Hacker News Reader

Comment by woadwarrior01 | Hacker News Reader

> For one, Apple was unwilling to have visible barcodes printed on the envelopes — but it wanted every step of the shipping and delivery of your card tracked. That wasn’t something the US Postal Service did. Apple and the printing company created an invisible barcode that was sprayed on the envelope, visible only under certain UV light, so that the envelope itself would remain unadulterated. And the USPS agreed to scan cards when sent, when processed at mail facilities, up to and including when they went out on a mail truck for delivery.

This is classic Steve Jobs. Sheer force of will.

View on HN

The amount of work that went into getting regulators IN EVERY JURISDICTION IN THE WORLD to let Apple put the regulatory markings behind an info button in the OS (instead of printed on the device) just so that the back of the phone can be clean of all text and iconography except the Apple is absolutely mindblowing.

I appreciate it SO MUCH. I remember on the 7 or 8 when it happened how totally blown away I was.

Now there’s less visual/symbol spam in my daily view of an object I (and billions of others) use constantly. This stuff is way more important than people think.

I would maybe appreciate things like this, if manufactures made phones with solid grip and not by visuals or metrics like thickness measured at thinnest point. But as they are all of them go into bumper cases that hide whatever they have on the back.

Speak for yourself, I don’t use a case.

Most people do, so they are speaking for the vast majority

It's a lot easier to add a case (in your preferred style, grip, and featureset) than it is to remove size/weight/thickness/engraved logos from a phone.

So then speak for them. Don’t speak for me. Thanks!

Noone was speaking for you in the first place - my comment started with "I".

> But as they are all of them go into bumper cases

To be clear, you personally ("I") put all phones ("all of them") into bumper cases?

That seems weird, but you were talking about all phones from the manufacturer.

So, again, speak for yourself. Thanks!

"all (my) phones." What other phones could I be talking about? I don't have control over what happens to anyone else.

To be clear, you meant something different than you typed, and that’s my problem somehow?

Great, have a nice day. I think we’re done here

Who are you talking to?

And removing the indicator lights from most of their chargers! unlike the twinkling stars of other companies that blind you while you're trying to sleep.

Honestly only dumbasses wouldn't appreciate these small things that accumulate to a big difference, just instinctively downvoting from bumache just because it's Apple

I remember the moronic Samesung ads that made fun of the iPhone 4 or 5 for moving the headphone jack to the bottom of the phone.. not realizing that it made it easier for people it put in their pockets while letting a headphone or charging cable go straight up.

MagSafe chargers have lights though?

Well. Apple reuses the branding. The MagSafe chargers for Mac do have indicator lights, while the MagSafe chargers for iPhone do not.

The magnetic chargers for Apple Watch also do not have lights. Neither do the USB-C cables for iPads and AirPods. I assume the newest AirPod cases still have charging lights though.

>MagSafe chargers for Mac do have indicator lights

Since we lost the on-MacBook charging lights (RIP).*

Apple Watch: set watch on charger or tap watch screen to check status. Same for iPhone. Tap AirPods case to see charging light as well.

*Guess I’ve survived without this, but it was a bummer my first Mac without it.

Really good point that those indicators are on-demand rather than always-on.

Succinct summary.

Ooh, “Your Apple Watch is fully charged.” notification on iPhone, that’s nice too. (Can sometimes just charge while showering/etc. and not think about it though.)

Yeah, a bit annoying, hence "most of"

> Honestly only dumbasses wouldn't appreciate

I'm seeing this style of argument on the rise: "only an idiot would disagree". It reminds me of an old professor of mine that would use "proof by intimidation", where he would begin the proof with "As any fool can plainly see..."

It makes for terrible discussion.

Because the GP was in the dark gray (and probably invisible to some users) when I saw their comment, even though they didn't say anything worth downvoting

When you're gonna go down anyway might as well go down with a middle finger up

> even though they didn't say anything worth downvoting

Sometimes it's how you say things, not what you're saying.

So yeah fuck the people who pant over hOw shit's said instead of what's said

There's always gonna be a moron somewhere who can't handle something, no matter how carefully you choose your words.

And now you can put a case on and cover it all up anyway.

Even before that, the first iPhone simply not having the brand name of the carrier plastered on the front like every other cell phone felt so nice.

It's not as complicated as it seems from a technical perspective. Stamps have been UV-tagged since the 1960s as an anti-counterfeiting/automated detection measure. In the analog era, you shine UV light on a letter and if it it glows enough, it's got a stamp.

Modern processing machines (AFCS) capture both a visible and UV image of the mailpiece, so it's fundamentally changing the image processing software to have it look for the barcode on the UV side if it can't find one on visible. The downstream DBCS sorters already read secondary barcodes that are applied by the AFCS which happen to be in UV ink.

Further, USPS benefits from the same idea to hide a barcode for marketing (junk) mail. When combined with a handwriting-like typeface, it makes letters look personal and gets people to open them more. Same psychology where mailers apply a bulk-rate stamp instead of using a permit imprint.

It's a very Steve Jobs/Apple case where it sounds like a minor detail that requires crazy advances, but under the covers, it's very technically feasible, and importantly, can exploit economies of scale.

What’s the latest on the roomful of people who read nearly-impossible-to-read addresses? Was dwindling last I heard—mad respect to them. You see some of those envelopes, complete chickenscratch or water damage, and somehow they get them to their destination.

In the 50s, when they started to use machines to sort mail, there were keyers at every facility that sorted mail. I believe there are still are still some local keyers on parcel sorters, where it's harder to "lift" the image of the address on a large box.

For letter encoding, they used to have 55 centers, in 2014 it became one, in Utah. A large part of it is OCR getting better and deciphering most handwritten addresses.

Another part of it is simple consolidation: it's trivial to send images over networks, and due to how mail has to be sorted together for dispatch, the demand tended to be peaky. Consolidation lets you exploit different timezones. (Slowing down the mail also gives a big benefit because you can spread the load over the whole day)

During my time at Apple one of the coolest talk I attended was about the process Apple went through to send a camera to the International Space Station and train astronauts how to use to use it to capture footage to be used as a screensaver in one of the earlier Apple TV versions.

Wow, I always assumed they used video released by NASA, not that they sent a camera to space specifically to have astronauts take the video they wanted.

I’d imagine most companies would laugh someone out of the room for suggesting something like that. That’s why those other companies seem like the Temu version of Apple.

Yeah, I learned that there is a whole process to rent astronauts in space by the hour for experiments or whatever. There was a part in that talk about sending the camera up that I don't remember, but I wish I did.

A separate part of the same talk was about a different screensaver. The flyovers through the cities and how they used math to figure out the exact time and place for the lens flares so they would be real. They also talked about removing all the billboards/ads from the buildings.

It was all just great stuff.

Can't believe they got USPS to do a custom stamp in 2011.

Which one is that?

I honestly couldn't find any documentation of it anywhere. But it's clearly in the picture.

Less "sheer force of will" and annoying arrogance and stubbornness.

Reminder that Jobs is not a good role model. A lot of his decisions were erratic and based on what might as well have been undiagnosed BPD.

What part of this is annoying? They made the barcode invisible so the envelope looks better. That’s wildly unnecessary, but cool.

That’s what makes Apple different than other tech companies. They have an extreme attention to detail that extends even to their packaging.

Arrogance and stubborness would be insisting on doing things that are literally impossible. This is pushing people to go beyond "computer says no" attitude.

The problem with Steve Jobs and his insistence on doing things his way is that other people were like ants to him. He made other people's lives hell when they had to follow his borderline insane orders. He'd yell at people, belittle them, insult them, and he got away with it every time because he was a billionaire and those other people depended on their paychecks.

And it was often for details that didn't matter. Like the exact shape of the curve of the plastic housing of some long-forgotten iMac. People just want computers that work and that don't look like total crap, they don't even notice the corner radius or whether the motherboard (excuse me, "logic board") is aesthetically pleasing according to the genius that took one class on calligraphy at Reed College.

He got away with it because the results were unique and valuable.

I like these comments that basically say working for Steve Jobs was hard. They carry a legend that is almost creative writing. Every year Steve Jobs becomes more of an evil genius villain-bastard hobbit-creature spreading the seeds of every sadistic personality disorder.

To be fair, he was genuinely a demanding and abrasive personality.

I once saw him absolutely dismantle, over the course of an hour, an intern that made the mistake of asking one stupid question.

I’ve dealt with difficult bosses myself so I’d appreciate a legendary story like that.

Maybe when I finally retire

I'm starting to read the Isaacson bio. There are many small moments where you literally shake your head and think "oh no, did he really do that now"

You’re just assuming everyone else shares your personal opinions on computers and design, but that’s not the case. There are people admiring the exact radius on the motherboard or that iMac shape, just like they absolutely value an envelope without a barcode.

Details that don’t matter to you might matter to someone else, and vice versa.

You mean maniacally focused on customer experience?

Sheer force of stupid, no one cares if a bar code is on the envelope.

I dunno. Premium products are a difficult thing. I can't weigh in because I don't care about cards at all, I'd much rather receive a wedding invitation via e-mail yet people spend hundreds on custom cards on thick card, custom printing etc etc. In fact, some couples are insistent on getting their wedding invitation envelopes "hand cancelled" so they look crisp and clean when they arrive at their destination:

https://www.theknot.com/content/hand-cancel-wedding-invitati...

If you're one of those people I could absolutely imagine you'd care about a visible barcode on an envelope. They kind of have to be premium products because if they’re blah then people will just use evites, which are better in a bunch of functional ways. The product relies on its differentiators.

And then, those idiots divorce in the third year after all this pantomine.

To whom do you send the card that says "congratulations!" to?

Clearly one person did.

Not only an untrue statement, but also a sadly incurious way to approach someone else's design choice. Yes, it was an enormous amount of work and invention to achieve a desired effect, but the effect is striking in an environment that is otherwise plastered with everyday visual clutter.

Minimalism is difficult and expensive to achieve. Some people consider that effort worthwhile.

Someone who cares about the barcode tends to care about other details. In some ways it's like the band riders that have silly things like no brown m&m's.

I literally thought of brown m&ms when I read your first sentence and have to say this way of thinking has to be some kind of mega baloney, no offense. I would be more concerned if someone actually spent time sorting brown m&ms because it means I'm dealing with people pleasers that waste time on nonsense, thus not having time for more important things.

As for the design details, the proof is in the pudding. If they sold well then the person with this idea understood the vapidness of his customers to the point of contempt. But I am reminded of how things like design evolve from being there to solve a problem to over time becoming the problem itself that needs solving and the actual focus. But I don't think this is a good way to deal with things.

From a systems perspective, the brown M&Ms are a "canary" (a.k.a. "sentinel indicator"). If a venue can't handle that or simply decides that it's "mega baloney" and ignores it, one can no longer assume that they've done anything competently, or at all.

This. Van Halen has stated as much - if there are brown M&Ms, chances are really high they haven't paid attention to detail, and a deep dive is going to uncover some serious problems:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-did-van-hale...

As an aside, I did think the M&Ms story was just a band being a diva until I heard them explain it like this. It's actually brilliant.

I am aware of the story and the theory behind it, I just don't agree. There is always something to do, and if you have a tightly run competent group, things go smoothly only because the team has a routine built on experience. If you throw a wrench in that and have someone waste time fiddling with m&Ms it will make the other important things worse. For me, asking for something like that and actually getting it would be more terrifying because it would be an indication that you're dealing with amateurs that don't have a routine and no experience. And also like I said, people pleasers that prioritize satisfying important people's whims instead of providing quality work. It's just been my experience those two don't really mix well, you either strive to be skilled at what you do and progress in your career, or you strive to make someone happy, and progress in your career. Think of the Volkswagen engineer that implemented the exhaust gas test cheating device. I expect qualified people to question nonsense, and to disagree. Skilled people are not McDonald's employees flipping a burger after the instructed 90 seconds or whatever. If you run your organization or team rewarding lemming like behavior, just following along with everything everyone else is doing, you will get a team full of lemmings. There's no way around that. How much you can accomplish with that depends on the task. For McDonald's it's fine, but then again it's a shitty product.

We can of course disagree, there's no harm in that.

One call: “hey saw the m&m requirement. Respect, but we aren’t doing it of course. See yall at the show.”

> things go smoothly only because the team has a routine built on experience. If you throw a wrench in that and have someone waste time fiddling with m&Ms

Isn’t there variance in how long a venue’s contractual obligations will take to fulfill? One weekend someone needs you to spend X hours coordinating on sound and lighting, the next weekend it’s .5X hours? (Correct me if I’m wrong here if someone knows.) If they get the M&Ms right and they triaged appropriately, seems like a little indicator they scheduled enough people to work long enough to make it through the whole rider.

No cop out here with “oh just tell them you’re ignoring it”, treating the whole doc as a serious thing to get through or they can find another venue that will.

Edit: apparently to even deal with Van Halen you’d have to deal with not three 18-wheelers of gear, max, but three times as many! So you’d need way more hours I bet. Also an alternative that might rub some less the wrong way: some redditor (or liar) claims they’d put something really dumb mistake in their riders and good venues would essentially bring it up first thing.

And as somebody who has been on the receiving end of funny riders, a simple message to the talent’s team indicating you saw it but that you don’t plan to carry it out is usually sufficient. All they care about is whether or not you were paying attention.

Not baloney. Someone who thinks they can decide what’s important about a production, not the production designer or manager, is likely to draw the line at the wrong place. Someone who faithfully implements detailed instructions is more trustworthy. A quick way to check if that’s the case helps to determine which kind of person oversaw the work.

I used to work as a developer at creative agencies and saw this all the time. There were developers who had a hard time believing that they should implement designs to the pixel because they thought a bit of padding didn’t matter so long as they got the important items right. They were almost always the ones who ended up missing important details (copy, working forms, performant databases etc.)

There's a related Steve Jobs quote:

"When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through."

I think this depends on your goal. You can plausibly make either a cabinet that is beautiful all the way through, or one that is beautiful on the outside without wasting money. Both are pretty reasonable choices.

It’s not just about the money, it could also be about being a perfectionist. Going that extra mile.

> reasonable choices

We are talking about fundamentally unreasonable people who make literally insane products. Some called them insanely great.

We don’t want reasonable choices. We want change.

Here’s to the crazy ones.

(It breaks my heart that most in Apple management these days are quite thoroughly sane.)

Assuming that is an actual Jobs quote, it's pretty on-brand for him. Carpenters don't make furniture.

That's typical executive lack of awareness of the skills and roles of the little people charged with fulfilling their grand vision.

Also funny that a plywood back is often preferred because it holds the squareness of the furniture without the issues of wood movement you get with solid wood backings.

JUMP!

When you’re sending someone a personal card barcodes makes it look very impersonal, maybe even makes it look like junk mail.

But this is not a personal card. It is a credit card. Who in the world would even notice this detail?

This whole exercise sounds like a minimalist circlejerk that was only possible in a ZIRP environment.

> only possible in a ZIRP environment.

Why did interest rates matter to Apple, a company famously averse to extended or significant borrowing?

It is a personal card, not a credit card.

This isn't about the Apple Card. It's about an iOS app called "Cards" which lets you physically mail personal cards straight from your iPhone.

Oof, serves me right for not reading the article! Thanks for the correction :)

I think many failed/aborted projects only seem stupid in retrospect because we assume it proof they could never have succeeded .. but many ridiculous things can and do succeed and find their place. It fizzled after his death without anyone championing it with persistent care and constructive iterations. It may well have ultimately failed, regardless, but it certainly lost its motive power.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com