Hertzfeld Quotes & Sayings

Andy Hertzfeld, an original member of the Apple team and now an engineer at Google, once said that what Jobs taught him was to "follow your heart" and only great work comes out of doing what you adore. — Carmine Gallo

It's [programming] the only job I can think of where I get to be both an engineer and an artist. There's an incredible, rigorous, technical element to it, which I like because you have to do very precise thinking. On the other hand, it has a wildly creative side where the boundaries of imagination are the only real limitation. — Andy Hertzfeld

I developed some unique software to public it on the web that I call the Folklore Project. — Andy Hertzfeld

Being idealistic really helps you overcome some of the many obstacles put in your path. — Andy Hertzfeld

I did some products for the Apple II, most notably the first small low cost thermal printer, the Silent Type. — Andy Hertzfeld

Working long hours being single helps because your time is yours. Once you have a family your time isn't all yours anymore. Most of the Mac team, we were in our mid-20's, most of us were single, and we were able to essentially devote our lives to it. — Andy Hertzfeld

Hertzfeld recalled that Gates just sat there coolly, looking at Steve in the eye, before hurling back, in his squeaky voice, what became a classic zinger. Well, Steve, I think there's more than one way of looking at it, I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it. — Walter Isaacson

I got bitten by the free software bug in February of 1998 around the time of the Mozilla announcement. — Andy Hertzfeld

Apple was our benefactor at starting General Magic, but about a year later decided they would rather BE General Magic and tried to make us blink out of existence ... which we eventually did, but it took a few years. — Andy Hertzfeld

A lot of people thought Steve Jobs was a CEO of Apple but he never was until he came back to Apple in 1997. — Andy Hertzfeld

In fact when I first got my Apple II the first thing I did was turn it on and off, on and off, just because I had the power to do so, which I'd never had on a computer before. — Andy Hertzfeld

You show me a great program and I'll show you a passionate individual somewhere behind it. — Andy Hertzfeld

The Apple II was not designed like an ordinary product. It used crazy tricks everywhere. — Andy Hertzfeld

People who work on the user interface side need to have empathy as a key characteristic. But if you are writing device drivers you don't really need to understand humans so well. — Andy Hertzfeld

I was a grad student at UC Berkeley when I bought my Apple II and it suddenly because a lot more interesting than school. — Andy Hertzfeld

But I think Steve's main contribution besides just the pure leadership is his passion for excellence. He's a perfectionist. Good enough isn't good enough. And also his creative spirit. You know he really, really wants to do something great. — Andy Hertzfeld

I left General Magic in 1996 to become an Internet hobbyist - got a T-1 line to my house. At one point I had all four food banks of the Bay Area hosted from this house here. — Andy Hertzfeld

I left Apple in April of 1984, pretty soon after the introduction of the Mac. — Andy Hertzfeld

Part of Steve's job was to drum into us how important what we were doing actually would be to the world. — Andy Hertzfeld

It's the only job I can think of where I get to be both an engineer and an artist. There's an incredible, rigorous, technical element to it, which I like because you have to do very precise thinking. On the other hand, it has a wildly creative side where the boundaries of imagination are the only real limitation." - Andy Hertzfeld — Cory Althoff

The Macintosh having shipped, his next agenda was to turn the rest of Apple into the Mac group. He had perceived the rest of Apple wasn't as creative or motivated as the Mac team, and what you need to take over the company are managers, not innovators or technical people. — Andy Hertzfeld

I started working at Apple about 18 months after I bought my Apple II. — Andy Hertzfeld

Hertzfeld explained that he needed to get his Apple II DOS program in good enough shape to hand it over to someone. "You're just wasting your time with that!" Jobs replied. "Who cares about the Apple II? The Apple II will be dead in a few years. The Macintosh is the future of Apple, and you're going to start on it now!" With that, Jobs yanked out the power cord to Hertzfeld's Apple II, causing the code he was working on to vanish. — Walter Isaacson

Sayings from Chairman Jobs." 1. Real artists ship. 2. It's better to be a pirate than join the navy. 3. Mac in a book by 1986. — Andy Hertzfeld

As you know, Microsoft eventually kind of grabbed the gold ring out of Apple's hands, I guess. — Andy Hertzfeld

We were developing an innovative Personal Information Manager called Chandler but a couple years ago I took off from that to do a project writing down my memoirs essentially, reminiscing about the development of the Macintosh. — Andy Hertzfeld

I'm the kind of developer who likes to throw lightning rods around. To make a great program there's got to be at least one person at the center who is breathing life into it. In a ferocious way. — Andy Hertzfeld

Scotty heard that I was thinking about quitting Apple because of his actions, so he called me into his office and asked what it would take for me to stay? I said, maybe if I could work on the Mac project, which Steve had just taken over from Jef Raskin. — Andy Hertzfeld

But typically for a project like the Mac, the size we had was pretty good. And it has different stages. The team grows as you have to write manuals and do testing ... though the Mac had no formal testing. — Andy Hertzfeld

I knew the Apple II was great when I bought it, but as I dug into the details it just completely blew me away the creative artistic approach that the designers had taken. — Andy Hertzfeld

Steve has a reality distortion field." When Hertzfeld looked puzzled, Tribble elaborated. "In his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything. It wears off when he's not around, but it makes it hard to have realistic schedules. — Walter Isaacson