Former Apple Computer product manager (and Minnesotan) Mike Evangelist, recently profiled by yours truly in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, has offered a fresh take, via a just-published article, on his time at One Infinite Loop.
His piece on the Guardian Unlimited site is timed to the upcoming Macworld Expo show, and looks back on similar events during the Mac firm's history. Here are the article's opening grafs:
If the chief executive of Cadbury-Schweppes speaks at a conference, or Nike's boss introduces a new kind of trainer, you might expect to see it covered in specialist magazines, then quickly forgotten. But on Tuesday a chief executive will stand up and announce something, and within minutes it will be scrutinised across the web and on stockbrokers' computers. It will be in newspapers. They'll talk about it for months.
That chief executive is Steve Jobs, and I know why that speech makes an impact. To a casual observer it is just a guy in a black shirt and jeans talking about some new technology products. But it is in fact an incredibly complex and sophisticated blend of sales pitch, product demonstration and corporate cheerleading, with a dash of religious revival thrown in for good measure. It represents weeks of work, precise orchestration and intense pressure for the scores of people who collectively make up the "man behind the curtain". I know, because I've been there, first as part of the preparation team and later on stage with Steve.
