There ’s a stone of a taradiddle — one of many — in Leander Kahney’snew book , Inside Steve ’s Brain , about the biggest osmium X fault Apple never made : The original design UI was to take the honest-to-goodness crusty shit interface from Mac OS Classic and expend it on top of the gist . Thankfully Steve Jobs phone the entire UI squad a “ clump of idiots ” and they used the beautiful tech demo mockups as the basis for what you see on leopard ’s OS today . Close call , eh ?
After purchase NeXT , Apple had to figure out how to turn NeXT - step into a Macintosh operating organization . At first , the line of work see so adult that Apple ’s computer programmer make up one’s mind they should take the old user interface in Mac OS 8 and attempt to graft it on top of the NeXT - stone’s throw codebase … ”We assigned one designer to OS X , ” he call in . “ His job was somewhat tiresome : make the new stuff look like the quondam stuff . ”
But Razlaff thought it was a shame to put an atrocious facade on such an elegant system , and before long , had intriguer creating mockups of raw interface plan … to show off advanced technologies under NeXTstep ’s hood .
job called Razlaff into a meeting before ever realize the prototypes , directly call them “ a bunch of idiot ” and kvetch about the old Mac interface .
One of the things he hated most were all the different mechanisms for open window and folders . There were at least eight different ways …
The get together ended with Jobs and Razlaff , now a creative at Frog Design , fancy out how to fix the UI issues , and Jobs ask for the mockups to be made into prototypes . Three week later Jobs drop a compliment on the mankind .
This is the first evidence of three - digit intelligence activity at Apple I ’ve determine yet .
And this was just the start . And over the next few week , Jobs and Ratzlaff ’s team would meet once a calendar week where the chief executive officer would pore over mockups and code establish executions , pixel by pixel , until the UI was done .
I get through a transcript of Leander ’s book this weekend , and to my delight it was very fact , quote and anecdote obtuse , not only trust on many previous interviews but lots of original coverage , as well . ( Like the story above . ) There are citizenry at Portfolio complaining that Jobs did n’t take part in the Holy Scripture , but anyone who knows anything about Jobs recognize that he does not typically comment on these projection . What you ’ll find is some crossover with old historical treatments by other authors , but put together in a unique room . Leander ’s does not dote on the history or sequence because it is organized by , well , mannerism of Steve ’s Brain , take apart how the man imagine between many anecdote like the one above .
The playscript is pretty adept at highlighting the evidence of his mastermind , chalking up the control - freakiness that he has a rep for as a scheme . ( As a comparability , his Pixar is relatively open with news . ) But I would have liked a slight more discourse here about one or two things . Like Apple TV ’s lack of support for DivX , while Jobs is lauded for being opened to newfangled business role model even if they jeopardize old 1 , for example . But this is a venial tip — the Word extend a mickle of reason and does it over a nice stretch ; to about the time where the iPhone launched plus the SDK and bricking debacles .
And even though it ’s mean for business concern wonk , who is to say that we all could n’t use a slight bit more malefic / genius ? One could practice this as a scout to pretending to be Jobs , at work , at base , and in seam I intend at work . I call everyone here on staff a friggin idiot every sidereal day , and it seems to be work ok . CHEN WHERE ARE MY TPS REPORTS ! ? And of course , there are dozens of novel interesting stories in the Word of God like the one above . [ Inside Steve ’s Brain ]
P.S. Leander impart “ please bribe my Koran . ” I distinguish him I ’d just photo imitate the whole affair and get off it by US Postal to whoever wants a transcript and broadcast him the bill for the tender . That might take for a while , so if you want , pick up a copy before then .
P.P.S. BoingBoing ’s Rob B. did this mirthful treatment of the book . You ’ll have tosee it for yourself .
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