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Comment by ajsharp | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of the fascinating NYT story about the lead up to the original iPhone announcement event: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/and-then-steve-s....

A choice excerpt:

> The iPhone could play a section of a song or a video, but it couldn’t play an entire clip reliably without crashing. It worked fine if you sent an e-mail and then surfed the Web. If you did those things in reverse, however, it might not. Hours of trial and error had helped the iPhone team develop what engineers called “the golden path,” a specific set of tasks, performed in a specific way and order, that made the phone look as if it worked.

I guess I post this here as a means to say, while what OP is talking about certainly sucks, Apple seems to have a long history of this. Doesn't make it better, and certainly what he's outlined seems extra bad, but not completely unexpected.

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There’s a difference between a golden path for a demo for a product that will ship in 6 month and a public release thats still very buggy.

And a public beta that will mess your files on other devices(!?)

Great read! Thanks for sharing. Highly encourage anyone who is on the fence about reading the whole thing to go for it.

Steve, and others like him, do make me wonder. On the one hand, I work four days a week, never stay late at work, and live a good, steady life. But on the other hand, I see these super-stars, these drive-people-to-the-edge, sleep-on-shop-floor types, and see how much change and drive they create, it makes me start to think that maybe I should work _much_ harder. But then again, I quite like all this time I have to think on things. And of course, we don't get all the details about how this style of work _really_ affects home life; I'm sure we'd have much less respect for these super-stars if we knew they _all_ had screwed up lives away from work.

I know what you mean, the appeal of this total dedication. For myself, I've come to the conclusion that I could not do it for long, not as long as I'd have to. I think for those types like Jobs, Musk, it wasn't even a conscious choice they made to put all they had into their work, they are/were just driven. You'd know it if you were, too. They could never have done a four-day work week with zero overtime, it was never an option for them. So, enjoy your life as it is, this is yours, theirs is different, and don't think you're missing out on anything.

Reminds me of an anecdote I heard about starting your own company. It's great, you're the boss. You can work half days if you want. You even get to choose which 12 hours that will be.

Demos of new products always have golden paths, and even demos of production grade software have golden paths very frequently because maintaining complex software in a demo-able state is hard (i.e. historical reports need to show a plausible history without anyone actually using the system).

Indeed. Apple's MO for a LONG time has been, "The way things have always worked should always be rethought, and we've come up with a better way for you". Many Apple users on forums like this tend to be Apple apologists until they introduce that one change that's too much, and then it's all "Apple's lost their way!" when the reality is it's just Apple being Apple.

That’s not what the parent comment is saying at all.

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