Steve Jobs Designed the Mac Calculator in 10 Minutes
▼ Summary
– In 1982, Apple employee Chris Espinosa created a calculator for the Mac but faced repeated critiques from Steve Jobs about its design details.
– Espinosa resolved the issue by building a “Steve Jobs Roll Your Own Calculator Construction Set,” allowing Jobs to design it himself.
– This story is documented on Andy Hertzfeld’s Folklore.org, a site that records the history of the original Macintosh’s development.
– Espinosa, who started at Apple at age 14 in 1976, was the company’s youngest employee and later became its longest-serving employee.
– The calculator was intended as a “desk accessory,” a small utility program for the Mac, and Espinosa’s iterative design process with Jobs felt like dealing with an unsatisfiable committee of one.
Finding the perfect calculator design for the original Macintosh became a surprisingly difficult task for Chris Espinosa, a young programmer who faced relentless feedback from Steve Jobs. The solution he devised was both clever and effective: he created a special tool that allowed Jobs to design the calculator himself, a process that took the Apple co-founder just ten minutes. This story, preserved on Andy Hertzfeld’s Folklore.org, offers a fascinating glimpse into the intense, hands-on development culture of the early Mac team.
Chris Espinosa began his career at Apple in 1976 as its youngest employee at just fourteen years old. Several years later, while attending UC Berkeley, Steve Jobs persuaded him to leave college and join the Macintosh project full-time. Remarkably, Espinosa remains with Apple today as its longest-serving employee. Back then, as the manager of documentation for the Mac, he decided to build a demo program to familiarize himself with Bill Atkinson’s QuickDraw graphics system. He selected a calculator as his project, part of a suite of small utility programs initially dubbed “desk ornaments” and later known as “desk accessories.”
Espinosa felt pleased with his initial design, but Steve Jobs immediately saw room for improvement. After reviewing the calculator, Jobs offered his blunt assessment, stating it was “a start” but “basically, it stinks.” He criticized the overly dark background color, inconsistent line thickness, and buttons he considered too large.
For the next several days, a cycle of revisions began. Espinosa would diligently implement all of Jobs’s suggestions from the previous day, only to have the Apple founder return and identify a new set of flaws with the updated version. What might have felt like design by committee was, in reality, design by one exceptionally demanding individual who seemed impossible to please. The situation called for a creative resolution.
(Source: Ars Technica)
