> I was reminded of what Steve Jobs, relating a lesson from his father on cabinet-making…

I confess, I found that quote from Walter Isaac's biography on Jobs to be kind of gross. It felt to me like a bullshit line that Jobs asked him to put in. By all accounts, Jobs was completely dismissive of his adoptive parents — this felt like an attempt to rewrite history by Jobs.

Andy Hertzfeld, on the original Macintosh team at folklore.org (https://www.folklore.org/PC_Board_Esthetics.html):

> George Crow, our recently hired analog engineer, interrupted Steve. “Who cares what the PC board looks like? The only thing that’s important is how well that it works. Nobody is going to see the PC board.”

> Steve Jobs responded strongly. “I’m gonna see it! I want it to be as beautiful as possible, even if it’s inside the box. A great carpenter isn’t going to use lousy wood for the back of a cabinet, even though nobody’s going to see it.”

People tell stories all the time that may have some non-truths in them (we can never truly know, can we?) Where it’s appropriate to call bullshit is when someone claims something that isn’t realistic, just doesn’t fit, or simply can’t be true. In this case, Steve really did obsess over the “back of the cabinet” stuff at his time at Apple:

> “The back of this thing looks better than the front of the other guys by the way.”

That’s a direct quote from where he introduced the iMac. A product that had translucent plastic so you could see the insides of the machine.