Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs - Episode 39: How Steve Jobs Saved Sean Parent

Episode Date: August 20, 2021

In this episode, Sean Parent tells the story how Apple sued him and Steve Jobs stepped in to save the day.About the Guest:Sean Parent is a principal scientist and software architect for Adobe Photoshop. Sean has been at Adobe since 1993 when he joined as a senior engineer working on Photoshop and later managed Adobe’s Software Technology Lab. In 2009 Sean spent a year at Google working on Chrome OS before returning to Adobe. From 1988 through 1993 Sean worked at Apple, where he was part of the system software team that developed the technologies allowing Apple’s successful transition to PowerPC.Date Recorded: 2021-07-28Date Released: 2021-08-20“I’d rather be driving a Macintosh” bumper stickerSteve JobsSteve WozniakIntro Song InfoMiss You by Sarah Jansen https://soundcloud.com/sarahjansenmusicCreative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/l-miss-youMusic promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/iYYxnasvfx8

Please tell me that this is like a PG-13 like and then we lost because you're telling me all the names and I was like did we lose Trent? Did we lose someone and that's why we're being so specific and okay everyone's alive. Everyone's alive. welcome to adsp the podcast episode 39 recorded on july 28 2021 my name is connor and today with my co-host bryce we interview sean parent and he tells us the story of how apple suitum and steve jobs stepped in to save the day have we ever had sean tell the story about the time that Photoshop crashed during Chinese New Year and created like an international incident? And Sean got an offer from a U.S. senator or something. Have we had that story here? So, yeah, you're referring to what's known as the Basimatic story, which I'm going to put that one on the shelf because that one, you know, that's a story for drinks over the bar. There's still some people who are very sensitive to that story.

Okay. So that tends to not go public um and if sean says it's too sensitive to be repeated then you can take it yeah yeah so so we'll leave leave that one hanging out there for your listeners um uh yeah so kind of you know in in conversations and on twitter, two stories came up. So I'll let you guys flip the coin and choose. One was the one that Tony mentioned, which he was kind of mentioning the punchline, which he said, you know, wasn't there. I forget how he phrased it, but wasn't there an individual after the whole Cyan proposal, which was the story we told before, who said that he had been asked at Apple to figure out why that couldn't work. And he saw my name at the top of the paper and said, oh, no, it'll work. So that's the punchline of the story.

But there's a good story for how we get there. The other story is how at one point Apple sued me, and it was Steve Jobs who actually saved me. I think we've got to hear how Steve Jobs saved Sean. Don't worry, listeners. we're not going anywhere. I mean, at least, uh, at one point I think I told Sean that he should have his own podcast and he said, I know I don't have time for that. I don't have the bandwidth. Uh, he said, however, if, if you had a podcast and you just want it to be a recurring guest, I'd be more than happy to do that. And I said, okay, done. Okay, so story time here.

So this goes way back, and it's a little kind of outside of tech, but, you know, ties into tech. I was in college, so the year is 1984. I had to look this up, and I believe it was 84. It kind of spans into 85 for the length of the story here. And I was working at a computer reseller called Microcomputer Systems. They were in Bellevue Square, for anybody who knows the Seattle area. So it's a mall, and, you know, selling computers at a mall. And they were an Apple dealer before Apple had their own stores.

And the Macintosh was newly out, and Apple ran a sales promotion for the Macintosh that was called I'd Rather Be Driving a Macintosh. And in fact, I still have a bumper sticker. You can probably find images of these bumper stickers online. So I've got a bumper sticker with the rainbow Apple logo that says I'd rather be driving a Macintosh. And the basic idea of the promotion is it was trying to get people in to test drive a Macintosh at an Apple dealer and so you could schedule a time to come into an Apple dealer, and they would kind of walk you through a canned demo

and try to convince you to buy a Mac. And part of the test drive is you could even take a Mac home for like a week and try it out and then bring it back. That's kind of a test drive. So part of the sales promotion was a SPF for the Apple salespeople, where for every 10 Macintoshes you sold, you got entered into a drawing to win a Porsche 944 for a year. It would be a one-year lease on this car. Wow, that's pretty cool.

Pretty cool. And there was just, you know, across all the Apple dealers, you know, across the whole country, there was one Porsche 944 that was going to be given out in this drawing. And at our store, we pooled all of our max sales under our manager's name. Our manager was ron to maximize our number of chances to win this car and uh and ron won yeah so So we agreed, and Ron agreed, that what we would do is once we, you know, had the car with the year lease, is we would just divvy up the car across the salespeople. There were four of us, including Ron, based off how many Macs we'd actually sold. So we would, you know, take the year, divide it up by the number of Macs we sold,

and you would get that percentage of time driving the would take the year, divide it up by the number of mechs we sold, and you would get that percentage of time driving the car during the year. And we thought that was fair. And so Ron flew down to Cupertino and met with Steve Jobs and got the car, got to drive the car back up from Cupertino back up to Washington. And we divvied up the car, you know, who got to use it between the people on the team. And I was taking the last section, and I think initially I had like two months for the car. But I ended up getting more time because as people got expensive tickets driving this car, they like handed it off to the next person. They were like, okay, that just cost me a bunch of money and my insurance rates are up.

You take it. And during that time, we also kind of traded off a bit, where it was like, oh, well, I don't need the car for this week, and I've got something to do this week, so could I use the Porsche? We're all college kids, for the most part, except for Ron. So I was the only person at this point who didn't have a ticket in the car, and I had three months ticket in the car, and I had three months to use the car, and I was down to the last two weeks on the lease.

And I was living in downtown Seattle, and my now wife, Tricia, she was visiting her family down in Southern California, and I got invited to a party. So I called up a couple of friends of mine, Joe and Pat, and a cousin of mine, Trent, and said, hey, I got invited to this party. Do you guys want to go? Like, that would be great.

I'm like, I've got the Porsche. We'll drive to this party and have a good time. So at the very last minute, Pat called and said, I can't go to the party. And he bails. And so it was just myself and Joe and Trent. And we're driving the Porsche to this party and there's a windy road out by Issaquah, Washington called Tiger Mountain, which is like a, you know, roller coaster. It's, you know, up and down and banked curves and kind

of notorious for being a fun drive. And so I kind of unleashed the car going up the hill and it was like, ah, that was fun. Let's do it again. So I turn around and start down the hill and coming over a knoll around a bend the car goes loose and starts to slide and the roadway here it's you know it's a fairly steep kind of mountainous area there's no guardrail and if i went off on the outside of the of the curve it was you know off a hill into big trees and and so all i can remember thinking is like keep the car to the inside of the curve like no matter what happens keep the car to the inside of the curve and and my memory was was hitting the gravel knowing that i was on the inside of the curve. And my memory was hitting the gravel, knowing that I was on the inside of the curve, the car just hitting the gravel, coming to a stop,

and me thinking, oh, whew, we're all fine, everything's okay. But my next memory is a firefighter yelling at me from outside the car to stay awake while they're prying the door off the car to get me out. What? Yeah. So I don't remember the impact, but we swapped ends and went backwards into a telephone pole at an estimated speed of about 70 miles an hour. What the heck? Yep. So the telephone pole ripped through the rear axle of the car.

I have pictures of the negatives, at least I found them recently, of the car. So the telephone pole ripped through the rear axle. The car had a sunroof. The sunroof came off and it was, you know, I was driving. My cousin Trent was sitting in the front passenger seat. The telephone pole went through the rear. What? Yeah. passenger seat what yeah yeah you hit you hit the

telephone pole we going backwards backwards okay we swapped ends and went backwards into the telephone pole right so and nobody died and nobody died

um so I'm thinking in the back of my head I'm like Sean And nobody died? And nobody died. As I'm thinking in the back of my head, I'm like, Sean, please tell me that this is like a PG-13. And then we lost it because you're telling me all the names. And I was like, did we lose Trent? Did we lose someone? And that's why we're being so specific. And so, okay, everyone's alive. Everyone's alive.

Yeah. So we'll walk through the injuries a little bit here. So the the sunroof popped and and and went back. The roof crumpled. The back seat got squished into the front seat. So the back Joe was sitting behind Trent. So he's on the on the on the right side of the if you're facing out the front windshield, he's on the right side of the car. And so his seat got pushed, like smashed up against the seat in front of him. And he would have been crushed except the sunroof popped, so he ended up pinned between the two seats, standing out the top of the car.

And his only injury was a gash from kind of just before, just below his shoulder down to about his elbow, where his, as he got squished up, the roof crumpled down. And so it left a sharp edge and it just gouged down his arm. So that was his injury. Trent had a concussion because of all things. There was a radar detector clipped on the visor that came off and clipped him in the forehead and gave him a good concussion from that. This was before airbags, so I rebounded and bounced off the steering wheel. So I had a good concussion and I also chipped a bone in my shin. I'm not sure what I hit it on, but something under the front of the car and so so yeah so kind of my next memory after impact was coming to with the firefighters out

Trent had managed to get out of the car and and then had managed to help Joe out of the car so they were already out of the car I was unconscious in the car and pinned. And somebody nearby heard the squealing tires and it called the police. So the police had come and they'd called the fire department and the fire department had come. So I was unconscious for a while and fire department pried me out. So I have kind of these little flashes of memory from all of this, right? Like I said, I remember the car coming to a stop, not impacting anything. Then I remember the firefighters yelling at me. Then my next memory is being out of the car and asking Joan Trent if they were okay. And then I have a memory sitting in the back of the police squad car with a

police officer asking if I'm okay. And then I have a short memory of waking up in a hospital briefly and then a memory of being at my parents' house. And I don't know, like, who called my parents, but my parents had lived in the area. And so, yeah, I was kind of in and out of it for a while. So accidents over, cars totaled, we're all okay. At my parents' house, I called Tricia and let her know that, oh, you know, the party we were going to, we never even made it there, crashed the Porsche, it's totaled, and she asks, you know, what happened to Trent and Joe, and I fill her in on those details, and she goes, what about Pat? And the words out of my mouth were, oh, Pat didn't make it. And it took me a while because my wife just like went into hysterics

on the other end of the phone, just like sobbing. And she like, you know, couldn't hear me. And it was like, well, I'm trying to say, no, no, no, no, no, I meant, like, he canceled. He didn't go to the party. He wasn't in the car. So, yes, she thought that I had killed our friend Pat. But luckily that was not the case. Pat had bailed. I also think had Pat actually been in the car,

I probably might not have totaled it because Pat was a very experienced race car driver, and he probably would have said, you're being an idiot here, so cut it out. So that all happens. There's, you know, medical bills and hospital bills and a total Porsche. And Apple's insurance company is a company called Industrial Indemnity. And I get a letter from Industrial Indemnity that says, hey, we were just looking things up and you're not on the lease for this car. You had no business driving it. So we're suing you for the car, the hospital bills, the legal fees, all of this. Which as a college student, this is a pretty daunting thing. I think even as an adult, this would be a very daunting

thing. But Ron, my boss at Microcomputer Systems, wasn't an idiot. And when he had gone to pick up the car, there had been a little ceremony with Steve Jobs handing him the keys to the car, and he gets to meet Steve Jobs. And he asked Steve, he said, hey, Steve, I would like to use this car as incentive for my salespeople at the store. Would that be okay? And Steve said, yeah, that would be okay. And Ron said, would you mind, like, writing that down? And so Steve wrote, Ron can use the car. I wouldn't have let anybody drive the car without permission.

I've got Steve Jobs' permission on this cocktail napkin. And so I go into a meeting with the insurance company and a bunch of lawyers, and I hadn't even hired my own lawyer at this point. So it's like just me on the other side of this table. And, you know, they're explaining to me basically how much money I'm going to owe. And I said, well, you know, I actually did have permission to drive the car. And I slide this napkin across the table. And they're like, you you know what's this and i'm like that's uh steve jobs ceo of apple who's gave me permission to

to drive this car and they're like yeah no right so so i'm like no that's that's what this is and so there's a bunch of like back and forth and conversation and eventually somebody says okay i'm gonna go make some phone calls and it took like an hour but somebody actually got a hold of steve thanks to steve i i ended up not getting sued i can't believe this story is like pre all of you're in college at this point i thought for sure this was like a college you know like so this so this is pre-everything, like pre-Adobe, pre-Google, pre-Apple. As a college student, you got sued by Steve Jobs. Or no, you got sued by Apple and Steve Jobs saved you. Yep.

So you were destined to go and have, you know, one-'re not one-on-ones but like that's amazing yep and you know sadly i never got to tell this story to steve jobs i have told the story to uh to steve wozniak so who got a good laugh what uh yeah so so steve wozniak came and uh to uh m MACAC one year. We talked about MACAC last time. So he came as a keynote speaker and hung out with everybody at MACAC for a long time. So I had the chance there to tell him the story. But yeah, never had a chance to tell Steve the story. Let him know that, yeah, I was the guy who totaled the Porsche.

Wow. Steve the story. Let him know that, yeah, I was the guy who totaled the Porsche. Oh, wow. Yeah, I got threatened to be sued one other time from Apple. And this was, I worked at a little company, Micro, or not Microcomputer Systems, Orange Micro. You know, graduated from college

and I was, I think we talked about this some before, I was doing printer driver stuff. And I was reverse engineering Apple's printer drivers and was stuck on one, and I was communicating with Scott Boyd, who, he was also Blue Meanie, and he was somebody who I met at MacHack,

and so we're still good friends to this day. But he was in tech support at Apple at the time, and I was communicating with him and asking him how some things worked on one of the image writer drivers. I don't remember if it was the LQ or the original image writer, but I said to Scott, I said, you know, instead of just telling me all this stuff, it would be super handy if you could just send me the sources.

And he was like, oh, sure. So he sent me the sources to one of the drivers, which he should not have done. And so he then kind of realized afterwards that that probably wasn't the best thing to do. So he asked his manager, you know, is it okay that I send this guy the sources? He was like, oh, absolutely not.

And so I got this, you know, nasty gram from Apple, basically threatening to sue me if I didn't destroy all copies of the sources immediately and wipe them out, and I guess Scott almost got fired through this. So we laugh about this from time to time that i almost got him fired too with my uh but uh uh yeah you know i just complied with the letter and it was not a not a big issue wow i still can't get over i still can't get over the last we also should put some like disclaimer about uh if you ever win a Porsche or even if you don't win a Porsche and you have a vehicle

and you look up to Sean, please do not attend to his behavior. Only look up to his C++ coding abilities, not to his irresponsible driving. The lesson is if you have a Porsche, don't let Sean drive the Porsche. Yeah, or any high-performance vehicle, for that matter. Yeah, and the stories of my youth, my cousin Trent and I were notorious. Almost every time we got together, it ended up in an emergency room visit from the time we were six on so so there are many stories of the two of us uh uh kind of egging the other one on until it ends up in an emergency room visit sean sean parent the you know the c++ luminary in his youth

just breaking bones constantly concussing himself yeah you know i was a you know kid in the in the in the 70s and it was kind of free range right it was uh we got up in the morning and on a weekend and left the house and went to play with our friends that lived in a rural area you know jumped off train trestles into the river and swam in a lake and the only rule was you had to be home when the streetlights came on. Where did you grow up? Halfway between Renton and Issaquah

in Washington State. I still don't know how I'm just like, wow, how come I wasn't sued by some big company? And the reason I was being sued I mean ideally it's not because I totaled a Porsche but like because I won a Porsche and uh yeah there's just so many amazing just even the fact that you like sure you you had the statistics in your favor by pulling them but what are the odds that that actually works across the whole country, right? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it was lots of good and bad luck in that story, I guess. Random chance. It's a good luck sandwich. Some bad luck in the middle. Right. Yep. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed and have a great day.