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Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was notorious for being harshly critical of his team’s work. If Steve wasn’t 100% satisfied with the hardware or software, you’d definitely know about it.
Chris Espinosa, who created the first Macintosh calculator app and remains Apple’s longest-tenured employee, found a creative way to get around Steve’s never-ending criticism in what has to be one of the greatest examples of upward management ever.
Altechnica’s Benji Edwards recalled a story Andy Hertzfeld shared.
Espinosa thought the first calculator design looked good, but Jobs had another idea. Hertzfeld describes the scene as follows: “‘Well, it’s a start,’ Steve said. ‘But basically, it stinks. The background color is too dark, the lines are the wrong thickness, and the buttons are too big.'”
For several days, Espinosa adopted Jobs’ suggestions from the previous day, but each iteration only led Jobs to discover new flaws (…)
Rather than continue the endless revision cycle, Espinosa took a different approach. According to Hertzfeld, Espinosa created a program that exposed every visual parameter of the calculator through a drop-down menu, including line thickness, button size, and background pattern. When Jobs got to use it, he spent about 10 minutes adjusting the settings until he found a combination he liked.
Not only did Espinosa avoid further iterations that could have taken days, but the end result was so successful that it remained largely unchanged for 17 years.
If you’re feeling nostalgic, there’s an app for that.
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Image: 9to5Mac/Infinitemac/Apple
