Words matter. These are the best Andy Hertzfeld Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Part of Steve’s job was to drum into us how important what we were doing actually would be to the world.
Apple was our benefactor at starting General Magic, but about a year later decided they would rather BE General Magic and tried to make us blink out of existence… which we eventually did, but it took a few years.
Working long hours being single helps because your time is yours. Once you have a family your time isn’t all yours anymore. Most of the Mac team, we were in our mid-20’s, most of us were single, and we were able to essentially devote our lives to it.
As you know, Microsoft eventually kind of grabbed the gold ring out of Apple’s hands, I guess.
Scotty heard that I was thinking about quitting Apple because of his actions, so he called me into his office and asked what it would take for me to stay? I said, maybe if I could work on the Mac project, which Steve had just taken over from Jef Raskin.
The Apple II was not designed like an ordinary product. It used crazy tricks everywhere.
But I think Steve’s main contribution besides just the pure leadership is his passion for excellence. He’s a perfectionist. Good enough isn’t good enough. And also his creative spirit. You know he really, really wants to do something great.
I did some products for the Apple II, most notably the first small low cost thermal printer, the Silent Type.
I developed some unique software to public it on the web that I call the Folklore Project.
People who work on the user interface side need to have empathy as a key characteristic. But if you are writing device drivers you don’t really need to understand humans so well.
But typically for a project like the Mac, the size we had was pretty good. And it has different stages. The team grows as you have to write manuals and do testing… though the Mac had no formal testing.
I started working at Apple about 18 months after I bought my Apple II.
I got bitten by the free software bug in February of 1998 around the time of the Mozilla announcement.
Being idealistic really helps you overcome some of the many obstacles put in your path.
I left Apple in April of 1984, pretty soon after the introduction of the Mac.
