Part 2: It started way back when Steve left Apple with 8 people and started NeXT. I was in developer relations and the idea was simple: we would make a computer with beautiful design that didn’t crash like the Mac and Windows did, and that developers would love. We had no idea we were writing the code that would power the iPhone.

👆That was 1991. You probably see a young Steve in front of a black computer, but there is a critical dot here — a man so obsessed with design the computer had to be turned at 28 degrees to the front of the desk because our logo was turned at 28 degrees to the vertical.

He fussed over the particular shade of black and we had to make a special demo desk with the exact same black paint for his keynotes, and that desk had to be turned at 28 degrees to the stage, measured with a protractor.

👆 The small e was homage to e=mc**2.

I was on my hands and knees with a protractor on many stages to get that right. For those too young to know what a protractor looks like:

In the day, I used one like this:

I didn’t know any other tech exec obsessed with design like him; he said that was something he had over Bill Gates. We couldn’t see then that one day we’d hold our computers in our hands at hipster coffee shops and if they weren’t beautiful and didn’t make us look good, we wouldn’t love them.