Steve Jobs' 10-Minute Menu Experiment Shapes Mac Calculator's Birth

Apple employee Chris Espinosa has revealed that the original design of the Macintosh calculator was influenced by a unique approach that involved giving the late Steve Jobs a hands-on experience with the menu system. In February 1982, Espinosa, who was 21 years old at the time, created a tool called the Steve Jobs Roll Your Own Calculator Construction Set, which allowed Jobs to design the calculator himself. This approach, which involved letting Jobs play with the menu system for ten minutes, ultimately led to the calculator's design. According to Espinosa, who still works at Apple as its longest-serving employee, the idea was to give Jobs a sense of control and ownership over the design process. "I built what I called the Steve Jobs Roll Your Own Calculator Construction Set, and let him design it himself," Espinosa said in an interview. "He spent about ten minutes playing with the menu system, and that's how we got the calculator's design." The story, which was first shared on the tech history site Folklore.org, highlights the collaborative and iterative approach that was characteristic of the Macintosh development process. Andy Hertzfeld, a member of the Macintosh team, noted that the approach was unusual for the time. "It was a very unusual approach, but it worked," Hertzfeld said. The Macintosh calculator was released in January 1984, and it was one of the first graphical user interface (GUI) calculators on the market. The calculator's design was a key part of the Macintosh's user-friendly interface, which was designed to make it easy for users to navigate and interact with the computer. In the years since the Macintosh was released, the GUI calculator has become a standard feature of many computer systems. However, the approach used to design the Macintosh calculator remains a unique example of how a collaborative and iterative design process can lead to innovative and user-friendly products. Today, Apple continues to innovate and push the boundaries of user interface design. The company's latest operating systems, such as macOS and iOS, feature sleek and intuitive interfaces that are designed to make it easy for users to navigate and interact with their devices. While the Macintosh calculator may be a relic of the past, its influence can still be seen in the user-friendly interfaces that Apple designs today.