YouSaid · the spoken record

Scott Forstall

lines on the record: 123
first: 2022-04-28
most recent: 2022-04-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“So this PLT, the page load test, is a PLT stands for, was this performance tool that we used during our daily development so that every code check-in that we had, we would run our page load test to see that there were no speed regressions. We had this idea that was really Don Melton's idea, who was the manager of the team, he had this little bit of sneaky logic where he said, Okay, team If we check in code and it doesn't make any speed regression, only two things can happen, either the code will remain the same speed or it'll get faster. Because as we would go over the weeks, the months,”
2022-04-28 · a16z Podcast · Inside Apple Software Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so anything you could do to speed up the browsing experience was something that would be attractive to people. People would notice. And so he said, browser team, you need to figure out how to make this browser fast. And he told us this a year plus ahead of time.”
2022-04-28 · a16z Podcast · Inside Apple Software Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“that people were familiar with. And so now we're going to come along and say, no, you had that other thing. Here is this new browser that we want you to use. It's Apple's own browser. And well, what is going to convince people to make the change? And so Steve thought, well, we're going to need a compelling argument. And to be compelling, it needs to be simple. And so his idea, his vision was, look, we need to make this thing perform fast. Again, thinking back to the time that the network wasn't so fast. I mean, some people were getting maybe broadband at the office, but certainly at home you're still doing dialogue.”
2022-04-28 · a16z Podcast · Inside Apple Software Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, no, no, we didn't. It was not luck at all. Steve was very, very clear to us at a very early stage in our browser development process was that, well, of course, he wanted to deliver the best experience out to customers. That was it. He wanted to put a smile on the user's face, right? And so if you think about the challenge that we had, there was this existing browser on the platform.”
2022-04-28 · a16z Podcast · Inside Apple Software Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so you ultimately decided on the Conqueror code base as sort of your starting point. And then pretty early in the development process, you ended up building a stopwatch, the PLT And so maybe talk a little bit about why you decide to do that. And then ultimately flash forward, like when Steve announced the browser, he would say, this is the fastest, like it was one of the key features. And did you know at the time that you built the stopwatch that he was going to do that? Like, did you get lucky?”
2022-04-28 · a16z Podcast · Inside Apple Software Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so we only had to do that once in that we took this Linux code and brought it over to the Mac. And of course, it was a challenge for us, so I can only imagine what it would be to kind of keep all of these platforms going concurrently. You're trying to make improvements and add features and make things better.”
2022-04-28 · a16z Podcast · Inside Apple Software Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, people don't remember this about the early days of the browser, but when we ship Netscape, we had to do it on 20 platforms. So every build was a, all right, here's the one for ARIX, here's the one for digital Unix, here's the one for AIX, here's the one for HPUX, and here's, by the way, is Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT was such a cross-platform exercise that the code base sort of grew and grew.”
2022-04-28 · a16z Podcast · Inside Apple Software Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's harder than it looks, so we thought that if we could make a compelling case to use open source as a way to jump ahead in the effort, stand on the shoulders of giants, right? It would get us to a point where we would have something sooner. And that was really the goal. And being open source, if we took this software from, say, another platform that neither Mozilla nor Conqueror worked on the Mac. So we were going to have this opportunity to bring this code from elsewhere and make it Apple's own and really make it look and feel like it was a native program to the Mac. So that was and looking at that, it really just came down to conquer was one-tenth the size of Mozilla. And so as a two-person team, soon thereafter, a three-person team, this just was the easy. Way to get from where we were to where we wanted to be.”
2022-04-28 · a16z Podcast · Inside Apple Software Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, right. And so, but Don Melton and I, which are the two people we joined on the same day in 2001 to begin this browser investigation, and we looked at open source because it was, we were a team of two people. And web browser is pretty complicated thing, right? It's harder than it looks like.”
2022-04-28 · a16z Podcast · Inside Apple Software Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was interesting that the executives, people like Avi Tvanian, who was the chief software VP at that time, and Steve were willing to consider open source. But just to give a brief summary of our full investigation, we considered writing about scratch. From scratch, we also considered going out and licensing from a company like Opera.”
2022-04-28 · a16z Podcast · Inside Apple Software Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And as all the operating system companies decided, right, the web browser was critical. It wasn't an optional add-on component, Netscape and Microsoft famously got into a legal battle over this. So Apple arrived at the same insight. And then interestingly, the two code bases that you consider to get Safari off the ground were Mozilla, right, the Netscape codebase, and then Conquer, which was a Linux web browser. And they were both open source. And so talk to me about what it felt like at the time to be looking at open source inside Apple, which is a famous sort of like, we'll build it all ourselves.”
2022-04-28 · a16z Podcast · Inside Apple Software Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Correct, but that was the situation that Apple was in, is that this exciting new technology, the web, was something that wasn't under its own control. And so the vision for Apple back then and even still today is that Apple wants to be in control of what it considers to be critical technology that gets critical to its future, critical to its user experience.”
2022-04-28 · a16z Podcast · Inside Apple Software Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. Well, you see, you know, it's sort of interesting, and maybe we'll get into this more as we talk. The way that Apple worked in this period, during the Steve Jobs era, is that he would set this vision. And so his vision was Apple needs its own web browser. So at the time when I joined in 2001, macOS X, the new version of the desktop operating system replacing the old classic version of macOS that had been shipping on the computer since the 80s.”
2022-04-28 · a16z Podcast · Inside Apple Software Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's fantastic. And why don't we get into that story because as you tell in the book, you sort of started experimenting with the old Netscape code base, right? Called Mozilla, I guess, by then. But you ultimately didn't go that way.”
2022-04-28 · a16z Podcast · Inside Apple Software Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we went ahead with that project, but of course that company didn't succeed. But of course, Easel had this longstanding connection through some of its principles, Andy Hertzfeld, Mike Boyds, Bud Tribble. Yeah. The legends, right? Macromedia. That got me an introduction to Apple. And started Apple in 2001 and started getting into making the web browser for Apple was my first project.”
2022-04-28 · a16z Podcast · Inside Apple Software Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually worked on the portion of Nautilus that connected to these sort of proto-cloud services. And interestingly for where I am here, Andreessen Harowitz, we hosted our cloud services at Loud Cloud.”
2022-04-28 · a16z Podcast · Inside Apple Software Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so to me, the interest was I'm going to make photos show up on this thing. I'm going to take my experience, my love of fine art and the liberal arts and figure out how to make that come alive on the web. And then just wound up getting more and more into programming. I graduated or I left RIT without graduating with any degree. But by that time I learned enough to go get a job in a web development company and wound up making websites and this startup, that startup, the next startup wounded up at a company called Easel I did Linux software development making desktop Linux.”
2022-04-28 · a16z Podcast · Inside Apple Software Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I was chasing a girl. That was the three-part plan, right? Photograph, teach, chase a girl. I wound up catching the girl, and so we've been married for, it's going to be 25 years. Congratulations here. Awesome. And so after that, I took that, the portfolio of work that I put together two years in Japan and applied to a fine arts program at the Rochester Institute of Technology for a Master of Fine Arts and degree program. It was there that I discovered the World Wide Web. And so I put my plans to be a fine art photographer or maybe a professor of photography or putting together the teaching experience with photography. I just set that aside because I saw the web for the first time. This is probably 1994. And I thought it was the most amazing thing. So a mosaic”
2022-04-28 · a16z Podcast · Inside Apple Software Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I had a three part plan for going to Japan. I was going to photograph myself, make a portfolio of my own work. And I thought that it might be interesting to get some teaching experience. So I taught English.”
2022-04-28 · a16z Podcast · Inside Apple Software Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, for sure. Yeah. Very interesting architecture, the art and architecture building in particular. Anyway, so I became more interested in photography. I wound up getting a job at a newspaper in the New York area, Newsday, did two years there working in their editorial library with their photo archive. But then I kind of decided that wasn't really going anywhere fast enough. So I moved to Japan.”
2022-04-28 · a16z Podcast · Inside Apple Software Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you would have been disowned. My dad was pretty confused about the choice. But anyway, but eventually they got behind and supported that. And so I fixed motorcycles. And then I wasn't really quite sure what I wanted to do. I had this degree in history, but wanted to Kind of keep following my nose, finding new and interesting things to do. I also did a lot of work in photography when I was at Yale. I spent a lot of time in the art and architecture library on the Yale campus just reading books, learning about art.”
2022-04-28 · a16z Podcast · Inside Apple Software Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, well, I was born in New York, stayed there on Long Island, downstate, grew up close to beaches, lived there until I went away to college. I went to Yale. and got a degree in history. And then after I graduated from Yale, I didn't do the typical thing. I went to motorcycle mechanics school.”
2022-04-28 · a16z Podcast · Inside Apple Software Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so today I'm here with Ken Kacienda, and I'm so excited for him to tell us all about the creative process that he used and his team used to create these products. So Ken, thank you so much for coming.”
2022-04-28 · a16z Podcast · Inside Apple Software Design · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source