Don Melton was the guy who oversaw the creation of Safari, Apple’s web browser.
That meant that on a day to day basis, he worked with Steve Jobs, and his dealings with the greatest product development genius of our times runs contrary to the image that most of us have of him; that he was a jerk, a slave driver, and not just a terrible boss, but a terrible person.
Jobs’ negative image, painted by third and fourth party stories, are legend in the tech industry, but like most legends, while there is some truth there, most of it is fiction.
Melton, who left Apple in 2012, has started a new career as a writer and is blogging about his encounters with the late Apple co-founder. “Memories of Steve,” reveals Jobs the leader, thinker, and colleague in vivid first-person detail. Jobs’ reputation as a brilliant but difficult person to work for is well known, but Melton’s you-are-there accounts paint a more nuanced picture of a man consumed by the intensity of his vision. Melton says Jobs wasn’t a jerk. Inventing the future means you just don’t have much time to waste.
“I wanted to get the intensity but humanity across,” Melton told WIRED Magazine after his post had become an online hit–attention he says he wasn’t actively seeking. If there is some higher purpose, he says it’s to convey that life at Apple was regular people trying to do marvelous things, sometimes succeeding, but sometimes failing big time.
“I want people to just see a glimpse inside the factory,” he says, “not to tell the company secrets but to let people know this was real people–just a bunch of folks standing around talking, trying to figure out how to change the world.”
Learn more about how Steve Jobs built and managed Apple from a guy who was actually there.
