Sean Parent

Yeah, and that was Steve's Steve's MO. Steve would t tend to arrive to meetings a little early. His question was, you know, why are you here? Why are you here now? So and if you didn't give an acceptable answer, he was like, you don't need to be here. Get out.

Conor

Welcome to ADSP The Podcast episode 28, recorded on May 19th, 2021. My name is Connor, and today with my co-host Bryce, we wrapped up our three-part interview with Sean Parent, where he tells us some of his awesome Steve Jobs stories.

Sean Parent

Fast forward until after I left Apple. So, you know, I left Apple after five years and went to Adobe to work on Photoshop. And so I joined Adobe end of 93 to work on Photoshop. And uh a couple years after that, uh Steve Jobs came back to Apple. So I always say I worked at Apple Between Jobs because I I joined Apple right after Steve left, and I left Apple right before Steve came back. So so I worked at Apple Between Jobs. So Steve came back and Apple proposed this operating system called Rhapsody, which was basically next step, and they said they were canceling traditional Mac OS and they were going to move to Rhapsody, which was uh next step which had come out of Next Computing, which is a company that's that Steve had formed. And at the time Apple had about 2% market share and was falling. Uh and so the idea of supporting a new and different, radically different platform on what amounted to a failing company was not particularly of interest to Adobe. And so uh both Adobe and Microsoft had basically said, well, you know, that's very nice, but we decline. We won't be supporting your new operating system. And uh before I had left Apple, I had worked at Apple on the transition from 68K processors to PowerPC processors. So, you know, I kind of knew, you know, at the very low level kind of how the operating system worked and how it was brought up, and you know, enough that I could could bring up you know, with high amount of compatibility, uh, you know, a 68k box running in a in a PowerPC box. And uh so I wrote this uh about a page and a half proposal that was known as the Cyan proposal. It was Cyan because Apple always color-coded their OSs, and Cyan was uh was an unused color, and cyan is kind of a blend between uh uh uh blue and green, tending towards yellow a little bit, and and Rhapsody I think was going to be yellow, and um uh traditional Mac OS was blue. And so I wrote this this Cyan proposal, and basically it was a proposal for how you could have Mac compatibility inside of this Rhapsody environment. And this was at while you were at Apple or while you were at Adobe, I wrote this proposal up. And um uh uh floated it up the management chain, and it went to John Warnock, who at the time was our CEO, and and uh uh we had lots of conversations, and John was like, yeah, okay, if Apple did this, then we would support their new operating system. And so then we ended up in discussions uh with Apple about, okay, you want us to support your new operating system, then build this bridge, and and we'll support the your new operating system. And uh Greg Gilly was my boss at the time, and he kind of took point on most of these negotiations. And so at uh uh one of the meetings with Apple, uh this was fairly senior director of engineering at Apple at the time, uh uh Greg had asked, you know, if if you don't do this, why would we support your your operating system? And the director of engineering from Apple said said, well, you know, if you don't do this, I'm just gonna build my own Photoshop and put you guys out of business, was his his basic response. Um to which Greg responded, if you really think that you could do that, I suggest you do, because you'll wake make way more money than what you're doing right now. Um and that turned into kind of a heated argument between the two of them. I, you know, at the time I actually thought it was going to come to physical blows, like they were like chest to chest.

Conor

Um is this at Adobe? Or like is this meeting taking place at Adobe?

Sean Parent

So they were literally like chest to chest, you know, pointing in each other's faces. Um so after this meeting, the uh the person from Apple uh uh wrote an email that went to Warnock that was that you know he could no longer negotiate uh uh with Adobe because Greg uh was uh uh uh you know was a hothead. And uh so you know if if if Adobe wanted to continue negotiations, it would have to be with somebody else. Uh so I got tagged and was like, okay, so Sean, you get to continue the negotiations around this. And so we set up another meeting. This one was at Apple, and the the meeting was supposed to basically go in in two parts where Adobe presented uh uh the the business reality of why we wouldn't support Rhapsody as it was, you know, the cost to us of moving our products to a new platform, um, uh the opportunity costs involved, the technical challenges, and basically lay out the case for why we weren't going to do it. And you know, unless Apple kind of met us halfway. And on the flip side, Apple was going to present their analysis of the Cyan proposal. Uh it was myself and Ross Bot. Rossbot was uh uh you know uh an executive at Adobe and he was handling kind of the number side, the marketing side of it, and I was handling the the technical side of it. And so we go to this meeting and we do our presentation on the technical aspects and the numbers aspects, and then it's like, okay, Apple, it's your turn to give your presentation, and uh this uh same same individual who had been in an argument with Greg uh says, Well, uh, we looked at this proposal that Sean wrote, and it can't be built. And like that was it. They had like no slides, no presentation, no numbers, no anything. And I got mad, and I'm like, I'm like, that's BS. Uh he was like, nope, I've had like all the you know best senior engineers we have here look at this, they say, nope, it can't be built. I'm like, like, you're full of blank, you know, if you just if you want to hire me back, let me put my own team together, I'll build it.

Conor

And uh so it went, it went really well then, the meeting. Uh so yeah, so the meeting went really, really well.

Sean Parent

Um so so I get back to the office, and uh it uh I don't even think the day was over. Um I get an email uh from John Warnock, and it's a forward of an email from this director of engineering, Apple, um uh that says uh you know that the whole problem with dealing with uh Adobe uh was you know was me as uh as an ex-Apple employee with an X to grind, and that I didn't know what I was talking about, and and I was impossible to work with. And so this is just a forwarded email just slamming me personally uh with a note from John at the top uh uh that says, uh I want to see you in my office now. That that was the extent of the note. Uh so you know I went through my office thinking, okay, well, if I'm getting escorted out of the building, uh what do I want to take home today? Um and I I called uh uh I c I called John's uh uh assistant and said, you know, as John sent me this note, he wants to speak with me now. And she said, Yeah, he's waiting for you. Come on up. Um so you know, go up to the to the 18th floor of the tower. It's it's what you would expect, you know, uh a CEO's office to be like, right? And um I I get there and uh uh John's like, oh Sean, come on in, come on in. Like, have a seat. I'm like, oh I'm like shaking and sweating, right? I think this is the end of my career. And uh uh he goes, just sit there, just listen. I just wanted you to be here for this. And uh uh he uh picks up the phone to his assistant and he tells her, Can you get Steve on the line? and she says, Yes. And so there's a pause and the phone rings again and he picks it up. He's like, Steve, I'm putting you on speakerphone, and he puts on speakerphone and it's Steve Jobs from Apple. And uh he goes, he goes, Hey, Steve, is it John? They go through a couple pleasantries. He goes, Yeah, but I'm calling you today about this rhapsody thing. I just want to tell you we're not doing it and we're not discussing it anymore. And he hangs up the phone. And he turns to me and he says, he says, you know, he said, for them to come back and say that they can't work with you when we had already told them no, and you're the only person who is trying to salvage the situation, uh, he said, is is is just ridiculous. He said, so so we're done. And and you know, I would leave the story there, but for your listeners, the time passes, probably about a year and a half uh uh from from this point in time. And I'm sitting in my office, you know, at Adobe working away on on Photoshop, and my phone rings and I pick it up. I said hello, and they're like, Hello, is this Sean Parent? I'm like, Yeah, this is Sean Parent, and it's like this is Steve Jobs. I'm like, Yeah. They're like, no, this is Steve Jobs. I'm like, okay, well, hi Steve. But what can I do for you? And he said, uh uh I I'm calling to personally invite you over to Apple. Um I've got a presentation I want to give to some of the Adobe folks. I said so I'm calling each of you individually and inviting you personally to come over. So it gives me the time, and it was myself and Greg and uh Mark Hamburg, who was who was uh technical lead on Photoshop at the time, a couple of other people from some of the non-Photoshop product teams also. And we go over to this meeting at Apple, and Steve comes into the room, and he said, This is what I'm going to present at uh WWDC, which is Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, in about two weeks, and he goes through a set of slides for for Mac OS X. And um he said, so we're gonna be announcing Mac OS X at WWDC and here's the slide deck, and he goes, I want Adobe's commitment here and now that you guys will support uh OSX. And I said, This is very interesting. What's the difference between this and Cyan? And he said, Nothing. Like, okay. And uh so he said, you know, we had a conversation and we had enough people in the room, we said we can commit to this. And he said, okay, I want to show Photoshop running on OS X in two weeks. And so uh uh we said we'll do our best, and uh uh yeah, a bunch of us got very little sleep for two weeks, and and you can look it up online. Uh you can probably hunt it down and find a link in the show notes. Uh uh but Greg Greg Gilly presented Photoshop uh running on on OS X at uh WWTC two weeks later. And and it's uh it's a horrible presentation because Greg was completely sleep deprived, and he starts uh uh rambling about how he was you know writing code during the family barbecue the uh the the night before the the WWTC and so it kind of goes into this long ramble about his family barbecue.

Greg Gilly (Clip)

So you know Photoshop is it's all crazy, and I'm dealing with all the fires that are coming up and dealing with that. And um so and then my brother comes in town, and so I've got him and his family, um, and so we you know trying to find around what to happen. So actually on this past Friday, I actually went down to uh the aquarium and uh machine with uh a couple of engineers of the Photoshop team who finally got to the point where they were just manufacturing, so they were had a few minutes of time and they fixed a couple of things which had been tagging me. And then so Saturday we had a bunch of queue for the backyard. And I was I was interested, I was fixing trying to get the last couple of things fixing. Trying to get them to work and bunch of sticks. Um my wife gave me grief for that, but and let's see, and then of course Sunday was Mother's Day.

Bryce

And didn't didn't didn't you say that when Steve present like unveiled this at WD WWDC, didn't he say something like they said it couldn't be done? Which you found amusing because a year earlier said it couldn't be done.

Sean Parent

Yes, it was yes, he he did use exactly those words. They, you know, whoever they were, and and it was it was somewhat annoying. Um yeah, there there was there's there's so many interesting side stories in this in this time frame because the the Cyan proposal went a little further after Apple turned it down, which was one of the people who I had worked with at Apple, he had actually started as mine and Scott Boyd's intern at Apple, Eric Trout, he he wrote the dynamic recompiling emulator uh for uh 68k to PowerPC that that Apple was using. And I knew uh Greg Galinos, who had created a company called MetroWorks, and they kind of had Apple's development tools, but development tools for the Apple platform, uh Code Warrior tools, which were very popular at the time. Uh but something else that uh uh MetroWorks had was a library that emulated some of the Macintosh on PCs. Now I'm drawing a blank as to what the name of the library were was, um, you know, so long as you kind of recompiled. And uh Eric then had worked at Connectix and they did something called Speed Doubler, which was a way to to uh to speed up uh the emulated portions of PowerPC systems at the at the time, uh at this company, Connectix. He he later went on to Microsoft and worked on the hypervisor, and he's now retired. But Eric and I kind of got together and kicked this around and said, you know, we know enough people uh that we could build a Mac compatible system. If Apple's gonna kill the Mac, we could put together a consortium of companies basically to build Mac compatibles. And you know, Macs at the time had opened themselves up for cloning. Uh so there were these hardware manufacturers that had geared up uh to build Mac clones, and then when Steve Jobs came back in, he kind of shut down all the clones. And so companies like IBM had been geared up to build PowerPC Macs and then had to shut it all down. And uh we knew uh folks at B, which was a company that built an operating system that ran on Power PCs. And so we kind of hatched this idea of, well, we could take BOS and we could take the MetroWorks library and we could take the the technology that Eric had been working on, and we could put together all of these pe pieces and we could build Mac compatible power PCs, and we know all the hardware manufacturers who were going to build Mac clones, and perhaps they would be interested in building Mac clones uh without, you know, without Apple. And we scheduled a uh a meeting. It was going to be just a handful of basically engineer types to talk about the technical feasibility over at B headquarters. Uh this had kind of leaked beyond the engineers who were talking about it to executives, and so I walked into this room and it was, you know, Jean-Louis Gasset who was what he had been at Apple and had then started the B Corporation and and senior executives from from IBM and these other companies. And and we sat for an hour and discussed the technical feasibility and it uh uh what it basically came down to is could we get the software manufacturers, the big software manufacturers to commit to support this platform. Right? If we were going to build a consortium of companies, could we get the software to back it up? And that led me back to to John Warnock's office to say, hey, would you support uh this uh uh uh Mac clone? And John came back and said, no, I I I wouldn't. He said he said for two reasons. One is it's a high risk thing. He said he said I think he said in his opinion, he said he thinks that the uh hardware manufacturers are actually playing you. He said they have a bunch of sunk costs into building Mac clones that they're looking to recoup and they want to do one generation and burn off their hardware and then they'll be done with this. Um so he said from a business standpoint, I th he said I think you know you're getting used, so so tread carefully. And he said the other thing, he said that he had learned, he said, was to never take Steve on head to head. He said it's one thing to tell Steve you know, I'm doing this or I'm not doing this, it's another thing to actually go and try to compete with the man. And um he said he said he's you know he uh has a long relationship with Steve, which you know, the whole laser writer thing and Adobe got started largely out of Steve's support from from Apple. And so he said, I'm not gonna go compete against Steve head to head. And so so so I'm out. And kind of without Adobe's commitment, we couldn't get Microsoft's commitment, and the whole strategy just kind of unraveled.

Bryce

And uh uh but you know Where were you working at the time? I was at Adobe Gatch. I went to work. Uh used to run Adobe Gatch. Yeah.

Sean Parent

Yeah, so yeah, so so I was at Adobe for uh uh from ninety-three until 2009. And then I went to Google for a little over a year and then back to Adobe, and I've been at Adobe since. You know, I'd be I was in a few meetings during that time period with Steve, um, and John was one of the few people who would uh stand up to Steve, and there seemed to be a huge amount of respect there. You know, s you know, John, I you know, I actually saw, you know, John tell Steve, Steve, have a seat and s and Steve kind of you know shut up and and sat down.

Bryce

If I recall correctly, the background of that story was wasn't it that Steve had come into the meeting and started asking each person in the meeting w who they were and why they were there, and then telling them whether or not to remain in the meeting.

Sean Parent

Yeah. Yeah, and that was Steve's Steve's MO. Steve would t tend to arrive to meetings a little early, and uh even, you know, this was a meeting at Adobe, so this was not a meeting that he had. And he would walk into the meeting, and people who were already there, and then people who came into the room, his question was, uh, uh, you know, why are you here? And the person might give, you know, well, I'm the so-and-so, you know. I I uh people answer that question with their title, right? Right, right. I'm I'm the lead on blank product. It'd be like, that wasn't the question. Why are you here now? So and if you didn't give a an acceptable answer, he was he was like, you don't need to be here, get out.

Conor

That's a nice guy.

Sean Parent

Yeah. Yeah. Uh yeah. You know, kind of everything you see in the movies about him is is is is uh you know has has some amount of accuracy. You know, he's uh uh uh incredibly smart guy, um had an incredible aura around him, you know, if you will, right? The the kind of you know reality distortion field that he's he's he's famous for, um uh uh could convince you of almost anything. And um and and you know, in in many ways that served him very well, right? He was a very good motivator and would push people outside of their limits. And a lot of times, you know, it was just by telling people, you know, no, that's not that's not right. I don't know what's right, that's not it, do better. Right? Right, and just pushing people to go back and do better and try again and to to try to impress the man. And so uh I wouldn't say he was an individual who I'd ever want as a friend, but uh you know, as somebody running a company, he was very effective.

Bryce

Yeah, certainly, yeah. Uh there's nothing I love more than uh than Sean uh war stories from that that particular period of time.

Conor

I think the first time uh it was the first time we met Sean. Uh and so for those that aren't familiar with Silicon Valley, uh Adobe's headquarters are in San Jose, which is sort of at the bottom of Silicon Valley. And I think Apple's offices, either the the new one or the old one, have always been in Cupertino. So is that where those meetings were taking place, going back and forth between Cupertino and San Jose?

Sean Parent

Yeah. Yeah, it would have been uh uh that time it was you know the the Infinite Loop building, uh which was in in Cupertino.

Conor

Um but yeah, the the first time I met uh Sean, we had lunch in the cafeteria of the Adobe headquarters, and I was I think I'd we had lunch for like I don't know, two hours or two and a half hours. It was very kind of you to spend that much time with me. And I heard all these stories. And when you were telling me the one uh where you go up to John Warnock's the CEO's office, like I thought for sure you were gonna get fired because the the way the story goes is like you're sent in there as like the second negotiator and told been told, all right, so you know it didn't go well the first time, you know, let's try and be friends, we want to be n we want to have Apple. And then you come out of it just as much of you know having having gotten an argument um and then and then uh the the the punchline of that of of the CEO getting Steve Jobs on the phone and and saying no thanks. Because it's a good you sort of in the midst of hearing the story, you forget that um you essentially had written a proposal like for Apple. It wasn't really for Adobe. It was you your proposal was like, hey, Apple's asking us for this, and we're saying no. Um and you went out of your way to write a proposal for Apple that said, hey, if you do this, we can work together. It wasn't for Adobe uh per se. Right. It was for the partnership between the companies. And you you lose sight of that because the story is so amazing, and then at the end of it, you sort of realize, oh yeah, Sean was the only one that was like nobody else, like you know, for for all we know, uh, you know, your your direct reports or people you were reporting to were saying, okay, you can spend a coup a little bit of time, but like we got other stuff to do, so um, you know, don't waste two weeks writing up this proposal or whatever. Um uh yeah, it's crazy. It's an amazing story.

Sean Parent

And I've heard you know, I've heard conflicting stories from from inside of Apple. The you know, what was referred to as Blue Box, which was kind of Cyan, was built, my understanding is largely by the QuickDraw team, which QuickDraw also had like a compatibility layer that they had built for Windows boxes. Uh and so I've heard that you know uh uh the Cyan proposal had nothing to do with with OS X, and it was developed completely independently, and then I've heard like no, it had everything to do with it, and you know, it wouldn't have been developed if it hadn't been for the Cyan proposal. You know, I think the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, right? Right, I think, you know, I don't think it was a unique idea, and I think anybody who I had worked with at Apple, because we had been working on how do we support the evolution of the Mac onto new operating systems, uh, you know, anybody who I had worked with who was still there would have come to the same conclusion. But I also think that having Adobe say no in less was a huge motivating factor, right?

Bryce

You know, it it's it's um it's interesting because it reminds me of a lot of act interactions that I have where you know it's not uncommon for somebody's initial reaction to a thing to be it can't be done or this is a bad idea, or we shouldn't do this. And I think really the the the key thing is not an initial reaction, the key thing, like when presented with a new idea that maybe challenges your your perceptions, the key thing is when you go and think about it and you realize, hey, maybe maybe this this was actually right, maybe my gut reaction was just me being defensive, what do you do next? Because you you can either double down or you can uh um you know you can say, oh yeah, you know what, I'm gonna I'm gonna change my position. And uh one of the things I've noticed about people that I consider very intelligent and and who have seen as being very successful is they are when they recognize that they were wrong, they have no shame and no remorse about switching their position to what they now believe to be the reality of the world. And so, like, you know, obviously Apple Apple doesn't come off well in that engagement, but at least they they eventually recognize that they needed to do the thing.

Sean Parent

Yes, and yeah, it and and you know, I I think that that's that's very true. Um I'm notorious in meetings for arguing all sides of a problem. You know, I will argue against myself in in a meeting, and and people are like, wait, you just said this other thing, and I'm like, well now I'm taking the other position, right? So let's let's let's let's figure this out. And and I'll frequently tell people when they say, you know, you can't do that, I'm like, do you know I can't do that? You know, do do do you know that that can't be done? Or do you just not know how to do it? Those are two different things. And and you know, if you know that can't be done or put together the rational argument, right, right? Connect the dots and and and basically, you know, prove it, prove that can't be done. So I think uh yes, yes, people are are are are are too dismissive, and a lot of times in my career, uh you know, I've I've had a significant impact just because I've been like, no, you know, I can see that that that this is doable and it's not a huge amount of work and it can be scoped and uh and there's a path that can get us from A to B. And and it just comes out of sitting down and trying to look at, you know, okay, you know, people say it would be great if we could do blank, but everybody says we can't do blank. And I'm like, do we? Does you know is that really we can't do blank, or is that just a bunch of people saying we don't know how to do blank? And so let's go go actually dig in and take a look at that problem.

Conor

My uh my youngest of three sisters, uh Piper, she works in finance and uh she has this quote, I think it's of Ray Dalio, um, but it could be from some other famous hedge fund person that says uh like genius or brilliance is the ability to hold like multiple points of view in your head at the same time and like compare and contrast them because uh a lot of times in meetings you see you know people go head to head, um, but like r real brilliance is like the ability to you know do what you were doing is you know take one side of an argument and then take the other side of the argument um because uh at the end of the day you shouldn't just be stuck to a decision because that's the one that you chose, you should be looking at all angles, um, which is it's a hard thing to do.

Sean Parent

Um Yeah, I think it's important also to kind of seek out people who view the world differently than you do, you know, in in tech. And uh you know uh an individual who at Adobe, uh Mark Hamburg, you know, he was was lead on Photoshop when I joined the Photoshop team, and then he and I worked later on a product called Revel. And uh uh so we've we've worked together off and on for gosh, it's getting close to thirty years now. But uh y but for you know, he's he's an absolutely brilliant individual, but he always manages to come at a problem uh from the opposite direction that I come at it from, you know, 180 degrees opposed. And and at first glance between whatever the two of us are are proposing as solutions, you would think that, you know, one of the two has to be wrong. And and I have a huge amount of uh amount of respect for Mark technically, and but his brain just works very differently than than mine does. He solves problems in a very different way than I solve problems. And what I usually find is is we're notorious for having these long drawn out, very vocal arguments. Um but yeah, we're good friends, we'll go out and get a beer afterwards. The when we have these arguments, it's like we both end up learning something, right? Right, and and usually we end up on a better solution than if either of us were trying to tackle the same problem alone. And so he's somebody whose input I will I will seek out, even though for whatever it is, when I'm like, oh, I'm thinking about doing this, and here's how I do it, his initial response is gonna be is gonna be, you're wrong. That's like a stupid way to do it. Right. Right, right. And I just know and expect that, and it's like, okay, so so but he's gonna propose something that's completely different, which at first glance I will say, well, that looks ridiculous. Um but if I take the time to understand what he's saying, it's like, no, that's not ridiculous. There's some some amount of brilliance in there. And if I if I understand where he's coming from, I'll end up in a better place. And so I think in tech we tend to people tend to gravitate gravitate towards people who affirm their own you know, their own belief systems, and they form these little clusters and they kind of push out outside influences. And it's like, no, you want you you know, it's like it's like you don't want to be the smartest person in the room and you don't want uh to work in an environment that's that's uh that's homogenous, you know, that's uh that that everybody's viewing things the same way.

Conor

And that's why we should all learn an APL. Perfect way to close it out.

Sean Parent

Yeah. Yeah. Perfect.

Conor

Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed, and have a great day.