My memories of Steve Jobs. Part 2: simple opening, insomnia because of the dog and the answer critics

Great article, the memory of Don Melton, known primarily as "the guy who created the Safari and WebKit in Apple», was published in The Loop Magazine in February of this year. Editor greatly cut it, so Melton decided to publish the article in its original form these days. Now you can learn all interesting details of Melton memories. Today - the second part.

The first part of an interesting interview Melton read here.

Easy opening

"After several meetings with Steve, I was allowed to do live demonstrations Safari application, sitting across from him.

Then who is usually from the design team presented screenshots or coded prototypes in Macromedia Director. And often they are also eligible to show actual use. But Scott wanted my speech in order to avoid sharp corners and failures.

By the end of summer in 2002, we have made progress with the look and feel of Safari. In discussing some of the elements in the main window of Safari Steve and I have focused on the status bar.

Steve did not want the implementation of the status bar, he saw no need for this. He thought it would be too confuse.

Fortunately, Scott and Steve persuaded to retain the status bar as an option, which is not displayed by default. But it meant that we should be faced with a new problem. Where we have to shove a progress bar to indicate the number of pages that are left to load?

Prior to this indicator lived happily ever after in the status bar. And now we had to find him a new home. We discussed all sorts of stupid ideas, including, insert it vertically on the edge of the box.

The room was quiet. Steve and I sat side by side, staring at the Safari. Suddenly we turned to each other and cried at the same time: "In the address of the page!"

And smiled. I added: "I will make a working version at the end of the week," Not without the help of my team of engineers, of course.

But I did not care. I just made a discovery with the tough guys. True, it was a small thing, but next to Steve's even a tiny thing acquires great value.

The irony of this discovery is that the years I have tried to remove it all. For the reason that even when the exact test showed that Safari faster than any other browser loads the page, this damned light made it seem slower for the user. Its remarkable appearance of killing our reputation.

Although we have not removed it, we finally changed the appearance and operation of the progress bar. And it saddened me, but at the same time to make happy.

"Sit down with a dog"

Sometimes, during these meetings, I was able to behold such things about Steve that few have had the privilege to see.

Once in the office of an employee he behaved like absent-mindedly sat with dull eyes, so Steve stopped the discussion, to ask whether he feels good. The man apologized and said that he was in the emergency room until late at night with her daughter following an accident at home.

Steve, clearly concerned, asked if it would be better to postpone the discussion. The guy thanked him and said that everything is fine and they can continue. Then Steve remembered a story about one of his own children, which was something like that a few weeks earlier, and how these events have shaken him too. After the discussion, he told the employee that he can take off.

On another occasion, he looked a little tormented Steve and apologized to all of us. He told us that he had not slept all night.

Steve and his family not so long ago, the dog died, a family member, and they decided to take a new puppy. After a few tense days fuss wife told him it was his turn to look after animals, so she and the children could get some sleep. And that meant that he had to sit on the floor in the kitchen till the morning with a small quirky dog, trying to calm her.

Even he thought it was funny, and it's good, because some of us have tried not neighing.

Yes, Steve could be sometimes experience. But he's not a robot. He was faced with the usual and mundane aspects of life, like everyone else. Maybe even I enjoyed them.

Critics may go to the forest... or where further

I've written before about the rehearsals of the main performances in Safari representation of honor at the 2003 Macworld. In addition, there is Steve showed the first modernization of our new Apple stores, while working more than a year.

Many experts in the technology and the business is already written off our undertakings in the retail sector, arguing that it would be a huge failure - another dull outlook on Apple. In fact, with shops, things went better than we expected. And Steve wanted to know well, that's all about it. especially experts.

Within two days of rehearsals I was sitting three or four rows from the stage in the nearly empty presentation hall with Ken Kosenda. Since the brightly lit scene lit and dark room, too, Ken and I were clearly visible to Steve or maintenance personnel in case you need our help to eliminate problems in Safari presentation.

But for the most part we had nothing to do but sit and watch the leading masters practicing their magic.

At the beginning of the first day, Steve said: "Phil is here?" Meant Phil Schiller, our head of marketing. Looking around, someone reported that he had not yet arrived.

Steve explained to all of us that he was planning a small rally, and first wants to show us, and it would be better if we did not say anything about it to Phil, when he will come later.

Then he put an extra special slide at the end of preezentatsii.

It. It was. Epic.

We laughed a moment in a row, looking at the slide, then quickly calmed down, and then the performance of wound off at the beginning. Time because Phil just entered the hall.

So Steve started rehearsals: first advertising campaign «Switcher», and then Apple stores.

At the end of the story about the upgrade shop he had to say something like "1.4 million visitors per month in December alone," but then added, "so for those of the press who questioned us ..."

Then he opened a special slide - I'm sure many people have seen this poster before - the style of the 1940s, a grinning man holding a large mug of coffee next to a person with the following text:

"How about a nice big mug rotozatykalnika?"

And then the best part - the part that we did not know - Steve stopped, turned to the vice-president of marketing and calmly asked: "What do you think, Phil? Is it too much? "

Ken and I struggled to hold, in order not to fall to the floor in convulsions of laughter.

The force has done Steve to play Phil showed not only that he had wonderful sense of humor, but also that he knew Phil fairly well, to see if he can evaluate joke. Phil did after a few seconds, it seems to me, a panic. "

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part 3