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The Mac calculator’s original design came from letting Steve Jobs play with menus for ten minutes

In 1982, a young Mac developer turned Jobs into a UI designer—and accidentally invented a new technique.

In February 1982, Apple employee #8 Chris Espinosa faced a problem that would feel familiar to anyone who has ever had a micromanaging boss: Steve Jobs wouldn’t stop critiquing his calculator design for the Mac. After days of revision cycles, the 21-year-old programmer found an elegant solution: He built what he called the “Steve Jobs Roll Your Own Calculator Construction Set” and let Jobs design it himself.

This delightful true story comes from Andy Hertzfeld’s Folklore.org, a legendary tech history site that chronicles the development of the original Macintosh, which was released in January 1984. I ran across the story again recently and thought it was worth sharing as a fun anecdote in an age where influential software designs often come by committee.

Design by menu

Chris Espinosa started working for Apple at age 14, making him one of the company’s earliest and youngest employees. By 1981, while studying at UC Berkeley, Jobs convinced Espinosa to drop out and work on the Mac team full time.

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Original Mac calculator design came from letting Steve Jobs play with menus for 10 minutes

In 1982, a young Mac developer turned Jobs into a UI designer—and accidentally invented a new technique.

Design by menu

Chris Espinosa started working for Apple at age 14 in 1976 as the company’s youngest employee. By 1981, while studying at UC Berkeley, Jobs convinced Espinosa to drop out and work on the Mac team full time.

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Lilbits: A new modular PC input device, Google brings even more AI to Pixel phones, Apple’s $230 knit iPhone holder

Over the past few years I’ve seen a couple of different widescreen touchscreen displays that are designed to be used as both a second screen and an input device for a computer. But the UltraBar X stands out for its unusual, modular design. At its…

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Apple TV execs dismiss introducing an ad tier, buying Warner Bros. Discovery

Apple execs say Apple TV shows and movies are about “emotional” experiences.

The heads of Apple TV have “no plans” to bring ads to the streaming service, balking, at least for now, at a strategy that has driven success for Apple’s streaming rivals.

In its November 2025 issue, British movie magazine Screen International asked Eddy Cue, SVP of Apple Services, if there are plans to launch an ad-based subscription tier for Apple TV. Cue responded:

Nothing at this time. … I don’t want to say no forever, but there are no plans. If we can stay aggressive with our pricing, it’s better for consumers not to get interrupted with ads.

The comments follow reports over the years suggesting that Apple has been seeking knowledge on how to build a streaming ads business. Most recently, The Telegraph reported that Apple TV executives met with the United Kingdom’s ratings body, Barb, to discuss what tracking ads on Apple TV would look like. In 2023, Apple hired advertising exec Lauren Fry as head of video and Apple News ad sales.

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Apple’s next MacBook could be a budget model to compete with mid-range Windows laptops (and high-end Chromebooks)

Apple’s laptop strategy has pretty much always been the same: offer premium products for customers willing to pay high prices for high-quality hardware designed to run the Mac software. While the company has occasionally toyed with offering “budget” models, that usually means selling previous-gen hardware at discounted prices. But according to a report from Bloomberg’s […]

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Apple releases iOS 26.1, macOS 26.1, other updates with Liquid Glass controls and more

New updates include a small but noteworthy batch of fixes and features.

After several weeks of testing, Apple has released the final versions of the 26.1 update to its various operating systems. Those include iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, visionOS, and the HomePod operating system, all of which switched to a new unified year-based version numbering system this fall.

This isn’t the first update that these operating systems have gotten since they were released in September, but it is the first to add significant changes and tweaks to existing features, addressing the early complaints and bugs that inevitably come with any major operating system update.

One of the biggest changes across most of the platforms is a new translucency control for Liquid Glass that tones it down without totally disabling the effect. Users can stay with the default Clear look to see the clearer, glassier look that allows more of the contents underneath Liquid Glass to show through, or the new Tinted look to get a more opaque background that shows only vague shapes and colors to improve readability.

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Nvidia hits record $5 trillion mark as CEO dismisses AI bubble concerns

“I don’t believe we’re in an AI bubble,” says Huang after announcing $500B in orders.

On Wednesday, Nvidia became the first company in history to reach a $5 trillion market capitalization, fresh on the heels of a GTC conference keynote in Washington, DC, where CEO Jensen Huang announced $500 billion in AI chip orders and plans to build seven supercomputers for the US government. The milestone comes a mere three months after Nvidia crossed the $4 trillion mark in July, vaulting the company past tech giants like Apple and Microsoft in market valuation but also driving continued fears of an AI investment bubble.

Nvidia’s shares have climbed nearly 12-fold since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, as the AI boom propelled the S&P 500 to record highs. Shares of Nvidia stock rose 4.6 percent on Wednesday following the Tuesday announcement at the company’s GTC conference. During a Bloomberg Television interview at the event, Huang dismissed concerns about overheated valuations, saying, “I don’t believe we’re in an AI bubble. All of these different AI models we’re using—we’re using plenty of services and paying happily to do it.”

Nvidia expects to ship 20 million units of its latest chips, compared to just 4 million units of the previous Hopper generation over its entire lifetime, Huang said at the conference. The $500 billion figure represents cumulative orders for the company’s Blackwell and Rubin processors through the end of 2026, though Huang noted that his projections did not include potential sales to China.

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Lilbits: Kensington’s new TrackBall, AMD’s new names for old chips, and a power bank that’s also a game console,

In my ongoing quest for ergonomic computer input devices, the Kensington Expert Mouse Wireless Trackball has been one of my favorite purchases of the past few years. While I still prefer a mouse for precision work like audio and video editing, the larg…

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With new acquisition, OpenAI signals plans to integrate deeper into the OS

The acquired firm was working on a tool to control macOS directly with AI.

OpenAI has acquired Software Applications Incorporated (SAI), perhaps best known for the core team that produced what became Shortcuts on Apple platforms. More recently, the team has been working on Sky, a context-aware AI interface layer on top of macOS. The financial terms of the acquisition have not been publicly disclosed.

“AI progress isn’t only about advancing intelligence—it’s about unlocking it through interfaces that understand context, adapt to your intent, and work seamlessly,” an OpenAI rep wrote in the company’s blog post about the acquisition. The post goes on to specify that OpenAI plans to “bring Sky’s deep macOS integration and product craft into ChatGPT, and all members of the team will join OpenAI.”

That includes SAI co-founders Ari Weinstein (CEO), Conrad Kramer (CTO), and Kim Beverett (Product Lead)—all of whom worked together for several years at Apple after Apple acquired Weinstein and Kramer’s previous company, which produced an automation tool called Workflows, to integrate Shortcuts across Apple’s software platforms.

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Reports suggest Apple is already pulling back on the iPhone Air

New phone design compromises on camera and battery to achieve a lighter weight.

Apple’s iPhone Air was the company’s most interesting new iPhone this year, at least insofar as it was the one most different from previous iPhones. We came away impressed by its size and weight in our review. But early reports suggest that its novelty might not be translating into sales success.

A note from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, whose supply chain sources are often accurate about Apple’s future plans, said yesterday that demand for the iPhone Air “has fallen short of expectations” and that “both shipments and production capacity” were being scaled back to account for the lower-than-expected demand.

Kuo’s note is backed up by reports from other analysts at Mizuho Securities (via MacRumors) and Nikkei Asia. Both of these reports say that demand for the iPhone 17 and 17 Pro models remains strong, indicating that this is just a problem for the iPhone Air and not a wider slowdown caused by tariffs or other external factors.

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