[cha-cho]

I sent him an email from a NeXTStep configured PC in around 1996/97/98 stating I had some window GUI ideas that would give him a distinct advantage over Windows.

As I recall, his reply was terse, along the lines of:

~~~

What are they?

sj

~~~

I was doubtful it was actually the man himself responding. I thought it was some email administrator trying to steal my ideas (I was 20yrs younger then). I proceeded cautiously and don't recall if he replied again.

A decade later I learned terse replies were his MO.

[pilsetnieks]

So you were okay with Steve Jobs personally stealing your ideas but not with his assistant doing so?

[cha-cho]

To my young mind, it was more about someone else taking credit for my wonderful ideas. My naive thinking was that Steve Jobs would be dazzled for sure. He'd probably want to hire me or pay me a million dollars, but some other person checking his email or administering the email server... how could I trust them? I was young and foolish and had spent too much time acquiring and configuring a NeXTSTEP compliant SCSI drive and SVGA card.

[ralfd]

What were your dope gui ideas?

[cha-cho]

This is a little embarrassing.

Like most every idea I came up with at the time, it had the word “smart” in it.

Smart Windows.

What are “Smart Windows”? So glad you asked. At the time both NeXTSTEP and MacOS only had resizing handles on the bottom of windows(if I remember correctly). What I proposed was a full perimeter border on windows like what was seen in the Motif Window Manager, CDE, et al.

But wait there’s more...

If you double-clicked the border, the window would jump-move in that direction until it hit either another window border or the edge of the screen. If you held the shift key while double-clicking the window would instead expand in that direction. All together it was a precise way to quickly move and arrange a full screen panel of windows without ever having to drag a window or window border.

I eventually tested out the idea on Windows NT 4.0 inside a Visual Basic project. It was super dope. SJ missed out.