Time Magazine: How Apple Does It

Cover article on Apple. You just can’t buy coverage like this.

Update: Time Canada has the full article online. Here’s a snippet:

Sure, Jobs is perfectly pleasant to be around. And he pays attention to what you’re saying, but if he disagrees with it — if, hypothetically, you’re maybe airing a pet peeve about the fact that iMacs have all their ports in the back, where they’re hard to get at—he’ll come storming back and hammer at you until you change your mind or at least shut up. When he generously introduces you to the guy who runs Apple’s iTunes development team, Jobs makes it clear that you’re welcome to meet him but you can’t print his name. Jobs doesn’t want competitors poaching his talent. “You can mention his first name but not his last name,” Jobs says. “How’s that?” It’ll have to do. The guy’s name, by the way, is Jeff.

Odd that Jobs feels the need to be secretive about that; everyone knows Jeff Robbin leads the iTunes development team. I mean, jeez, look in the Wikipedia. Update Redux: Aaron Swartz points to this Fortune article, which contains a quote from Jeff Robbin, described as “lead software engineer for iTunes and the iPod”.

★ Sunday, 16 October 2005