‘Mobile Safari Creator’

Andrew Cunningham, regurgitating for Ars Technica Brian Chen’s interview with former Apple engineer Francisco Tolmasky:

Today, the New York Times Bits Blog ran an extensive interview with Francisco Tolmasky, the developer responsible for the first version of mobile Safari, and he shared some additional details about the creation of the very first iPhone apps.

Judging by my inbox, an awful lot of coffee was spewed in Cupertino today upon reading Tolmasky’s self-aggrandizing description of his role in Mobile Safari’s creation. There’s a difference between “the developer responsible for the first version of mobile Safari” and “the developer who claims he was responsible for the first version of mobile Safari”.

Update: Said one long-time trusted source: “He definitely was NOT the lead on the project and several other engineers made far more significant contributions.”

Update 2: Ars has changed the headline and appended an update to the article which begins:

This article originally stated that Tolmasky was the leader of Apple’s Web team; he contacted us to tell us that he was just one of its five members. The original headline also referred to Tolmasky as mobile Safari’s “creator,” and Tolmasky made clear to us that each application was the combined work of multiple people.

★ Friday, 25 April 2014