Skunkworks At Apple -- The Graphing Calculator Story

avitzur writes with a link to the story behind the Macintosh Graphing Calculator. An excerpt from this strange account: "It's midnight. I've been working sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. I'm not being paid. In fact, my project was canceled six months ago, so I'm evading security, sneaking into Apple Computer's main offices in the heart of Silicon Valley, doing clandestine volunteer work for an eight-billion-dollar corporation."

Comments

EA?

[danielacroft]

I hope we don't hear from this person's significant other soon...

Re:EA?

[avitzur]

>I hope we don't hear from this person's significant other soon...
I was dating a high school math teacher at the time, but, unsurprisingly, the relationship did not survive the events of the story.

Re:EA?

[rampant mac]

"I hope we don't hear from this person's significant other soon..."

Somehow, I don't think that will be a problem around here.

Re:EA?

[DarkAurora]

This is - beyond a doubt - the most amazing piece of software I have ever seen. I never knew this gem was sitting quietly on my hard drive.

At first, I was unimpressed. However, as soon as I saw it animate I was blown away. Of course, when I saw the plane intercept of a 3D function animated, I was visibly giddy. :)

I so wish I had this while in my vector calculus course. In fact, I think I might stop by former professor's office when school is back in session and show him.

As soon as your site recovers from this merciless slashdotting, I think I might pick up version 3.

And again, wow. :)

Re:EA?

[caino59]

gotta hand it to you - i think thats the best read i've had here on /. in quite a while. That is a truly great story - one to pass down through the generations. Thanks for sharing the story and your creation!

Re:EA?

[Tackhead]

> > I hope we don't hear from this person's significant other soon...
> I was dating a high school math teacher at the time, but, unsurprisingly, the relationship did not survive the events of the story.

"Your shirt smells like someone else's perfume? Lipstick on your collar? Don't try to lie to me, you bastard! You really spent the night at that damn computer lab again!"

Re:EA?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Same Pay. Same coolness. Better recognition. Maybe even a job offer somewhere."

...although lacking the benefits of apparently rigorous interface and QA testing, leading to the inevitable CLI with a half-assed GUI tacked on a year or two later and missing half the functionality of the CLI it was supposed to replace.

And it's "would have," not "would of."

Re:EA?

[JamieF]

Did YOU read the story?

The 2 QA guys volunteered from September to October. Then they were assigned to the project officially in October, as were usability folks (who have a usability lab at their disposal). The story doesn't specify how many QA people were assigned, so maybe it was more than 2.

They also got free prototype hardware to develop on that made their app run 50 times as fast as it did on regular, publicly available hardware.

They shipped in January, so that's 1 month of 2 QA guys' free time, versus 4 months of full time QA, and an unknown amount of usability assistance.

This could certainly be made available to an open source project as well, of course. But don't overlook the big increase in resources that the project got when Apple managers decided to officially support it.

This is the leap that companies need to start making with open source, both in visualizing how it was made, and in investing in it. It isn't always a nights-and-weekends hobby project; sometimes it's a full time project with lots of people being paid to work on it. The fly-by-night image is one that Microsoft really, really wants people to believe, so they can say stuff like "there's no QA" or "there are no real releases" and make people scared to buy anything but Microsoft's incredibly high-quality, bug-free code. *cough*

Article Text without silly next buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

Pacific Tech's Graphing Calculator has a long history. I began the work in 1985 while in school. That became Milo, and later became part of FrameMaker. Over the last twenty years, many people have contributed to it. Graphing Calculator 1.0, which Apple bundled with the original PowerPC computers, originated under unique circumstances.

I used to be a contractor for Apple, working on a secret project. Unfortunately, the computer we were building never saw the light of day. The project was so plagued by politics and ego that when the engineers requested technical oversight, our manager hired a psychologist instead. In August 1993, the project was canceled. A year of my work evaporated, my contract ended, and I was unemployed.

I was frustrated by all the wasted effort, so I decided to uncancel my small part of the project. I had been paid to do a job, and I wanted to finish it. My electronic badge still opened Apple's doors, so I just kept showing up.

I had many sympathizers. Apple's engineers thought what I was doing was cool. Whenever I gave demos, my colleagues said, "I wish I'd had that when I was in school." Those working on Apple's project to change the microprocessor in its computers to the IBM PowerPC were especially supportive. They thought my software would show off the speed of their new machine. None of them was able to hire me, however, so I worked unofficially, in classic "skunkworks" fashion.

I knew nothing about the PowerPC and had no idea how to modify my software to run on it. One August night, after dinner, two guys showed up to announce that they would camp out in my office until the modification was done. The three of us spent the next six hours editing fifty thousand lines of code. The work was delicate surgery requiring arcane knowledge of the MacOS, the PowerPC, and my own software. It would have taken weeks for any one of us working alone.

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. We calmly carried it outside to avoid setting off smoke detectors, plugged in another monitor, and tried again. The software hadn't caused the fire; the monitor had just chosen that moment to malfunction. The software ran over fifty times faster than it had run on the old microprocessor. We played with it for a while and agreed, "This doesn't suck" (high praise in Apple lingo). We had an impressive demo, but it would take months of hard work to turn it into a product.

I asked my friend Greg Robbins to help me. His contract in another division at Apple had just ended, so he told his manager that he would start reporting to me. She didn't ask who I was and let him keep his office and badge. In turn, I told people that I was reporting to him. Since that left no managers in the loop, we had no meetings and could be extremely productive. We worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week. Greg had unlimited energy and a perfectionist's attention to detail. He usually stayed behind closed doors programming all day, while I spent much of my time talking with other engineers. Since I had asked him to help as a personal favor, I had to keep pace with him. Thanks to an uncurtained east-facing window in my bedroom, I woke with the dawn and usually arrived ten minutes before Greg did. He would think I had been working for hours and feel obliged to work late to stay on par. I in turn felt obliged to stay as late as he did. This feedback loop created an ever-increasing spiral of productivity.

People around the Apple campus saw us all the time and assumed we belonged. Few asked who we were or what we were doing.When someone did ask me, I never lied, but relied on the power of corporate apathy. The conversations usually went like this:

Q: Do you work here?
A: No.
Q: You mean you're a contractor?
A: Actually, no.
Q: But then who's paying you?
A: No one.
Q: How do you live?
A: I live simply.
Q: (Incredulously) What are you doing

Re:Article Text without silly next buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

Beyond this lies another set of questions, both psychological and political. Was I doing this out of bitterness that my project had been canceled? Was I subversively coopting the resources of a multinational corporation for my own ends? Or was I naive, manipulated by the system into working incredibly hard for its benefit? Was I a loose cannon, driven by arrogance and ego, or was I just devoted to furthering the cause of education?

Or did they do it because they could? One of the things that so many Free Software users overlook as they use the software they didn't pay anything for is that OSS is more than about just getting stuff without paying, it represents the right for someone to write that code. Imagine a world where if you didn't legally work for Apple, you couldn't write a program for their computer. If you weren't a licensed and regulated programmer, you wouldn't be able to develop your own software or develop software for other people.

With signed code initiatives like TCPA/Palladium, that world could be coming to a planet near you soon.

Re:Article Text without silly next buttons

[name773]

that world could be coming to a planet near you soon
then it's just the pits for mars, isn't it... we should recall the rover as soon as possible.

Re:Article Text without silly next buttons

[bob beta]

Imagine a world where if you didn't legally work for Apple, you couldn't write a program for their computer.

It really wasn't that long ago that you had to request an extension from Apple to get a 'legitimate' Mac application up and running. Sure, they were developer friendly, but you didn't want them not liking you at Cupertino.

I worked at a company that had a small skunkworks developing a medical diagnostic device. That team applied and became registered Apple Developers. Their status later expired, but it was a small closed project so it didn't really matter.

You couldn't just go out and buy Turbo C and sling code for the Mac at that time.

Re:Article Text without silly next buttons

[bokmann]

Uh, you most certainly could buy compilers and tools such as Macintosh Programmers Workshop, ThinkC and ThinkPascal from Symantec, and Codewarrior from Metrowerks. I was exclusively a Mac programmer from 1985 - 1996.

The 'extension' of which you speak is equivalent to the file extensions under dos, like .exe, .txt, .doc, etc. MacOS has meta-data about each file - a 4 digit code identifying the file type, and a 4 digit code identifying the file that created it (which allows for some neat capabilities such as having two files of the same type, but opened by different applications when they are double-clicked on.)

The only reason you had to 'register' an extention with Apple was so other applications could know, for sure, what kind of file an extention represented. There is nothing to stop anyone from using any code they desired, just as there is nothing to stop me from naming a file with an ending like '.dll' under dos/windows... it just isn't a prudent thing to do.

Re:Article Text without silly next buttons

[Eric S Raymond]

I'm not sure, but this may be why Google is so great, their culture is hacker-friendly, being formed by two graduate students.

Also I believe the original creator of AutoCAD, John Walker, wrote something about creating democratic companies where everyone is equal below the one visionary.

It's called the AutoCAD File:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/nav/topics/autodesk .html

Re:Article Text without silly next buttons

[l3pYr]

...those of us that use Free Sofware exclusively...
Read: Leeches

Re:Article Text without silly next buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me describe it so that even a windows user can understand:

It would be like right-clicking on a file, selecting 'Properties...' and seeing this:

File Type: TEXT
Opens in : WORD

And another file would have:

File Type: TEXT
Opens in : WPAD

One text file would have a Word icon, the other a Wordpad icon. But you wouldn't be prevented from opening either file from either application.

I haven't used Macs in years, but I do think this is a nice feature.

Dedication

[dshaw858]

Wow. This story really really amazed me. It made me think of dedication. I can think of people *cough* EA employees *cough* that work those long hours, and that finish a project, but that's because they're forced to... I really wonder if this type of dedication for just the love of the work is existant anymore... I, for one, wish it was a lot more frequent.

- dshaw

Re:Dedication

[High Jumbllama]

The words obsessive and idiot comes to mind if this was true.

Re:Dedication

[Jahf]

Phooey.

It is one thing to for a person or three finish a project out of love without expecting a reward. Key words "a project".

It is FAR different for a company to expect that level of work in a non-ceasing manner from their entire dev staff, knowing full well that it destroys mental and social health.

Not to mention the difference in stress level when you're volunteering that level of effort versus being chided in the hopes of squeezing out even more.

I've worked in both situations. One is a suite kind of pain, the other is an intense kind of anguish.

Re:Dedication

[badriram]

Yup you see it everyday... Open Source.

Although there are people that do expect fame/ power from open source, a lot of them do the work because they like to do it. But do not blame EA employees, I would never do such work any any For profit company in my life unless they paid me more.

The first one is giving, the second one is being moronic....

Re:Dedication

[raindog_mx]

Hey this guy had no family to support and he could live from his savings. I have a family and even tough I'd love to have a job as rewarding as that one, my savings wouldn't last more than a month. That guy should be praised as he excersiced his choice to do a somewhat heroic task yet he always had the right to be paid for what he did. The story doesn't say so but in the end I believe he should have got more than smart friends and seller badges from his project, and that's ok for me.

Re:Dedication

[pHatidic]

Yeah all this guy's dedication is making me feel guilty for posting while being too lazy to even read the story.

Re:Dedication

[hchaput]

I work for EA. I work long hours. I've never been asked to work past 6pm. I *have* been asked to stop working and go home for the night. I write games and I love it. It is my dream job.

No offense to you, but I wish people would stop thinking they know all about EA because they read a blog.

Microsoft Security?

[Anonymous Coward]

"...but sadly, Microsoft has effective building security."

I hear you can use Internet Explorer and ActiveX to get around any Microsoft security...

Re:Microsoft Security?

[IO ERROR]

Being the only person I know to walk into a Microsoft building and out of same carrying CD-R's stamped "Microsoft Confidential" all over them, without actually being there to do any work for the company, I think I should comment on what MS building security was like.

In order to get into the building, I had to use the phone outside the door to call upstairs to my friend who then came down and let me in. (Five-digit extensions starting with 2.) Or you could just follow somebody in, but watch out, the building I went into has double sets of doors, and you have to swipe your card at both sets. And there's a receptionist inside who had to be distracted...

Once you're in, you're in. If you look vaguely like you belong there, nobody's going to raise a stink. It helps a LOT to wear an old T-shirt and jeans, the standard MS business suit. Wander in and out of offices nobody's in, load up your backpack with cool stuff lying around. Stop by the kitchen and pick up some free soda. (Well they don't have that anymore, I guess...) Play a game of pool or Donkey Kong.

If someone does challenge you, tell them the connector you're writing is driving you insane, and do they want to pop out for Chinese?

And definitely swipe 50 of those "Microsoft Confidential" CD-R's.

Sometime that evening, I notice the building seems a lot dimmer than it was before. When I got outside I noticed Microsoft Security driving around, stopping in front of a building, and pointing some sort of remote control at it. He pushed something, and most of the lights in the building shut off. I STILL want one of those remotes.

I got in my car, drove back across the lake, and hightailed it up I-5 to Canada...

Re:Microsoft Security?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just setting straight some of your inaccuracies

In order to get into the building, I had to use the phone outside the door to call upstairs to my friend who then came down and let me in. (Five-digit extensions starting with 2)

Internal numbers are accessible via the last 5 digits on an internal phone, but not all (or even most?) start with 2. Or maybe you're trying to get your friend in trouble?

Or you could just follow somebody in, but watch out, the building I went into has double sets of doors, and you have to swipe your card at both sets. And there's a receptionist inside who had to be distracted...

If you tailgated in years ago, that may be true. These days, good luck tailgating if you're not known by the person you're following, even if you have a valid badge. Also, while all buildings have a double set of doors (access to the lobby from outside, and access to the inside from the lobby), the outside doors (into the lobby only) are unlocked during business hours. Good luck distracting the secretary (or more likely, secretaries). You'll need more than one accomplice to do that for you (they're really not busy enough for you to bank on random traffic, and even when they are busy they have a clear view of the doors and will stop you from tailgating), at which point you could just get a valid visitor's pass instead.

Wander in and out of offices nobody's in, load up your backpack with cool stuff lying around.

Cool stuff generally is not just "lying around", unless you want posters and such off of the wall. Everything else is in a locked lab or occupied offices, and in the latter case anything you could easily get away with is personal property. Do you feel good about stealing from people? (ignoring that you're suggesting stealing from a company)

Stop by the kitchen and pick up some free soda. (Well they don't have that anymore, I guess...)

The free sodas are still there.

Play a game of pool or Donkey Kong.

If that's your goal, you need to have good inside sources. Entertainment items vary from building to building and floor to floor. If your heart is set on Donkey Kong, you'll be disappointed to find only Street Fighter 2 if you didn't do your research (and that's not publicly available, or even easily internally available aside from visiting every building).

And definitely swipe 50 of those "Microsoft Confidential" CD-R's.

Which are not sitting out in plain view, if available at all in that building. If it's software available to all internal employees (for example, connection manager software to connect to the VPN from home), you have to get it from the receptionist. If it's for a product group, it's either locked up in the lab or in the group admin's office (or more likely, not available in CD form, but on an internal share you'll not have access to). Either way, don't expect to find piles of booty just laying around.

Sometime that evening, I notice the building seems a lot dimmer than it was before. When I got outside I noticed Microsoft Security driving around, stopping in front of a building, and pointing some sort of remote control at it. He pushed something, and most of the lights in the building shut off. I STILL want one of those remotes.

I've never seen that, but most buildings are on a timer to shut off lights (not power) after a certain time of night. There are internal overrides if you're still working.

I got in my car, drove back across the lake, and hightailed it up I-5 to Canada...

There's a good chance your car would've been towed if you weren't showing a valid parking pass or visitor's parking pass. And if you drove back across the lake to get to I5, you wasted a whole lot of time sitting in traffic on the floating bridges (I90, SR520). If Canada is the goal, better to take I405 up around the lake and meet I5 there.

Re:Microsoft Security?

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Folks, if you've been paying attention, you will notice that an actual Microsoft employee has been "social engineered" into revealing information about the security in the buildings. This guy says "good luck" plenty of times, without realizing that these amazing ninja-turtle secretaries and others would cough up info with less trouble than he has.

Re:Microsoft Security?

[richie2000]

an actual Microsoft employee has been "social engineered" into revealing information about the security in the buildings.

He's probably on the ActiveX team and not really used to the concepts of "security" and "secrets".

Re:Microsoft Security?

[Webmoth]

Spurs and loops on the interstate highway system are given three-digit identifiers where the last two digits reflect the primary route they join. An odd first digit represnts a spur; an even first digit represents a loop or bypass.

There's also an I-405 in Oregon, running through downtown Portland.

But this is all off-topic, so I'll take my karma hits now.

Re:Microsoft Security?

[ferratus]

I got in my car, drove back across the lake, and hightailed it up I-5 to Canada... Well, there it is. The proof W was looking for all this time. Canada really is arboring terrorists and other assorted bad guys (tm). You guys really need to invade us soon. Who knows, as soon as we get helicopters powerful enough to cross the borders, imagine what we could do!

Re:Microsoft Security?

[3.1415926535]

[...] Canada really is arboring terrorists [...]

Canada is putting terrorists into trees?

Re:Microsoft Security?

[identity0]

But I bet you you don't know the secret entry codes to NORAD headquarters - in fact, I'll BET YOU A HUNDRED DOLLARS that you don't know, and couldn't possibly tell me how to get in. : )

Re:Microsoft Security?

[26199]

Read Kevin Mitnick's book, The Art of Deception. It's made very clear that information that "everyone knows" is exactly what you need to break into most places. It's what you need to seem like just another employee. Most companies aren't smart enough to treat such information as confidential, but that doesn't mean it's unimportant.

Re:Microsoft Security?

[kimota]

"arboring"? Terrorists grow in orchards? I guess that would explain a lot....

--Kimota!

Re:Microsoft Security?

[gatekeep]

Isn't it generally agreed that security through obscurity is a bad thing for software? Why should it be any different for physical security?

Re:Microsoft Security?

[Pope]

What do you think the Okanagan is for?

Re:Microsoft Security?

[Senzei]

Oh no, I know it.

The code is:
1
2
3
4
5

The same as on my luggage.

Working for no pay...

[Junior J. Junior III]

This is guy put the "insane" in "insanely great"

Re:Working for no pay...

[Junior J. Junior III]

Suddenly I'm typing engrish... should have included the words "the" and "who" in there somewhere.

I like this line

[iosmart]

"The secret to programming is having smart friends." hahaha

Re:I like this line

[KillerCow]

"The secret to programming is having smart friends." hahaha

I have to agree with that. I've solved many of my problems by IMing a friend. I might not know how to do X, but PersonA does, and he can shave a few days off of my learning curve by sending me in the right direction when I get stuck.

Sadly, some of my employers have had "no instant messaging" policies.

Re:I like this line

[MikeFM]

Isn't that really the key to success in all parts of life? It's not what you know, it's who you know. If you know the right people and they like you well enough to do favors for you then you'll likely be a success.

Opensource plays this card a lot. One of the best ways to earn favors is by giving favors. If you write some cool code and give it away then people who use it will often be willing to return favors of one kind or another back to you. The fact that copying is easy in the digital age, the horror of Micrsoft, the MPAA, and the RIAA, makes it easy to pass favors out. Pass them out in mass and you can get massive favors returned. The concept of a gift economy is really that easy.

Heh

[daveschroeder]

The last line of the story:

We wanted to release a Windows version as part of Windows 98, but sadly, Microsoft has effective building security.

Too bad that security didn't translate to other areas...

Re:Heh

[binkzz]

We wanted to release a Windows version as part of Windows 98, but sadly, Microsoft has effective building security.

I heard that if you issue any sentence longer than 1024 characters to the first guard, he'll obey any command you give after that.

For the second guard, keep shift pressed before he sees you and he won't notice you.

what do EA employees think of this?

[djeddiej]

Recently there have been a number of slashdot postings related to the conditions of working for EA (can't recall the exact URL, but summary best described as "slave-labour like"). I wonder what those folks think of this level of dedication?

On another note, it was a nice holiday feel-good read for the techno-geek developer. Also inspires me to finish the damn project that I am on right now so that I can "be home for Christmas".

Happy Holidays!

Re:what do EA employees think of this?

[Fahrenheit 450]

But there's a huge difference between working long hours when you want to, and doing it when you're forced to. I worked for a while at Rockwell Automation, and I had one winter where I was working 16 hour days for a month, and I didn't mind because it was my decision to do that so we could help get our guys home from Korea in time for Christmas (they were upgrading the control systems at a steel plant).

Now if I was forced to do that to get some rod mill in PA up and running on short notice because management screwed up and set a poor schedule, I'd be pretty pissed about it, and those hours would get mighty long mighty fast.

These guys wer working out of love (or insanity, you decide). That makes the long hours a lot more palatable...

Re:what do EA employees think of this?

[happyhippy]

Its one thing making software that you think will benefit people, its another making a generic shitty brand game that'll benefit no one.

Re:what do EA employees think of this?

[JabberWokky]

If he was a slave, who was his master?

I submit that all free men can make their own choices. That includes working on an educational tool because you want to see it shipped, fully recognizing the possibility of failure (and indeed with trespassing charges, jail time).

He did this of his own will. If you don't understand that, you will never understand greatness; most great men and women have pushed like this in their fields of art, science, industry and technology.

--
Evan

Re:what do EA employees think of this?

[hchaput]

I work for EA, and let me tell you: I can totally relate. I love my job and I work long hours at, and I've never been asked to, and nobody on my team has been asked to. (In fact, I've been asked to go home a couple of times.) I work long hours because I love my job, and the people I work with are smart and cool, and the entire company supports my effort, which is crazy because I write games all day. EA certainly doesn't take advantage of me. I feel like I'm taking advantage of them. My experience has been just like avitzur's, but with a paycheck. I'm glad I found a company that supports this level of enthusiasm, like avitzur did (eventually).

Please remember that EA is a big company with many managers, and everybody's experience is not the same. Happy employees don't post blogs.

An engineer's dream

[silentbozo]

No meetings. No managers. No legal worries. Not having to kowtow to public relations or marketing. Shipping millions of copies of your software.

The only downside was not getting paid, but even that seemed to work out.

Re:An engineer's dream

[jsgates]

Sounds like a volunteer, not a slave. Distinction, he's not being forced.

Re:An engineer's dream

[Anonymous Coward]

The only downside was not getting paid, but even that seemed to work out.

Pure luxury. In my day we had to pay to come to work. And we liked it.

Re:An engineer's dream

[tomstdenis]

I think you missed the part where he said he had money to burn.

If you have debt/family/etc to pay down then free work doesn't make sense. But if you've saved up enough to live a year or two without working I don't see the harm.

Tom

Re:An engineer's dream

[avitzur]

> a company that canned me

No. There was a line in the story that got dropped on the editing room floor. I was offered a job as an employee on a new project when the old project was cancelled. I just wasn't interested in the new project. I prefered to be working on educational software.

Re:An engineer's dream

[rmull]

University, huh?

Good job, you will probably get security fired

[AHumbleOpinion]

... my project was canceled six months ago, so I'm evading security, sneaking into Apple Computer's main offices in the heart of Silicon Valley ...

Good job, Steve will probably hear about this tomorrow and start firing people working security.

Re:Good job, you will probably get security fired

[justforaday]

Ummm, the story being told took place nearly 10 years ago

Re:Good job, you will probably get security fired

[AHumbleOpinion]

Ummm, the story being told took place nearly 10 years ago

Do you really think that little details like that can stop Steve's rage?

Re:Good job, you will probably get security fired

[mj_1903]

Do you really think that little details like that can stop Steve's rage?

Well as Steve wasn't actually working there, he would probably be more annoyed that those guys weren't sneaking into his corporate headquarters and writing code for NeXTStep. It probably would have doubled the number of computers he sold, which really wouldn't have been all that hard.

Re:Good job, you will probably get security fired

[Otter]

Absolutely -- if Steve had been working there at the time, he would have been designing the calculator himself!

Re:Good job, you will probably get security fired

[Megane]

Yep, if Steve was still at Apple at the time, he'd have gone apeshiat over some of the more trippy inequalities functions in the demo, and that warping 6-color Apple logo too. They would have been re-hired in no time at all.

Re:High Praise For Mediocrity

[AHumbleOpinion]

Now if they could only find someone that'd work night and day to invent the 2-button mouse they'd have it made.

Actually there is only one person preventing a multibutton mouse, unfortunately no one outranks him. He won't even allow a build-to-order option when you are ordering online.

Programmers: Please note.

[martinX]

Sitting behind a two-way mirror, watching first-time users struggle with our software, reminded me that programmers are the least qualified people to design software for novices.

Re:Programmers: Please note.

[bladesjester]

I have this theory that programmers who write software should have to do in person tech support for that demographic for at least a year or so. It really opens your eyes as to what users are actually doing, why they're doing it (if you can get them to be frank with you), what they like, what they don't, what works, and what doesn't.

It makes some decisions about how to do things a whole lot easier...

Re:Programmers: Please note.

[eyeball]

I have this theory that programmers who write software should have to do in person tech support for that demographic for at least a year or so.

Years ago when we developed a replacement CRM application for a large telco ISP, we did something unheard of - we integrated the customer service reps into the development process. At first we shadowed them for days to get a feel for how they use the existing application, and interviewed them to see what they liked and disliked. Then we invited at least one rep to every design meeting. During development they were constantly reviewing the work, making sure it was perfect. They almost cried they were so happy.

As an aside: their number one complaint was when they were doing data entry on the very long web form, they constantly had to take their hand off the keyboard, find the cursor, position it over the scroll bar, scroll the page down, then position the cursor over the text field, and resume typing. Tabbing took care of some text field focusing, but wasn't intuitive and predictable enough even when combined with javascript. We broke the data entry into multiple pages with simple navigation. I really miss the old days of character-based terminal applications (so do a lot of end users).

Re:Programmers: Please note.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Years ago when we developed a replacement CRM application for a large telco ISP, we did something unheard of - we integrated the customer service reps into the development process.

Smart companies do custom development by involving the end users in all steps of the process.

Stupid companies off-shore development to somewhere as far away from the end users as possible and think they are saving money by doing so. All they end up doing is shifting the cost from the development group to the end users, often multiplying those costs by an order of magnitude.

Re:Programmers: Please note.

[bladesjester]

I can agree with the statement that some of the college kids thought they knew it all (I was in college at the time, but I started training in kung fu when I was about six, picked up japanese and european sword arts later, and even trained for a while in muay thai).

I was the person that the maestro sent the problem people to - the shy ones, the ones with agression problems on both ends (too much and too little), etc. This was largely because of my background, teaching style, the fact that he'd known me before I ever started fencing with them (he invited me to come play with them after my engagement ended to sort of get me back on track with things), and the amusing fact that most of the new people thought I was the teacher to begin with.

Loved working with the kids I taught martial arts to (only taught one or two of them fencing. most of them learned open handed techniques), and really enjoyed working with *most* of the college students. There were a couple, however, that I had to *ahem* escort out of the salle and tell to not come back.

For the most part, the college students listened pretty well, but the fact that I was 6' tall, built like a gorilla, not a slow man, and extremely accurate with my weapon might have had a *little* to do with that.

Filled with Gems

[Lizard_King]

The secret to programming is not intelligence, though of course that helps. It is not hard work or experience, though they help, too. The secret to programming is having smart friends.

classic...

I liked this line the best

[goon america]

I liked this line:

I asked my friend Greg Robbins to help me. His contract in another division at Apple had just ended, so he told his manager that he would start reporting to me. She didn't ask who I was and let him keep his office and badge. In turn, I told people that I was reporting to him. Since that left no managers in the loop, we had no meetings and could be extremely productive.

Someone should write a novel about this. ... Come to think of it, this is exactly the sort of thing Chuck Palahniuk would write (author of Fight Club).

Re:I liked this line the best

[leprkan]

and who doesn't like chuck palahniuk? honestly. i can see him writing this. maybe throw in some odd perversion and really weird friends and hobbies on the side.

Re:I liked this line the best

[idlemachine]

maybe throw in some odd perversion[...]

Something other than working for Apple? :)

Wow

[chrisgeleven]

Wonderful story. Amazing that this could actually happen.

I don't own a copy of OS X, but is this application still on there?

Re:Wow

[Anubis350]

its runs under classic (not osx native unfortunately, though it runs perfectly fine even so), and yes its included. You can find it in the "Applications (Mac OS 9)" folder on your HD (not you you, since you dont run osx, but anyone running osx can).

Re:Wow

[avitzur]

>No, the graphing calculator doesn't come with OS X.
It is available for OS X now. You can download the free release from http://www.PacificT.com/FreeStuff.html (Well, at least you will be able to after the server recovers from the Slashdot Effect. :)

Re:Wow

[Barlo_Mung_42]

Maybe the guy that builds the gold master disk will download it :)

Can't legally volunteer

[Russ Nelson]

You can't legally volunteer to help a for-profit corporation. And for IT staff, there is a minimum amount you have to pay them (well above minimum wage; don't worry).
-russ
p.s. R0ML says that this is why he couldn't get a carrier-grade accounting system turned into open source.

Re:Can't legally volunteer

[dilberito]

but weren't they nonprofit back then?

Re:Can't legally volunteer

[feorlen]

Unpaid internships, if the intern does anything remotely productive and is a net gain for the organization, is quite illegal. And also rather common.

The trouble with enforcement is that it is the "intern" who must file the complaint with the Department of Labor. Only the person exploited can do it, nobody else can. And when you are working for nothing, what you are really working for is a good reference, so you will not do anything that will remotely piss off your "employer".

A while back I tried to report multiple obvious and blatant "internships" that were advertised as requiring professional level experience. Neither the Federal Wage and Hours department nor the similar organization for the state of California will do anything about it. At least California was decent enough to talk to me about it, they politely said they have bigger fish to fry and few resources for enforcement. As for the Feds, I couldn't even get them to answer the door at what was advertised as their western regional office.

Re:Can't legally volunteer

[burns210]

Steve Jobs a couple years back(2001?) was payed $1 for his CEO position at Apple.

They also happened to rent from his a personal jet for corporate use, so in the end, he made significant income. Just nontraditionally.

But Apple was flailing at the time

[Anonymous Coward]

The story he describes occurred in the early 1990's, when Apple was beginning to hit its skids. Projects would be raised with a flurry of energy, then cancelled, and there was a general sense of chaos. That was either in the latter part of the John Sculley era or the beginnings of the Michael Spindler, which were NOT good years (eg., the failed Newton, the failed Copland system, and merger talks with Sun Microsystems, etc.) Scully, Spindler, and Amelio were all shoved out of their CEO positions due to unsatisfactory performance.

The problem with fairy tale workplaces are exactly that: They are fairy tales that don't last long in reality.

Re:Score Chart

[AHumbleOpinion]

Great... People doing free work: Apple-1 Linux-Several Million

So what, its not like lots of people or hours translates to quality. Look at shareware in general, look at MS. There is only a very small core of people that have made Linux useful. Few people can read source code, fewer still can write working code at all, fewer still are able to write good code.

Re:Slashdotted already

[chris_mahan]

In this case you have to say "burst into flames."

All too true...

[stubear]

"Sitting behind a two-way mirror, watching first-time users struggle with our software, reminded me that programmers are the least qualified people to design software for novices. Humbled after five days of this, Greg and I went back and painstakingly added feedback to the software, as if we were standing next to users, explaining it ourselves."

I really wish more programmers, engineers, and managers understood this.

Re:All too true...

[nihilogos]

I really wish more programmers, engineers, and managers understood this.

And I wish first time users weren't so flipping clueless ;)

Re:All too true...

[Stevyn]

Yeah, it may sound wrong at first, but it's the correct terminology. Check this link out: http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/phy00/phy002 39.htm .

It does makes sense though. A regular mirror only reflects light on one side.

Is this the explanation behind OSX graphing calc?

[xtal]

There's a hidden trick in OSX to get a graphic calculator from the standard one. I never knew why it wasn't there all the time - there's one or two easter eggs in there - and they're all fully functional from what I can tell.

This would explain it nicely, or at least, provide more romantic one than a plain old easter egg.

forget WWJD

[bird603568]

man forget wht What Would Jesus Do, from now on for coders it should be WWGATOGD - What Would Gregg And The Other Guy Do?

Ron Avitzur's Demo @ WWDC

[poena.dare]

Does anyone remember the demo Ron gave at the World Wide Developer's Conference? Was it May 1993...?

Anyway, I remember it was supposed to be a lecture about pen computing, and Apple had Ron come out and show the equation solving interface of the proto-graphing calculator. He threw a bunch o' X and Ys on the screen with some sins and coss for good measure. "Now if you want to solve for X"... and he tapped an X, dragged it to one side of the equals sign, and the equation solved itself.

We were floored. There was this deep silence for a couple of millisenconds and then everyone broke out in thunderous applause. He did more tricks with the equation interface and people hooted and hollered. It was a geek wet dream. After he finished he got a standing ovation and there was a long line of people who wanted to shake his hand.

Good times.

Re:Ron Avitzur's Demo @ WWDC

[BWJones]

Yes indeed. This was kinda one of those moments when everybody smacks their collective foreheads and says "Of Course!" "How Cool".

Kinda like the beginning of Quartz at a meeting of engineers when "Engineer X" speaks up and says "you know, instead of using the CPU to render all of this 2-D stuff, we could use the GPU............." This statement was followed by a long pause while the implications of this statement sunk into everybody's wetware (brain) only to be followed by a quiet "sunofa....." by the senior project manager.

Of course Microsoft is busy co-opting this idea which has been shipping now with OS X for a few years but, what else is new?

Re:Ron Avitzur's Demo @ WWDC

[Sycraft-fu]

Actually Microsoft has a hardware accelerated UI in Windows XP. Read up on GDI+. Also, for newer cards with real programmable GPUs (pretty much Ati 9000, and nVidia FX and up) they use the shaders to accelerate Windows Media playback.

Either way, I'm not so sure the UI acceleration thing was a blinding flash of the obvious, I think it was more hardware needing to get to a certian point. It wasn't until about mid 1999 that a card (TNT2) existed that even had the basic 3d capibility to do what would be needed for a user interface. Even so, at that level, all you could really do was make a window a big texture stretched on a polygon. Neat, but faily useless.

Real useful UI acceleration didn't become feasable until cards became Graphics Processing Units in fact, which means some programability. The GeForce 3, which came about in 2001, was the first consumer level card that could be really considered for that.

So I don't think it was an idea that really had to think in. I remember hearing people musing about using the Voodoos for UI acceleration (and having those more knowledgable tell them why that wouldn't work), I think it was just a matter of the hardware advancing to a point where it was sufficiently useful for things other than playing games.

Re:Ron Avitzur's Demo @ WWDC

[mpaque]

...it won't make the mistake of starting off with Display Postscript aka Quartz which is not 3D based to begin with. Prepare to be leapfrogged.

2D is just 3D with some constants in the matrix. No, really.

Re:High Praise For Mediocrity

[michaeldot]

Yep, the evil Steve Jobs personally drove up to my door in his Mercedes and threatened physical violence when I bought my Logitech mouse for my G5.

And I'm still suffering from the torture he inflicted when I dared to use the scrollwheel.

I can't imagine what he did to the Mac OS X engineers when he found they'd built full support for multiple buttons and into the OS, or the fact that all their iApps - iTunes, iPhoto - support full functional scrollwheel movements.

Hmm...

Or maybe's it's because Apple's QA people know that best way to have software designed to be easy to use is to not encourage them to use right-click kludges. It is impossible to use a Windows machine without a two button mouse and learning context menus. That is not true of Mac OS X.

Well Thank god...

[Opticalsky]

"Microsoft has effective building security." Well thank god, they at least have that.

Re:motivation same as OSS

[AHumbleOpinion]

to me, it seems that many of the same things that motivated this (these?) guy(s) are the same as the motivation for being an Open Source Programmer. Just my .02

You think there is something new about writing code for free and sharing it with others? It predates "open source", it predates Linux, it predates GNU, ... The only thing different nowadays is that more people have computers and that communication and distribution is much easier. Well that and religious/political overtones about all of this.

In other news, your (and my) generation did not invent sex. ;-)

Re:Is this the explanation behind OSX graphing cal

[Yaztromo]

Feel free to share the hidden trick with the rest of the class :)

Find the Calculator icon in the Finder, and select "Get Info" (or press Command-I after clicking on the calculator). In the plug-ins section, select the "Add" button, and in the resulting file dialog, browser your way to the Calculator -> Contents -> Resources. Select any/all of the *.calcview directories, and press "Choose". Presto -- open the Calculator and select the "View" menu item, and your new plug-in views will be available.

Now for the caveat. Ever since one of the 10.3 updates (10.3.3 maybe?), none of the plug-ins work anymore. But in the event they ever fix this, you now know how to activate different view modes.

I doubt that the graphing capability built into the calculator has anything to do with the Graphing Calculator application, as the one built into the regular Calculator is supposedly 2D only, whereas the Graphing Calculator supports 3D graphs as well.

Yaz.

Bravo! Bravo!

[ZebadiahC]

The classic silicon valley hacker/enthusiast vs. big corporate culture. It says alot (in a positive note) on the type of people who worked there and helped these guys along.

I've worked in a big company like Apple in the past and with the right people this just shows how far someone can really go in the most ideal situation. (not really needing a job in the short term)

Good Job Ron!

Obligatory

[Have Blue]

The first rule of graphic calculator club...

Red stapler, anyone?

[Jester99]

100+ comments, and nobody's yet realized that this guy is Milton from Office Space?

"They fired him, but he doesn't know it. He just comes in every day and works."

(And despite Milton's, ah, interesting character traits, I find him the coolest character in the show; or perhaps it's because of them. So, I mean this in the most praiseworthy manner possible. Rock on!)

Do I smell acontract upcoming for Ron?

[broKenfoLd]

-Unpaid -Long, long hours -Long crunch time It is only a matter of time until EA hops on this.

Testament to Apple's luster

[heroine]

Apple has so much luster it isn't suprising that people would sneak in to work there for free. More interesting than the fact that they continued to work on company projects after being laid off was that they insisted on doing it in the Apple building rather than in their bedrooms. It doesn't matter what they're doing, just being a part of Apple culture gets people real excited. Not sure whether it's the counterculture, the kind of people Apple hires, or the management style of Steve Jobless. No other company motivates as many people to spend the rest of their lives working for free on its products as Apple.

Re:Testament to Apple's luster

[goMac2500]

Well, it wasn't Steve. He wasn't even at Apple when Graphing Calculator was done. :)

Re:Testament to Apple's luster

[MacDaffy]

Ron's story points to the reason he and Greg felt compelled to do it at Apple. It was the best environment in the world to accomplish the Graphing Calculator. The resources were there. There was a top-notch research library there at the time. Many of the people who are determining the course of computing at Apple and in other places today were either interning there or working there after graduating from college or had been there for a while. He mentioned the QA people. They were and are true advocates of the users.

I don't know about other places, but working at Apple was--and, I imagine, still is--like playing for the Yankees. The expectations of the fans was everything. The penchant for doing things the right way permeated every nook and cranny of the place (except upper management until Steve Jobs returned). Little bits of fit and finish that weren't even noticeable until you had them pointed out to you (or they were missing from a product) were all-important. The best projects assembled teams of people who were involved from the design phase to product release; the good managers made sure that everyone stayed on the same page.

It is the people that make Apple so special. They care about the customers. They care about the products. They care about each other, for the most part. Reading Ron Avitzur's reiteration of what passes for high praise at Apple ("this doesn't suck"), brought a tear to my eye. Another saying--at least among my group--was "we do good work." I have my own business now, and the things I learned at Apple guide everything I do.

Wonderful article, Slashdot. Thanks.

Golly...

[CodeWanker]

Apple is so cool it has stalkers.

Hire the guy

[utlemming]

And why didn't Apple hire the guy after this dedication? I mean he proved that he not only had the dedication, but he also proved effective inter-department communication, team managment, "hiring" skills, and the ability to produce quality. If I were Apple I would have begged him to stay and given him a nice job -- if I didn't reward him financially for the project.

Re:Hire the guy

[LaCosaNostradamus]

In what is now well established as the MBA mentality, such a guy is only demonstrating that he is uncontrollable. An uncontrolled asset is an unproductive asset. After all, the executives are the only authorized sources of work; in pure Taylorist terms, the workers are only fit to follow directions.

That probably explains a lot about Apple's dry period.

I remember...

[andrebasso]

...working as an unpaid intern for a special f/x company over a decade ago. Thousands of rendered frames for a major motion picture were screwed up and there wasn't enough time to rerender them. With the help of a few fellow geeks (smart friends make a great coder) we sat there and wrote a custom program to isolate the problem areas of the frames and only rerender those parts, later compositing the results into the original frames. Every one in the company was holding their breath watching us and offering to help in any way possible. Mostly done in programming (complex compositing programs didn't even exit then) we saved the day and moments after finishing the last frame the master disk was shipped to be printed onto film for nationwide distribution. One of the most satisfying moments of my life. Got paid nothing, but the enjoyment of working towards a common goal under pressure was so satisfying. Pefectionism, obsessiveness, compulsion. For recognition maybe, but the process of complex problem solving was and always will be one of the most enjoyable things a person can partake in. Why else would be be programming?
-- andre basso

I love the last line

[bossesjoe]

We wanted to release a Windows version as part of Windows 98, but sadly, Microsoft has effective building security. Never thought I'd ever see "microsoft" and "effective security" in the same sentance

Re:PovRay.

[avitzur]

heh. If there are any PovRay developers reading this, send me an e-mail. I'd like to discuss this. It's on the big list of features for future releases. http://www.PacificT.com/TheList.html

Re:The real story

[Ageless]

He didn't do the work for a corporate entity. He did the work for himself, and his users. He got his software on millions on machines, which to many programmers is the best pay you can receive.

Re:formatting

[avitzur]

Ok. Done.

Re:This sounds like a Wired story

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm too lazy to figure out what my account is, so I guess I'm an anonymous coward, but I worked with Ron at the time, and still hang out with him. The story is true, and NuCalc/Graphing Calculator got started just as he describes. I even have the embroidered NuCalc shirt he gave me as a memento.

Now, should you see anything similar in some upcoming release of some unspecified operating system, check to see whether it's the real deal (Graphing Calculator from PacificT http://www.pacifict.com/Gallery.html), or something else.

Well, two big reasons for that

[Sycraft-fu]

1) They are doing it because they want to. If someone wants to work on a project, I don't feel bad about asking them to do more work on it. They can always say no. However if they like working on it, and think my idea is a good one, maybe I'll get what I want.

2) Many of them like to trumpet their software as better than closed source. K, great, but it'd better be good then and part of that is fixes and updates. Firefox is a good browser, however if they decide they don't need to patch it, and it gets security holes that go unfixed, it won't be a good one any longer.

Number two is actually the one that gets many OSS projects in trouble. They want to claim OSS is a superior model, and that the software that OSS produces is better than commercial. However they also want to hide under the "It's free, no gaurentees, fix it yourself" flag. Well, you can't have it both ways.

Re:Well, two big reasons for that

[cbr2702]

They want to claim OSS is a superior model, and that the software that OSS produces is better than commercial. However they also want to hide under the "It's free, no gaurentees, fix it yourself" flag. Well, you can't have it both ways

Yes you can. OSS is a better model that usually puts out better software in the end. But part of that approach is a stage where the software is not yet done and still needs testing, bug fixes, and features. And sometimes it is not clear where in the process a given project is.

Re:Well, two big reasons for that

[symbolic]

"It's free, no gaurentees, fix it yourself" flag.

How recently have you read the EULA on most commercial software products?

What bugs are fixed, and under what kind of time frame? Who decides? You? No way. You are subject to THEIR priorities, which means that some bugs may be overlooked entirely, merely because the ROI isn't high enough.

You may not have the expertise to fix the bugs yourself, but I know from my own experience, we had a problem with a commercial software package whose recent upgrade not only introduced a serious bug that affected our workflow, but we were powerless to do much about it. At least with OSS,we could have considered the option of hiring a programmer to make the necessary changes.

And this is the kind of zealous insanity

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

That Microsoft has to compete with?

There will always be an Apple Computer.

Re:And this is the kind of zealous insanity

[Max Romantschuk]

If you mean in the sense that there will always be an Amiga, then yes.

Re:High Praise For Mediocrity

[aaronl]

Try Shift+F10 - same as a right click. Similarly CTRL+ESC is the start menu, CTRL+SHIFT+ESC is Task Manager, Windows+Pause is System Properties, etc.

My Best Project was a Skunkworks Job

[serutan]

This story is guaranteed to be very boring for 99% of readers, but it's probably my only chance to tell it where anybody might be remotely interested.

Back in the 80s I was part of an IT group in a manufacturing dept at Tektronix. Our software involved inventory control, tracking batches of work through assembly steps, that sort of thing. One of the computer operators asked if I could help him solve a problem for the stockroom people. Their job was to hand out parts to assembly workers, receive and store the finished subassemblies and hand them out for additional steps until they left the area as finished goods.

All movement of material was tracked by a giant MRP system on an IBM mainframe in another building. The IBM machine generated stacks of PUNCH CARDS which were delivered to our computer room and loaded into our VAX 11/750. As the stockroom people handed out and received material, they had to manually keep track of what they did, noting shortages and errors. Then they entered the information into the 750, which wrote it nightly to a tape that was hand-carried back to the building where the IBM system was.

The stockroom data entry program was very cumbersome to use. It simply did a one-way scroll through the entire inventory -- thousands and thousands of parts and subassemblies -- and allowed the user enter a code on the few items that mattered. To get to an item near the bottom, the clerks had to hit the Page key dozens of times and wait for the slow page refresh in between. Sometimes they would hold the Page key down for a while and go away until it caught up. If they overshot they had to start over because there was no Back function. The stockroom people spent most of their time doing data entry and were consistently several weeks behind, which forced them to come up with various manual ways of keeping track of things. This affected their ability to hand out parts and was starting to have an impact on manufacturing deadlines, and ultimately profits.

In spite of the importance of the situation, the stockroom was low on the IT priority list. So we had a couple clandestine meetings in which the staff told me how the business end of the system worked and the computer operator explained the behind the scenes parts. Working a couple hours a day on the sly for about 2 weeks, I came up with a new data structure and an editor that let the users search for what they wanted and produced various on-screen reports. I also changed the loading procedures to use a tape instead of the stupid cards, and my operator friend persuaded an IBM sysop to bypass the change control process and generate a tape for us instead of cards.

When the users were satisfied with the way everything worked, we put it into production one afternoon as the swing shift person came on duty. In that one shift she cleaned up their entire 3-week backlog of data entry. When the morning people arrived they were speechless. With the extra time they now had, they set about reorganizing their operation and making improvements that they had wanted to do for months.

It was amazing to see what this change did for the morale of these people. Their jobs had been absolutely miserable when they had to work with the old system. They were so happy they brought me a great big apple pie, and were almost in tears giving it to me. Best award I ever got.

Re:My Best Project was a Skunkworks Job

[44BSD]

Notice what kind of pie you got?

Re:An engineer's nightmare

[cheekyboy]

Whats worse is seeing a project that IS making money and is NOT a redink sink being cancelled, even though it was making $2m a year in revenue out of 2.5 programmers fulltime. But we know how NASDAQ corporates like to inflate development costs by counting the managers time, the marketing staff, the HR and insurance rates etc... all up to about 120k/person even though the end person only gets 80k.

So typical company cancels the product while it is selling, and at the same time invests 100m+ into take overs that wont see a positive ROI for at least 3-4 years down the track, even with 30m in sales per year.

Damn politics and suck up managers.

Also seeing the company spend $45m per quarter on sales/marketing vs $15m per quarter on R&D is very sad too, considering that the sales/marketing staff get FREE "junkets" and meetings in great places like hawaii and paid for.

Are the engineers considered the 'farm workers' of the 21st century?

Graphing calculator was an insanely great app

[multiplexo]

I remember getting my first PPC 601 back in '94 and playing around with this. One of the research scientists I worked for came into my office and saw it at work and I showed him what it could graph. We played around with it for a couple of hours and then he went out and ordered new Macintoshes for his research group to replace his aging Sun workstations.

Apple squandered a great opportunity in the 90's. Macs were much faster than many Sun workstations with the kind of work we did (computational fluid dynamics), much cheaper and ran a broader selection of applications. Despite this Apple knew nothing about the scientific market. I remember going to a seminar at MacWorld Boston in 1996 on scientific uses of the Macintosh. None of the presenters talked about how a PowerMac 7500 with a 3rd party 604 accelerator smoked a Sparc 20 for about 33 percent of the price. Instead they talked about how they could use a Mac to model the behavior of a lobster. I felt as if I was in crazy world, here was Apple with this insanely great line of CPUs and they basically ignored a market that would have gone for it lock stock and barrel.

Things have gotten better since then and I have been pleased to see that Apple is targeting bioinformatics applications with the Xserve, but they're going to have a lot of work ahead of them to keep up with Linux's inroads into the market.

Sheesh..

[Kwil]

We wanted to release a Windows version as part of Windows 98, but sadly, Microsoft has effective building security.

Wouldn't you just know it.. the one place Microsoft has effective security is the place that keeps people from doing something useful.

This Program Changed My Life

[Ariane 6]

I was struggling through algebra I not long after this program came out (1995). I just wasn't "getting it". I know the phrase is cliched now, but this program was just so *intuitive* that after a few days of fiddling I understood almost all the math I'd ever take right up to 1st semester calculus on a conceptual level.

For me, at least, seeing things in motion (that nifty little value slider) made the concepts just click. Once they were there, the actual mathematical manipulation was much easier, because I was able to visualize "they way this should work out". My teachers were trying to show it on a static chalkboard, and it just wasn't getting through.

I just got my BS in Physics, and without Graphing Calculator, I doubt I'd be where I am today. To the author, if he reads this:

Thank You.

Re:This Program Changed My Life

[avitzur]

Thank you! May I quote you on our web site?

Re:This Program Changed My Life

[Ariane 6]

You betcha!

Re:This Program Changed My Life

[Ariane 6]

Oh - and I feel compelled to mention that I'm currently having my ten-year-old brother play with it like a computer game. He just likes the shapes for now, but I hope it'll help get the "I've seen this before" wheels clicking in his head when the time comes.

PowerCalc

[Domini]

On a side note, something similar and free already exists for windows:

You can download Powercalc.exe from Microsoft's XP PowerToy page.

Sadly, his company now distributes nagware

[iamacat]

PacificT.com offers a free download of "the original Graphing Calculator, beloved by students and teachers, which Apple has bundled on all machines since the introduction of the Power Macintosh in 1994". But when you actually run it, you can not edit any provided examples - even y = x^2 - because "they have been created with commercial version". Documentation makes no mention of what is actually supported by free software and equation editor lets you enter full syntax supported by version 3. You just get messages asking you to order their $100 stuff when you try something like x+y=1.

Now, how would the original program created by unpayed volunteers in '94 know to nag users about their future $$$ product? The answer is easy, because Graphing Calculator saves documents in simple text format. For example:

GraphingCalculator 1.4;
Window 447 21 1247 661;
PaneDivider 248;
DrawGraph 0;
Expr x+y=1;

Simply changing the first line to "GraphingCalculator 3.0;" and opening it again magically causes all the missing features to be supported! Of course now it doesn't let you edit the document until you change the version back. I bet both programs are compiled from the same source with a few #ifdef NAG blocks.

Nothing is really wrong with that, except for misleading claims and that nagware rather destroys the original sentiment of authors who wanted to release a useful program without even getting payed. This is not "Version 1.4", it's "Version 3.0 demo". Otherwise it would come with original documentation and examples that actually show you how to use the free program.

Re:Sadly, his company now distributes nagware

[avitzur]

That is 1.4b3. It is still in beta testing. We're still working on it. I need to do is fix those example files which were created for the full version. If you type y=x^2 into a new empty document, it will work. For a comparison of the features in 1.4 vs. 3.5, see http://www.pacifict.com/FreeStuff.html. The 150-page PDF book, "Learning Math" in the help menu is almost entirely devoted to the features of the free version. You can download that by itself or browse it at http://www.pacifict.com/Books.html

Not only in software companies

[kirinyaga]

While designing Concorde, some engineers started working on their own project without telling anyone, diverting a small part of the huge ressources needed for concorde to this.
At the end of the concorde project, managers discovered with great surprise they also had almost all the plans of a working regular subsonic jet : Airbus was born.
Ironically, the unofficial project actually succeeded far better than the official one.

It doesn't happen only with software companies ;)

Well done Google...

[BigAlexK]

The Graphing Calculator story just goes to show how valuable/insightful/important Google's 20% time (20% of work time to spend on their own projects) is both to their engineers, and more importantly to their company.

Remind me to do the same when I get my software co up and running.

Hehe

[Photo_Nut]

"Imagine a world where if you didn't legally work for Apple, you couldn't write a program for their computer. If you weren't a licensed and regulated programmer, you wouldn't be able to develop your own software or develop software for other people. With signed code initiatives like TCPA/Palladium, that world could be coming to a planet near you soon."

This is the funniest paranoid schizophrenic thing I've read on /. in a long time. Every little advancement in the computer industry comes from a lot of hard work on the part of a few people. The rest of the industry is simply doing the glue work to connect those bits. Mind you that the glue can be interesting and complicated, it doesn't take a license to code from Microsoft.

The TCPA (if it ever ships -- how many years has it been since the Microsoft Windows team has done that...) is a method to restrict certain apps from running in a specific environment with access to specific resources.

Think of it like an XBox console, only harder to crack. Basically, your PC would have a little XBox inside it which would let MS Signed apps run on a special video overlay (secure video path) and play with special encrypted content and a special digital audio plug (secure audio path).

If the idea actually takes off, which it might not (it all depends on how expensive the modifications are to make to the hardware to support it), it won't be several years before companies wrote software that took advantage of it. Likely Microsoft Office, Windows Media Player, and Adobe Acrobat would be available to take advantage of it shortly after TCPA/Palladium.

But this isn't a big deal. Anyone who didn't use TCPA/Palladium would simply be more likely to have content that would be easier to distribute. Maybe this lets people lock down content/software, or make people pay per use of content/software that they didn't pay for. That doesn't mean that you need to apply DRM to everything, but having the choice is better than not having the choice. Is that really so horrible?

Think of the applications: I'd like to be able to protect my photos so that people can't print them, but I trust IE to show them along a "secure video path". Maybe I sell desktop backgrounds. Maybe I sell wedding photographs. Why can't I chose my business model?

This doesn't just benefit large corporations. It benefits small people who create independent content. Sure, you could bootleg audio, video, documents, or photos just like you could when all the various media duplication forms came out, but the point is that this makes it harder to do so and keep up the quality that you could do with a digital copy. Thus it preserves the value of purchasing a license to use the digital data, and thus it preserves the time honored tradition of paying people who produce the content which you consume. That won't stop people from producing free content or make it any more expensive to produce free content.

Also, it means a great many standards need to be created to carry encrypted content digitally. This may take some time for hardware manufacturers to standardize on and adopt... We'll see how quickly it takes porn to use it, then we'll know that it's here. (Very seriously) Porn is always at the forefront of media technolgy trends. It's the most compelling reason VHS won out over Beta. It's also very interesting that there is no Porn IAA...

Re:Hehe

[danheskett]

DRM is incompatible with fair use. Its *MY* computer, if I want to copy some audio I legally purchsed the right to listen to into an MP3 format to play on my portable player I have *EVERY* right to do so, and the producer of that audio has no legal right to prohibit me from doing so, so they are chasing a technical ability to do so with DRM.
You are wrong. They have the ability to ask you to abide by additional rules. You and I can enter into a supplemental agreement on top of copyright: you get the audio I recorded, you pay me $15, you promise not to let anyone else listen to it. That's one example. Perfectly legal, perfectly acceptable, been doing it for 100 years.

Re:Hehe

[Ioldanach]

You and I can enter into a supplemental agreement on top of copyright: you get the audio I recorded, you pay me $15, you promise not to let anyone else listen to it.

That's where I have an issue with how copyright is enforced. Copyright was written in such a way so that after a given period of time, the work passes into the public domain. DRM effectively prevents that. In my opinion, if you want to require a licence/contract to view your work, then your work should no longer be protected by copyright law. In effect, you should have to choose between contract and copyright protection for your product.

These are the programmers I miss.

[blanks]

When I first started getting into computers, these were the types of people I had the chance to learn from. There are too many people that are into IT now that are simply there for the paycheck. They don't care what they are working on, and its just a job. When you are working on a project that is fun, that can take over your life 12 hours a day and 7 days a week, and you enjoy every minute of it. Then your a true techie.

If it was MS, there would be no end to the bitchin

[EXrider]

Actually, it's not invisible if you view the file with ResEdit. And yes, it is neat IMHO. Mac OS can also decipher file types via filename extensions the traditional Unix and Windows way.

The problem is that if Micros~1 had done it, it would have most likely been in a way that would intent~1 ensure it to not work with other OS's right out of the box, and it would be depend~1 on some propri~1, highly temper~1, and convol~1 database. It would also be in the least aesthe~1 pleasing, quick and dirty way, that's how Micros~2 would do it; ie our friend the registry.

I worked at Apple in security around that time

[myth_of_sisyphus]

I probably saw the guy in the parking lot.

I was working grave shift and going to San Jose State during the day. Apple was a cool place to work, if even as a lowly security guy in a polyester suit. All of the buildings had keycards so if you're in the building and nobody is complaining about you what reason would we have had to stop someone with a badge? Hell you could have printed one out, we couldn't tell.

Most of the security people were uneducated couldn't-pass-the-cop-tests-wannabes who could be fired by a well-placed complaint from a PHB. We didn't fuck with any of the REAL employees for fear of our own jobs. (One woman I trained with went around the next night turning off every computer left on, thinking they forgot. She was fired at dawn.)

It was not unusual for engineers to work (or do whatever) all night. One guy built a hut of styrofoam over his cubicle and had 20 monitors lining the walls playing those acid-trip designs. I was admiring his handiwork at 3 in the morning when I hear "Can I help you?" and turn around: he's in a sleeping bag behind his desk. This dude lived at work. Literally.

One guy was going on vacation to the Bahamas and his coworkers turned his cubicle into a beach complete with sand and water.

There was an Apple museum complete with a Lisa. The first PC was in a glass case in the corporate lobby: resplendent in its ratty briefcase. It would be mistaken for a bomb today.

Interesting place.

Here's the secret

[Inthewire]

Sales brings money in.

Everyfucking thing a company does happens because there is money.

The company is a device to put money in the pockets of those who own / fund / control it.
The company doesn't exist to employ you.
The company doesn't exist to invent things.
The company doesn't exist to further the state of the art.
The company exists to enrich the people who own / fund / control it.

Welcome to Earth.
Feel free to convey the lesson to your home planet.

RMS on Hacking and the Graphing Calculator

[Differance]

Note from RMS:
I love the story of sneaking into Apple in order to do something useful. It's a wonderful explanation of the spirit of hacking.
However, on another level it reminds me of how the staff of UC Berkeley spent years donating their Unix work to AT&T, which kept it off limits to the public. When I read this,

There was one last pressing question: How could we get this thing included with the system software when the new machines shipped? The thought that we might fail to do this terrified me... All the sweat that Greg and I had put in, all the clandestine aid . . . would be wasted.

I thought, "It wouldn't have been wasted. They only had to release it as free software!" The developers were in a perfect position to release a nice free program--and they blew it.
As a result, their work was indeed wasted, in the sense that we will have to redo it. The free world will need to develop a free replacement for this non-free program.
When a free program isn't quite right technically, that's no big deal. You just fix it. But when a program falls short of being free, that's usually impossible to fix. A miss that can't be fixed is as good as a mile.

Re:RMS on Hacking and the Graphing Calculator

[avitzur]

I have long considered releasing GC under an open source license. While I have total sympathy and support for the open source movement and philosophy, my analysis is a pragmatic one. My goal is to best serve my users, and adopt a strategy to best accomplish that. (I think the events of the story give proof to that.)

Remember that my software's users are primarily high school students or younger.

An open source release would cause the existing revenue stream to vanish, making it impossible to continue to support existing customers or maintain and develop the code base. Pacific Tech has provided free support for its customers and would like to continue to do so, and continue to maintain the product on Mac OS and on Windows. The reason GC is useful is the ease-of-learning and ease-of-use of its user interface. I do not know of a product which demonstrates the open source community's ability to produce excellent user interfaces.

In a high school classroom where any time spent on software is time taken away from teaching, usability is the most important feature of our product. In these respects, open sourcing the code could prove to be a large disservice to our customers.

This is educational software for high school users. There are remarkably few people in high schools, either students or teachers, with both the skills and the time to contribute to open source development. This removes one of the major motivations for open source development - the "I need this tool for myself" reason for working on something.

Furthermore, the reason this software is so useful to schools is not how powerful it is or how many features it has - it is completely unlike the classical monolithic mathematical applications of yore. It is useful due to the restraint in choosing a minimalist feature set and interface to address teachers' and students' needs with elegance. I fear that as an open source project, the incentive structures would lead down the slippery slope of creeping featuritis, which, while it might create something cool for hackers, will do little to help children learn math and like math.

I would like to find a way to have the best of both worlds. Genuinely open and free software, for all that that implies, and the ability to continue to create great software for people that are not programmers, for people that hate math, and know nothing about computers, and to have it installed at the factory, so that it actually reaches the people that need it where it can do some good.

Re:RMS on Hacking and the Graphing Calculator

[gmrobbins]

With the original Graphing Calculator, we delivered a showpiece educational program to every machine capable of running it. No other distribution mechanism besides installing on the hard drives at manufacture can do that. In 1994, the reach of any "free" distribution was quite limited, particularly when the target audience was young students and secondary schools. We reached 100% on the platform.

Our then-novel ideas now turn up not just in math software, but in applications as well as operating systems. User interfaces incorporate live animated feedback instead of dotted outlines, direct interaction instead of dialogs or configuration files, a functional rather than demanding starting point for new users, context-driven help, and in the best cases, minimal preference settings. We didn't patent the ideas or the algorithms; rather, we wrote about our goals and methods, and encouraged people to take the ideas and run with them.

So if the complaint is just that the source code isn't free for anyone to copy, rebuild, and redistribute, then give us a model for doing so. It needs to be a model where we can cover the cost of ongoing development by professionals; the calculator has evolved in the past 10 years, as have operating systems. Paid support isn't a good answer, as that would reward us for making crummy rather than excellent software; we want users to feel empowered, not dependent. And the idea that students or schools could or would pay for support contracts is silly.

Ron has never turned down a reasonable licensing request. Getting students to learn and enjoy math is the goal. But letting other programmers recompile our code isn't interesting, nor would that really move it very far on future platforms. Better that developers learn from our interface designs, deduce our algorithms (or just ask us), then build better software on the next generation of computer platforms.

If you are bothered that you can't recompile our ten year old application yourself to fix a bug, then you really aren't in the target audience we are aiming to reach, nor are you among the people who will deliver the next leap forward in software design.