Steve Wozniak has a little bit of fun at Gray Powell’s expense | Hacker News Reader

Steve Wozniak has a little bit of fun at Gray Powell’s expense

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128 pointsanderzole89 comments

I have a new theory about life that hasn't let me down yet. It's a variant on Occam's Razor that I call Zoschke's Razor:

The most boring explanation is usually the correct one.

Let me apply it here...

Gray has talked to his supervisors, and his job is secure because he's the same talented engineer today as he was last week.

Gray's career options are unaffected by this because who wouldn't want to hire an iPhone engineer?

Gray was scared when his phone was lost, embarrassed when it was found, but already back to business as usual, and actually even wiser than before.

Gray isn't paying attention to any of the publicity, only to the laughs his personal friends are having at/with him.

Jobs wasn't even caught off guard by this, he's seen it all before.

Apple will not comment publicly on any of these events.

Apple will release the new iPhone at a typical keynote in a few months, and will sell tons of them.

No charges will be brought against Gizmodo.

All the speculation, here and otherwise, wants this to be way more drama than these things ever are.

We aren't talking about losing the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. We're talking about boring, corporate America that we all know too well.

This is essentially the same as that one time your bug dropped an important table in the production database. Did you get shit canned? Did your company suffer insurmountable losses? Nope. Your company did damage control, you and your team fixed the problem, and everyone went back to business as usual the next day.

Real life is boring, even for the seemingly larger-than-life Apple, Steve Jobs and the iPhone.

That sounds incredibly reasonable to me, especially the first 4 points.

Gizmodo will not be charged, but they probably will be sued in civil court. Just to discourage 'repeats'.

The only slight hitch I see in your points is the police investigation; but I suspect it will come to nothing (from the perspective of - they had to make some form of response and the media seized on it because it was the story/scandal they wanted).

At the end of the day; Apple are on such a high at the moment it will almost certainly have been "forgiven"

At the end of the day; Apple are on such a high at the moment it will almost certainly have been "forgiven"

Historically, counting on Apple to be a gracious winner is risky.

Maybe Apple is a very cool company, but I've watched people get fired for far less significant data loss incidents. I hope you're right.

Except for that other iPhone prototype guy who lost an iPhone and either committed suicide after "intense interrogation", or was killed: http://gizmodo.com/5319275/report-iphone-leak-interrogations... http://www.fakesteve.net/2009/07/im-really-thinking-maybe-i-...

So, yeah, losing an iPhone prototype is really, like, boring.

I think the cultural differences are important here: not only the fact that the Foxconn employee had fewer options (whereas Gray Powell can be easily employed tomorrow at a competitor), but also that US companies are far less forgiving of errors by a vendor, especially a foreign vendor. I've heard people hurl abuse at Indian call center employees that they wouldn't dream of saying to a colleague in Palo Alto.

I don't think the guy was killed by Steve force-choking him, or whatever. If he was killed, it was Foxconn's doing. They would have been terrified of losing future business from Apple, so they might have wanted to set an unequivocal example for other employees who might have been thinking about mishandling Apple's IP.

Personally it seems a bit over the top to accuse Foxconn or Apple of killing anyone.

I'm not sure where I accused anyone of killing anyone else... my point was that if someone screws up royally, and you yell at them and tell them they are a worthless piece of shit at a time when they need support and forgiveness, they are more likely to commit suicide.

Yikes I remember that story now. Strange that Gizmodo is breaking that story too...

I'll grant Chinese factories are more interesting than the Cupertino labs.

The most boring explanation here would be that the worker stole the phone, got caught, and chose to take his own life instead of suffer the other unpleasant consequences.

My posed principle would indicate there was no inappropriate investigation or murder, Gizmodo is again sexing up the story.

But its just a thought experiment, tragic and dramatic things do happen.

Awesome analysis -- agree with most of it.

I completely agree. Apple lost almost nothing (1 phone) and got millions of dollars in free PR. My understanding is this was covered on a variety of comedy shows, all the morning shows, all over the Internet from tech sites to mainstream news sites. All over the world. They should give Mr. Powell a bonus. He actually managed to eclipse Apple's normal media hype frenzy with what is, basically, a very positive story. (there's going to be a new iPhone and it's so amazingly great people are trying to steal it before we can even release it! In 2 months you can buy one too!)

But what did they lose in sales to people who are now holding out for a 4G? Thats the primary reason Apple is so secrative. I also very much doubt this story eclipsed a normal Apple media buy in terms of exposure.

    Zoschke's Razor:
    
    The most boring explanation is usually the correct one.

I'm kinda hoping somebody makes a 'demotivational poster' out of that.

Pulp Fiction? At least one person is known to have died for losing iPhone prototype. Not sure if he was quoted a passage from Bible prior to asphalt-diving.

Point is, don't rely on your rule too much.

I think that it would be stupid not to have him on stage as part of the introduction of the new iPhone. It's not like everybody doesn't know about it, and it would generate a lot of goodwill among developers and Apple employees.

It's like the story of the Air Force commander and the mechanic: One day, a military big-wig took off in an Air Force transport, which almost crashed, and was forced to land due to mechanical failure shortly after take-off. Upon inspection, it became obvious that the mechanic in charge of the plane's engines had screwed up and been sloppy.

Rather than berating him, the commander looked at him and said, "I trust that you won't screw up again. In fact, I trust you so much, that I'm putting you in charge of fixing it."

If I were this guy I'd wouldnt want this joke to be dragged on for eternity, I'd want people to forget about it as soon as possible.

That would be pretty cool having him introduce it, then Jobs comes out and takes over, shaking his head and doing the chastising father thing. PR gold, right?

The iPhone accounts for five point four billion-with-a-B dollars of Apple's revenue.

They don't have 30 different iPhone models. The iPhone they "launch" this year is probably going to be The iPhone.

Why do you think this Gizmodo debacle is a joke? Am I crazy? Because from where I stand, there is exactly one situation where this is funny: if Apple planted a fake iPhone prototype to screw with Gizmodo. That seems vanishingly unlikely.

Its funny because shit happens, and I'd rather a promising young man not be destroyed over it. Better to address the problem and roll with it rather than crucify the guy. The gravity of the situation, and how simple a mistake it was to make is the reason to forgive.

Woz got it. Why don't you?

On the spectrum of "shit happens" running from getting too drunk and throwing up on your best friend's shoes all the way to having your house bombed by an F18 because you have the wrong President, this event, while nowhere near the "epic tragedy" end of the scale, doesn't land anywhere near "funny" for me.

We agree on how we'd like things to work out for the engineer. Maybe, let's stop turning him into a punch line.

Everyone gets the gravity. Its tragicomedy.

Is your point, "don't let some random guy's reputation get in the way of our Internet joke"?

Sir, I suggest that your sense of humor is challenged in this matter and I decline to discuss it further. Woz has a big heart, I take this as a sign the kid is ok. Have a nice day.

Argh. Will you guys please stop?

The point is that it would be morally better if the people involved treated it as something capable of being laughed off, and so we should all treat it that way to encourage such an atmosphere in our culture. It is similar to how we discourage people from making a big deal over interracial, or more recently gay, marriages—if we treat it like nothing happened (and that those that insist something did are on the wrong end of a bad joke), then nothing did happen, and everyone—including Mr. Gray—can get on with their lives.

I've watched a lot of Steve Jobs presentations, and I can't recall any direct humor (aside from John Mayer and maybe Sam Altman rocking the popped collars).

It just doesn't seem that they'd do something like this. It's not vaudeville night, it's the Reality Distortion Field.

There is some humor (Remember the reference to the tablet rumors when the iPad was introduced?) but hardly any self deprecating humor. I can‘t think of anything. Bringing him in would be a great thing to do but not something Apple does. Probably. He might at most get a spot in the first row or something like that :)

Nevertheless I’m really looking forward to that Keynote. It will be really interesting to see how they handle that. We had the situation where blurry photos of new iPods leaked, Jobs only acknowledged that by saying something like “I think you may have seen that one before” and carried on like nothing happened. I don’t know whether Jobs can do that this time. That would be pretty ridiculous.

How about this one? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIClAanU7Os

Or this one? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl7xQ8i3fc0

I actually LOLed when he did this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p4j0CODBX8

OK. There is humor. I stand corrected, and I still think they won't highlight Graw Powell.

Macworld 1997 Boston Bill Gates (1984 ad reference) ~33:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEHNrqPkefI

Here's a video of Jobs reacting to leaked PowerMac G5 specifications

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c92rhiOepI

That would be great and it would show Apple has a sense of humour. Powell could walk out in a black turtle neck and Levis and talk about magical devices...

The thing to do is to have the chief mechanic along for the check ride.

Or just bring along the mechanic responsible for keeping the plane from becoming a twisted pile of metal and death.

Short-term, it's a PR win. Long-term, what kind of message would it send to the employees?

"This is the reason you want to still work here helping us make great stuff, instead of jumping ship because of perceived morale/culture death," for starters.

That is a nixie tube watch on his left arm. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nixie_Wozniak.jpg

What beautiful devices.

Yeah, nixie tubes are the perfect blend of Soviet-era impracticality and elegance. Now that I think of it, it's pretty impressive that there's circuitry to get up to 120V or whatever it is to drive those tubes right on his watch.

It's all explained here: http://www.cathodecorner.com/nixiewatch/theory/theory.html

Battery life: approximately 4-6 months at 50 viewings per day.

They've also GPL'ed the PIC firmware.

It's not nearly as much power (watts) to drive, but many of the EL backlight panels in cheapo digital watches require 60-100vac to drive them.

Soviet Era? Nixies were produced all over, it's just that the Soviet Union continued to produce them longer than the rest.

In this context, "Soviet-era excess" is a jab at the culture of the USA around the time of the cold war. Some of the time periods in US history are named for the war we were fighting around that time. Revolution era, Civil War era, WWI and WWII era, cold-war/Soviet era, Vietnam era.

I had no idea Woz is associated with Axiotron. Interesting...

This seems to me rather insensitive -- more importantly, it's probably not worthy of Hacker News.

Edit: Given the downvotes, I'd be quite happy to hear any legitimate grounds for disagreement. I consider the widely disseminated mocking of someone who hasn't knowingly signed on as a public figure to be insensitive (independent of how funny or clever that mocking might be, and independent of whether being insensitive will have any effect on the target's career).

If it were anyone else, I would agree. But Steve Wozniak being who he is, I think it's a signal of 'all's well that ends well.'

I'm really picking up an undercurrent of "Steve Wozniak being who he is in relation to Apple, this joke probably means that Apple has gotten over it". I don't see the evidence to back that argument up.

I think the simple fact that Wozniak (who as far as I know is one of the nicest really rich people out there, by his deeds, not by his words) is willing to do this in a way suggests that it could have happened to anybody. Shit happens, prototypes get lost.

Stuff happens to prototypes quite frequently, especially car prototypes that suddenly and unexpectedly highlight both the existence of the prototype and the unfortunate person in possession of it, you can't have the one without the other.

Keep in mind that it wasn't Wozniak that released Grays name, effectively he's saying it could have been him, since he goes out drinking as well.

Maybe I'm giving Wozniak too much credit based on his past, but I can't imagine him doing this out of malice.

Surely that's the surface rathrr than the subtext of my commemt :) But yeah, it is only a qualified guess on my part, as Wozniak is not known for vindictive behavior.

People really like Steve Wozniak, and a lot of people think the iPhone prototype was blown way out of proportion. I don't care one way or another about Wozniak, but I couldn't disagree more about the seriousness of what happened.

Don't worry about (or waste time commenting about) downvotes. If you're commenting in good faith, your karma will reflect it over the long run.

Tragically, our civilization has lost the capacity to forgive and forget, and the target doesn't qualify for witness protection, so further damaging his career is no longer possible. After Apple, he's going to have to go smith for the Amish or something.

This is not a career-ending mistake. He should be just fine.

With lazy HR people using Google, it is a huge problem. I wish him well, and hope he has good people around him.

I would not be surprised if Gray Powell felt good when he saw this pic.

Hell...if it were me...I would be jumping for joy that Woz even knows I exist.

I would be thrilled and (assuming I hadn't collapsed under the stress) I'd shamelessly milk it by trying to get Woz out for a drink.

It wouldn't surprise me either, and that doesn't make me happy. Even if the prototype had to get published once it was lost, there's simply no reason any of us needed to know this guy's name.

my god that's a neat switch panel

The situation is funny, and it provides Gray Powell with an extraordinary opportunity for personal growth.

Douche.

It's called having a sense of humor and it's not harming Gray at all.

Strong disagree.

Would you care to clarify why? Apple is either upset with Gray or it isn't. Woz wearing an irreverent shirt won't change it either way.

Wozniak having a "sense of humor" about someone else's misfortune doesn't help that person. Meanwhile, there's the guy's name, plastered on a rich famous guy's belly, being mocked. I stand by my original comment and believes it sums the situation up precisely.

Au contraire... He's making light of the situation because it doesn't deserve a heavy-handed approach, and the engineer in question will be just fine at Apple. Losing the prototype could have happened to anyone.

It's good-natured ribbing. Besides, Woz doesn't have it in him to be mean, I reckon.

There's not a single pair of subject and predicate in this comment that I agree with. That's fine. We can disagree. I think much less of Wozniak for joking about someone else's career.

I agree to disagree - I don't have insider knowledge, so I may be utterly wrong. Perhaps we'll find out soon enough.

My feeling is this is a bit of social signalling going on. Woz is saying 'Gray is one of us, we can joke around about it, because that's the kind of teasing we can do in our circle'. If the matter were serious, Wozniak would indeed be out of line, and he'd hopefully know better than to do this. There's no need to keep Powell's name secret anymore, he's part of the Apple mythology now.

There is a few bits more info in this article: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20003345-37.html

Woz:"It seems clear that (Powell) kept the iPhone prototype secret enough to satisfy Apple. It's a bad accident that could happen to any of us."

If Wozniak was an Apple spokesperson, that comment would carry a lot of weight. But he isn't. He has no authority here whatsoever. And I think he's wrong.

Do you disagree with the first sentence, the second sentence, or both?

I imagine he has the ear of more than a handful of important people at Apple, so him saying 'give the kid a break' would have a fair degree of influence.

Why do you imagine this? Apple in 2010 is to my eyes a completely different company than the one Wozniak worked at. Wozniak has publicly criticized it.

There's clearly no malice intended, and I'd say "mocked" is far too strong a term. He's making fun of the situation, not Gray himself.

If you find this joke to be insensitive I'm having a hard time imagining what sort of humor you approve of, given practically every joke out there makes fun of someone/something.

There's nothing wrong with making fun of people. I do it incessantly. But I avoid doing it to people when they're down. And, if I ever achieve the sort of success Wozniak has, I hope I'll avoid doing it to people just starting to make their way in my field.

An iPhone baseband engineer is not "just starting to make [his] way."

He graduated in 2006. He's a kid. I'm sure he's better at his job now than I ever could be, but that's beside the point.

Totally agree that publishing the guy's name in the first place was the dickest move in a long time and that it's douchey to keep publishing it. But Wozniak by all accounts doesn't have a malicious bone in his body, so people (including me) take for granted that his intent is not to kick a guy when he's down.

I'd be willing to bet this wasn't his idea, that someone handed him the shirt and he went along with the gag as much to be agreeable as because he thought it was funny. So as far as gradations of jerkdom are concerned second prize ought to go not to Woz but to whomever produced the shirt, whose purpose requires no speculation:

http://www.zazzle.com/the_unofficial_gray_powell_iphone_t_sh...

(Edit: Deleted the sentence "It does seem like poor judgment, though, also not out of character for Woz." That was sloppily and hastily written, didn't convey what I meant, and isn't even something I believe.)

You really have no idea who, never mind what, you're talking about, do you?

I don't know the baseband guy at all, even a little bit, if that's what you're getting at.

"practically every joke out there makes fun of someone/something."

Those are the types of jokes Americans like. I prefer surreal/absurdist humor. http://www.laughlab.co.uk/

Had I lost my iPhone prototype, having Woz go to the effort to make a t-shirt and take this picture would absolutely have made my day. Anyone who knows anything about Woz knows that this was done with a good heart.

Had I lost it, I would have thought it weird that a guy like steve wozinak has nothing better to do than make a t shirt with my name on it.

He didn't make it. Those shirts literally appeared hours after the story broke and his name was out there.

With all the publicity this story has gathered? I certainly wouldn't. Then again, Woz was the guy that placed professionally crafted signs reading "Warning: Do not use over populated areas" and put them on airplane lavatories, so I wasn't surprised to see him pull something like this.

Culturally I doubt Apple's that mad if their cofounder's joking about it.

I don't know any better than you (probably) do, but my sense of it is that Wozniak's sensibilities don't even land on the same hemisphere as Apple's circa 2010.

Would it pain you greatly to communicate in more than grunts, maybe even using subjects in your sentences? I really don't mean to be pedantic, but a comment consisting solely of "strong disagree" doesn't really lead to a productive conversation.

Maybe, after having his name sold to Nick Denton for $5000 for making a career-damaging mistake, the guy might rather get this past him, rather than becoming an industry punch line. I don't know. Unlike some people on HN, I'm not one of his friends.

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