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Inside Apple's Core

Posted on: Monday, 21 November 2005, 21:00 CST

By Julio Ojeda-Zapata, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.

Nov. 20--The iPod music player was about to make its 2001 debut, but Steve Jobs was none too pleased with preparations. "This feels like crap!" the Apple Computer chief executive growled while connecting and disconnecting iPod earbuds.

As onlooker Mike Evangelist remembers it, Jobs looked as if he might hurl his pre-production iPod across the room. "These headphone jacks all have to be replaced by tomorrow," he recalls Jobs snapping. "Find a way to fix it."

A publicly ebullient Jobs would go on to unveil the iPod as scheduled, while surely assuming his behind-the-scenes flare-up would be forgotten. But Evangelist, a Minnesotan who then worked as an Apple executive, would remember.

Now Evangelist is detailing his Apple experiences on a Web log he plans to turn into a book. In doing so, he has fed a seemingly insatiable appetite for inside details on the iPod and Macintosh maker along with its famously perfectionist leader. His blog has been something of a sensation with page views recently exceeding 750,000.

Writers Block Live (www.writersblocklive.com) is less kiss-and-tell memoir and more analytical journal about a company he still loves. Much of it revolves around his stressful yet enthralling experiences as an Apple software-marketing manager. Some are fly-on-the-wall takes on key Apple events.

Evangelist's project doesn't have Jobs' seal of approval. When the Minnesotan recently asked his former boss if he minded him writing the book, Jobs e-mailed, "I'd prefer not, but this is America."

Evangelist, 51, also touches on his lengthy journey toward Apple employment -- for better or for worse.

1984. Evangelist was shopping at Rosedale and wandered into an electronics store, where a Mac was on display.

Other computers of the time "didn't grab me," Evangelist said. "I could see that the Mac was different. Its screen was black on white," like paper. Apple's MacPaint program displayed a lifelike picture of a woman.

"I was playing around with the mouse, and I could see there was this menu called 'fonts.' I typed a couple of words, changed the font, and I was blown away."

Evangelist worked for an ad agency at a time when that industry relied on wax rollers and other crude tools for laying out text and graphics. He sensed those days were numbered.

1987. As head of a small marketing firm, Evangelist loved putting his Mac Plus to creative use. His client proposals put him ahead of rivals with IBM Selectric typewriters.

It dawned on him that he wanted to work in the Mac business.

Mirror Technologies, a Mac hardware maker, had its base near his Vadnais Heights home. So, rather than put his resume on paper, he loaded it on a floppy diskette.

Macs booted off such discs instead of hard drives at the time, so he configured his disc to start a machine, launch the MacWrite word processor and type out his resume as his potential employer looked on.

He got the job.

1988. Evangelist applied for Apple jobs and, at one point, contacted the top Mac "evangelist," or cheerleader. "My name is Evangelist," he said, "so what the heck."

In a new take on his floppy resume, he used the Rolodex-like HyperCard database program to show his credentials as flipping cards. "I sent it off, but nothing did come of it."

A while later, Evangelist met the evangelist at a tech conference. "Hey!" the man said, "You're the guy who sent me that amazing HyperCard resume." He had recommended that Evangelist be hired, but the matter languished.

So close, the Minnesotan said to himself, yet so far.

Autumn 1999. The era of computer-based DVD recording, a leap from CD burning, was dawning. Evangelist was part of it, running U.S. operations for a German supplier of DVD-authoring gear aimed at Mac-using professionals. Astarte had achieved fame as developer of Toast, a CD-burning program still in use.

Apple aimed to make DVD recording a consumer craze and thought Astarte could help, so it asked Evangelist to demonstrate his firm's DVDirector software.

"Oh, crap," Evangelist privately exclaimed, "kludging together" a version to run on a PowerBook laptop for easier transport from Minnesota. None other than Avadis "Avie" Tevanian, Apple's top software guru, turned up in the Cupertino conference room.

"At the risk of sounding like an awestruck schoolkid," Evangelist said, "I knew who he was. I was petrified."

January 2000. When Apple offered to buy Astarte, Jobs asked Evangelist, "Are you willing to move here?" Evangelist said no, realizing he couldn't uproot his family. "It won't be a problem," Jobs replied.

But with the deal done, product-marketing chief Phillip Schiller said, "You have to move to California. I've tried to work with remote people. It doesn't work."

Saying no was "was one of the hardest things I've had to do," said Evangelist, who lined up other work. But "this Apple thing nagged at me. Steve Jobs told me we could work it out. If you can't take his word, whose can you take?"

Evangelist e-mailed Jobs. He replied, "You're right. I did say we'd try to work it out. ... Give me a few days."

Apple agreed that Evangelist would spend only part of each month in Cupertino. It was a deal that thrilled him, but would cost him dearly.

April 2000. As manager of DVD product marketing, Evangelist grasped Apple's DVD-authoring ambitions. It aimed to create a simple DVD-creation program for consumers along with a more complex one for professional DVD authors.

The consumer app -- the future iDVD --was the stiffer challenge because it required distilling Astarte technology. As Apple saw it, iDVD would let average Mac users easily create pro-quality DVD discs containing their home movies and photos.

Astarte had designed a consumer DVD-creation app, but "it was terrible," Evangelist said. He and other Astarte veterans revamped and simplified their earlier work, then prepared to pitch it.

Jobs never glanced at their presentation. Instead, he walked up to a whiteboard and drew a square. This is the program, he said. Users will drag their movies here to create DVD menus. Then they'll click "burn." That's it. "I don't want to hear anything about drawers or pop-out" windows, he said.

Evangelist recalls being crestfallen, "but I could immediately see he was absolutely right" in his minimalist take.

Summer 2000. Working on the pro DVD-authoring app, Evangelist's team was in for another shock.

"We thought we could take DVDirector, buff up a few things and start selling it," Evangelist said. But Jobs, in a meeting with Evangelist and his former Astarte boss, promptly disabused them of this idea.

"Our version had lots of windows, and windows within windows. In hindsight, the thing was clearly designed by an engineer," Evangelist said. "I'm only into the demo a minute, maybe two minutes, and Steve said, 'Why do you keep moving those objects around like that? Why are there so many windows?... It's brain-dead stupid.' "

Jobs wasn't angry or nasty, Evangelist now realizes. He just wanted excellence with elegance. Turning DVDirector into Apple's first version of DVD Studio Pro took another six months.

October 2001. Apple execs often get peeks of hot products from other departments. Evangelist was given a first-generation iPod days before the player was revealed to the world.

He wasn't blown away at first. The iPod didn't seem much smaller than other MP3 players he used, but he missed that it had a hard drive instead of "flash" storage. It was the navigation wheel "that made this light go on," he said. "It was the most brilliant interface I had ever seen."

He knew it "was an exciting product -- though no one, not even Steve, had any inkling how big it was going to be."

November 2001. Ex-Beatle George Harrison's death "hit me hard," Evangelist said. "Many of my colleagues at Apple were fans."

His e-mails with Jobs had been all business until then, and he feared coming off as "a sentimental loony," but he proposed an online tribute. A home-page homage with three Harrison photos soon appeared.

"It was one of my proudest moments at Apple," he said, "not just because I made the suggestion ... but because I was honored to be part of a company that lets its heart guide its actions."

It wouldn't be the last time. Apple recently honored civil rights icon Rosa Parks on its site.

January 2002. An apex for Apple workers is a starring role in a "Stevenote," a Jobs keynote speech at a trade show or tech conference.

But when the engineer in charge of the Final Cut Pro professional video-editing program was asked to demo it at the Macworld Expo show, Evangelist said he refused (too scary). Evangelist's immediate superior declined, saying he wasn't steeped in the software's features.

So the job fell to Evangelist. "This turned out to be my lowest and highest point at Apple."

Even after much practice, "I was doing a terrible job," he said. "I was too slow." Jobs, watching from the audience, said, "You gotta get this together or we're going to have to pull this." Evangelist said he was "crushed," but kept practicing after pep talks from other Apple execs. Jobs' verdict the next day: "Yeah, that'll be great, thanks."

Keynote day "was terrifying," Evangelist said. But he thought of something Schiller had told him: Those 6,000 Mac fans "aren't against you, they're the best friends you can have.' " The applause was "the most incredible adrenaline rush I've ever had."

March 2002. Evangelist's commuter lifestyle was taking a toll. "I was working so intensely that I was useless" at home. "As I became more successful at Apple, there was a constant pressure to be there more."

He finally considered uprooting his wife and three sons, but "spending $2 million on a house and (commuting) an hour each way sounded like a recipe for more stress."

So he ditched his dream job.

"It was hard to be in the thick of it one day, and shut out the next," he said. He missed "hanging around backstage at the keynotes, and going on press tours, and talking to highfalutin' journalists, and flying off to Japan with Steve."

But he realized soon after leaving Apple that his chronic heartburn was gone. He had blamed his condition on the spicy food he ate in California, and he kept a big tub of Tums handy. "But maybe I was burning myself out," he said.

Maybe, he thought, joining Apple had been a mistake. "Maybe I didn't listen closely enough to my family's original objections (because I so) wanted to be part of Apple."

But "some days I miss it, even now," said Evangelist, now living in Birchwood and heading up a firm that makes Power Mac add-in cards for speeding up DVD projects. "I was at the center of the universe. Now I'm just an observer."

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Source: Saint Paul Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.)

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