What Was Going Through Your Head When You Were Just Watching Him Do That?

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"I don't know what's going on inside his head, but just having seen him do that, having at least enough experience with him and his approach to evaluating work," she says. "He he was envisioning himself that being in an apple store as a customer, walking up to a table, seeing this new eypad thing for the first time."

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.