What 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 su…
Joining Apple Computer (2018)
61–70 of 131 posts
Re: Joining Apple Computer (2018)
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's really hard to extract computing from the capitalistic, consumerist cradle within which it was born. Every other human creative practice and media (poetry, theater, writing, music, painting, etc) have existed in a wide variety of cultures, societies, and economic contexts. But computing has never existed outside of the immensely expensive and complex factories & supply chains required to produce computing compon…
you can only blame capitalism so much for the unpopularity of hypercardlike things vs instagram/facebook/twitter etc on some level it is just human nature to want to consume than create. just is. its not great but lets not act like people havent tried to make creative new platforms for self expression and software creation and they all kinda failed
> is just human nature to want to consume than create
That may be true.
But it doesn't really explain why the tools for simple popular creation are not there. There are a lot of people in the world who would use them, even if its only 1%.
Re: Joining Apple Computer (2018)
#63> 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.
> I admit it is exciting to make something you truly believe is good and helpful.
It's sad when management takes that work and locks it down, and puts it in a walled garden.
Re: Joining Apple Computer (2018)
#64> 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 P…
You can be a superstar and still not succeed alone, without other superstars around you. They are so successful because they know each other. And survivorship bias guarantees that all those who didn't make it are unknown, or not mentioned.
This is the role of successful companies like this, just like top universities. They help create the connection between people with huge potential (or money), superstars, and amplify it.
Remember those pictures will all the famous 20th century geniuses in one place. They each got to reach the peak by building a new step on top of someone else's previous step, and so on. Eventually they all climbed the same ladder together. They were like a talent packed sports team dominating the sports for many seasons. It's not a coincidence they're in the same picture.
Re: Joining Apple Computer (2018)
#65What 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 su…
I'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.
Re: Joining Apple Computer (2018)
#66> 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 P…
It’s purely luck driving success. The book _thinking fast and slow_ illustrates it quite eloquently. Real geniuses are rare and even then they do not necessary become successful
Re: Joining Apple Computer (2018)
#67"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.
Re: Joining Apple Computer (2018)
#68> 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 P…
It's very localised and Californian. There were really two big tech scenes - one around MIT and Mass, and one around CalTech/Stanford and adjacent areas - with some also-rans in other areas that were mostly gov mil/aerospace spinoffs.
The Mass scene sort of fizzled in the 90s for various reasons - not dead, but not dominant - and the centre of gravity moved to the West Coast.
So if you were born in CA and studied there - and Atkinson did both - your odds of hitching your wagon to a success story were higher than if you were born in Montana or Dublin.
This is sold as a major efficiency of US capitalism, but in fact it's a major inefficiency because it's a severe physical and cultural constraint on opportunity. It's not that other places lack talented people, it's that the networks are highly localised, the culture is very standardised - far less creative than it used to be, and still pretends to be - and diverse ideas and talent are wasted on an industrial scale.
Re: Joining Apple Computer (2018)
#69If the two year lag is still true, the state of the SwiftUI SDK is even more ridiculous.
Re: Joining Apple Computer (2018)
#70> 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 P…
It's very localised and Californian. There were really two big tech scenes - one around MIT and Mass, and one around CalTech/Stanford and adjacent areas - with some also-rans in other areas that were mostly gov mil/aerospace spinoffs. The Mass scene sort of fizzled in the 90s for various reasons - not dead, but not dominant - and the centre of gravity moved to the West Coast. So if you were born in CA and studied the…
You said it yourself - universities are the major hubs that bring talented driven people together and provide access to some of the greatest teachers and researchers and other resources. MIT and Stanford are special, somehow, in this regard.
You see this as inefficient and maybe you’re right. I think about how little it has cost to run these schools compared to the wealth (financial, cultural, technological) they spin off and to me it looks very efficient.