Shipping Graphing Calculator

Host here. I’ve been on many projects that get canceled. We’re building cool stuff. We’re going above and beyond, and we’re excited. But the project encounters shifting priorities or budgeting constraints, and the work never goes anywhere. This is Ron's story of refusing to let that happen, sneaking onto the Apple campus to work, and as a result, getting his project onto millions of Apple Computers. (It's been on hn before, but this version has new details and more back story)

A favorite part of mine:

    Ron: Frequently people would come up to me and ask me, “Do you work here?”

    And I’d just tell them no.

    And they’d say, “Oh, that means you’re a contractor.”

    And I’d say, “Actually, no.”

    Then they’d say, “But then who’s paying you?”

    And I’d tell them no one.

    Then they’d ask, “How do you live?”

    I’d say, “I live simply.”

    And then they’d ask me, “What are you doing here?” And I’d give them a demo.

Previously:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=684002

I think I'd originally read this story on https://www.pacifict.com/Story/ I think it's interesting to see the differences.

For instance, I didn't see this make it into the corerecursive story:

> For example, at that time only about two hundred PowerPC chips existed in the world. Most of those at Apple were being used by the hardware design engineers. Only a few dozen coveted PowerPC machines were even available in System Software for people working on the operating system. We had two. Engineers would come to our offices at midnight and practically slip machines under the door. One said, "Officially, this machine doesn't exist, you didn't get it from me, and I don't know you. Make sure it doesn't leave the building."

Nice to see CoRecursive up here, probably my favourite tech related podcast. Really interesting to find out about less known things like SerenityOs (for me at least) and especially the stories of people facing difficulties in their work and how they managed to change up their lives are often captivating.

You can find the Graphing Calculator website at https://pacifict.com/

Or, try the System 9 version of Graphing Calculator at https://macos9.app/ in the Macintosh HD -> Applications folder. It has a "Demo" menu if you want to see some of its capabilities.

Cannot see this link and not share Ron's delightful Google TechTalk (though I imagine many if not most here have seen or heard it already):

The Graphing Calculator Story https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl643JFJWig

This is an utterly mad story - fully expected the episode to end with the developer getting arrested and going to jail. Sneaking onto the Apple campus for months to develop an App?!

This episode was very entertaining, something that I could believe happening back in the earlier days of computing (but not now), and is one of my favourite recent episodes.

> I make the Golden Master hard disc. In a very real and pragmatic sense, I decide what does and does not ship on the machines

This is the high point of the story to me. Do we know who said that and what was their story? E.g. what made them approach the devs and were there any consequences?

I was at the WWDC, when he gave that demo at an ATG night (I think).

He was given a standing ovation, by 2,000 geeks.

Of course, there's always Ron's original story: http://www.pacifict.com/Story/

I've seen this story told many times, but the podcast version was still entertaining.

If your idea is good it will stick outside your idol that snubs you.

What apps do drabble algebra today?

Couldn't get past the site design, dynamic headers, tracking fonts, etc