[REVEALED] The Story Of An Ex-Apple Engineer Who Worked On The Original Web Browser
Francisco Tolmasky, a former Apple engineer who was hired when he was 20 years old speaks about how he developed the then first web browser for the original iPhone.
By Darian Goh — 25 Apr 2014, 07:51 PM — Updated over 10 years ago
In an interview recently, Francisco Tolmasky reveals how he was approached by Apple when he was just 20 years old
The New York Times profiles Francisco Tolmasky who was hired out of college early by Apple in 2006 to work on Mobile Safari in the run up to the launch of the iPhone.
9to5mac.com
Tolmasky, then a 20-year-old WebKit developer freshly graduated from the University of Southern California, was tapped to lead the five-person Web team.
arstechnica.com
His task was to develop a web browser for the original iPhone
When Francisco Tolmasky was just 20 years old and started working for Apple, he took on a challenging task: to create a rich mobile web browser for the original iPhone, back when the device was still a pile of circuits.
Tolmasky joined Apple when he was just 20 years old, working under Steve Jobs to create a mobile web browser for the original iPhone.
macrumors.com
He recalls Steve Jobs' attention to detail and demands perfection for this browser
Like most of the people who worked on the iPhone project, he has memories of (twice-weekly) meetings with then-CEO Steve Jobs, and Jobs was characteristically unflinching in his demands. He wanted a finger-friendly mobile browser that could render standard pages properly on hardware much less powerful than the computers of the day.
arstechnica.com
“Steve was really adamant, where he said, ‘This needs to be like magic. Go back, this isn’t magical enough!’” Mr. Tolmasky said about his experience developing the mobile Safari app. “I remember being very frustrated. This was, like, an impossible task.”
But Mr. Tolmasky eventually helped produce an Internet browser that could load web pages just like they looked on a computer, but shrunk down for a small phone screen. And instead of using a mouse and keyboard, people could interact with the web pages with their fingertips — a pinch, swipe or tap.
He also recalls developing the Maps application in two weeks just before the Macworld Expo in January 2007
According to Tolmasky, Apple's original iPhone Maps app was a last minute addition to the device, as Jobs decided the app should be added just a few weeks before the smartphone was first introduced at the Macworld Expo in January of 2007. It only took his teammate, Chris Blumenberg, a week to have a workable prototype.
macrumors.com
The original Maps application was developed in a two-week marathon session leading up to the original iPhone introduction at the Macworld Expo in 2007. Jobs decided near the last minute that the iPhone needed the app, so Tolmasky's teammate Chris Blumenberg was told to get it working. "That was the kind of effect Steve could have on you," said Tolmasky. "This is important, this needs to happen, and you do it."
arstechnica.com
“Within a week he had something that was working, and in two weeks he had something to show at Macworld that we were showing,” Mr. Tolmasky said.
9to5mac.com
While the keyboard was developed as a result of a hackathon challenge by Steve Jobs
A hackathon was organised to determine the best team to develop the keyboard
Image via guardianlv.comIn one anecdote, Tolmasky divulges the origin of the iPhone's keyboard, which reportedly came about during a week-long hackathon where Jobs instructed the software team to work only on keyboard prototypes.
macrumors.com
The first iPhone software keyboard was the result of a contest between the different software developers—Jobs had each of them work on their own keyboard for a week, and the best one was then used as the basis for the shipping version.
arstechnica.com
He told how several of the iPhone’s apps and key features came to be created. The keyboard, he said, was the result of a sort of hackathon run by Mr. Jobs. The chief executive had been unhappy with the keyboard prototypes for the iPhone, so he assigned everyone on the team to work only on keyboards for an entire week. An engineer on Mr. Tolmasky’s team won the contest, and from then on his full-time job was to work on the iPhone keyboard.
He also revealed how Steve Jobs sometimes showed his funny side as renamed another engineer Margaret as he had the same name as Steve
Mr. Jobs was notorious for throwing his weight around however he could. One person on the iPhone design team was also named Steve, which caused some confusion in meetings. Mr. Jobs sought to change this.“At some point Steve Jobs got really frustrated with this and said ‘Guess what, you’re Margaret from now on,’” Mr. Tolmasky said. From there on, members of the team would always address the designer Steve as Margaret.
9to5mac.com
Tolmasky has since moved on from Apple and became a mobile game developer
Tolmasky left Apple after the launch of the iPhone and formed a startup that eventually got bought by Motorola for around $20M. He is now focusing on games that “take advantage of the smart sensors, like the accelerometer and gyroscope, inside mobile devices. His game, Bonsai Slice, developed with a team of five people, involves swinging around an iPad like a sword, to cut through virtual objects on the screen”.
9to5mac.com
Tolmasky left Apple shortly after the original iPhone was released as the company no longer felt like a startup, and now he works as a mobile game designer. His most recent creation, Bonsai Slice, was released today.
macrumors.com