How to create a standard calculator for the Macintosh

As we know, Steve Jobs had a special look at the design of Apple products, including software. Habitual thought to hear a huge flow of his criticism of the various prototypes, their appearance and performance. One such case was the choice of design for the standard Macintosh calculator. From this story, you know, as a young officer managed to get the look that Steve Jobs liked to 100%.

Chris Espinosa was one of the youngest employees. He started working at Apple in 14 years, and in 1978 left the company for college at Berkeley, but continued to perform various freelance work. For example, he wrote a reference guide for the Apple II computer.

In the summer of 1981 Steve Jobs persuaded Chris to quit his studies and go to work on the Macintosh team on a full-time, claiming that he could go back to college at any time. Chris dropped out of college and in August 1981 became the manager of the documentation in the Mac division.

We should have as soon as possible to provide technical documentation for third-party developers. The main part of the Macintosh software package was Quickdraw, so Chris decided to start its work is with him.

Espinoza wanted to write a demo file with the Quickdraw, to better understand all the nuances. Chris began to draw the look of the calculator. After a while he believed that he had made a pretty good look. But the main thing was how to respond to the creation of Chris our aesthetic compass - Steve Jobs.

We gathered as a team, to see the reaction to Jobs' drawn calculator. Chris was waiting for his reaction, with bated breath.

"This is just the beginning, but now it looks sucks", - stated the point of view of Jobs.

"The background color is too dark, some lines are irregular in thickness, and the buttons are too big" - Steve continued flow of criticism. Chris said he will continue to work and will show Jobs updated version of the current design. Espinoza showed new versions of almost every day, because before it received new portions of the crushing criticism from Steve. Finally, Chris came illumination.

Instead, the next iteration Espinoza changed approach to writing the program. The new approach he called "the calculator Designer for Steve Jobs." any graphic attributes you can choose from a drop-down menu backgrounds, button size, thickness and so on.

Once Jobs saw the new program, he held her for about ten minutes, adjusting the various parameters to your liking. Then he shared his vision of how the calculator should look like. It is this version of the look was used by Chris and calculator became the standard solution for all Macintosh operating systems for years to come, including OS 9.

via Folklore