Aperture: Senior QA (2004-2005)

Summary

Click here to view all the articles about my Apple career.This project is tricky to write about as there was so much positive and negative emotion involved — a real roller coaster.Paul Marcos was an engineer on Mail with me and unofficially my mentor. He was a huge reason I joined the team in the first place. When I heard about him leaving Mail, it was like a punch in the gut. I asked where he was going, and he couldn’t say. That’s Apple for you.Then he said ‘You could come with’. I instantly felt better. I loved Mail, but the thought of an entirely new product from scratch was very appealing.Note that some of these images are newer versions of ApertureWhen I interviewed, I didn’t know the assembled team had many people on it that I already knew. There was already some mutual respect or at least awareness. That sure helps!Some of the people in that category were Randy Ubillos and Stan Jirman (co-creators of Aperture), James Dempsey, and Dan Waylonis. I loved the people I interviewed with, but I was hesitant to consider a project where no one would tell me what it was. My last interview was with Randy, and that helped my hesitation. When the subject of working on an unknown project came up, he said (paraphrased):I can’t tell you what we’re working on but if you look around my office, you might get some idea.He moved his hand across his office wall, covered with beautiful pictures he’d taken. Ok, so I’d be working on a photos app, awesome!Aperture was more than a year away from shipping when I joined, and the software was mostly a series of demos. It was unique with a ship date set in stone. Apple caught wind of Adobe working on Lightroom and of course wanted to beat them to the punch.They wanted to announce it at PhotoPlus+Expo in New York in the Fall of 2005. Apple likes to announce and ship at the same time or within a month or so.The team was stellar, and most were very senior. Despite being assembled quickly, it had the feel of a team that had been together for a...