The Scariest Room in Silica Valley

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Seglay tostort: The demo room for steve, the soft or demo room was this really shabby little room. That's not what you would expect for ist yo adise. You make yo performanceis this pristine room atit et ther lanngasi,. Like an air yo air filtere, the air is clean. Or yo do or g like the scent of redwoods or something like that. Steve could be intimidating. There is absolutely no doubt about it.

In this wide-ranging conversation from April 2019, a16z’s Frank Chen sits down with Ken Kocienda, a longtime software engineer and designer at Apple from 2001 to 2017, who wrote a book about his career there, called Creative Selection.

They discuss Ken’s unconventional path from freelance photographer to software engineer at Apple, his work on many core products from Safari web browser to iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch and features like Autocorrect, what it was like to demo new products for Steve Jobs, and more.