{"id":27984,"date":"2020-01-30T15:58:03","date_gmt":"2020-01-30T20:58:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=27984"},"modified":"2020-01-30T15:58:03","modified_gmt":"2020-01-30T20:58:03","slug":"behind-the-scenes-on-apples-aperture-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/30\/behind-the-scenes-on-apples-aperture-team\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Scenes on Apple’s Aperture Team"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris “cricket” Hynes<\/a> (via John Gruber<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

There were several unique things about how the team worked which differed from Apple practice. Even before writing any code for feature, a software engineer and a QA engineering would collaborate on a document detailing a test plan. Both parties learned a lot, and it created a great relationship.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

We had a reasonable number of QA engineers, which is very rare in any software product. Since this was a professional product, they knew the quality had to be high.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

So we went to IL1, right across from the executive suite. Given how close Steve (Jobs) was to our offices, I saw him only once in our area. It was clear that Pro Apps were not his thing and Aperture was not on his radar.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

They seriously yelled at us for writing bugs. ‘This bug should never have been written!’ they shouted. They argued that we shouldn’t write bugs on incomplete features. But that’s what the engineers wanted, and we felt we worked for them on a day-to-day basis. […] I was considered a risk to the project because of the number of bugs I filed.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

So they tried cutting finished features, yelling at people, and working people to the point of nervous breakdowns. Then they came upon a brilliant idea: let’s steal over a hundred engineers from other teams and then the project will magically get done on time.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Cabel Sasser<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Although \n@gruber\n described this as a “delight to read”, I felt like I was reading a slow-motion car crash!! These recollections make me extremely thankful of the life I have and the company I work for, as this team’s environment is my precise idea of hell.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Buzz Andersen<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I worked in Apple Pro Apps at the time this was going on and can confirm that it was a fairly miserable place.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Andrew Abernathy<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

As someone who loved Aperture (and still uses it — can’t find anything with comparable workflow), I extra-hate reading about the horribleness the team was put through.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I miss Aperture greatly. It is perhaps the<\/em> piece of software I would choose to resurrect if I could make such a decision. The earliest versions may have been slow and buggy, but I remember running Aperture 1.5 (or thereabouts) on a Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro with a spinning hard disk and it was fast<\/em>. And it wasn’t just the speed with which Aperture rendered photos or adjustments; it was everything about the app — every interaction, every UI component, every menu, and every panel. Every action felt deliberate and precise. The whole app also looked and felt damn near perfect.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Another post<\/a> from Hynes:<\/p>\n

\n

It’s a sad thought to be certain that your best days are behind you. The sheer size of Apple has been difficult to adjust to. Teams are too big, organizations are too big, and sometimes even the products are too vast for my brain to comprehend. Things that used to be personal are now impersonal. Apple did not scale well.<\/p>\n

In the first 12 years or so, I was fortunate to be given the freedom to influence products to a degree far exceeded my position, a testament to the Apple management I worked under. As the company got bigger, my influence declined from a very high point to effectively zero.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n