Career Reminiscing
Another Steve Jobs story, including a piano
One more Steve Jobs story, not as good as the previous one, but featuring a piano
Well, that escalated quickly.
Previous post gets a hundred thousand views. What? Huh? And in Japanese?
From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."
The one email I ever got from Steve Jobs, and it said “Great idea, thank you.”
1 Gig for $1225 in 1993
I bought a 1 gig SCSI drive for $1225 in 1993. It’s about 50,000 times cheaper today.
Perhaps my final team meeting
I could never say enough good things about my work colleagues and friends. 32 years ago I had no idea that my dream job actually existed, but it turns out, it does, and it’s working with this gang. It was great seeing everyone in New York this week and I’m happy they could meet Photographer Cathy too!
Y’know, it’s one of the odd things from working at home, which I’ve done the whole time (albeit with a LOT of work travel.). You get so used to video chats via WebEx and Zoom that you almost forget what it’s like to see people in three dimensions, and eventually you realize that your wife has hardly ever actually met anybody you work with. I’m glad I had that chance this week.
I’ve never really been a fan of hugging people at work but I made a lot of exceptions to that policy this week. (Cathy did too, but she’s always like that.)
Thanks, team. You’re all the best.
ps. wait, what, am I retiring? Well, yeah. Soon.
Paris, 2009. Automating the Eiffel Tower
Here is something dumb and silly but I’m glad we did it. See video below.
In September, 2009 I was just finishing up a bit of a business boondoggle trip - presentations on iOS coding in London, Madrid, Berlin and Paris. (I hope it impressed my Dad that I gave a lecture at the Sorbonne.)
On the final night I went to a little sidewalk café with some colleagues.
It had a lovely view of the Eiffel Tower. (Lots of places in Paris seem to have a lovely view of the Eiffel Tower. for instance this was the view from the office.)
So anyway we’re at this cafe.
7:00 PM
One of my friends mentioned that the tower lit up once an hour. Sure enough, at 7:00 or so we noticed it flashing dramatically. That was pretty cool!
And we had some more wine.
8:00 PM
And at about 7:57 somebody said “I wonder if it lights up at Exactly 8:00 on the dot? Like, is it synchronized to an atomic clock or something?”
So we all looked at the clocks on our iPhones intently, and sure enough, at EXACTLY 8:00 on the dot, the light show began again. That’s cool!
More wine. maybe beer. I forget. But we must have had something because we were still there at
8:45 PM
We’re still there. we hatched a plan. I’d spent the week showing people how to build iOS apps. Sometimes I’d build a flashlight app, some dumb little thing where you’d tap the screen and a light came on. What if you had an app that turned on the Eiffel Tower lights? Maybe the tower has bluetooth. That’d be pretty cool. Wouldn’t that be hilarious? But how would you do it?
What if you just faked it? Would it be believable, or just stupid? Or maybe funny?
8:57 PM
The three of us are now standing outside. One guy is filming me. The other is holding up his iPhone where I can see it, displaying the time to the second.
8:58 PM
Ready? Let’s start filming. What have we got to lose? Quick, think of something to say.
8:59 PM
Showtime.
We tried the corresponding turn-the-lights-off stunt a minute later but messed up the timing.
14 years later I’m glad we did this silly thing. But I kind of wish I could have a do-over. I’d sell it better!
Half my life at Apple and NeXT
Well, I just turned 64. So half my life ago, I was 32, in September of 1991. And in September of 1991, I started work at NeXT, which then merged into Apple in 1996.
So I’ve been doing this job - with great delight! - for half my life. (I figured out the actual day when I’d spent half my life here; it was a few days ago, I won’t bore you with the calendar math.)
I had been working at Indiana University, and bought a NeXT Cube workstation for $11,000. I was fascinated with this computer. A Unix machine, with a great graphical interface, amazing built in sound, awesome object-oriented developer tools, and it’s only $11,000 with the academic discount? I’ll buy one!
That’d be a much younger me, and my brand new NeXT cube in my Bloomington, Indiana apartment (and in the background is an Atari 520ST. It was my previous favourite thing that I think never got turned on again after I got the NeXT cube.
Of course, I still have that NeXT cube. The watch on my wrist is its direct descendant - it’s running sort of the same operating system, using sort of the same developer tools, and it’s a better computer by almost any measurement. That NeXT cube was the ancestor of everything Apple makes today.
So anyway, Indiana was swell but eventually I wanted to move back to Canada, so not knowing anything about sales or anything, I asked the local rep Pat Wootan if, by any chance, did NeXT have an office in Canada and would they have any use for someone like me?
Turns out, yes! There was a sales office in Toronto consisting of a whole two people, and one of them (the “Systems Engineer”, whatever that meant) was leaving, so Pat put me in touch with Phil Hume (the “Account Executive”) and a chain of interviews started.
NeXT flew me out to Redwood City, California, and I remember a theme during the interviews. Multiple people asked me “Wait - you paid $11,000 for a Cube? Did nobody tip you off that a cheaper, faster, $2,000 NeXTStation was about to ship? Geez, I’m sorry. Maybe we can make it up to you by hiring you.” And they did, and I started in September 1991.
Here I am now, half my life put into this job. 32 years of wonder, of fascination with new technology, of nagging impostor syndrome that I still don’t really understand a lot of it, and of excitement about what comes next.
So what were YOU doing half your life ago?