Tech Emails is a Substack that publishes internal emails and messages from tech companies, often from court cases and legal filings.
HN commenters enjoy the archive of internal emails, citing Bill Gates on Movie Maker and Apple's iMessage exchange, though one dislikes the Substack's tone.
The real reality distortion field is that folks believe that Apple (or Steve Jobs) is somehow benevolently pro-user, almost to an extent of sacrificing itself for the users benefit. This never was true, Apple is a company like every other company and it views their customers are simply revenue streams.
Apple's pro-user perception is an (amazing) marketing campaign.
Would a pro-user company use it's monopoly position to raise eBook prices 20-30% and simultaneously eliminate any competition in the eBook space, on the backs of their users? Apple did exactly this, directed explicitly by Steve Jobs and was forced to pay nearly half a billion dollars and be found guilty of violating antitrust law.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Apple_Inc.
https://www.techemails.com/p/ibooks-is-going-to-be-the-only-bookstore-on-ios
Apple's priority is Apple - and that is the only priority. This is a perfectly reasonable thing too, they are not running a charity. They often build pretty good products, but I think folks are doing themselves a disservice to believe that Apple maintains some kind of user focus moral high ground. They want the dollars in your pocket, and if they can get more of them by acting against you they will do it if they think it's unlikely they will be called out on it.
I used to always think like that and try to come up with these excuses.
Until I read the story about how Steve Jobs was mad about the fact that Mac was slow to start and asked teams to fix it. Surprise, they fixed it.
And it's not like nobody could say anything at Microsoft. Someone on HN posted this email (originally from a different website):
https://www.techemails.com/p/bill-gates-tries-to-install-movie-maker
However, my guess is that this email got nowhere, because the experience of using Windows isn't so different decades later.
What this means is that 1) Microsoft is first and foremost a business oriented company, and what matters to them most is feature set, compatibility, support etc. As long as things mostly work, it's fine. Usability is at the bottom of the list. 2) Windows is just not important to Microsoft any more.
I bet that Satya Nadella has grumbles about bugs and ads in Windows 11, and likely has run into this specific bug first hand. But when he decides that "ads revenue trumps everything" and "these are just small bugs that don't really matter", he immediately forgets about it all.
If you read Thiel’s internal emails with Mark Zuckerberg, it’s clear he thinks a lot about public perception and how to frame tech to the masses.
The antichrist stuff strikes me as a debate tactic. Public sentiment has been trending toward, “maybe tech is kinda bad” so to shift the frame, Thiel says something extreme he knows will get headlines like, “if you regulate tech you might be the antichrist.” He also sprinkles in “or maybe there’s a 1% chance tech kills everyone” to deflate tech criticism from the other angle.
My 2c is that most tech is actually good and 90% of public disdain comes from social media and phone addiction (Thiel apparently limits his kid to one hour of screen time per week) and that because social media’s downsides caught nearly everyone by surprise we’re overcorrecting with AI safety stuff.
https://www.techemails.com/p/mark-zuckerberg-peter-thiel-millennials
There is a real schism in the SV elite community between the "tech right" and Google. You could argue that OpenAI was founded by Sam Altman and Elon Musk to deny Google exclusive access to the GenAI.
"Been thinking a lot about whether it's possible to stop humanity from developing AI. I think the answer is almost definitely not. If it's going to happen anyway, it seems like it would be good for someone other than Google to do it first."
- Altman to Musk, immediately before proposing what became OpenAI ( https://www.techemails.com/p/elon-musk-and-openai )
"OpenAI is on a path of certain failure relative to Google. There obviously needs to be immediate and dramatic action or everyone except for Google will be consigned to irrelevance."
- Musk to Altman, later ( https://www.techemails.com/p/elon-musk-openai-path-of-certain-failure )
Apple internal emails from the period have been released as court evidence. They didn't make the decision to create a native SDK until 4 months after the iPhone was released (by this time there was already jailbreak sideloading available) https://nitter.net/techemails/status/1400270458608664577
In another email it seems like before the device was released the need for a native SDK was considered only as a stopgap until HSDPA was fast enough to make web apps good enough (the original iPhone was EDGE only) https://www.techemails.com/p/scott-forstall-emails-steve-jobs
Was gonna say, the email reads similarly to this famous thread about Java (with the old CTO of MS!): https://www.techemails.com/p/bill-gates-im-literally-losing-sleep-over-java
Really makes you think about the structure of mega corps and how powerful the “defender’s advantage” is. These giants knowingly sleep on disruption and wait to time their entry, and are generally rewarded. I dont know if its good or bad, it probably depends, but I think the capitalism game devs need some balance tweaks.