
What was it like working on the original iPhone project? - dvdhnt
https://www.quora.com/What-was-it-like-working-on-the-original-iPhone-project-codenamed-Project-Purple/answer/Terry-Lambert
======
grecy
In the Quora post [1] Terry says:

> _I wrote about 6% of the Mac OS X kernel, by lines of code, over a period of
> 8 years. That’s about 100,000 lines of code a year._

Does that mean he wrote 800,000 LOC in 8 years, or am I reading that wrong?

If he did write 800k LOC, I'm curious why the Kernel is so many LOC? Given OSX
is based on BSD, I always assumed Apple's kernel would be small in size (LOC)
and mostly just glue between BSD code that has existed for decades.

[1] [https://www.quora.com/What-was-it-like-working-on-the-
origin...](https://www.quora.com/What-was-it-like-working-on-the-original-
iPhone-project-codenamed-Project-Purple)

~~~
epberry
Yeah he averaged about 500 LOC a day for 8 years. Which seems insane. That is
a wildly productive programmer.

~~~
cel1ne
How is LOC a measure of productivity?

~~~
ux-app
it's not _the_ measure, but surely it's _a_ measure?

~~~
blueprint
It's a measure of something. The question is whether it's a measure of
productivity, which begs the question, what is the definition of productivity?

------
cyberferret
Should be more aptly titled "Apple internal project secrecy". From the
original title i assumed it was going to be about technical security
compliance on the iphone, not the multiple levels of NDAs required on top
secret projects.

~~~
azinman2
Ya this was disappointingly thin.

------
zefhous
Here are some great podcasts with Nitin Ganatra, who was Director of iOS apps
at Apple during that time. Transcriptions available too.

[http://www.imore.com/debug-40-nitin-ganatra-episode-ii-
os-x-...](http://www.imore.com/debug-40-nitin-ganatra-episode-ii-os-x-ios)

[http://www.imore.com/debug-41-nitin-ganatra-episode-iii-
ipho...](http://www.imore.com/debug-41-nitin-ganatra-episode-iii-iphone-ipad)

------
Someone
_" I only got to see the machine doing the remote debugging, not the target —
but it was obviously an ARM based system"_

I find that a weird statement. If you are pulled into a team because you are a
good kernel debugger, in a company where talent in that area likely isn't
scarce, wouldn't they pick you because you know ARM, and wouldn't they tell
you beforehand exactly what CPU you are dealing with?

There also is very little information in this (or the Quora post), most of
which isn't new. How do we know this isn't something someone made up to look
interesting (or to score karma on Quora, if it has such a system)?

------
tajen
What I wonder is, what's the pleasure of working in such an environment? Do
people get compensated so much that they're ok with not sharing? I like
discussing about the latest frameworks at lunch, and I like working in open
companies where you try to create links with a cross-department initiative.
How's that fun to constantly have the Damocles Spade of the corporate lawyer
sending his wrath upon you, inspecting all iPhones of the department, or the
corporate spy having lunch at your table to check you're never talking about
work? With that system in place, don't you only get a certain type of people
(i.e. the opposite of the SV youngster – rather the father who'll stay there
for years, half bored half under mortgage)?

------
Cozumel
Maybe a naive question, isn't he violating the NDA by talking about it now? Do
they expire?

~~~
brogrammernot
Potentially, but his response is vague in nature and doesn't reveal any trade
secrets or other information that isn't publicly available. If he had
mentioned another project that never went live or that he saw some interesting
prototypes then yeah he would be at that point.

It also has to actually matter to Apple or the employer in question to issue a
cease and desist order. I'm not sure they care if he revealed a random
prototype from 16 years ago.

------
TheAceOfHearts
This blog entry doesn't add any value, can we change the link to the Quora
response[0] instead?

[0] [https://www.quora.com/What-was-it-like-working-on-the-
origin...](https://www.quora.com/What-was-it-like-working-on-the-original-
iPhone-project-codenamed-Project-Purple/answer/Terry-Lambert)

~~~
rms_returns
Let me put it this way, Apple is all high on secrecy stuff and have these
black cloths, NDA and every other secretive procedure that a developer has to
go through. OTOH, Android OEMs like Samsung, HTC, etc. don't do any of that
and just use pure open source android, and yet they too manage to sell their
phones like hot cakes exactly like Apple!

~~~
SixSigma
Maybe Apple need all that stuff in order to sell stuff like Android.

------
cooper12
The interesting thing about Quora is that it has a lot of personal anecdotes
directly from people involved. That's really unfortunate considering all the
dark patterns and user hostile design the site utilizes. Along with their
registration paywall, they also do other things to hoard all that user-
contributed knowledge: [https://konklone.com/post/quora-keeps-the-worlds-
knowledge-f...](https://konklone.com/post/quora-keeps-the-worlds-knowledge-
for-itself). Really disappointing, imagine if Stack Overflow was run this way.
I hope this rant is on-topic enough considering that the post is just quoting
a Quora source and if Quora ever shuts down or fully hides itself, these kinds
of posts will be all that we have of the knowledge shared by these experts.

~~~
alxmdev
The robots.txt comment explaining that they disallow the Internet Archive
crawler to protect users' privacy sounds so facetious given they require
people register with their real names and in certain cases go as far as to ask
for government ID scans: [https://techcrunch.com/2011/02/14/quora-to-oddly-
named-users...](https://techcrunch.com/2011/02/14/quora-to-oddly-named-users-
papers-please/)

~~~
cooper12
Wow that's blatant discrimination. Hasan himself put it best in the email:

> Your reason for querying the authenticity of my name seem arbitrary and
> unfair. Discriminating against non-familiar names begs the question: non-
> familiar to who? Would you have questioned me had I used a fake but common
> English name? If you intend to attract a global community of users you will
> have to reconsider this approach.

And the protecting privacy bit is a huge cop-out because it's only really
"protecting" them from honest actors who adhere to robots.txt. Not to mention
that publishing something with your name on it is effectively making that
association public; just like how you should assume that passwords committed
to a public GitHub repository are no longer secure, you should exercise the
same vigilance with your identity. Sure it's great that they let you change
it, but someone out there probably already knows the association and wrote
about it, and anyone persistent enough to use the Wayback Machine on an
anonymous post will probably find out what they need anyway.

------
dorianm
I also heard that during lunch people would be placed randomly and randomly
have someone who would make sure no NDA-breaking topics were discussed.

~~~
thechao
This is a major corporation; not elementary school.

~~~
devopsproject
"you're holding it wrong" sounds pretty childish to me

~~~
tinus_hn
It seems like a lot of fuss about nothing to me, especially now that we can
see it in hindsight.

There was a big fuss about this issue and then a few weeks later everyone went
on about their business, using their phone and enjoying using it without any
real problems for a few years. And then they got a new iPhone because they
liked the first one so much.

