In early 1983, Apple had committed to shipping the very first Mac that coming fall. It didn’t ship then. Actually, the project became months overdue as the software team worked through Christmas break. By the first week of 1984 the team was working around the clock. No sleep. Soon, the new deadline was less than a week away and it had became clear to the engineers that there were still too many bugs for the Mac to ship.
The Software Manager broke this news to Steve Jobs, suggesting that they ship with a demo version of the software and send out the final version a few weeks later. Steve’s response is quoted as “No way, there’s no way we’re slipping! You guys have been working on this stuff for months now, another couple weeks isn’t going to make that much of a difference. You may as well get it over with. Just make it as good as you can. You better get back to work!”
And although an exact day is uncertain, it was around this time that Steve Jobs took an easel and wrote the phrase “Real artists ship.”
Towards the end of the final week, the software team was forfeiting sleep all together thanks to chocolate covered espresso beans and “medicinal quantities of caffeinated beverages”. They were producing new release candidates of the operating system every few hours.
Although not perfect, and with a known bug or two, they shipped on schedule this time.
Being one who over analyzes almost everything, this phrase resonates with me maybe more than any other epigram of Steve’s. In the book “Insanely Great”, author Steven Levy does a pretty good job elaborating on the meaning and power of the phrase.
“It was an awesome encapsulation of the ground rules in the age of technological expression. The term “starving artist” was now an oxymoron. One’s creation, quite simply, did not exist as art if it was not out there, available for consumption, doing well. Was [Douglas] Engelbart an artist? A prima donna—he didn’t ship. What were the wizards of PARC? Haughty aristocrats—they didn’t ship. The final step of an artist—the single validating act—was getting his or her work into boxes, at which point the marketing guys take over. Once you get the computers into people’s homes, you have penetrated their minds. At that point all the clever design decisions you made, all the twists and turns of the interface, the subtle dance of mode and modeless, the menu bars and trash cans and mouse buttons and everything else inside and outside your creation, becomes part of people’s lives, transforms their working habits, permeates their approach to their labor, and ultimately, their lives. But to do that, to make a difference in the world and a dent in the universe, you had to ship. You had to ship.”
Real artists ship.
So we wouldn’t forget, designer Andrew Power created a few visual reminders for us.
