[etaioinshrdlu]

Was this used to effectively silo developers from each other? Ie, don’t let the hardware team see the real software UI, and don’t let the software team see the real hardware UI.

It looks too ridiculous to be real, I suspect it was ugly by design.

Apple did this on the iPhone design, the ugly software UI was called “skankphone”.

[adamgordonbell]

It's so cool to see these pictures. It does seem to match David Shayer's description:

    So they make what Apple calls a stealth case, which is just a big plastic box. So our stealth case was so ugly. It looked like they went into an old Russian medical equipment leftover warehouse and just took some plastic boxes, and stuck it in. It was horrible. They said basically, “ You’re writing the file system for this thing. You don’t need to know what’s on the disc. Just make it work.”

They weren't supposed to know what they were working on. To the extent that that was possible.

https://corecursive.com/063-apple-2001/#the-first-day

[robocat]

Later down the article is another story:

David: So, my guess is they were making some sort of secret Geiger counter and they wanted to be able to take it around and look for, I don’t know, people making dirty bombs maybe? But not have it looked like a Geiger counter.

David: if you wanted to go and check if there’s any signs of radiation in some place where you’re not officially supposed to be checking, you’re on a tourist visa in Tehran or something, this would be a very useful device. If you’re arrested with a Geiger counter you’re in trouble, but if someone looks at your iPod and the iPod works and it plays music and it’s totally normal, you’d be much safer, right?

Adam:Yeah, totally. So, they built this and then?

[Waterluvian]

I get why this is done when something is top secret. But I think there’s no better way to be reduced to a fungible coding cog than “you don’t actually need to understand the big picture. Here’s a spec. Implement it.”

[gwbas1c]

I wonder if they thought it was a boombox or a personal stereo?

[jetrink]

My guess is that they used that case from early on in the project and then just stuck with it even as the electronics inside shrunk. It's not like the software people would be fooled by the enormous size; they knew they were making a pocketable music player.

Interestingly, the holes for the screen and the buttons look like they were molded, but the holes for the jacks and wheel look like they were milled. I wonder if the boxes were custom-made or something off-the-shelf that happened to have the right screen size and number of buttons.

[samwillis]

It looks like a SLA 3d print to me. They go that distinctive yellow over time.

[ghostly_s]

In 2001?

[samwillis]

Absolutely, was already quite common back then. It was invented in the 80s after all.

[monocasa]

Yeah, SLA printing was totes used in prototyping back then. It was just really expensive because the patents hadn't expired yet. I'd expect that Apple's R&D lab would have had access to them.

[siva7]

But why? Why silo

[marcellus23]

So the hardware guys can't leak the software, and the software guys can't leak the hardware.

[amelius]

Funny thing is, Apple claims that they need to integrate everything from hardware to software in order to obtain the best possible user experience.

This shows that this is complete nonsense.

We could break up Apple into a hardware and software company and little would change in this respect.

[jolux]

> This shows that this is complete nonsense.

That is…not at all what this shows. Just because software engineers writing a file system don’t know what the final industrial design is going to be like doesn’t mean there aren’t people fully responsible for end user experience.

[tinus_hn]

Giving out information on a need to know basis does not mean integration is impossible. It just means people that don’t need to don’t get to see the full picture.

Keep in mind that this kind of decide would be under development for many years, if you can keep the idea a secret until launch you’ll be years ahead of your competitors. But if it leaks your advantage is gone.

[marcellus23]

> This shows that this is complete nonsense.

Uh, what? This makes no sense. It's not like the entire hardware and software teams were totally firewalled. Obviously higher ups and managers were in both circles and coordinated the development of both.

[amelius]

Yes, so if Apple were divided into separate hardware and software companies, then a third company X could order both these companies to come up with hardware and software solutions, and reach the same result. In this case, what you call management would be performed by the third company.

This is imho a better way of building things than having everything completely integrated in a single company. A fourth company could do the same thing as X and build an alternative iPod. And so could a fifth, etc.

[_jal]

> This is imho a better way of building things than having everything completely integrated in a single company.

Sounds like you should run your firm that way, then.

[clint]

No leaks