A chat with Jay Elliot
Jay Elliot has been part of Apple during its first incredible growth, in the early Eighties. He met Steve Jobs in a restaurant and was offered a job, where he became a Senior Vice President
The rest, as they say, is history, and Elliot has chronicled those years and his thoughts about Steve Jobs and Product Marketing in “The Steve Jobs Way”, a book he cowrote with William L. Simon.
I had the chance to speak a bit with him during his promotional tour for the italian edition, which was published by Hoepli.
Stories of Apple: How long were you at Apple?
Jay Elliot: I was at Apple from 1980 to 1986. Late part of 1980 to the late part of 1986.
SoA: And what was your role?
JE: I was Senior Vice President of what they call the “operation side”.
I really focused on the human side of the company so I kept that title when I had the IT operations and the financial operations… I ran sort of the administrative engine of Apple on the job but I also worked in the Mac group directly for Steve. [...] I really had two jobs. (more…)
Introducing the iPod
Ten years ago Apple introduced the original iPod.
Here is Steve Jobs’ presentation during the first Apple Music Event:
The promotional video that followed the announcement:
The first TV ad:
The interactive QuickTime VR movie:
All contents are “courtesy of Apple”.
1955-2011
Chris Espinosa on Jobs leaving Apple again
Mr. Espinosa started out at Apple as employee number 8 and has been working on computers and products “for the rest of us” since the late Seventies, beginning with a a rewrite of the Apple II manual.
Yesterday, after Steve Jobs resigned from his CEO role, Espinosa posted three very poignant messages on his Twitter account:
The Mac OS Anthology
Introduced on the stage by Steve Jobs during the May 1999 WWDC Keynote, the “Mac OS Anthology” was a collection of many Mac OS operating systems to aid (registered) third party developers in testing their software for compatibility.
It was presented originally in the form of a boxset of 4 DVDs which included all of the releases of the Macintosh operating systems since System 7 ’til the current one which at the time was Mac OS 8.5.
The DVDs were chosen for their archival capacity and featured all of the international localizations of the systems, up to 25 languages.
According to Applefritter the back of the first four DVDs reads:
Worldwide System Software for Developers
1999 Edition
From System 7 to Mac OS 8.5 and beyond
This DVD-ROM set is the first DVD offering from the Apple Developer Connection. The DVD format was selected because it delivers so much useful data on one convenient and easy-to-use medium. This collection is designed to assist you in extending your product’s reach into international markets and environments.
From an archived copy of the Apple website we also know the sale price: 199 USD, and just 149 for those ADC members who ordered a copy before May 14. In 2000 the price was discounted to just 99 dollars.
Volumes 5 and 6 were devoted to Mac OS 8.6, just introduced at the aforementioned 1999 WWDC so the contents of the DVDs, which by the way are not bootable, at the end of the year became as follows:
Disc 1: 7.0, 7.0.1, 7.1, 7.1.1, 7.1.2, 7.5, 7.5.3, 7.5.5 Update, 7.6.1, OS 8.0
– Disc 2: OS 8 (continued), OS 8.1
– Disc 3: OS 8.1 (continued)
– Disc 4: OS 8.1 (continued), OS 8.5, OS 8.5.1
– Disc 5: OS 8.6
– Disc 6: OS 8.6 (continued)
Later, in February of 2000 Apple offered to ADC developers two more volumes for Mac OS 9 (in 15 languages) collecting the other four in a new, second boxset labeled “2000 edition”.
After that, in 2001, the Mac OS Anthology again grew to include two more DVDs. These were to be the last additions, featuring Mac OS 9.0.4, 9.1 and the first Mac OS X and brought the grand total to 10 discs.
Images taken from the Apple website and from www.junewon.com