Tolmasky via Flickr
The New York Times profiles Francisco Tolmasky who was hired out of college early by Apple in 2006 to work on Mobile Safari in the run up to the launch of the iPhone. It is hard to imagine a more difficult first job than working with Steve Jobs on something so important.
It wasn’t just Mobile Safari…
Mr. Jobs was taking a monthlong vacation, so Mr. Tolmasky had to wait for him to return to give his personal blessing for the hiring. “He was super guarded about the project, and he was probably suspicious of some random 20-year-old,” Mr. Tolmasky said. “I remember being very frustrated. This was, like, an impossible task.”
On Maps:
It wasn’t all serious though. One particular anecdote produces a few LOLs:
Tolmasky left Apple after the launch of the iPhone and formed a startup that eventually got bought by Motorola for around $20M. He is now focusing on games that “take advantage of the smart sensors, like the accelerometer and gyroscope, inside mobile devices. His game, Bonsai Slice, developed with a team of five people, involves swinging around an iPad like a sword, to cut through virtual objects on the screen”.
Mr. Jobs was notorious for throwing his weight around however he could. One person on the iPhone design team was also named Steve, which caused some confusion in meetings. Mr. Jobs sought to change this.“At some point Steve Jobs got really frustrated with this and said ‘Guess what, you’re Margaret from now on,’” Mr. Tolmasky said. From there on, members of the team would always address the designer Steve as Margaret.
A trailer for the game is below:
