What is Digg?190 Comments
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+266it really was a good story, great ending: "We wanted to release a Windows version as part of Windows 98, but sadly, Microsoft has effective building security."
- jdkane, on 10/12/2007, -9/+248I've read this story before but I never get tired of it. Please Digg it if you like it, so everybody can get a feeling of the pioneering days of the personal computer, well of the Mac's story in particular.
This is a story of people who truly loved their work and believed in it. It's severely motivational if nothing else. That's worth a lot in and of itself. It's also funny. - ThinkBox, on 10/12/2007, -6/+156So, I guess he was the first Macintosh Trojan that didn't need administrator privileges!
- lykathea, on 10/12/2007, -3/+76I never thought I'd see "Microsoft" and "effective security" in the same sentence.
- Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -6/+68Yeah, too bad more people don't work for big corporations for free.
- netgoddess, on 10/12/2007, -3/+64Greg Robbins is now at Google, and helped get Ron an invitation to tell the story for Google Video a couple of weeks ago:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7497796873809571567 - Ibox, on 10/12/2007, -1/+60Uhm... yeah it''s old, dumb ass, it is a story about things that happened in 1994.
You must really get frustrated in History class - Mambo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+54I love how as soon as the managers were out of the way, a lot of work got accomplished in a very short time frame.
- Dradis, on 10/12/2007, -4/+56Really amazing, these guys are pretty inspirational.
- rgov, on 10/12/2007, -11/+63digg++ for using "sneaked" instead of "snuck."
- tonyspencer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+47That happened a lot with the original Mac. Jobs wanted to limit things so much. RAM was an example, but the engineers kept working so later models could accept higher RAM.
One of my favourites concerned the floppy. Originally the Mac was going to have the flaky drive from the Lisa, but the engineers preferred the then new Sony 3.5". An engineer from Sony was there, when Jobs made a sudden visit, and they hid the Sony guy in a closet... - UrlorJkron, on 10/12/2007, -12/+58I found that line hilarious.
- robbh66, on 10/12/2007, -3/+43Great story. Shows how hardwork and dedication can even manage to break a big corporation's rigidness.
- steveng, on 10/12/2007, -0/+38My new favorite saying is "That doesn't suck."
- lazydrumhead, on 10/12/2007, -4/+36How unfortunate that such occurances are rare.
- ShrimpCrackers, on 10/12/2007, -2/+34Yeah thats what I call dedication. Its interesting how he would've been unable to create such a wonderful piece of software had he been on payroll and under someone.
- hobbesmaster, on 10/12/2007, -2/+26Makes perfect sense to me...
First 90%: 90%
Second 90%: 99%
Third 90%: 99.9%
And no software project is ever 100%... - dizzledaking, on 10/12/2007, -1/+24Apple willingly let him in? Funny, I thought he was breaking in. This makes the guy special, not apple.
- sheinypoo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+22this american life did an episode on this story. truly amazing.
http://207.70.82.73/pages/descriptions/05/284.html - PayneX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+23"I believe you have my stapler..."
- Odo08, on 10/12/2007, -3/+23I'm sick of the people commenting with the "old story" s#!t. If it is a good story it bears repeating because maybe, just maybe, someone has not seen it yet and would enjoy it.
Maybe the people commenting with "old story" have not yet entered into high school where they teach a whole hour a day about "old stories". It's called "history". - drewthaler, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20Correction: This is what makes Apple's *engineers* special. The rest of the company (legal, HR, security, etc) of those days would have kicked him out posthaste.
If the same thing happened today, the engineers are much less in control, and the rest of the company would probably have him arrested and prosecuted. C'est la vie.
I remember the story of Graphing Calculator quite well. It happened just a bit before my time, but it was always retold with fondness by the guys I knew who were there. And the engineers who worked with Ron kept fighting to get the newer versions licensed and distributed. It finally stopped shipping with the machines years later, and they never replaced it. OSX these days has "Grapher", which is a sad imitation that wishes it was half as cool as even the original Graphing Calculator -- let alone the modern versions. - elnerdo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18It wasn't really 'the company' that did it. The people at the top had no idea what was going on.
- avitzur, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18I'd been working on the software for ten years prior to setting foot at Apple, and as the programmer, own the copyright unless I sign it to someone else. Now, they could have charged me with criminal trespass....
- calambrac, on 10/12/2007, -3/+20Maybe when it first came out, but when it first came out, OS X sucked in many more ways than "no decent calculator". Now it comes with a great calculator that has scientific and hex modes, as well as with Grapher, which is similar to Graphing Calculator.
- chesterjosiah, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17If you haven't read this story, do yourself a favor and read it. Unique, remarkable, must-read for engineers and non-engineers alike.
- jragon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Greg Robbins worked at RealNetworks for a long time, which explains a lot of the reason why the Mac OS X RealPlayer doesn't suck as much as it could have.
When I realized that the story referred to THAT Greg Robbins, the guy down the hall that was always so nice and helpful troubleshooting issues, I got star struck.
When I told other people about the story, they all cracked jokes about how pathetic it is to work for free. It felt like Greg and I were the only two people in the slowly dying company that realized how great it is to believe in something. Even software. - Linkage155, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16Awesome story, love the ending: "We wanted to release a Windows version as part of Windows 98, but sadly, Microsoft has effective building security."
- brad3378, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15LOL
This is my favorite part - how true!!
......"Since that left no managers in the loop, we had no meetings and could be extremely productive. "..... - deadbaby, on 10/12/2007, -9/+22Old story but still fun to read. This is the type of stuff that makes Apple special.
- vhold, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14"Yeah, too bad more people don't work for big corporations for free."
This was my first thought.. the fact he says that it's common for engineers to work on canceled projects in their own time, and that such canceled projects are also very common leads me to believe that this is potentially nothing more then a management technique to get their employees to work more for free. - antny, on 10/12/2007, -7/+19"It is a cliche in our business that the first 90 percent of the work is easy, the second 90 percent wears you down, and the last 90 percent - the attention to detail - makes a good product"
he should try putting those figures into his graphing calculator... - veritech, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11This is why i wanna be a software developer, unlimited commitment to something that you love, there can be no better job in the world.
It's not always about the money, sometimes it just about creating some damn good software - geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14I assume he didn't get hired at Apple. That's corporate america for you, a smaller company would see him as a motivated and hard working addition to their staff.
- whisk3rs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10"At 1:00 a.m., we trekked to an office that had a PowerPC prototype. We looked at each other, took a deep breath, and launched the application. The monitor burst into flames."
Funny too! Dugg! - moofree, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9I found it on the macs at school in middle school. I loved that program.
- Kerr, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9awesome story...is this the Grapher that is in OS X.4 today?
- gaius_baltar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9This is a pretty classic story. Yes I've heard it before but more people should read it.
- kertap, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8He was a loose cannon with a heart of gold
- NoozeHound, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12So how you stand on 'dove and dived'?
- morcheeba, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8tony - that's pretty funny! I've had the pleasure of working with japanese engineers, but I don't think I could bring myself to hide one in the closet. My language skills aren't good enough!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Exactly, a movie about this would be spectacular. Instead of stupid "Sports Motivational Movies" we could finally have a "Geek Motivational Movie" that would pluck the geek heart strings inside me, and many others around the world.
- LoungeActx, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8not the same one I don't think. But in Applications>Utilities you'll find a program called Grapher, which is a Graphing Calculator.
- NoozeHound, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7In fairness, that's exactly the point of management - making sure the people are doing the right work on the right projects and also making sure that less well-focused individuals stay on task. Technically the people offering their services as resources were acting as management in ensuring the project had sufficient resource. Finally, the guy who got the orange badges made what could only be called 'a management decision'.
Just a few thoughts. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10Boy was I wrong! I thought Microsoft had nothing that was secure!
- Twango, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6A great story ... because it teaches SO MUCH about how the world really works. Many of the greatest things ever done faced endless opposition, short-sightedness, ridicule and worse. And everything else that needs doing faces the same gauntlet of people who seem determined to eradicate life, or at least all expressions of sentience, from the world.
Here's to all the heroes that keep making things better despite the stoopids.
"The country is divided up into those that don't have alot of clothes to put on…the 'Less-ons', and the big-shots who have alot of clothes…So who's running the country? The 'More-ons!'" - grayapple, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Fantastic story to read :) - Wonder what their up to now?
- Cattttt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Mr. Avitzur has his own company, Pacific Tech: http://www.pacifict.com/Products.html
Does anyone know what became of Greg Robbins? - newbill123, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Grapher 1.0 included on Mac OS X is a Cocoa user interface built atop a Unix executable (grapher). The more traditional, accounting, and hex calculators are part of Calculator.app in Applications (but don't look for graphing here).
While there's a version of Graphing Calculator included in the Mac OS 9 Classic disc, the modern "Graphing Calculator" in this article is actually a product on the site where this article was hosted. It's called Graphing Calculator by Pacific Tech. It has a Windows version, but it doesn't appear to have a Universal binary available for MacIntel users.
http://www.pacifict.com/Products.html - Cattttt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I see your point, but the company is in essence the people in the company. The honchos and Legal were not in the know, but a bunch of engineers and managers were in on it. I like this quote:
"They laughed, until they realized I was serious. Then they told me, "Don't repeat this story.""
One more thing - IIRC, the Graphic Calculator wasn't touted much - it was just there. I remember finding it, wondering what it was, and using it. It would have come in handy when I took Calculus and numerical analysis, during the dark ages (well, not quite). :) -
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