Computer History Museum's Oral History Collection: Richard Williamson & Ken Kocienda

Video info:

Richard Williamson great up in Stafford, England, and moved to Arizona at age 11, when his father moved to the Honeywell mainframe factory in Phoenix. While at Swarthmore College studying the philosophy of language, he met Steve Jobs and joined NeXT, working on the Digital Librarian, the NeXT laser printer, and after graduation, the abortive NeXT RISC Workstation project, the AppKit and Foundation frameworks, the end-user environment and applications that shipped with NeXTSTEP. After leaving NeXT in 1994, Williamson co-founded InfoScape, which developed development tools for Java, and then worked as CTO at Resonate, a company which focused on internet server load balancing, before joining Apple. 

Ken Kocienda grew up on Long Island, New York in a Polish family, studied art history at Yale, pursued an MFA in fine art photography, and then discovered the World Wide Web in the early 1990s, and spent a number of years creating websites and writing Java, before joining Andy Herzfeld’s startup Eazel. After Eazel’s demise, Kocienda was one of a number of Eazel employees that joined Apple. 

In June of 2001, a few months after the initial version of Mac OS X 10.0 ships, Scott Forstall asked Don Melton to start the Safari/WebKit project to build a web browser and web framework for Apple. Melton hired Kocienda and Williamson, and the three of them built the initial version of Safari/WebKit from the open source Konqueror/KHTML project, after researching various open source options, including Mozilla, which was rejected due to its overly large and complicated codebase. Williamson wrote the initial OS X port of KHTML as a proof of concept in a few days, which convinced the team that it was the right choice. WebKit made it possible not only for Apple to ship the Safari browser, but also to embed web pages inside other applications as web views, as well as to create standalone apps using Web interfaces, which lead to the creation of Dashboard widgets. In a subsequent release of OS X, Kocienda added HTML text editing in WebKit to support editing rich text messages in Apple Mail using HTML. 

After several years of work on Safari, Williamson and Kocienda were recruited to join the iPhone team to work on WebKit and Safari for the iPhone. Again, the two of them were the initial engineers on the team, with Williamson eventually becoming the manager as the team grew. Williamson was a crucial voice in pushing the vision of the iPhone as a web browsing device. Beyond Safari, however, WebKit was important on the iPhone because it was used for all text display and input in iPhone 1.0, even in native applications. WebKit was also considered a contender as the API for all application development, in a way similar to Dashboard Widgets on OS X, until the decision was made to create the native UIKit framework, for reasons of internal developer productivity. The iPhone software team became divided organizationally between Williamson’s web team, which owned not only WebKit and the Safari browser but also apps implemented in WebKit, and Nitin Ganatra’s native applications team, which owned UIKit and native apps, such as Mail, that were implemented using UIKit, though there was collaboration throughout. Kocienda won an internal contest to design a workable software keyboard for the iPhone and became the engineer responsible for the keyboard for many years. Williamson’s team also built the original Maps and YouTube apps for the iPhone, implementing the native client applications in collaboration with Google’s server-side platforms and data. 

* Note: Transcripts represent what was said in the interview. However, to enhance meaning or add clarification, interviewees have the opportunity to modify this text afterwards. This may result in discrepancies between the transcript text and the video recording. Please see the transcript for further information: http://www.computerhistory.org/collec... 

Visit computerhistory.org/collections/oralhistories/ for more information about the Computer History Museum's Oral History Collection. 

Catalog Number: 102740224

Lot Number: X8367.2018

Ken Kocienda has recently released a book about his days working for Apple:

Creative Selection:
Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs

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BOOK DETAILS
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Release date: 2018-IX-4
Language: English

Number of pages: 304

Size: 6.4 x 1.1 x 9.6 inches
ISBN-10: 1250194466
ISBN-13: 978-1250194466

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Steve Wozniak at TEDx

Engineer guy video: Anodizing

It's rewarding to see that one can learn so many things on the Internet in the blink of an eye. I remembered when they spoke about anodizing in a boring Materials Class in Madrid Architecture School, with just an ugly drawing projected in a bad quality transparency projector. Thankfully things have changed so much since 2003.  Let us be thankful we have Internet and great people creating interesting content.

The Hobbit Production Repot #5 by Peter Jackson

The Hobbit movie trailer has been released recently and I just saw this production video on YouTube today. It's always great to see the behind scenes of the cast and crew, especially on those huge productions. I still remember when I first started to watch this kind of stuff when got internet at home for the first time. Star Wars Episode II On Location's where hitting the net thanks to a colaboration betwen Lucasfilms and Apple. A long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away in the pre-YouTube days.

ART & COPY directed by Doug Pray

I was looking for Lee Clow's work in the net, the guy responsible for the classic Apple 1984 commercial. And I came upon with the documentary Art and Copy directed by Doug Pray about the revolution of advertisement and marketing. It's available on DVD.

Computers making computers

This video that explains how was the everyday life in the Apple's Macintosh Factory in Fremont, California where Mac SE and Macintosh II used to be produced in the eighties.

Steve Jobs dies at age 56

Steve Jobs passed away. It's so sad to think that he is not going to appear presenting all those pioneering products that year after year have revolutionized the consumer electronics business any more. It's hard to believe that he won't be in Cupertino thinking and working with his colleagues at Apple any more. 

But, for the vast majority of us, that just know him from written media or have seen him on YouTube, is going to be specially weird not to have him some in a while around us. That small dose of Steve Jobs that feels so good to everyone, from the rich business man on Wall Street to the lazy student from wherever. The same way we won't have another Kubrick movie, the same way we won't have another Tezuka manga or another essay from Oteiza, we won't have any other Steve's state of the art keynotes presenting us his company's latest creations. 

However, Steve, as all great people do, has left a huge legacy behind him. Companies like Apple or Pixar have their roots in Steve's way of doing things and he has become a model for hundreds of thousands entrepreneurs around the world. And that memory, will live forever.

Rest in peace Steve.

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Note on the video: The video above is one of my favorites. It was year 1997 and Jobs was just back at Apple to rescue it from bankruptcy. And sure he did. Here the presentation of one of the best commercial campaigns ever  done in the computer industry: Think Different. It's amazing how much you can learn from this guy.

Steve Jobs

Today Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO of Apple due to health problems. Take care Steve and keep on inspiring the world. Here some selected quotes from all this past years:

I've seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you've gone through all that, the girl's got up and left! You're much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you're connected with about two feet of headphone cable.

When asked whether he was concerned over Microsoft Zune's wireless capability, as a product competing with Apple's iPod, as quoted in Newsweek(2006-10-14)

Look at the design of a lot of consumer products — they're really complicated surfaces. We tried to make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don't put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through.

On the design of the iPod, as quoted in Newsweek (2006-10-14)

Real artists ship

An old saying at AppleComputer, attributed to Steve Jobs, meaning that it is important to actually deliver

It's more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy

At a retreat in September 1982, as quoted in John Sculley and John A. Byrne, Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple – A Journey of Adventure, Ideas, and the Future (1987), p. 157

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me ... Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful... that's what matters to me.

On the success of Bill Gates and Microsoft, as quoted in The Wall Street Journal (Summer 1993)

John Sculley ruined Apple and he ruined it by bringing a set of values to the top of Apple which were corrupt and corrupted some of the top people who were there, drove out some of the ones who were not corruptible, and brought in more corrupt ones and paid themselves collectively tens of millions of dollars and cared more about their own glory and wealth than they did about what built Apple in the first place — which was making great computers for people to use.

Statement in The Computerworld Smithsonian Awards Program oral history, (1995-04-20)

You know, I've got a plan that could rescue Apple. I can't say any more than that it's the perfect product and the perfect strategy for Apple. But nobody there will listen to me.

As quoted in Fortune (1995-09-18)

If, for some reason, we make some big mistake and IBM wins, my personal feeling is that we are going to enter a computer Dark Ages for about twenty years.

On the early rivalry between Macintosh and "IBM-compatible" computers based on Microsoft's DOS, as quoted in Steve Jobs : The Journey is the Reward (1987) by Jeffrey S. Young, p. 235

The desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased. Microsoft dominates with very little innovation. That's over. Apple lost. The desktop market has entered the dark ages, and it's going to be in the dark ages for the next 10 years, or certainly for the rest of this decade.

As quoted in "Steve Jobs : The Next Insanely Great Thing" in WIRED magazine (February 1996)

When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth.

Interview in WIRED magazine (February 1996)

I was worth about over a million dollars when I was twenty-three and over ten million dollars when I was twenty-four, and over a hundred million dollars when I was twenty-five and it wasn't that important because I never did it for the money.

Interview in the PBS documentary Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires (1996)

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.

As quoted in Fortune (1998-11-09); also quoted in "TIME digital 50" in TIME digital archive (1999)

The products suck! There's no sex in them anymore!

On products at Apple, just before his return to it BusinessWeek (July 1997)

It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.

As quoted in BusinessWeek (1998-05-25)

I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.

As quoted in Newsweek (29 October 2001)

The system is that there is no system. That doesn't mean we don't have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that's not what it's about. Process makes you more efficient.

But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem. It's ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea.

And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.

As quoted in "The Seed of Apple's Innovation"in Business Week (12 October 2004)

I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what's next.

"Jobs : Iconoclast and salesman" by Brian Williams, at MSNBC (2006-05-25)

source: wikiquote

Steve Jobs presents the new Apple Head Quarters

iMac G3 to iPhone4

Last June 7th, Steve Jobs presented the iPhone 4. Take a look at this comparison with the imac G3 a product by the same company, from a decade ago. That makes me think on the first computer we ever had at home.

Steev Jobs at D3

playing with a iBook

This Easter Holidays our cousins bring to Macotera an awesome computer the Apple iBook. My brother and I have been playing with it and learning a little Macromedia Flash. It's been a great experience, we need a computer at home!

Steve Jobs interviewed in Fox

MACWORLD '97 the return of Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, the soul and visionary co-founder of Apple Computer, returned to the company that watched him grow as Apple adquired NeXT a company Steve himself founded back in 1987.

Steve Jobs keeper of the vision

This great documentary by John Nathan moves us back to the days in which Steve Jobs and his pals were giving  the first steps on his newly founded company: NeXT

Steve Jobs introduces the Macintosh

1984ko urtarrilaren 24ean, ni jaio baino 6 hile lehenago, Apple-ek Ordenailu pertsonalen historian eman den aurrera pausu handienetako bat aurkeztu zuen: Macintosh-a. Hona hemen aurtengo SuperBowl-ean, Ridley Scott-ek zuzenduriko komertziala.

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El 24 de enero de 1984, seis meses antes de que yo naciera, Apple presentó lo que sería uno de los mayores avances en la historia de los ordenadores personales: El Macintosh. Este es el anuncio publicitario dirigido por Ridley Scott que fue emitido en la Super Bowl de aquel año.

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On January 24 1984, six months before I was born, Apple introduced one of the biggest leaps in the history of Personal Computers: The Macintosh. Here, the commercial shown at this years Super Bowl, directed by filmmaker Ridley Scott.