Don Melton, who started the Safari and WebKit projects at Apple, writes about that history and his retirement from Apple.
HN links it for the inside account of Safari's creation. Commenters read it as showing the passion behind early Safari and cite its credit to Forstall.
That’s not at all the impression I get from interviews and reports by former Apple employees (0)(1). They almost always have huge respect for the execs they worked for. Bear in mind all the Apple execs for engineering groups are themselves engineers. It’s a highly disciplined and focused organisation, but that’s not the same thing as top down and good engineering is highly prized.
Take Steve Jobs. He was infamous for his perfectionism. But on the other hand he trusted his team. When several of his execs insisted that they should build an App Store, which he initially opposed, he folded and let them do it. He once said there’s no point hiring A grade engineers and then telling them what to do and how to do it. I hire A grade engineers so they can tell me.
(0) https://donmelton.com/archives/
(1) https://youtu.be/N8Vz1BeymHE
This applies to our own industry.
For those of us that have been in it for awhile -- keeping abreast of what is going on, reading about "new paradigms" and how they may just be new incarnations of what we have seen before, continuous learning is key.
For those getting started, battle stories can be interesting and provide insight.
Don Melton's blog - http://donmelton.com
JWZ's blog - http://jwz.org
The * at Work series (Coders, Founders, etc.)
Usenix archives on the subject of choice
Are some that come to mind. Others are there, but it's been a long day and I am a bit burnt.
What do others read for their history lessons?
On one of the Debug[1] podcasts (I can't remember which one now), Don Melton[2] claims the decision to not allow other web rendering engines or Javascript implementations is because they don't know how to allow those and keep iOS secure, and that is the reason behind a lot of limitations enforced in iOS.
Apple is certainly more closed than Microsoft ever was. The difference in perception is likely because Apple has never had a monopoly. There are more Android phones than iOS.
[1] http://www.imore.com/debug
[2] http://donmelton.com/about/
I'm pretty sure Melton credited Forstall with giving with the support and cover for safari/khtml - she's written extensively about it.
https://donmelton.com/2013/01/10/safari-is-released-to-the-world/
And for Apple Maps, I remember reading somewhere that one reason Forstall refused to sign the infamous apology letter was that the initial release was from a team not directly under his supervision, but I can't find the old reference to that...granted, whatever went down was probably a joint failure of everyone involved
Whether something like this ever becomes widespread depends on WebGL becoming popular, which in turn depends on WebGL becoming sufficiently secure.
In an interview on the Debug podcast, Don Melton describes hardening WebGL, which involves hardening the whole stack down to the hardware level, as a significant challenge.
http://donmelton.com/2013/03/25/im-on-the-debug-podcast-this-week/
I wouldn't hold my breath.
Priorities change unfortunately. Read this article if you have time. It highlights the importance and passion that was given to safari at a time. I am sure most engineers working on safari are still having great ideas for the product but management will not be on the same page as them.
https://donmelton.com/2014/04/10/memories-of-steve/