From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you." • Hacker News Board

Re: From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."

#41

Post by mattl » Thu, May 08, 2025, 7:40 PM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #36

khazhoux wrote: post #25

Honestly, kind of sad that Tim Cook’s reply was so generic. I don’t think I’m off base in saying this, and from personal experience, he is really not connected to the people at the company.

There's no evidence that Steve Jobs knew Steve Hayman from Adam. "This was the only email I ever personally received from Steve Jobs."

Hayman did a lot of WWDC presentations of WebObjects which was the only thing really keeping NeXT alive prior to the merger. He mentions elsewhere that towards the end Jobs was mostly at Pixar and NeXT was reduced to selling $50,000 WebObjects licenses but also had its first profitable quarter.

Re: From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."

#42

Post by cosmicgadget » Thu, May 08, 2025, 7:40 PM UTC

void-pointer wrote: post #30

khazhoux wrote: post #25

Honestly, kind of sad that Tim Cook’s reply was so generic. I don’t think I’m off base in saying this, and from personal experience, he is really not connected to the people at the company.

The experience as CEO of a company with 10e2-10e3 headcount is a lot different than the experience with 10e4-10e6 headcount.

Personally I'd either say nothing or farm the research out to an assistant for long tenure employees.

Re: From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."

#43

Post by ryancnelson » Thu, May 08, 2025, 7:41 PM UTC

i love this. A startup I was at during early COVID times got acquired into Hewlett Packard Enterprise, so we all became HPE employees with HPE addresses. There was a similar form there to request "ryancnelson"@hpe, etc...

One of my co-workers got cute and asked for "root@hpe.com" .... And boy, there's a lot of cron jobs running at HP.

Re: From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."

#44

Post by mattl » Thu, May 08, 2025, 7:41 PM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #26

AIorNot wrote: post #10

[flagged]

Dude wrote a small anecdote on their blog and this is your response?

Yeah, a small anecdote on their blog after 34 years on the job. Does not seem like worship at all.

Re: From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."

#45

Post by georgewsinger » Thu, May 08, 2025, 7:44 PM UTC

This was such a great story.

Steve was a mischievous person himself, so surely a part of him respected this.

Re: From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."

#46

Post by no_wizard » Thu, May 08, 2025, 7:44 PM UTC

mattl wrote: post #8

Steve Hayman, long time NeXT/Apple employee who just retired last week from Apple having started in 1993 with NeXT. His WebObjects demo from 2001 is one of the most entertaining tech demos I've ever seen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfWnDJtUyrw

In many ways, WebObjects feels ahead of its time.

Sometimes I wonder what happened to these ideas.

Re: From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."

#47

Post by sgerenser » Thu, May 08, 2025, 7:45 PM UTC

smm11 wrote: post #6

I emailed Steve Jobs right after he came back to Apple and suggested they make a carry-able computer that could project the interface and keyboard input to any glass surface.

At that point, Steve was just starting to kill all the “moonshots” and “cool tech but who is really going to buy it” products like the Newton and OpenDoc. Even if he read the email, there’s no way he’d be interested in something like that at the time.

Re: From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."

#48

Post by oortoo » Thu, May 08, 2025, 7:46 PM UTC

AIorNot wrote: post #10

[flagged]

On the one hand, an amusing anecdote about an interaction with someone that ended up becoming massively famous does come across as somewhat noteworthy, but on the other hand, the fact that Job's response basically translates to: "Um, ok." does make this kind of... sad?

Side effects of living in a world where wealth and power have become virtues. I think we subconsciously judge our own value based on how many degrees we came to stepping onto the world's "stage".

Re: From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."

#49

Post by bena » Thu, May 08, 2025, 7:46 PM UTC

khazhoux wrote: post #25

Honestly, kind of sad that Tim Cook’s reply was so generic. I don’t think I’m off base in saying this, and from personal experience, he is really not connected to the people at the company.

It would have been funnier if he replied with "Great idea, thank you."

Re: From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."

#50

Post by no_wizard » Thu, May 08, 2025, 7:48 PM UTC

mattl wrote: post #41

lapcat wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no evidence that Steve Jobs knew Steve Hayman from Adam. "This was the only email I ever personally received from Steve Jobs."

Hayman did a lot of WWDC presentations of WebObjects which was the only thing really keeping NeXT alive prior to the merger. He mentions elsewhere that towards the end Jobs was mostly at Pixar and NeXT was reduced to selling $50,000 WebObjects licenses but also had its first profitable quarter.

A big part of me has suspected, especially after reading biographies about him, that Pixar was simply better aligned with his creative side. NeXT was a business, one he knew well, but Pixar made things with computing and I think that really appealed to Jobs.

All speculation of course.