Steve Jobs immediately got rid of "About boxes" and Easter eggs when he returned to Apple. Probably the right call if you want to promote a brand of professionalism for your company.<p>But it is a bit more than that. About boxes that indicated the engineers that worked on the software are kind of cute in a way — recalling a time when a couple of programmers could write The Finder.<p>Credits (and Easter eggs) also speak of a time when engineers, if not driving the boat, were at least given a good deal of leeway to sign their creations.<p>I feel like there were a cadre of engineers that Jobs tried desperately to keep out of the public eye around the time of iTunes, etc. Worried, I suppose, about poaching.<p>Presenting at WWDC turned out to be the best way an Apple engineer could pass out their resumé.<p>When the engineers were essentially muted I think it represented a power shift at Apple toward management, marketing, design.<p>Good for Apple. It served the company and the brand well. No one can argue with the stock trajectory.<p>I, on the other hand, miss the cowboy programming days.
Here's the complete (?) exchange between Colligan and Jobs (no login wall or linkrot),<p><a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2013/01/24/steve-jobs-used-patents-like-mob-boss-threatened-to-sue-palm-over-patents-if-it-poached-any-apple-employees/" rel="nofollow">https://www.techdirt.com/2013/01/24/steve-jobs-used-patents-...</a>
> <i>Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other's employees, regardless of the individual's desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal.</i><p>Said in email, from one CEO to another, is this obviously intentional paper trail?<p>> <i>Threatening Palm with a patent lawsuit in response to a decision by one employee to leave is just out of line.</i><p>Did that patent lawsuit happen? (And if it did, did this email, which suggested illegal activity, come up in discovery.)
Palm... Or "how to blow your lead by wasting half a decade doing nothing".<p>I _loved_ my Palm Treo 600, that was released 5 freaking years before the first iPhone. It had everything I needed, but the OS felt anachronistic even in 2003.<p>So I was eagerly awaiting for Palm OS 6 to come, so I could upgrade. And waiting. And waiting. And then Palm died.
I'm impressed at how principled and unflappable Ed Colligan is in his response to Jobs:<p>><i>On the other hand, this is a small space, and it’s inevitable that we will bump into each other. Threatening Palm with a patent lawsuit in response to a decision by one employee to leave Apple is just out of line. A lawsuit would not serve either of our interests, and will not stop employees from migrating between our companies. This is a very exciting time for both of our companies, and the market is certainly big enough for both of us. We should focus on our respective businesses and not create unnecessary distractions.</i><p>Compare this to Eric Schmidt's spineless response when Jobs complained to him about Google poaching:<p>><i>Can you get this stopped and let me know why this is happening?" Schmidt wrote.</i><p>><i>Google's staffing director responded that the employee who contacted the Apple engineer "will be terminated within the hour."</i><p>><i>He added: "Please extend my apologies as appropriate to Steve Jobs."</i><p>Then again, Google thrived afterward and happily enjoyed the fruits of illegally suppressing wages, while Palm's market share plummeted soon after Jobs' threat.
Context: Steve Jobs, as well as Eric Schmidt at Google, and several other high ranking tech execs conspired to illegally fix wages lower by agreeing to not hire each others’ staff.<p>Billions of dollars were thus stolen from staff by these companies.<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust...</a><p>> <i>In June 2014, Judge Lucy Koh expressed concern that the settlement would not be a good one for the plaintiffs. Michael Devine, one of the plaintiffs, said the settlement was unjust. In a letter he wrote to the judge he said the settlement represented only one-tenth of the $3 billion in compensation the 64,000 workers could have made if the defendants had not colluded.</i><p>The companies got off with barely a slap on the wrist.
The thing that strikes me is the disparity in length. I think a lot of people don’t realize how hard it is to write succinctly. Jobs was (is?) probably under-appreciated as a writer.<p>Colligan was correct such an agreement would be illegal and could have just stood on that.
This crap happens all the time between companies.<p>When I worked at Apple around 1990, Steve who was as we all know was CEO of NeXT at the time was recruiting 6 Apple folks (including me) to help add the internationalization infrastructure to NeXT OS. We were invited to dinner at his Woodside home (the one where the Ducati motorcycle was parked inside at the bottom of the stairs which I can confirm to be true.)<p>The first thing, after we sat down for dinner, is Steve read us a letter that the Apple Lawyers sent him threatening to sue for poaching employees. He then sat down and we had a wonderful vegetarian meal prepared by his two ex. ahead Panisse chefs.<p>What was memorable about the meal was that Steve was still very emotionally attached to Apple and most of dinner was him asking us about Apple.<p>None of us took him up on the Job offer and I letter learn that the Apple lawyers found out about the meeting before hand because one of us (who I’ll kept nameless) alerted them about the meeting.
Keep in mind this was 2007 -- my hunch is it sounds like it probably was really about iOS vs webOS, not Apple vs Palm (Pilot/Foleo/PalmOS). Android wasn't even out when the email was sent, and I know webOS didn't come out to the public until 2009, but I am rather curious how long it was in development prior-to...<p>I was a webOS dude -- I still have a Palm Pre 1, 2 and 3 in a box. I tried to explain to my hipster doofus buddy at the time why I fucked with the Palm vision over the Apple vision (regrettably, in hindsight, part of it was due to Palm holding onto the physical keyboard, part of which was I was a huge fan of that due to entering the smartphone era after being a previous T-Mobile Sidekick 1 - 3 user) -- they both preached the same philosophy of web apps over native apps, except something intangible and aesthetic about the Pre resonated with me in late 00's more than iPhone did.<p>Apple also hadn't yet started deploying most of its critical infrastructure (walled-garden interoperability, APNS, any of that stuff) that lead to eventual dominance and ended up justifying the current stock price / mobile supremacy -- it was just a phone vs phone comparison.<p>These days, IMO, Apple is on top of the pile. They're launching satellites that likely will completely sidestep mobile carriers in the short term. They're doing stuff with hardware that today we think is stupid, but tomorrow might just be an accepted part of life. They've made it easy for anybody to lock their digital lives inside of the Apple vaults for a recurring monthly subscription lol.<p>I can't say any of that speaks to the 90's dream of an open internet, but they sure do seem to have a clear-cut plan and are quite good at executing it!
What would have happened had Jobs followed through with his threat and arranged to have Apple sue Palm? All this stuff would have entered the record, right?
These are some of the richest people debating whether to stop people from seeking to work elsewhere. Absolutely despicable. Hat's off to Palm for seeking the reasonably route.
Lot of comments observing that Apple is doing much better than Palm these days, but IMO they miss the point.<p>Steve is dead, and I don’t think he got to take any of that victory money with him.<p>Palm is dead too, but its investors and employees are doing something else now, and I don’t think they’re generally much worse for the wear. And the time that Palm’s engineers spent there is indelibly better because their boss respected them. On the other hand, I don’t know how many Apple employees got to retire early because of Steve’s management, but I’m not sure their lives, including their time working for Steve, are better overall.<p>Life is a journey, not a destination.
Totally fair and balanced response. I'd much rather works have liked to work for him than for Apple. Of course they didn't do very well in the end but I like this respectful attitude.
"Inside Macintosh" disciples would enjoy PalmOS app development.<p>Clearly the "Classic" Mac API was an inspiration. In a good way.<p>It was simple and fun.<p>By 2007, though, the world had changed.
I think the best description I have ever heard of Jobs was given by Bill Burr: "Jesus, Ghandi, John Lennon, ME!". Much like Lennon, he cultivated a whole peace/love/enlightenment image while being a garbage person. Lennon for example, beat the shit out of his first wife, abandoned his first son Julian, and then made sure they got no money from him. Sound familiar? Yeah Jobs did very much the same to his first wife and daughter (well, I am not sure if he physically abused his wife but still..).<p>I think you can make the argument that what Jobs brought to the table was impeccable taste. He was very good at pushing (some would say abusing) his people to make things that people genuinely loved. I think that design sense is notably absent in today's crop of tech CEO's. Again Burr nails it: "I want my entire album collection in this phone. GET ON IT!!"
"Palm now owns the former Siemens mobile patent portfolio"<p>Man, I miss Siemens phones, they were great at the time. I wonder what they would be like today if Siemens didn't quit the market.
Great email by Palm CEO. Very adult and levelheaded. Something we all expect and deserve from anyone that makes it to the CEO level. Unfortunately, it has been rare and even more so lately.<p>You will never be able to avoid the type of people that only care about the most money they can make. These people don’t care about the product, the mission, or the company. They will bounce from Apple to Palm and then somewhere else. Totally fine. I hope they are doing the level of work and have the level of skill that warrants their pay, if only for the sake of their colleagues that have to put up with them. I don’t have any sympathy for companies or people at the top of those companies that hire dipshits that can’t produce anything and still pay them unnecessary money.<p>Obviously, we hope companies pay employees that have passion for the mission and treat them fairly. Then they have a reason to stay. Unfortunately, a lot of these employees fall through the cracks and it’s a shame. If they jump to another company then finding out why is a good thing to focus on.
This spells out in black and white that Jobs was a pretty shameless crook. We already knew this based on Apple and its peers getting caught colluding to wage fix, and the settlement that came from this, but this is a great reminder.<p>I really feel like Jobs gets too much credit. He was smart, but he also rode on the shoulders of multiple giants in his career, and he got lucky several times. The cult of Jobs was convinced that Apple would go downhill in his absence, but the company has quantifiably done wildly better since Cook took over.