Michael Lopp – 8 years at Apple
Michael Lopp is a Silicon Valley-based engineer who writes about pens, bridges, people, and werewolves at the weblog, Rands in Repose.
I asked whether his books were for ordinary people to help them deal with the nerds they employed, or the other way around.
“A bit of both! It’s intended to be the latter – you’re a nerd, these are people, this is what you should do. But then I heard from non-nerds going like ‘Oh, that’s why he’s that way, I get it now!’ So it’s serving both, so that’s cool.
“It seemed to me there were normal people over here and geeks and nerds over there, and they’re looking over at each other and saying ‘what the hell are you about?’ so I tried to bridge the gap.”
As for writing books despite working full time, that’s what Michael does to relax. “So that’s easy. I’ve been writing journals since I was 11. You just start writing. It just kinda happens over time.”
Silicon Valley is in Lopp’s blood. He has lived there all his life, worked there and even went to school just 20 miles from where he grew up. I asked if there was something in the water. “No. But it’s a bubble. There is a lack of reality about the rest of the world in Silicon Valley. But that aside, it’s attracted engineers, going back to Honeywell and companies like that, attracted the folks who build that stuff. My dad worked at Hewlett Packard and I’m an HP brat. So I’m a second generation nerd.”
I asked if it was almost as if Michael didn’t get attracted to engineering and computing; he was already there.
Whenever his interest in computers waned, my dad would buy me something else. “You want a modem? Here … Have you seen this colour screen? I’ve never not wanted to be an engineer and associated with building products. I’m a software guy. All software.”
“I’ve been the manager director sort of guy, so it’s more the making other people do it rather than making the decisions around it.”
I asked if Michael had to sign anything when he left Apple saying he couldn’t talk about it.
“You know, I was thinking about that just a couple of days ago. I don’t think so. I don’t believe so. I’ve been talking about Apple and nobody’s gotten cranky about it. I left there last July and went to a company called Palantir.”
At Apple, “I was a Mac OS X Server manager – I managed part of that team – and I also worked on the online store for Apple Dot Com, so transferred to an online guy.”
Michael likes Wellington and has been to two Webstocks before this one, and had already run a workshop on leadership before I talked to him.
I asked if Apple put a premium on management training. “At Apple there was some training, but there wasn’t this huge training program. There’s very bright people there but I don’t think that’s a differentiator. I would say there’s a fairly effective leader at Apple and around him he has put some amazing managers, so I think that is one thing about it. It has an amazing executive team, and I say that with all respect there. Really.
“One thing Steve (Jobs) has said publicly a couple of times is to look at the Beatles. You can’t imagine them without all those individual skill sets there. They all augmented each other.” Lopp thinks that’s the same for Apple, and having really strong, agile leadership.
“I don’t want to riff on Microsoft, but when Gates was there, love him or hate him, you felt like there was a guy there calling the shots. And it seems to have drifted with Ballmer.
“And I haven’t paid a lot of attention to Microsoft, but when you don’t have that iconic figure there, things can drift.”
So does Michael think things can drift without Jobs there?
“Absolutely. And that’s what everyone is collectively worried about. I think it’s an amazing company, and I don’t work there any more, but there’s a certain design that needs a dictator. Whether it’s Apple or anywhere. Someone who is making a decision, who has taste. And I think that’s one of the things they had there. So I’d have to say that would be a risk.”
I mentioned how John Gruber of Daring Fireball thought Apple used three people where other companies would use ten.
“Yeah. One thing we built was a calendar server, but we learned that Microsoft’s team was bigger by a factor of ten. And [the software] was comparable.
“Apple chooses what it wants to go do. Microsoft listens to its customers – awesome – and then tries to build everything for them.
“Apple is not building for those folks. They’re building for your mom. They’re choosing to do three things really, really well. And that’s a very hard thing to do, but it also means you don’t have to worry about those other less seven features that have that incremental value. Which may not get you that corporate customer.”
It was a good time to be at Apple. “In terms of what’s interesting in the tech world in the last seven years, say if you made a list of ten, Apple would probably have five of those. What has Microsoft done? I mean, Xbox is probably there, right?”
But even that’s not exactly new technology.
“Exactly. So I think there was a healthy competition there for a long time, but in my opinion, Apple won. Long ago. I mean, Microsoft’s making huge piles of money. Go look at the balance sheet; they’re doing fine. But it’s floundering from an imagination and creativity perspective.
“Apple just seems to have its fingers around that really well. It’s amazing.”
Michael accused Yahoo of ‘strategic negligence’ in a recent blog, so I asked about Apple’s strategies. “Apple can get a piece of hardware out the door much faster than most people assume. Apple can get a product out the door in a year compared to five for some companies.
“The thing that shocked me was when that first metal-coloured iPod was replaced while it was still kicking ass. I mean, everyone was still buzzing about it. And they replaced it.” And then Michael had a realisation. “My assessment was, every September … it’s fashion. That’s when the new fashions are coming out and that’s when all the shows are. They’ve turned it into that. It’s also fun fashion, because it’s so much fun to use and so useful, but now it’s also objects of desire.”
We discussed Apple’s interfaces and the development of the iPad. “With the iPad, there’s no Save dialogue there. And for you and I, that’s weird, but let’s get to the basics there. Why is it even called ‘Save’? Because operating systems used to be crap. They used to crash all the time. You needed to ‘save’ your file. The whole file system concept is left over engineering design from 20 years ago, when we were all still figuring it all out.
“So what Apple’s doing amazingly well, in my opinion, is saying we don’t need to have file systems any more – think about that. And me and you, we’re like ‘woo, woo, woo, I need my thing!’ whereas my mom is like, she could care less. She has an image in her head and it’s a picture. She doesn’t know what it is, what its called and where it is – and by the way, that’s fine. I think for the iPad and the iPhone, that’s really revolutionary. And the people that want the flexibility and the power and the openness and all that? They’re going to always want that. But they’re the minority. A declining minority.
“People are taking pictures of themselves opening the packages of their Apple devices. Pictures of stuff they’re going to throw away. The attention to detail across all of the products at Apple is simply amazing.
“You know, Open Source guys, ‘walled garden’ and all of that stuff … I understand all of that. But your average person doesn’t care a bit about that. Your average person wants to send me a picture of their cat, and Apple makes it really easy for my mom to send me a picture of her cat. And that’s that.”
With that noted, developers can start learning the iPhone SDK and have an app on sale in the App Store within a few weeks.
“Yeah. And developers I have talked to want to focus on building the app. Not on returns, the sales, credit card sales, fraud, updates and all of that. They think the cut is fair. They want to focus on the next great thing. And I think that’s a great boon to developers.”
[This is the full version of an interview run on the nzherald.co.nz tech pages online.]
