Writers Block Live

I suppose it’s fair to say I know Steve Jobs; at least more than most people know him. I’ve been in meetings with him, I’ve been chewed out by him (more than once), I’ve had lunch with him, and I’ve even been in his house. But it was all ‘in the line of duty’, and didn’t give me the kind of insight into how he thinks that I wish I had today. (more…)

I was catching up on the Apple-related news yesterday (after returning from the long weekend) and learned about an unwelcome new feature that came along with the 10.4.7 update. Apparently there is a new component of the Dashboard which ‘phones home’ to Apple on a regular basis. Ostensibly, this is to check the installed versions of your Dashboard widgets against the ‘official’ versions to make sure they have not been modified.

It sounded like a reasonable explanation to me; perhaps it’s a preemptive strike against malware that might masquerade as a widget*. Reflecting on the pros and cons of such a system reminded me of a conversation about similar things in the Apple boardroom several years ago.

The iApps Review Meetings

During the big push that led up to the new products being released at MacWorld, there would be a regularly scheduled weekly meeting where Steve would review the progress on the ‘i-apps’. It was held in the Apple boardroom and usually attended by the product managers and engineering lead on each of the applications. Senior execs, like Avie Tevenian, Eddie Cue, or Phil Schiller would also attend if there were particularly important things to review. Each product group would bring a Mac configured with latest build of their software so Steve could check it out. (more…)