Enjoying the show, avoiding the flamethrower: life inside Apple What's it like working inside Apple when the MacWorld announcements are made? The man who set up many of its email systems and worked there 17 years explains the inside story of the preparation, the unveiling - and why it's sometimes best to avoid Steve Jobs
Chuq von Rospach guardian.co.uk Friday 2 January 2009 10.54 GMT Even two years after I left Apple, I still feel like I celebrate two Christmases: the one I celebrate with my family, and the one in January that we celebrate when Steve Jobs gets up on stage and says: "I have a few things to show you today that I think you'll really like." When I worked there, the MacWorld speech was always the point at which most of us stopped work and gathered around the screens - there was always a big gathering and a special screen in the restaurant. Work would stop for a while as everyone enjoyed the surprise. And for most of us it was a surprise; only for those in the small teams working on, say, the iPhone or the new release of Apple's office suite iWork would know precisely what was coming; and even they didn't know what the other teams had. And afterwards people talk about it for days; and the staff discount means that there are plenty of orders right after the speech ends. Only, of course, this year it won't be Steve. It'll be Phil Schiller, Apple's own Vice President of Demos, as we liked to call him, because he'd always be the second guy who'd come out to help Steve out. I'll still tune in with great anticipation, and while people are already predicting there will be no major announcements, I'm not so sure. Instead, I think this is the first step in proving to the Apple community (and investors) that while Steve's vision is important to Apple, Apple is not Steve, and Apple will not disappear when Steve retires from the company - which he is going to do, sooner or later. ... http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jan/02/apple-macworld-lookback *********************************** * POST TO [email protected] * *********************************** Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
