i love this. A startup I was at during early COVID times got acquired into Hewlett Packard Enterprise, so we all became HPE employees with HPE addresses. There was a similar form there to request "ryancnelson"@hpe, etc...<p>One of my co-workers got cute and asked for "root@hpe.com" .... And boy, there's a lot of cron jobs running at HP.
That is one of the most beautifully crafted “I did something dumb” emails — and to a CEO no less. I wish all my emails were so clear, direct, and personable.
That beats my similar anecdote.<p>At a high-profile place, I too used an automated IT thing to make a first-name email alias for myself, and there was a semi-famous person there with the same first name.<p>It played out much like this story: I started getting email for the VIP, so I told them, and switched it over to them. I don't recall them being as gracious as Steve Jobs that time. Then, the only other interaction I had with them was them during my time there, was them declining my request to participate in something. :)
This post is particularly funny to me as well as I also had a very common name@apple.com email and I would often get sensitive emails, including travel info, sent to me - despite the fact that I had worked there longer than most peers.<p>I eventually grew so annoyed with it that I ended up surrendering the email to said person as it was a losing battle.
Mind blown. I remember getting very excited that my teacher in 1991 sent an email. I didn't see the email or use that computer. Just the concept that the email was sent to another country. Weird I barely remember what the email was about. But something along the lines of science and contacting another school.
Despite P&G, people tend to assume my name ends Or instead of Er, so I thought it'd be smoother to get firstname@domain.tld<p>Turns out folks used to firstinitiallastname@ get confused pretty much every time I tell them to get me at firstname@
> Hi - I'm new here. I did something dumb and<p>> set up a mail alias so that steve@next.com<p>> would go to me.<p>> This was a bad idea, I'm sorry.<p>> I've changed it to steve@next.com goes to you,<p>> not to me. I think that makes more sense.<p>> My apologies.<p>> Signed, new guy.<p>What a great example of how to own a mistake, apologize, communicate, and get it fixed. I can think of so many past situations with coworkers that would have been so much better handled with quick communication like this.
Steve Hayman, long time NeXT/Apple employee who just retired last week from Apple having started in 1993 with NeXT.<p>His WebObjects demo from 2001 is one of the most entertaining tech demos I've ever seen<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfWnDJtUyrw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfWnDJtUyrw</a>
My interactions with Steve Jobs came earlier, when he wasn't quasi-mythical, but was already a PITA. A typical interaction with Steve Jobs in 1976:<p>"Hi! Are you Steve Wozniak?"<p>"No, I'm Steve Jobs."<p>"Okay ... umm ... where is Steve Wozniak?"<p>I suspect people's preference for those who were actually building things, over selling them, may have twisted SJ's character ... I mean, more twisted than it already was.<p>Ironically, two people I worked with in the early Apple days -- Steve Jobs, enough already said, and Jef Raskin, who designed the first incarnation of the Macintosh -- both died of pancreatic cancer.<p>I actually miss Jef. We lived together for a while, as I was finishing Apple Writer and my frequent commutes from Oregon were becoming impractical.<p>Here's a Jef Raskin story I think almost no one knows. Jet resolved to design an electric car. He packed a bunch of 12 volt car batteries into a relatively small, lightweight car, and, after removing the ICE, rigged an electric motor in its place.<p>First test drive, Jef tried to descend a hill, only to discover the car's brakes, which until then had gotten an assist from the ICE, were nowhere near adequate to stop the suddenly-massive battery bank. Very scary, briefly out of control, but no harm done.
One thing that struck me reflecting on this is how much of Steve Job's mythos is about his harsh unrelenting treatment of his employees. I think notes like this shows that Steve must have shown a lot of gratitude as well which goes unnoticed because its less exciting to talk about.
It's a really cool story, but I can't help but feel a lot has be idealized around regular people who did extraordinary things.<p>I mean, Steve Jobs had to work with people, but he wasn't some prophet. He was a talented guy, who had his failures and successes, more of the latter.<p>It is a cool story, but if my boss of 15 years ago becomes world famous, I'm not going to personally treasure the email he sent with 4 words, possible 2 automated, write a blog post about it.<p>I'm just going to giggle to myself a little. Again, I might be in the minority here.
It's interesting that they can just reassign an email alias to someone else without any approvals. Could this be a permissions oversight? Or could the person who designed the system thought that heck it's always permitted to reassign an email alias owned by the current user?
Honestly, kind of sad that Tim Cook’s reply was so generic. I don’t think I’m off base in saying this, and from personal experience, he is really not connected to the people at the company.
I emailed Steve Jobs right after he came back to Apple and suggested they make a carry-able computer that could project the interface and keyboard input to any glass surface.
I have absolutely no respect for Tim Cook anymore. I understood that Cook was the operations guy and not a product guy like Jobs.<p>I even have to begrudgingly admit that he has to navigate the political waters in both China and the US doing things I don’t like.<p>But he consistently makes Apple’s products worse in the name of money - advertising on the phone, malicious compliance in the EU, what came out in the recent court case where he ignored Phil Schiller (head of App Store and long time a Apple employee) who suggested they do the right thing as far as the courts ruling, and how the experience is worse not being able to buy third party content (kindle) and subscriptions within apps. Well you can now. The Kindle app has been updated.<p>Of course I don’t care if they skim 30% from games, loot boxes and coins where 90% of their revenue comes from.<p>I wouldn’t consider it an honor to get an email from Cook. The enshittification of iOS is completely on him.