 6502.org http://forum.6502.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6369&start=0
"I used to be a big-endian fan until I finally figured out why the 6502 designers switched to little-endian: it let them start the addition of an index to an address on the LSB before the MSB was read, whereas if you read the MSB first you need to wait for the LSB addition before you know if you need to add a carry to it."
Re: Apple 2001
#3680 and 90 hour work weeks? Steve Jobs changing software direction at nearly every weekly meeting? Huge secrecy requirements including assigned lunch breaks? I hope they were getting paid a lot.
What? Don't you feel the passion?
This is what being passionate is all about.
Re: Apple 2001
#37> This was the first time that I was aware of Apple had shipped a little Endian processor. FWIW, the LaserWriter 16/600 PS (introduced 1994) uses an Intel 80168 as I/O processor for AppleTalk serving etc. So Apple did develop for and ship little endian CPUs way before the iPod.
> "So Apple did develop for and ship little endian CPUs way before the iPod." ARM was always little-endian by default. It has a big-endian mode, too, but now days it's virtually never used. But did Apple actually use the big endian mode in the Newton, which shipped in 1993? Google hasn't been able to give me a clear answer on this.
I was curious too, so I took a quick read through a Newton ROM hex dump. I'm pretty sure it's running in big endian mode.
00000000 ea 00 06 2c ea 68 00 01 ea 6c ff ef ea 68 00 00
00000010 ea 67 ff fc ea 67 ff fb ea 67 ff f9 ea 67 ff f7
There for sure could be some weird other piece of information I'm missing (like maybe the rom image is pre swapped for efficient emulation on big endian systems like Mac/PowerPC?), but barring that it really looks like Newton was a big endian system.
Re: Apple 2001
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
If so, I think he knew the features weren’t finished, but he demanded the product not to crash nevertheless. It’s an interesting thing to expect as a product owner: A stability-first approach to development. I personally hate the “it’s temporary” excuse we developers often have.
The way I work, is that the entire project is in "Ship" quality, the entire time of development; just not yet complete. Incomplete functionality means a blank screen or a button that doesn't do anything. It never means that something crashes. My goal is zero crashes, ever ; at any time during development. The same with memory leaks or severely anomalous behavior. It's an old-fashioned way of working that results in b…
You could write in Elm, which has no runtime exceptions and thus no crashes (barring stack overflows and similar). I have and it didn't seem to result in zero tech debt, incredibly well-formed UX, or a shortage of QA surprises.
Re: Apple 2001
#39People currently at Apple, is the culture of working 80 hours a week to hit unreasonable deadlines year after year still a thing? I never understood how you get teams to work that much but one of the factors at least in this case is not wanting to let your team down.
First of all, the last time I was an Apple employee was in the late 1990s, so I don't have any special knowledge of what it's like now. I'd be at least mildly suprised, though, if the corporate culture has changed a lot.
I worked on one of the experimental Newton OSes before the product was shipped. I worked 100-hour weeks for nearly two years. Nobody ever told me or even hinted to me that I needed to do that. My motivation was purely internal, based on the slim chance that I might succeed in making something that millions of people would want, and that would make their lives better in some ways that I envisioned.
By the way, just because I did it, don't assume I think it's a good idea. I don't.
Re: Apple 2001
#4080 and 90 hour work weeks? Steve Jobs changing software direction at nearly every weekly meeting? Huge secrecy requirements including assigned lunch breaks? I hope they were getting paid a lot.
When I worked at Apple in the 1980s and 1990s, their payscale was not especially impressive. Based on what we can learn from public information, that hasn't changed much.
In fact, maybe it's gotten worse. When I worked for Apple in the 1980s and 1990s I lived in Cupertino and walked to the office every day. The last time they tried recruiting me, the offer was not enough for me to do that (Cupertino has gotten more expensive to live in). Maybe if the offer had been enough to do that, I would have bitten; I liked most of my time at Apple, and I loved living in Cupertino and walking to work. Some people I like and respect are reportedly still there.
I don't think big salaries are the draw at Apple. Some of what recruits candidates is moonbeams and fairy dust, just like in the games and movie and music industries. In the cold light of reason, that stuff shouldn't justify a discount on the payscale, but in the real world it apparently does.