Published on September 09, 2020
This is a small story I read yesterday in Steve Job’s Biography by Walter Isaacson.
Personal computer revolutioner and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs launched first ever calculator program in 1984 in his dream project Macintosh Computers. The Macintosh team at that time was around 17 people and a young boy Chris Espinosa, (employee number 8, youngest Apple employee who joined Apple at the age of 14 in Job’s garage and currently also serving Apple as all-time longest serving employee) was designing a calculator app for Jobs.
Every day Chris used to show his calculator program to Steve Jobs after implementing his suggestions but was never able to impress Jobs. Steve had rooted admiration, knowledge, and impact for calligraphy fonts from his Reed college graduation days and was very particular about shape, sizes, distance between letters, letters with different designs, and curvy corners. He called the calculator application ‘a shit’! Smart (or may be annoyed by Steve’s demands!) Chris one afternoon presented Steve a very different version which was named ‘The Steve Jobs Roll Your Own Calculator Construction Set’. This was a dynamic application that allowed the user to set font size and colors, fix border width and colors of his choice and the calculator would resemble those settings. Instead of a weird look or words of appreciation, Steve immediately sat and started playing with this application of his name! After 10 mins of playing with this new soft toy, Steve showed Chris the calculator he wanted Chris to design to ship in MacOS! Both Steve and Chris were then finally happy!
The design that Chris created as per Steve’s instructions was first shipped in MacOS in The Macintosh 128 1st version in 1984. Mac users continued using the same calculator design for 17 years until classic MacOS was released in 2002!
This is a small but impactful story.
A story of strongness of desires and not settling for less!
A story of clarity of thoughts!
A story of stubbornness to change the world the way you want!
A story of chasing the goal that you set on Day 1!
A story of respecting your leader’s craziness!
A story of casting your employee’s best version!
A story to change the universe before The Goodbye Day!
A story of resilience to perfection!
