Today, Steve Jobs stepped down from his role as CEO of Apple, Inc. I thought I would commemorate that with my favorite SJ story.<\/p>\n
Once upon a time, I worked in the building\/floor where Steve has his weekly meeting with the interface designers of the OS X operating system. Like Darth Vader walking the corridors of the Death Star, The Steve would stride down the halls with a pair of minions in his wake, while employees nervously avoided eye contact and drifted out of his path. SJ and minions would enter the meeting room (hilariously named Diplomacy<\/em>) and leave a couple of hours later, followed by interface designers and engineers who were either crushed or elated, depending on how that day’s presentation had gone.<\/p>\n On one of those days, I happened to be in the bathroom in one of the stalls. The door to the bathroom opened and I heard the footsteps of people entering. They were mid-conversation, and I could immediately place one of the voices as Steve’s, and the other belonging to his Smithers (of that era).<\/p>\n Smithers was talking about some speech demo he had seen (I don’t know if this was from Apple or on the intarwebs or what), where a speech synthesis engine was generating speech using a variety of accents. He gushed, “People love British accents! Those are so sexy! You should get Madonna or Gwyneth Paltrow to do a speech synthesis voice!”<\/p>\n And Steve, in his most condescending, patronizing voice said, “Madonna. Isn’t. British.”<\/p>\n And I’m in the stall, clutching my sides with stifled laughter, trying my very hardest not to shout, “And neither is Gwyneth Fucking Paltrow, ya morons!”<\/p>\n But I wasn’t quite ready to quit. Yet. That’s a different story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"