Thirty Years

Today marks the 30 year anniversary of my becoming a full-time employee of Apple Computer, Inc. When I was hired on May 13, 1996, I was 20 years old, a week shy of 21. I was hired on to the Mac System Integration team, which was responsible for “System Updates”: the kinds of OS upgrades fellow Mac old-timers will remember being associated with the file in your System Folder called the “System Enabler”. Essentially it was a collection of patches to the main System File (and ROM) that fixed bugs, added features, etc. At that time I had already worked in the same general area as a Quality Assurance engineer, contributing to the System 7.5 (“Capone”) release. It was called “Capone” in response to Microsoft giving Windows 95 the codename “Chicago”. Watch out, Chicago, we’re coming for you. Another project at the time alluded to Mrs. O’Leary, whose cow was wrongly accused of causing the great Chicago fire of 1871. The playful competition between Apple and Microsoft was still alive and well.…