The Story of the Original iPhone's Development 221
jds91md writes "Today's NY Times delivers a great story of the development of the iPhone by Apple. It focuses on the events during the leadup to Steve Jobs taking the stage with shockingly buggy prototypes and pulling off the show that is now history. 'Only about a hundred iPhones even existed, all of them of varying quality. Some had noticeable gaps between the screen and the plastic edge; others had scuff marks on the screen. And the software that ran the phone was full of bugs. The iPhone could play a section of a song or a video, but it couldn’t play an entire clip reliably without crashing. It worked fine if you sent an e-mail and then surfed the Web. If you did those things in reverse, however, it might not. Hours of trial and error had helped the iPhone team develop what engineers called “the golden path,” a specific set of tasks, performed in a specific way and order, that made the phone look as if it worked.' One of the big problems was the phone's connectivity. The man in charge of the iPhone's radios, Andy Grignon, had to deal with Jobs's anger when rehearsals didn't go well. Grignon said, 'Very rarely did I see him become completely unglued — it happened, but mostly he just looked at you and very directly said in a very loud and stern voice, "You are [expletive] up my company," or, "If we fail, it will be because of you." He was just very intense. And you would always feel an inch tall.'"
Re:A testament to engineers (Score:5, Funny)
It's also a great testament to what an utter fucking prick Jobs was. An effective utter fucking prick, but an utter fucking prick nonetheless.
It's worse than that: As Dune tells us 'The Golden Path' was Leto Atreides II's prescient plan to guide the entirely of human evolution in the guise of a terrible half man/half sandworm God-Emperor.
This also explains why Apple began building a massive, ring-shaped, climate controlled headquarters shortly after Jobs 'died'. Earth is too moist for sandworms; so they need a secure environment to house their God-Emperor.
Re:Terminology (Score:2, Funny)
Neither does it mean "popularizing".
Sir, you are mistaken. Apple has recently innovated the definition of "innovation". You will kindly conform to the new Apple-approved meaning.