Round Rects Are Everywhere! The Grand Unified Model.

Just a while ago, lcom kindly pointed its readers to the story of Quickdraw's Rounded Rectangles which, while being read for its entertainment value, also quite nicely explains what Mr. Steven Jobs is or rather was really good at.

In this particular case comment reading is an absolute must to get the whole stuff right. And allthough we, subjectively and after a short discussion of the matter, are not sure about Mr. Raskin's claims, we think there is a lot to make them probable in the core. There are enough testimonials about Mr. Jobs doing what he did in all his visible years without giving credit where credit would have been due.

Chapter 13: Steven finds an ally and executes a big mistake that throws him back behind William for many long years.

In another part of the Mac corpus on Folklore.org Andy Hertzfeld provides us with deep insight on a particular execution of probably Mr. Jobs' badest imperfection , the one that really put him at a disadvantage against his pal Bill and his allies, the Texas Instruments Runaways: Greed and Control Addiction and his hope - quite obvious until this very day - closed proprietary systems will provide satisfaction for both addictions for his customers and for himself.

The last enlightening story about the folklore of consumerism driven personal computing we recommend for today's reading can be found under the title of The Grand Unified Model. In that story Bruce Horn claims that "the Lisa Filer was 360K, a significant application - much too large for the Mac Team to use, and that it wasn't based on the Grand Unified Model". He also states that "writing the Finder was not easy and that for of the tight memory requirements, most of the code was 68K assembly, like the Mac ROM Toolbox.". Such are the prices one pays for consumer benefits. Still, do not be lazy, do not be shy, read for yourself.

Do not get us wrong. In many ways we admire Mr. Jobs for being so good at being able to buy first class materials at competitive prices, to hire the best product designers and developers for himself and his companies and, most of all, for having been able to do all of this for as long as he did.

But, then again, we are not blind to his faults, deficencies and his unethical wrong doing. Neither are we blind to the many faults of his companies' otherwise sexy and desirable products.