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Steve Jobs' cabinet

perfectdays23.substack.com

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Re: Steve Jobs' cabinet

#11

Post by gowld »

dang wrote: post #5
Hatrix wrote: post #2

Steve is concerned with the esthetics of the PC board https://www.folklore.org/PC_Board_Esthetics.html

Wow, the interesting part there—at least for anyone who already knows the cabinet story—is how it ends: "Well, that was a difficult part to layout because of the memory bus.", Burrell responded. "If we change it, it might not work as well electrically". "OK, I'll tell you what," said Steve. "Let's do another layout to make the board prettier, but if it doesn't work as well, we'll change it back." So we invested anoth…

The best-looking cabinet you can make that stays up is more beautiful than a beautiful back wall that collapses.

More cynically, these stories are also a way for Steve Jobs, who lacks technical skill but is still the boss of the technical geniouses, carves out a niche for himself where he is the undisputed leader and no oen can challenge him: his own subjective sense of aesthetic.

Re: Steve Jobs' cabinet

#12

Post by woodpanel »

gowld wrote: post #10
woodpanel wrote: post #8

I can do nothing but agree - but don’t tell the author about Louis Rossmann, who has been opening, repairing, and bemoaning the horrible electronics design of Apple products. Like someone here noted, the scapegoat of our times, Car manufacturers figuring out how to „appear nice on the back“, Apple managed to hide its poor engineering behind the veneer of branding and shiny materials.

Rossmann has competing business interests to defend.

He details gazillions of design flaws, all the while Apple customers are also his main customers.

How would this be „competing business“?

And even if, how would this repudiate his arguments, which he documents in detail?

How come Apple never sued him if it was all fabricated?

Re: Steve Jobs' cabinet

#13

Post by dlivingston »

I first heard this SJ quote maybe 15 years ago and I've carried it with me since.

I've always prided myself on taking a craftsman-like approach to software engineering... thinking deeply about interfaces, ownership, lifetimes, how the public API looks, how using the public API feels...

Lately, though, with the advent of LLM-assisted coding this mindset is starting to feel hollow. Why spend 1.5x as long crafting something robust when, in all likelihood, it will be replaced or refactored by LLM tooling within the next 5 or 10 years?

Re: Steve Jobs' cabinet

#14

Post by sonofhans »

woodpanel wrote: post #8

I can do nothing but agree - but don’t tell the author about Louis Rossmann, who has been opening, repairing, and bemoaning the horrible electronics design of Apple products. Like someone here noted, the scapegoat of our times, Car manufacturers figuring out how to „appear nice on the back“, Apple managed to hide its poor engineering behind the veneer of branding and shiny materials.

Yeah, Rossman’s entire brand is being anti-Apple. If you think Apple’s engineering is poor, I’d love to know who you think does it better.

Re: Steve Jobs' cabinet

#16

Post by aabdi »

dlivingston wrote: post #13

I first heard this SJ quote maybe 15 years ago and I've carried it with me since. I've always prided myself on taking a craftsman-like approach to software engineering... thinking deeply about interfaces, ownership, lifetimes, how the public API looks, how using the public API feels ... Lately, though, with the advent of LLM-assisted coding this mindset is starting to feel hollow. Why spend 1.5x as long crafting some…

is this the right way to think about LLMs?

For example, the syscalls for linux are never changing IMO. The cost is unbounded to change, even with AI.

Should your APIs be treated any different?

At the very least, the LLMs work better with better APIs and data models, which yet accelerates the solving of problems.

Re: Steve Jobs' cabinet

#17

Post by delichon »

I finished building a cabinet for my shop last week. It holds 58 small parts cases from floor to ceiling. I didn't put a crappy piece of plywood on the back, I put three separate crappy pieces of plywood on the back. I used the worst leftover pieces that I though had the structural integrity to keep the cabinet rigid.

And instead of losing sleep over it, I would have lost sleep if I had used a perfectly good large sheet of plywood, and lost the opportunity to make something nice with it. Real wood? Forget about it.

Steve Jobs' imaginary carpenter must be too rich to care about stretching her materials as far as they can go.

Re: Steve Jobs' cabinet

#18

Post by ruralfam »

I can no longer find a link to this... But I do remember an article about the uniquely machined stainless steel screws that Apple used to assemble Macbooks. They were infact unique. Very "square threads". IMHO that was SteveJ (and perhaps Woz). They cared less about share price, and were focused on everything that could add unique value -- including the special screws. Now SHV trumps everything, and we have "...fiduciary responsibilty..." (FR) to cover all decisions no matter how anti-consumer. Sadly the FR decisions today are mostly due to the brand value built during the IDGAS era when high-quality screws were important.

Re: Steve Jobs' cabinet

#19

Post by tfandango »

delichon wrote: post #17

I finished building a cabinet for my shop last week. It holds 58 small parts cases from floor to ceiling. I didn't put a crappy piece of plywood on the back, I put three separate crappy pieces of plywood on the back. I used the worst leftover pieces that I though had the structural integrity to keep the cabinet rigid. And instead of losing sleep over it, I would have lost sleep if I had used a perfectly good large sh…

and plywood is probably the material of choice for cabinet boxes, straight, strong, not prone to warping, etc. Actually, seems crazy to use nice wood where it won't be seen.

Re: Steve Jobs' cabinet

#20

Post by xboxnolifes »

dlivingston wrote: post #13

I first heard this SJ quote maybe 15 years ago and I've carried it with me since. I've always prided myself on taking a craftsman-like approach to software engineering... thinking deeply about interfaces, ownership, lifetimes, how the public API looks, how using the public API feels ... Lately, though, with the advent of LLM-assisted coding this mindset is starting to feel hollow. Why spend 1.5x as long crafting some…

Unless LLMs significantly improve, LLMs benefit greatly from stable APIs. Constantly changing APIs are awful for good LLM output.
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