Founder at Infactory. Past: 15 years at , inventor of iPhone autocorrect, author of “Creative Selection”.
Nov 16, 2023 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
Two days ago, I gave a demo to some guests at @Humane. This was their first time to see the Ai Pin in action. Generally, I just like to start doing things with the device. Show rather than tell.
I asked about the most recent Warriors game.
They lost to Minnesota on Nov 12! 🫤
I “settled a bar bet” by asking who was the president of the United States on January 1, 1880.
Rutherford B. Hayes… everyone’s favorite president 😉
Nov 6, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
No. This is false. I helped to create two different billion-user projects at Apple: WebKit and iPhone. I was on these teams from the earliest stages and I never once came close to sleeping at the office. It’s not an essential part of doing great work.
Yes, I worked hard back then at Apple. I still do at @Humane these days. Just yesterday (a Saturday) I spent four hours at the office, but I do this because of the joy I take in the work. Then I went home and got a good night’s sleep.
Nov 5, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
The positive legacy of Steve Jobs is showing how to create great tech products by leading with design. The negative legacy is the false belief that the way to achieve this as CEO is by running the company like a domineering ill-tempered brat.
I don’t know how to reconcile the paradox of company that has a toxic environment rife with bad behavior on the inside but aims to produce terrific things and fantastic financial results on the outside. When does toxic transform to terrific? Where’s the crossover point?
Oct 30, 2022 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
I somehow missed this question from @rsms when it went by a couple weeks ago. I have lots of ideas about what I’d like to see in a workstation OS. Here are a few.
Great search. It’s ridiculous that I can search the internet more efficiently than I can search the contents of the local storage on the computer sitting in my lap. Honestly… it’s crazy.
Oct 20, 2022 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
I love computing as a creative medium because it also offers practical benefits. New ideas in computing compound each other. Take a great idea. Implement it in hardware and software. It opens up more great ideas for yourself and others.
I got into computing because I was so excited about the potential of software and what I could do with it, and that enthusiasm has only increased over the years as I became aware that I could contribute to making new kinds of hardware too.
Oct 17, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Where do great ideas come from?
• Somebody goes for walk in the woods or at the beach.
• Two people get a cup of coffee.
• A person shows a demo and then somebody reacts to it in the moment or soon after.
Great ideas are far less likely to spring from a scheduled brainstorming confab where a moderator is standing at a whiteboard with a bunch of color-coded stickies writing down things people dream up on the spot. Maybe you’ll get lucky, but I say forget even trying such meetings.
Oct 14, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I'll be on the livestream in a little bit with @samsheffer.
Last week, somebody asked for a list of books I recommend. Here are a dozen.
Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer that Changed Everything, by Steven Levy
Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet, by Katie Hafner
2/
Oct 12, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Sometimes people ask me how to get better at programming or design or making things. The simplest and best answer I can offer: practice. Start doing the thing you want to do, and don’t expect quick results. There is no magic.
For years when I was younger, I wanted to write computer programs, but I had no idea what I was doing and I wasn’t good at it. I kept going because I couldn’t let go of the idea that someday I might be good at it if I kept trying. Slowly, over many years, that worked.
Oct 10, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I haven’t worked on autocorrect in a long time, but I did the one for the original iPhone. I had a couple big ideas about it. They’re related.
Give people what they meant rather than what they did.
Don’t give people results they obviously didn’t mean.
The basic concept was input correction, not spelling fixups or word prediction. Here’s the fundamental problem that autocorrect solved for: the keys were too small to target reliably. It wasn’t that people can’t spell or are too lazy to type long words.
Oct 9, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Great products are built on “wow” moments.
I had those moments when we were making the original iPhone.
“Wow, I can access real web pages on a pocketable computer.”
“Wow, scrolling through a list of songs with touch is terrific.”
“Wow, I can read and reply to texts easily.”
These “wow” moments were tied to actually using the product. We had these moments in the R&D labs long before anyone did in the outside world, and sometimes we had to squint to see them because the product wasn’t done yet.
Oct 9, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
I feel lucky to have been born in the age of computers. Making software and gadgets is the perfect job for me.
I sometimes wonder what I would have done if I had been born in earlier times.
Oct 8, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Even though I just finished dinner here on Friday night, I’ve been inspired by Brian Lagerstrom and the linked video. And so—fortified by a couple glasses of wine—it’s time to start on tomorrow night’s dinner. Pics to come.
The dinner recipe calls for a roasted chicken stock, and I’ve done that many times, but always by closely monitoring my stock pot on the stove. The chef, Brian Lagerstrom, suggested using a slow cooker set to run overnight, and (duh!) that’s such a good idea.
Oct 4, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
As a kid in the 1970s, I read books about people like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford telling of how they tinkered with small machines like alarm clocks when they were kids. Their desire to know how things worked formed the basis of their future success. They were hardware hackers.
I never was going to be a hardware hacker myself, I didn’t tinker like they did, and I felt that I was missing out on something—perhaps a successful future as a maker and creator.
Oct 3, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The joy in software comes from people using technology and what they bring to it. Their photos, songs, messages, writing, communications, ideas, and creations supply the emotion, carry it, and sustain it.
I see my job as a software designer to facilitate such joy, but I have no illusions that I can supply it on my own.
Oct 2, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I don’t want a lot of user interface in my apps. The best software gets out of the way.
Great apps offer minimal controls placed in a straightforwardly visible location. Just enough to help me get the job done easily. So many apps have features that get in the way without yielding much benefit.
Sep 10, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
I often get DMs from people hoping for mentorship or career advice. Unfortunately, I can’t give individual help to everyone who asks. Besides, there’s nothing much I can say to anyone in a few words over a couple DMs that I wouldn’t say in public tweets, so here goes.
Over my career, I’ve gone in the direction of the things that interested me. I’ve never had a master plan. I don’t think you need one in high tech. Things move so fast. I’ve stayed current on new things. When something changes, I’ve tried to figure out what I could make of it.
Sep 8, 2022 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
Consider the round rectangle (roundrect), a four-sided figure with rounded off corners. They are often used in user interface designs… but they have a built-in aesthetic glitch which I’ll describe later. First, to make one.
Round rectangles are generally specified with a rectangle’s width and height plus a radius for the corners, like this 200×120 rectangle with a corner radius of 20.
Sep 7, 2022 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
Earlier today, I released an update to Up Spell, my iOS word game. It’s now free. Go get it! apps.apple.com/us/app/id15317…
I had an absolute blast making the game in 2020. Really was such fun. I did a lot of custom development to make everything come out like it did. Here are some of the details.
I made the first autocorrection for the iPhone. I last worked on it more than 10 years ago, and it’s changed a lot since then. People still blame me, complain to me, say it’s gotten worse, tell me they want my old code to be restored, etc. Here’s the thing: My code was simple.
I built the scheme around input correction. Fixing targeting errors in the current word you just finished typing. Giving what you meant rather than what you did. You typed ‘thw’ + space? Oops! Hmm. That third letter looks odd and ‘w’ is close to ‘e’ so obviously you meant ‘the’.
Aug 30, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Start doing the job you want.
Particularly in the world design and tech today, with social media, open source software, and comparatively cheap computing resources and services available all over, there are fewer excuses than ever for not jumping in and doing the kind of work you want to do.
