Sci-Fi Hi-Fi

The first person I ever got to know at Apple was a really smart guy named Eric Albert. I read his weblog back when I was an Apple-obsessed Java developer in Colorado, eventually he started reading mine, and when I started interviewing for my current job, Eric helped me a lot by explaining how the Apple interview process works and what I should expect.

When I finally got to California, Eric and I would do lunch occasionally and talk shop. The only problem was, it tended to be a bit of a one-sided conversation. I would tell Eric about how the latest OS update was going and so on, and he would tell me…not much. Eric was unusually secretive about his work–even by Apple standards.

More recently, though, Eric started talking optimistically about his super secret project actually shipping. My co-workers and I thought we had a pretty good idea what he was working on (based on his background and the kinds of bugs he tended to file), but we all had a fun time coming up with wild, rumor site-grade theories about what it would actually be used for.

Then, last weekend, while I was hanging out in Los Angeles, I woke up to find CNet’s scoop on Apple’s Intel switch in my del.icio.us links, and I immediately knew that Eric’s long hours at work recently were about to pay off.

Yes, it’s true: Eric is one of those mysterious people Steve Jobs mentioned in the keynote–the people who have been secreted away making sure OS X works on Intel. Now that the truth can be revealed, I think Eric and the rest of his team deserve a hearty round of applause–both for doing a lot to improve the long term prospects of the Mac platform, and ensuring that what could have been a nasty transition will likely be almost transparent (he even spent a lot of time enthusiastically helping developers port their apps in the Intel lab at WWDC, as the screenshots I posted to Flickr attest).

Nice work Eric–enjoy your vacation!

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 11th, 2005 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Life at Apple, Mac, Software, WWDC 2005. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.