Apple at 50: Gonna be, gonna be golden

The author, slightly more than half of Apple’s lifetime ago.

A 50th anniversary is a good time to reflect on your relationships, and it seems lots of people have thoughts about their time with Apple today. I would definitely not be where I am in life without the company, for both good and bad, so here are mine.

Technically, my days with Apple started by playing games on my next-door neighbor’s Apple II in the late 70s or early 80s. When enough time has passed, the exact memories naturally become a little bit fuzzy. It was certainly before I got my own Commodore 64 in 1983, I know that much, but I don’t think I can exactly claim to have been there from the very beginning. Anyway, little did I know back then that I would actually get to house sit for the guy who designed the thing. Foreshadowing.

My best friend’s dad was a university professor from California, and he had brought over an Apple II of some flavor. I don’t remember them being common over here otherwise—the UK had a weird home computer industry all of its own, but this was probably just the perspective of a little kid who only wanted to play video games.

I eventually graduated from my C64 to an Atari STe around 1989, which had many better games than a Mac, and built-in MIDI ports as well. It was also way cheaper than a Mac, and it was totally fine. There was a GUI and a mouse, and those are all the same anyway, right?

Then, just a year later, I started a degree in Computing Science at the University of Glasgow, and back then all the computers in the labs were Macs. Generally, Mac Pluses or SE/30s, with the occasional brand new LC in the second-year labs. And so I used them, and I realized quite quickly that Atari had completely ripped off the Mac GUI, and not exactly done an amazing job of doing so.

I’ve had this experience two or three times in my life with technology, using something and realizing that it’s an inflection point for everything else going forward. The first was those early days with the Mac. Okay, so I was six years late to the party, so you are entirely right to question my definition of “early days.” Still, the user interface was so well designed and thought out, and it just made sense to me in a way that no computer had really done before. System 7 came out shortly afterward and improved everything even more.

At this point, we’d been doing most of the development work for our coursework in THINK Pascal, and I quickly realized I could use that to make my own applications. This history has been covered well, but I wrote the first version of my calculator PCalc in 1992 on my brand new Mac Classic. (Sorry, Atari.) I bought an LC II some time later, probably a month before the LC III was announced. I even fitted it with a maths co-processor! I started working on my application launcher DragThing in 1994.

Again, this is well documented, but I was soon determined to work for Apple. And a few years later, I got my wish, working in Apple’s software engineering group in Cork, Ireland. It was a lot easier to get a job with Apple in late 1996 than it is today, but my existing apps certainly helped me get a foot in the door. However, as I discovered after joining the company and moving to a different country, Apple was actually on the verge of complete bankruptcy.

I’m told that, like with having kids, you block out a lot of the difficult times of your life, and generally remember the good bits. Well, I remember a hell of a lot of bad stuff from those years, so who knows how bad it really was.

Gil Amelio appeared and fired so many people across the company that soon our little engineering group all fit around the one table for lunch. It was an extremely stressful time to be at Apple, but also probably one of the most interesting – I got to witness the return of Steve Jobs first hand, after all. Another inflection point, really.

I worked on a bunch of things while I was there, including the only two things that actually shipped from my less than four years on that team – the Disney 101 Dalmatians and Hercules Print Studios that were bundled with Macintosh Performas. That was enjoyable and relatively low-stakes work. I learned how to program in C++, use a UI framework (Metrowerks PowerPlant), and generally work as part of a team. I was even co-team lead on the Hercules one. However, staring at pegasi all day meant that I did not see the film, and I still have not to this today.

I was then placed on the iMac project somewhat unknowingly, and ultimately the Dock and Finder – the source of all my best Apple anecdotes. Then Steve Jobs happened, I resigned, etc etc. You know how this story goes, I assume. In any case, I met a lot of good people at Apple, some of whom I am still in touch with today. Companies do not care for you, but at least some people do.

In all, it was a relatively short time working there. I was not important in the least, and I did not really do anything of note. I worked on lots of cool stuff that didn’t ultimately ship, sure. Put it this way: I am unlikely to be an entry in any Apple history book.

And I was so relieved when I left. I was 27, and I was young enough then that I didn’t really know how stressed I had been working in that environment. The weight off my shoulders was enormous, even if being an indie developer came with its own set of slightly different artisanal weights. You know how some people have stress dreams about doing exams? I still have stress dreams that I’m back working at Apple.

I did not part from my ex on the best of terms, but it has remained a big part of my life, and we kept uncomfortably meeting up at parties.

I rewrote PCalc again after I left, and through a random pressing of my business card into the hand of one Phil Schiller at a WWDC, it ended up getting bundled with the iMac G4s in the U.S. I probably made more money from that deal (and a weekend’s work to change the app into U.S. English) than I did from all my years of salary at Apple.

I am definitely still in Apple’s orbit, or perhaps just past their event horizon. I am forgetting many things now, including Widgetgate and Lodsys.

And yes, I also ended up getting to know Woz, and stayed with him for many years in a row during WWDC time. We’re still in touch occasionally to this day. It is absolutely wild to me that I know one of the founders of Apple, who basically invented the personal computer. I got to chat to Douglas Adams because of Apple as well – he used DragThing, and I added several features to it just because he asked. Frontier scripting? Absolutely, Mr. Adams, right away, sir.

I’ve also known Jason Snell for something like 32 years at this point, since he was a youth at MacUser, and nowadays have the pleasure of doing podcasts with him at The Incomparable and Relay. So many good friends in my life have happened because of Apple, directly or indirectly.

I’m also, I will admit, doing reasonably well because of them. Then again, Apple is doing pretty well because of me. If I calculate the 30% or 15% of all the sales of PCalc in the App Store, I’ve probably easily paid back my entire Apple salary and all the PCalc licensing fees. But then again, the Apple stock I got in the late 90s is worth a little bit more these days, too, so ultimately I can’t really complain.

Whenever I purchase a new Mac with the money I have made from selling things on the App Store, it does at least make me think how ridiculously circular these things are. A disturbing amount of my lifespan has consisted of moving money slowly back and forth between Apple and me, whether I’m working for them or not. I think I’m currently ahead, but who knows what the future holds. I do sometimes wonder if I never actually stopped working for Apple.

Anyway, DragThing lasted nearly half an Apple, at 25 years. PCalc is still doing well, some 34 years later (I just need to hold on for another eight.) Dice by PCalc is a recent addition, based on my return to playing D&D, but it at least constantly amuses me. I suspect I will still be doing this long after I retire.

So here’s to the next 50, Apple. I do still miss you sometimes.