Lately, it’s become easier to know what Apple employees thought of their former company. Although Apple is famous for its secrecy and ensuring a more efficient way of working privateToday it is easy to find dozens of testimonies from former workers. And more to the point, it’s easy to find statements from employees that praise Steve Jobs. Even if it means getting fired. Let them tell Justin Santamaría, who worked at Apple as a chief engineer for an entire decade, from 2003 to 2013.
Justin was part of the key teams that created FaceTime, iMessage and CarPlay. And remember, the lessons he learned from Apple in general and Steve Jobs in particular served him well for the rest of his life and personal career.
The time it takes to press the key
Jobs was a driving force, a brash leader who was desperate to outpace his rivals. Until leaving”five years ahead of the others“, as he said during the presentation of the iPhone. The cost of all this was working upstream and requiring personal commitment from the teams and inappropriate involvement for other companies.
But Jobs was very clear that the only way to achieve perfection is through iteration. That is, repeat and repeat and refine until you find the correct version of what you’re looking for. As Justin Santamaría points out, “mastery requires iteration.” This is how FaceTime was born thanks to iChat and Jobs was clear that he had hit the nail on the head, that they had created something great:
When FaceTime made that sound Wowwhen it came to this 3D view, I remember Steve saying: “God, I’m going to make people shit their pants.”.
Failure is an opportunity for success
Another mantra learned by Justin Santamaría is related to failure and how we understand it. In technological terms, some setbacks are 100%. A wrong path teaches you where not to go. And success requires ideas, but also perseverance and effort. The moment eureka It doesn’t go to people, but you have to go get it. “If the muses arrive, let them catch you working,” said Picasso.
Justin Santamaría describes it this way: “use your failures as stepping stones to success.” As he recounts his days in the business, “Jobs expected things to go wrong. But he also understood that making mistakes is often worth the reward.” In fact, preparing for failure is essential to not losing focus. That’s why it’s so important to write the autopsy after each project and read them from a didactic perspective: extracting success from this failure.
A new way of understanding the old
Sometimes a function that we consider essential today is simply an obstacle, because we have not yet found another way to do the same. Here’s how Justin Santamaría sums it up:
“The original iPhone changed the world forever in 2007, with its multi-touch screen and numeric keypad as its highlights. The decision to remove the mechanical keyboard was a smart industrial design solution. It enabled the iPhone to have more screen space for other creative functions.
And that couldn’t be more true. Today it is unthinkable to acquire a smartphone equipped with a numeric keypad beyond a nostalgic and revisionist look. However, there was a time when Steve Jobs had to argue and confront his team to stand for something different. “If it works for Blackberry, why not for us,” they replied.. The funny thing is that the creators of Symbian ended up giving up, for example.
The fear, in reality, revolved around the phone made calls by accident or play music. That’s when the concept of “slide to unlock” appeared, and everything that followed: having the best screen in less than six months. They succeeded and, with it, changed the history and way of understanding telephony.
An older version of this article was originally published on 11/15/2023.
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