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.

Andy Hertzfeld

Categorized in : Thinking Taken Apples

Being idealistic really helps you overcome some of the many obstacles put in your path.

Andy Hertzfeld

path overcoming helping

It's [programming] the only job I can think of where I get to be both an engineer and an artist. There's an incredible, rigorous, technical element to it, which I like because you have to do very precise thinking. On the other hand, it has a wildly creative side where the boundaries of imagination are the only real limitation.

Andy Hertzfeld

learning real jobs

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.

Andy Hertzfeld

keys writing people

I left Apple in April of 1984, pretty soon after the introduction of the Mac.

Andy Hertzfeld

macs april apples

I'm the kind of developer who likes to throw lightning rods around. To make a great program there's got to be at least one person at the center who is breathing life into it. In a ferocious way.

Andy Hertzfeld

breathing likes way

The Macintosh having shipped, his next agenda was to turn the rest of Apple into the Mac group. He had perceived the rest of Apple wasn't as creative or motivated as the Mac team, and what you need to take over the company are managers, not innovators or technical people

Andy Hertzfeld

apples team people

I was a grad student at UC Berkeley when I bought my Apple II and it suddenly because a lot more interesting than school

Andy Hertzfeld

uc-berkeley apples school

I developed some unique software to public it on the web that I call the Folklore Project.

Andy Hertzfeld

projects software unique

You show me a great program and I'll show you a passionate individual somewhere behind it.

Andy Hertzfeld

program individual passion

We were developing an innovative Personal Information Manager called Chandler but a couple years ago I took off from that to do a project writing down my memoirs essentially, reminiscing about the development of the Macintosh.

Andy Hertzfeld

couple writing years

I got bitten by the free software bug in February of 1998 around the time of the Mozilla announcement.

Andy Hertzfeld

mozilla february bugs

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.

Andy Hertzfeld

passion leadership thinking

A lot of people thought Steve Jobs was a CEO of Apple but he never was until he came back to Apple in 1997.

Andy Hertzfeld

apples jobs people

In fact when I first got my Apple II the first thing I did was turn it on and off, on and off, just because I had the power to do so, which I'd never had on a computer before

Andy Hertzfeld

apples facts firsts

Part of Steve's job was to drum into us how important what we were doing actually would be to the world

Andy Hertzfeld

important would-be jobs

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.

Andy Hertzfeld

apples magic years

The Apple II was not designed like an ordinary product. It used crazy tricks everywhere

Andy Hertzfeld

apples crazy ordinary

As you know, Microsoft eventually kind of grabbed the gold ring out of Apple's hands, I guess.

Andy Hertzfeld

apples gold hands

I started working at Apple about 18 months after I bought my Apple II

Andy Hertzfeld

apples months

I knew the Apple II was great when I bought it, but as I dug into the details it just completely blew me away the creative artistic approach that the designers had taken.

Andy Hertzfeld

apples creative taken