
Stories of Steve Jobs in Safari Design Reviews (2014) - Nuance
https://donmelton.com/2014/04/10/memories-of-steve/
======
seltzered_
There was also a muli-part interview with Don Melton and Nitin Ganatra in
2014: [https://m.imore.com/debug-47-melton-ganatra-episode-i-
demoin...](https://m.imore.com/debug-47-melton-ganatra-episode-i-demoing-
software-steve-jobs)

[https://m.imore.com/debug-48-melton-ganatra-episode-ii-
under...](https://m.imore.com/debug-48-melton-ganatra-episode-ii-
understanding-apple)

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misiti3780
im glad steve jobs did what he did, because i love my apple products as much
as the next person, but everytime i read something like i realize there is no
way i would have wanted to work for him even if i was "changing the world".
life is simply too short.

~~~
philliphaydon
This article is the first time I’ve read something abou Steve that makes me
think, “I would totally love to work for Steve”

It’s the parts about how Steve conducts reviews. I feel like too many people
beat around the bush, when asked a question they get flustered and make stuff
up. I actually kinda enjoy being put on the spot. Say I don’t have an answer
or give my personal opinion, or be open and honest, or have to come up with
ideas and such. I don’t get flustered or bothered if I’m yelled at. I’ve had
bosses that I think are worse than what Steve is sometimes described as. But
damn if I haven’t enjoyed those reviews or design sessions.

~~~
foobar1962
I studied photography and one of the teachers was blunt about quality and
talent to the point of rudeness. He'd tell people they wouldn't even make a
photographer's arsehole, let alone a photographer.

The day he handed back one of my photographs and said "Congratulations, you're
now a photographer's arsehole" was a good one.

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goto11
This is a weird and fascinating read since it says almost nothing about Jobs
(good or bad), but is only about the fear and fawning and deference of the
people meeting him. There is nothing in the stories that explains _why_ they
have this fear and fawning. Apparently Jobs made some silly practical jokes
where the fun was that the victims were initially too afraid of him to
acknowledge the joke. But no hint of why people would be afraid in the first
place.

Apparently Jobs asked how the IE bookmarks bar looked and this guy googled an
image. And this was one of the must harrowing but ultimately triumphant
moments of his life.

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olliej
Story time with gramps!

~~~
favorited
Not sure if you're getting downvoted for "gramps" – but in case people don't
know:

[https://donmelton.com/2015/11/30/why-they-call-me-
gramps/](https://donmelton.com/2015/11/30/why-they-call-me-gramps/)

~~~
olliej
Wow yeah I hadn’t seen the downvotes but seriously anyone who has worked with
him knows about “story time with gramps”.

Shrug.

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benwerd
This is how I know I would suck in a company like this. Yeah, it's Steve Jobs
- but I find the level of reverence on show in this piece to be a little hard
to take. It's certainly revealing of the culture there at the time.

> And when you can get the time for thoughtful reflection on your idea from a
> visionary like Steve — well, that’s a good day.

Being humble is one thing, but forcing yourself into this kind of fawning
emotional servility feels dangerous to me. He was smart; he was lucky; he was
a human, like anyone else. I don't think this level of hierarchy is something
that I would seek to build at any of my startups, or would hope to support in
a startup that I invested in or advised. It just feels unhealthy to me.

~~~
graeme
There have been stories outside Apple of Steve Jobs giving incredibly good
feedback in a variety of areas and people being glad to have it. Have you
considered the possibility that:

1\. Steve Jobs was a couple of standard deviations better at this than almost
anyone

2\. As such, people were glad to get feedback from him

3\. Such ability is rare and hard to identify, and so trying to replicate that
structure is nonetheless not a sensible idea.

In other words, you're correct in your business practices, but possibly
blinded to the fact that Steve actually was very, very good.

~~~
tw04
Like insisting that notes look like a leather bound notebook?

I'm confident he had good ideas. I'm also confident he had plenty of horrible
ideas... Just like most intelligent humans.

~~~
talltimtom
“I'm confident he had good ideas. I'm also confident he had plenty of horrible
ideas...”

... as you walk along you path you meet a man. 50% if the time he tells you
sage advice that makes you a multimillionaire and 50% of the time he tells you
sage advice that doesn’t make you richer. What do you value the mans afvice
as?

It’s not a cult or a conspiracy when what the other part is selling actually
materializes.

~~~
ALittleLight
Does your evaluation change if, instead of making you fantastically rich his
advice makes him fantastically richer?

~~~
sudhirj
If everyone has stock options, this isn’t quite true. And not sure about the
eningeers, but the execs at Apple seem to be doing pretty well.

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jrs95
> between rounds of Overwatch

Ah, an Overwatch player. This explains everything ;)

In all seriousness, WSL has improved A LOT and I use it frequently on my
gaming PC so I don't have to pull out my MacBook. Performance is definitely a
bit worse but I have a Ryzen 2700X and an NVMe drive, so it's still plenty
quick enough despite the inefficiencies on the software side of things. I used
to always dual boot Linux on my desktops, but I just don't have a need to do
that anymore.

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jsqu99
"As a manager, you should never share such things with someone who reports to
you."

Sharing a human moment (being upset that a superior is sick) w/ a subordinate
is off-limits?

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qntty
Anyone else annoyed by how deferential the author seems to be towards Jobs?
Like surely after knowing him for a bit you'd get over that.

~~~
fossuser
I've seen this kind of strange behavior elsewhere with less famous people who
are in charge of companies.

People who don't regularly interact with them seem to act strange around them
(which isn't that surprising if they're not seen that often and they're in
charge), but the weirder thing to me is that all the supporting staff around
the leader also acts strangely and seems to make it worse.

It reminds me of the story when Carmack had a demo and one of Jobs' support
staff said they couldn't use it because "he doesn't like blood". When Jobs
heard it was Carmack he said it was fine.

Something about it feels weird.

~~~
derefr
> When Jobs heard it was Carmack he said it was fine.

That seems less like the kind of "aura of reverence" you're talking about, and
more like a respect for another creative person who makes carefully-considered
choices (and perhaps a knowledge that most people in the audience for the demo
know the artist and _also_ respect them.)

Even if you don't agree with someone's tastes, if those tastes are a
_coherent_ part of a polished work, and you value the work itself, then you'll
tend to let your aesthetic disagreement slide.

For a different concrete example: when the average movie director puts a weird
sex thing in their movie, it _sticks out_ in a way that makes you wonder
whether they have a fetish and wanted to indulge it—and that breaks the
verisimilitude of the work, lessening its impact. If, on the other hand, a
director like David Lynch puts a weird sex thing in their movie, it's usually
a critical element that fits the tone of the work, and doesn't break
verisimilitude at all. It doesn't really matter whether David Lynch likes a
given weird sex thing; it would still be a part of the work even if he didn't,
because it belongs there.

Blood _belongs_ in Carmack's games, in a way that means you'll tend to
appreciate the bloodiness for its contribution to the overall tone of the
game, even if you don't like blood.

~~~
fossuser
Yeah that makes sense to me - my comment was more about how the support staff
acted like "oh we can't do that - he wouldn't like that" when it turned out to
be totally fine when interacting with him directly.

I'm not sure if that's a thing with Jobs and people being afraid of him, but
I've seen similar stuff where people around the person act like they're
delicate or everything requires special consideration when interacting with
the leader.

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jiveturkey
2014 tag would be helpful

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Quintus_
Talk about being brainwashed, this man sees Steve Jobs as a god.

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PieUser
Disappointed. I was expecting at least some screenshots.

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rchaud
I used to think Jobs' Reality Distortion Field only worked on tech bloggers
who loved Apple's story and narrative so much, they went overboard to praise
their products, in spite of tone-deaf stuff Jobs would say in public like
"You're holding it wrong".

Turns out there were plenty of people right there at Apple who fell under that
same RDF.

~~~
fullshark
Did you really think the RDF as you say didn't apply to workers inside Apple?
Almost always the biggest kool-aid drinkers for any company are the employees.

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vkou
> Steve didn’t like the status bar and didn’t see the need for it. “Who looks
> at URLs when you hover your mouse over a link?” He thought it was just too
> geeky.

People who don't want to be phished? People who don't have absolute trust that
a hyperlink posted by some random schmuck on the internet won't take them
somewhere they shouldn't go?

This sort of background mentality of "Make the happy path look slick, and if
the happy path doesn't work for you, good luck," has always turned me off from
Apple stuff. But, of course, I'm not the target audience.

~~~
bluedino
One thing I miss when using Safari instead of Chrome

~~~
olliej
The article literally states that they convinced him to have a toggle...

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s3r3nity
> I don’t want those few and fleeting memories fractured and confused by other
> people’s interpretations.

So you want to maintain dogmatic ideological views without subjecting yourself
to an uncomfortable re-examining of how rose-tinted your glasses might have
been?

I was immediately turned off by this, and had a hard time finishing the post
after reading that. Sometimes admitting that your idols are flawed human
beings, but often trying their best nevertheless, can end in a better
appreciation of the person.

~~~
jimbokun
He wanted to keep his first hand memories intact, and not be distracted by a
dramatized or fictionalized account.

Why do you need the interpretation of people who weren't there, of events you
have directly experienced yourself?

