Please note that some of the links referenced in this work may no longer be active.
2. The Crystal Ball
1. Free Software Foundation, GNU Operating System. [Online]. Accessed November 12, 2017. Various pages on this website provide the history, the philosophy, and licenses for the GNU Project. https://www.gnu.org
2. Steven Levy, Insanely Great, the Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything (New York: Penguin Books, 1994). The Mac has been an inspiration to me from the moment I first saw one in college in 1984, and if Steven hadn’t written his book about how the people at Apple created it, you wouldn’t be reading this book right now.
3. David Winton, Code Rush: Full Film. Vimeo. [Online]. PBS Home Video, Winton Dupont Films, April 25, 2000. Accessed November 12, 2017. One of my favorite scenes from the documentary showed Don walking across the Netscape campus in the fading light of early evening. A colleague, Tara Hernandez, was along for the the jaunt, and she was toting a hockey stick for reasons unexplained. They were off looking for a wayward software engineer who possessed an arcane bit of knowledge that might fix one of the few remaining bugs preventing Netscape from shipping the browser code. When they found the engineer’s cube, which was stacked high with empty Coca-Cola cans and other detritus, its owner was nowhere to be found. Where was this guy? Nobody knew. A cube neighbor of the not-found engineer, who had seen the engineer earlier in the day, heartily joined in the pronouncement of impending “Doom!” I thought it was a great show, the stuff of Silicon Valley legend. https://vimeo.com/8235099
4. Sam Williams, Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman’s Crusade for Free Software (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly & Associates, 2001). https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/index.html
5. Wikipedia contributors, “Gratis versus Libre,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gratis_versus_libre&oldid=840748752. Accessed May 14, 2018.
6. David Flanagan, JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, 3rd ed. (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 1998). O’Reilly & Associates books were ubiquitous in 1990s high tech. All the programmers I knew had these books and cherished them. While I haven’t actually referred to my second edition of Programming Perl (“the camel book”) in many years, I keep it by my desk out of sheer love and nostalgia.
7. “Steve Jobs Announces the Microsoft Deal—Macworld Boston” (1997). YouTube: EverySteveJobsVideo. [Online]. Accessed November 12, 2017. This keynote was presented at Macworld Boston on August 6, 1997, at the Bayside Expo & Executive Conference Center. Cue to 30m 20s to see Bill Gates. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=almoJa_c_FA
8. James Daly, “101 Ways to Save Apple,” Wired, June 1, 1997. The word “Pray” appeared on the cover of the magazine, but the article itself was titled “101 Ways to Save Apple.” The advice was mostly wrong or dopey (“#1. Admit it. You’re out of the hardware game. . . . 24. Pay cartoonist Scott Adams $10 million to have Dilbert fall in love with a Performa repairwoman. . . . #73. Rename the company Papaya”), but it does turn out that #50 did the trick: “Give Steve Jobs as much authority as he wants in new product development.” https://www.wired.com/1997/06/apple-3/
9. “What Makes a 10x Programmer/Software Engineer?” Quora. [Online]. Accessed November 12, 2017. https://www.quora.com/What-makes-a-10x-programmer-software-engineer. “Are You a 10x Programmer? Or Just a Jerk?” The New Stack. [Online]. Accessed November 12, 2017. https://thenewstack.io/10x-programmer-just-jerk/. Love the title. It communicates the doubt many in the industry feel about 10x programmers.
10. Frederick P. Brooks Jr., The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995), p. 17.
3. The Black Slab
1. WebKit, “Timeline.” [Online]. Accessed November 14, 2017. My memory is good, but it’s not good enough to remember exact line counts to the level of accuracy I wanted for the text. I referred to the open source WebKit repository for assistance on dates, chronology, files, names, commit comments, and the like. https://trac.webkit.org
2. Ryan Tate, “Apple Just Ended the Era of Paid Operating Systems,” Wired. [Online]. Accessed October 22, 2013. https://www.wired.com/2013/10/apple-ends-paid-oses/
3. Elmer Ellsworth Burns, The Story of Great Inventions (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1910), pp. 121–124.
4. Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation (New York: Riverhead Books, 2010).
5. Paul Israel, Edison: A Life of Invention (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998). Of particular interest is the text on pages 168, 188, and 217.
6. James Newton, Uncommon Friends: Life with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel & Charles Lindbergh (New York : Harcourt, 1987), p. 24. Apparently, the author, James Newton, was on the scene when Edison made this statement about inspiration and perspiration. However, the quotation I cite is part of a lengthy back-and-forth with a reporter who was questioning Edison on the occasion of his birthday in 1929, and I doubt the author had a notebook to take down what Edison said. So, did Edison really talk about his working method exactly as we say that he did? I don’t know, but posterity seems to be voting in the affirmative, and by using this quotation again myself, I realize I’m just adding another log onto the fire.
4. One Simple Rule
1. Donald E. Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming (Boston: Addison-Wesley, various years).
2. Donald Knuth, “Structured Programming with go to Statements,” ACM Computing Surveys 6, no. 4 (1974): 261–301. I love how Knuth’s famous statement on optimization comes in an article that references one of the other most famous statements in computer science, that from the age of “structured programming,” the assertion made by E. W. Dijkstra in his article “Go To Statement Considered Harmful.” That article can be found by consulting your friendly neighborhood search engine. I found it here: http://www.u.arizona.edu/~rubinson/copyright_violations/Go_To_Considered_Harmful.html
3. Cliff Edwards, “Commentary: Sorry, Steve: Here’s Why Apple Stores Won’t Work,” Bloomberg Business Week, May 20, 2001. [Online]. Accessed November 13, 2017. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2001-05-20/commentary-sorry-steve-heres-why-apple-stores-wont-work
4. “Steve Jobs Introduces 12"–17" PowerBooks, iLife & Safari—Macworld SF” (2003). YouTube: EverySteveJobsVideo. [Online]. Accessed November 13, 2017. This keynote was presented at Macworld Expo SF on January 7, 2003, at the Moscone Convention Center, San Francisco. Cue to 3m43s to hear Steve discuss Apple Store performance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iOWA2wEFPE
5. David Foster Wallace, String Theory: On Tennis: Five Essays (New York: Little, Brown, 2014). Is my passage about Vince Lombardi an attempt to channel Wallace? Yeah, maybe. The piece I’m thinking about the most is the one about Tracy Austin, published in this volume as “How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart.” This piece appeared originally on August 30, 1992, in the Philadelphia Inquirer. The banal baseball quote I used is modeled closely on one Wallace used in his story.
6. John Eisenberg, That First Season: How Vince Lombardi Took the Worst Team in the NFL and Set It on the Path to Glory (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), p. 76 (chapter 7).
7. Ibid.
8. Lombardi. HBO Sports, NFL Films, 2010. I couldn’t obtain a full copy of this film. I found what appears to be an excerpt on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILrJenuiYF0, and I could only deduce this clip came from the HBO production. I recognized Liev Schreiber’s voice, and other sources confirm that he did indeed provide narration for the film. In addition, one other clip of Jerry Kramer shows him in the identical setting as a trailer for the film available on HBO’s website. I am reasonably confident this citation is correct. I wish I could watch this HBO film in full. I reviewed a wealth of other Lombardi resources while researching this book, and these few clips from this truncated excerpt are among the best. The review of the film by Richard Sandomir that appeared in the New York Times on December 10, 2010, under the title “The Loud, and Memorable, Voice of Lombardi,” cites NFL Films as “the main repository for film of Lombardi as a coach.” Presumably, a more determined researcher than I could nail down these clips by approaching HBO or NFL Films. Off you go.
9. “Vince Lombardi Teaches the Power Sweep Part 1,” YouTube: Football Coaching. [Online]. Accessed November 14, 2017. I wish I could obtain a full copy of Vince Lombardi’s The Science and Art of Football. For the sake of nostaligia, a 16mm print would be ideal, to be viewed in a darkened room, with the light of the projector revealing chalk dust in the air. Sadly, I could only find excerpts of this film on YouTube. I found the film’s introduction and portions describing the Power Sweep at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv4CXySXxCk.
10. Lombardi, HBO Sports.
5. The Hardest Problem
1. Tracy Kidder, The Soul of a New Machine (New York: The Modern Library, 1997), pp. 82–83.
2. Wikipedia contributors, “White-Naped Xenopsaris,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=White-naped_xenopsaris&oldid=833595068. Accessed November 14, 2018. I edited the original HTML source to simplify it.
6. The Keyboard Derby
1. NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. May 25, 2006. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/12974884/#.Ww3STy-ZP1I. This is such an apt summation of Steve’s work philosophy that, after his death, when the company put up a remembrance to him in the atrium of Infinite Loop Building 4 on the Apple campus in Cupertino, these were the only words chosen for display.
2. Freddy Anzures and Imran Chaudhri, Graphical user interface for a display screen or portion thereof. U.S. Patent D604,305, filed June 23, 2007, and issued November 17, 2009. This is the design patent describing SpringBoard, the iPhone home screen icon launcher program. http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=D604305; Bas Ording, List scrolling and document translation, scaling, and rotation on a touch-screen display. U.S. Patent 7,469,381, filed December 14, 2007, and issued December 23, 2008. This is the patent describing inertial scrolling. http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=7469381; Matt Brian, “The Apple Patent Steve Jobs Fought Hard to Protect, and His Connection to Its Inventor,” The Next Web, August 7, 2012. Accessed November 19, 2017. https://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/08/07/the-apple-patent-steve-jobs-fought-hard-to-protect-and-his-connection-with-its-inventor/
3. “Crackberry,” Urban Dictionary. Accessed November 14, 2017. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Crackberry
4. Kenneth Kocienda et al., Keyboards for portable electronic devices. U.S. Patent 7,694,231, filed January 5, 2006, and issued April 6, 2010.
7. QWERTY
1. Mat Honan, “Remembering the Apple Newton’s Prophetic Failure and Lasting Impact,” Wired, August 5, 2013. https://www.wired.com/2013/08/remembering-the-apple-newtons-prophetic-failure-and-lasting-ideals/. Accessed November 14, 2017.
2. Wikipedia contributors, “International Talk Like a Pirate Day,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=International_Talk_Like_a_Pirate_Day&oldid=831048898. Accessed November 14, 2017.
3. Wikipedia contributors, “QWERTY,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=QWERTY&oldid=842348998. Accessed May 14, 2018.
4. Samantha, Today I Found Out, “The Origin of the Qwerty Keyboard,” January 7, 2012. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2012/01/the-origin-of-the-qwerty-keyboard/. Accessed May 14, 2018.
5. Wikipedia contributors, “Critique of Judgment,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Critique_of_Judgment&oldid=842429054. Accessed November 14, 2017; Immanuel Kant, Kant’s Critique of Judgement, translated with Introduction and Notes by J. H. Bernard, 2nd ed. revised (London: Macmillan, 1914). Originally published 1892. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1217. Accessed November 14, 2017.
6. Kant, Kant’s Critique of Judgement, p. 62.
7. Quoted in Rob Walker, “The Guts of a New Machine,” The New York Times Magazine, November 30, 2003. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/30/magazine/the-guts-of-a-new-machine.html. Accessed November 14, 2017.
8. Richard P. Feynman, “Atoms in Motion,” in Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I. http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_01.html. Accessed November 14, 2017.
8. Convergence
1. Kenneth Kocienda et al., Method, Device, and Graphical User Interface Providing Word Recommendations for Text Input, U.S. Patent 8,232,973, filed June 30, 2008, and issued July 31, 2012. http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=8232973.
2. Wikipedia contributors, “Bugzilla,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bugzilla&oldid=841348601. Accessed November 15, 2017.
3. stopdesign, creative outlet of Douglas Bowman, “Goodbye, Google,” March 20, 2009. http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html. Accessed November 15, 2017.
4. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (New York: Collier & Son, 1909), pp. 45–46. I obtained a digital scan of this edition at https://ia902205.us.archive.org/19/items/originofspecies00darwuoft/originofspecies00darwuoft.pdf.
5. Wikipedia contributors, “Seagull Manager,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Seagull_manager&oldid=838557671. Accessed November 15, 2017. The original source for this notion appears to come from a book titled Leadership and the One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard, published in 1985.
9. The Intersection
1. “Steve Jobs Introduces the Original iPhone at Macworld SF (2007),” YouTube: EverySteveJobsVideo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3gw1XddJuc. Accessed November 16, 2017. Cue to 21m45s to hear Steve begin his iPhone introduction. I believe the cue point isn’t forty-one minutes because copyrighted content was shown on keynote day that can’t be reproduced on YouTube.
2. “Steve Jobs Introduces Original iPad—Apple Special Event (2010),” YouTube: EverySteveJobsVideo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KN-5zmvjAo. Accessed November 16, 2017. This keynote was presented on January 27, 2010, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Cue to 1h30m to hear Steve talk about the intersection.
3. Robert X. Cringely, Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview. Furnace, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) (as NerdTV), Oregon Public Broadcasting, John Gau Productions, 2012. Cue to 57m to hear Steve talk about proportionally spaced fonts on the Mac. http://www.magpictures.com/stevejobsthelostinterview/.
4. “Star Wars Blasters Sound Effect. How They Did It,” YouTube: tedmerr. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl0wIdGxfbQ. Accessed November 16, 2017; “The Story Behind the Creation of the Lasergun Sound in Star Wars.” Filmsound.org. http://filmsound.org/starwars/lasergunstory.htm. Accessed November 16, 2017. “Sound Design of Star Wars.” Filmsound.org. http://www.filmsound.org/starwars/.
5. Wikipedia contributors, “Ben Shneiderman,” Wikipedia, The Free En-cyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ben_Shneiderman&oldid=838578865. Accessed November 16, 2018. Wikipedia contributors, “Direct Manipulation Interface,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Direct_manipulation_interface&oldid=831492190. Accessed November 16, 2017.
6. Wikipedia contributors, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two&oldid=841444468. Accessed November 16, 2017. George A. Miller, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information,” Classics in the History of Psychology. http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Miller/. Accessed November 16, 2017. The article reproduced on this website was first published in Psychological Review 63 (1956): 81–97.
7. Steven P. Jobs et al., Touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics. U.S. Patent 7,479,949, filed April 11, 2008, and issued January 20, 2009. http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=7479949.
8. Ibid. The text I cite is in column 75, starting on line 39.
9. “Ballmer Laughs at iPhone,” YouTube: smugmacgeek. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U. Accessed November 16, 2017.
10. The first time I heard the term “execution dependent” was when screenwriter Philippa Boyens used it to describe her effort to write the lines for Samwise Gamgee near the end of The Two Towers. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Appendices, Part Three, The Journey Continues . . . , From Book to Script: Finding the Story. New Line Productions, Inc., 2002. “What does ‘execution dependent’ mean?” johnaugust.com. https://johnaugust.com/2009/what-does-execution-dependent-mean. Accessed November 16, 2017.
10. At This Point
1. Apple Newsroom, “Steve Jobs Resigns as CEO of Apple,” August 24, 2011. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2011/08/24Steve-Jobs-Resigns-as-CEO-of-Apple/. Accessed November 16, 2017. Apple Newsroom, “Letter from Steve Jobs,” August 24, 2011. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2011/08/24Letter-from-Steve-Jobs/. Accessed November 16, 2017. Apple Newsroom, “Apple Media Advisory,” October 5, 2011. Accessed November 16, 2017.