title: [Book Sharing] Creative Selection - Exclusive Confessions from Apple's Former Chief iPhone Software Engineer
published: false
date: 2021-03-09 00:00:00 UTC
tags:
canonical_url: http://www.evanlin.com/reading-creative-selection/
---
[](http://moo.im/a/hnDRSU "Creative Selection")
Creative Selection - Secrets of software design from the golden age of Steve Jobs, glimpse into Apple's creative methods, essence, and key to excellence
Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs
Author: Ken Kocienda
Original Author: Ken Kocienda
Translator: Hung Hui-fang
Publisher: Face Publishing
Publication Date: 2021/01/26
#### Recommended Book Purchase Links:
- Books.com.tw: [Purchase Link](https://www.books.com.tw/exep/assp.php/kkdailin/products/0010881518?sloc=main&utm_source=kkdailin&utm_medium=ap-books&utm_content=recommend&utm_campaign=ap-202103)
- E-book: [Readmoo](http://moo.im/a/hnDRSU)
## Preface:
This is the fourth book I've read this year. I bought the e-book of this book immediately after hearing "[“From Now On, You Are All Keyboard Engineers!” The Birth of the iPhone Keyboard and Apple's Software Design Process in the Steve Jobs Era](https://podcast.starrocket.io/97)" (bought it on Sunday), and finished reading it last night (Wednesday). Why did I want to read this book so much? My reasons are as follows:
- This is the first book written by a "Former Chief iPhone Software Development Engineer at Apple" (Note: Principle iPhone Software Engineer, usually the highest non-management position in foreign technology companies).
- This is also a book that explains the atmosphere that was created at Apple when Steve Jobs was around, and how a good feature was selected.
I highly recommend it to everyone, and if you're interested, you can buy it and read it.
## Content Summary and Thoughts:
──Exclusive confessions from Apple's former Chief iPhone Software Engineer──
──A complete record of Apple's creative rules during the golden age of Steve Jobs!──
Apple products have nearly two billion users worldwide, but the entire workflow that gave birth to and realized these creations,
Due to the restrictions of internal "confidentiality clauses," it has always been a mystery.
How did geniuses actually give birth to the iPhone, iPad, Safari...?
Apple's former Chief Software Engineer, for the first time, reveals Apple's design and development process during the golden age of Steve Jobs, and the key elements that made Apple successful.
### Chapter List
- Introduction
- The Demo
- The Crystal Ball
- The Black Slab
- One Simple Rule
- The Hardest Problem
- The Keyboard Derby
- QWERTY
- Convergence
- The Intersection
- At This Point
- Epilogue
The whole book starts with a keyboard design demonstration for the iPad (which was also the author's last time seeing Steve Jobs at the company), and slowly recalls how the author was brought to Apple to develop software. How he helped develop the browser on the Mac, and it was also because of the development of the browser that the author first felt the ability of a ten-times engineer. The little story inside is: At first, the author wanted to modify and port the source code of Mozila to Mac OS. But because Mozilla was so huge, it took the author six weeks and still couldn't get Mozilla to run correctly on Mac OS (or rather, couldn't even compile). But with the addition of a new member, Charlie, he used two days to write a Shim layer himself to make Mac OS run the browser on KDE (Shim is a layer of deception, on the one hand, it deceives the KDE browser that it's running on KDE, and on the other hand, it deceives Mac OS that it's running Mac software. (Similar to Dockershim in Kubernetes)
This is also a very special story to share (so strong people can write a shim in two days ah ah ah ah ah)
After completing the browser on Mac OS (which is what we later know as Safari), the author had the opportunity to be promoted to iCloud (which was then network storage), but because he was not used to it, he actually threatened his bosses with a job change to become an engineer again. (This is also a very interesting example, it turns out that there are really people who are willing to be purely engineers). Then the author also joined the later Purple team (which is Apple's greatest product, the iPhone) team. It was also this opportunity that allowed the author to have the opportunity to demo the new feature "keyboard function" in front of Steve Jobs. The keyboard on the iPhone now is a feature that the author participated in making, and it is also the auto-correct function that the author created, and he also created finger adjustment. That is, when the button is pressed, the user often thinks that the fingertip is pressing it, but often the pad of the finger will touch the screen first. This makes the user think it is not accurate (in fact, they touched it first), even this can be improved, it's really Apple!!
## Thoughts:
Many of Apple's new features are not achieved through brainstorming by many people, but through many different demonstrations. Many talented engineers, through high-efficiency prototypes and demonstrations, allow Steve Jobs and many senior executives to decide which features are needed by Apple through the results of the demonstrations. These sections are described in detail in the book, and are also very worth reading. As an engineer, being able to understand how to do efficient demonstrations, and how to think about how to make many people accept your demonstrations during the demonstration. These are all very important abilities.
If you want to quickly understand the content of the book, you can listen to the Podcast. But if you are an engineer, I suggest you must read this book.
#### Reference Articles
- ["From Now On, You Are All Keyboard Engineers!" The Birth of the iPhone Keyboard and Apple's Software Design Process in the Steve Jobs Era](https://podcast.starrocket.io/97)
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