johnmaconline

I joined the cult in 1984.

I was excited to work on Gladys’s New Shoes because I’d been in the cult already for 20 years. I saw the super bowl commercial like millions of others, and then I got to touch one in person. I was hooked.

The look, smell, feel of the keys, and this new-fangled thing called a mouse. It was magical. 

In high school in 1984, the Mac was a cool and interesting curiosity kept at arm’s length because I didn’t have one. But Penn State changed all that.

At Penn State, we had rooms full of Macintosh SE’s stationed throughout the campus. Rooms full of IBM PCs also existed, but the Mac labs were for the cool kids. Who in their right mind would want to use some ugly greyish, multi-box, wires-everywhere, DOS-based PC over the slick point-and-click beauty of the Mac SE?

“Hey man, we got a paper due tomorrow. I’m heading to the Willard Lab to get in line. You comin?” 

I was on team Steve. I grumbled when he got fired, monkeyed around with NeXT, and cheered when he came back. 

As I jumped into the New Shoes project, my favorite Mac of all time was sitting in my kitchen (yes, the kitchen) — the iMac G4, looking like a desk lamp with a beautiful 15″ flat-panel display and ice-white hemispherical base. It was a beautiful addition to the kitchen decor. 

Then came the iPod. Like with the first Mac I touched, it instantly hooked me. When I held that smooth, shiny deck of cards and spun the click-wheel under my thumb, I knew this was my thing. I bought one as a “gift for my wife.” Wink, wink. 

And now I was lucky enough to be working on the next generation.

The engineering team is rolling.

Apple, famously, and to their credit, is hard on their partners and suppliers. But not in the “we’re gonna grind you up and toss you to the wind so we get ahead” way. 

I’ve had the misfortune of working with those customers. They abuse you on price, time, and effort to lever their competitors and undercut them by pennies. They chew you up, spit you out, and think nothing of it. As a supplier, you can’t succeed. You’re better off without their money. 

No, Apple is tough because they do care. They care deeply about what they’re making — the thing that has their name on it. They want it to be awesome. And to make it awesome, they hold themselves and their partners accountable. They demand excellence. You’re in the fire when you work with Apple, but it’s a cleansing fire. Not everybody can handle it. 

I can handle the fire. Our team can handle the fire. 

All told, we’re about 20 people inside a company of 5000. We’re like an internal startup. Not exactly outcasts, but definitely outsiders because we’re not working on the core product of our business unit, mobile phones. 

We’re a bunch of pirates. 

We’re small and energized. Innovative and agile. The executives aren’t lording over us. We’re an afterthought, which we thought was awesome. We’re working long, hard, and quite frankly, killing it. 

What’s today’s unsolvable problem? And then we solve it.

I’m exhausted, but exhausted in the way I am after finishing a triathlon. 

And we knew that at the end of this race, we’d be standing on the top step of the podium. Future Agere Systems executives will point to our team and our project and say, “That’s when we went nuclear. These 20 guys made this company.” 

We’re gonna be able to do anything we want. We had the ship, cannons, and the crazies with nothing to lose. We had the power. 

Ah, how naive I was. 

Apple builds consumer trinkets like it’s a matter of national security — all to feed the hype machine. Marketing brilliance. 

If you’re familiar with the Steve Jobs era, you know that their “one more thing” product announcements were always a self-congratulatory exercise in pretentious back-patting. 

“Scotty, engage the maximum hype generation drive!”

“I’m giving her all she’s got, Captain! She’s gonna blow!”

As such, they kept their new products’ specifications, development partners, and suppliers entirely on the down-low. As a partner (and for this project, the main partner), we had to sign NDA’s not just for normal proprietary information protection but also promising never to disclose we were working with them.

We had to create an internal code name for Apple and another for iPod as part of our contractual obligation. We were to always use these codenames, even within our office walls. 

Somebody suggested Gladys for Apple and New Shoes for the iPod. So we walked around talking about Gladys’s New Shoes. Presentations, whiteboard sessions, and documentation all referred to Gladys’s New Shoes. Imagine the blank stares and exaggerated blinks from our colleagues. 

I’ve worked under real security on very secure programs in the top-secret world. This was just funny. For what? Gladys’s New Shoes was a fitting name. 

And this level of pretend security, specifically not announcing to the street that we were involved, was part of our downfall. Because eventually, we’d be stupid enough to kick Gladys and her New Shoes right out the door.

My team single-handedly destroyed a $2B company, and then I got fired. 

This is less of a personal regret than a regret by association, and reliving it boils my blood, even today. 

It’s 2003, and I’m working at a semiconductor company called Agere Systems, which is a spinoff from the former Lucent Technologies and AT&T. We invent, design, and build the core technologies for cell phones, computers, network infrastructure, and many other electronic devices you’ve had in your pocket, in your car, or in your office.

I’ve just landed my dream gig — lead systems engineer on an exciting project. The project? It’s the big guy. The one that took the recently back-on-the-map Apple and catapulted it to the stratosphere.

“1000 songs in your pocket.”

And 2003 was the moment of dancing silhouettes with white headphones on primary background colors. Go to the gym on a Monday and see a few people with the tell-tale white headphones. Go again on Friday, and you see twice as many. Week after week. 

You don’t need special insight, marketing expertise, or anything other than a set of open eyes. Walk down the street. This shit is happening. 

This was the beginning of the Holy Growth phase for the iPod and Apple. The genesis of the changeover from cultural curiosity to planetary vernacular. The heel in the proverbial hockey stick curve. 

No matter. Even a giant in the industry with $2B in revenue can screw the pooch.

After two announced delays, we finally boarded. 

I’m fake smiling at people as I snake through the aisle full of lucky bastards up front. I hate them with all of my being. 

All the while straining my neck to catch a glimpse of seat 23D. For sure, I was giving the death stare to whoever had kicked me out. Daggers, baby. Get ready to have me think that I’ve made you uncomfortable with my death stare. 

But it was empty. And not just that seat. The entire section of rows 16 to 29 was completely absent of seated passengers. What’s going on here? I didn’t know whether to be annoyed or elated. What did this mean? I didn’t know what to feel. 

So I asked the flight attendant. She said, “Oh, this section is empty for weight distribution purposes.”

Huh? All of it? That’s bullshit!

Here’s the thing — my father was a professional pilot. I grew up in airplanes. I know this is true. My brain knows it’s a real thing. I’ve been in airplanes with him and personally witnessed him move people around for proper weight distribution. 

But I can’t get my emotions out of the way of my brain. It makes no sense. 

“Keep moving, sir. Your seat is just back there.”

When I got to 37D, I found exactly what I assumed I’d find given how this entire mess had gone so far — two people occupying seats 37D and F. My bookends. 

I thought to myself, “Oh, here we go. Fourteen more hours of this shit.” Wheels up. 

And then an angel appeared.

“Sir, now that we’re airborne, we can redistribute the weight. Would you be interested in changing seats?”

Uh, would I? All I know is that within ten seconds, I was back in that aisle, being led to a new and promised land. I don’t remember standing up. I probably left some of my crap in my old seat. I’m sure I stepped on the person next to me. 

“Sir, take your pick. You’re welcome to just about any seat in this section.”

So I chose. Really, there was only one choice. 

I sat my ass right down in seat 23D and contemplated the fourteen hours of relative bliss ahead. 

I was that guy. 

You know the one. The one you hate. The one you and your people shake their heads at. You see him at the restaurant, sometimes at the doctor’s office, and always at the DMV. And today, my fellow humans saw him at the airport in Doha. 

“What’s the deal with that guy?”

And then, suddenly, I had a moment of clarity and calm amid my temper tantrum. 

It didn’t come from bullshit, fake optimism like “making lemonade from lemons” or “smiling on the outside so my inside will believe it.” I couldn’t possibly have conjured any of that. 

But somehow, I stumbled on a moment of mindful awareness of my presence in that time and space and gratefulness for being. I’m in freakin Doha, Qatar. That’s kinda cool.

Yup, the old me also thinks that sounds nuts. Was I chemically altered?

An actual calm came over me as I paced in the corner behind the gate seating. I saw the light bulb. I took a seat.

I’d be lying if I said that now all was well, but at least I could sit and breathe.

But this was a brief respite. The pressure was about to build again.

Through the haze, I heard the agent mutter something about a seat reassignment. 

He quickly confiscated my boarding pass and handed me a new one. At first, the obscene markings on the new boarding pass didn’t even register, but then I focused my eyes and understood — seat 37E.

The fog lifted, and I became razor-focused on my surroundings.

WHAT??!!! 37E??!!!

I didn’t know exactly where 37E was, but I knew it was a) near the back of the plane and b) in the freakin middle seat of the middle aisle.

And the wheels fell off.

I don’t know who grabbed control. Obviously, it was some version of me, but I never want to meet that guy again. Do we all have this ugly infant inside of us?

I had a full-on out-of-body experience because one appalled part of my brain. I remember thinking, “Oh my God, stop!” I couldn’t, though. 

At one point, the agent asked me to please step aside so that the manager on duty could help me without holding up the process. 

I simply refused, like a child.

“I’m staying right here, blocking this line, until this is fixed!”

I was yelling and waving my arms. I wouldn’t be surprised if I stomped my foot at some point. At one point, I left the gate agent, stewed on it some more, and returned to pick up the fight. But in the end, I got no satisfaction. 

I was flying home in seat 37E.

We land in Doha at 4:30 am local time, but the airport looks like 9 pm on a Saturday night in Times Square. 

People and overly brilliant lights everywhere. No escape. 

I’m as introverted as they come. I enjoy less people so much more than more people. And when I’m agitated, I prefer even less people. At this point, I haven’t slept for over 24 hours. 

The InstantPot in me is now building pressure.

Luckily we have a savior in the form of my boss. He has a pass to the Qatar Airlines lounge and is happy to bring us. All we have to do is cut through the haze of brain fog and exhaustion, wade through the crowd, and find the lounge. 

We stumble upon the lounge. Yet another line, but upon entry, we sit down with some sparkling water and snacks to kill the next couple of hours.

Snacks and sparkling water. WTF is wrong with you? Quit your bitching. You live like a king.

An hour before boarding, in full zombie mode, I waded through the masses and found my way to the gate. 

After a quick and easy gate-entry security check, I hand my boarding pass to the gate agent for what I assumed was simply verification of my identity and acknowledgment that the passenger in seat 23D was at the gate.

That’s when the lid blew off the InstantPot. 

The journey started rough in Armenia.

Flights from Yerevan to Doha leave at 3 am local time. My colleagues and I worked all day, relaxed for a few hours in the evening, and then made our way to the airport. 

No sleep. 

We arrived in a brain fog at the airport to crowds, slow lines, and odd rules. At one point, an Armenian TSA officer confiscated my friend’s laptop. Not mine, though. What was the difference? After some difficult conversation, they hand it back, and we’re on our way to the gate. 

What just happened there? We still don’t know. 

Window seat on a 737. Tight, but maybe I’ll be able to lean against it and doze a bit for the three-hour flight. 

A young couple takes their seats next to me, and the friendly man sits in the middle, likely to shield his partner from the grumpy old man in the window seat. We exchange some pleasant conversation while the remaining passengers board.

I’m already glassy-eyed. I don’t blame the guy for shielding his partner.

Wheels up, and somehow, inexplicably, my formerly talkative neighbor falls sound asleep. Snoring. How does one fall sound asleep in coach? In the middle seat? 

It helps if you take over half of your neighbor’s seat.

So the next three hours were an exercise in physical and mental tension. I’m straining to keep myself out of his way, yet I’m smashed against the fuselage.

It’s uncomfortably warm, I’m exhausted, I have no place for my feet, I’m trying not to touch the guy next to me, my back hurts, and I’m hungry.

I’m starting to feel like an InstantPot full of rice, and someone just locked my lid and pushed the “go” button.

Even at 50, I couldn’t stop stamping my feet, waving my arms, and generally making an ass out of myself.

I squirm just thinking about it.

The occasion was a flight home from Armenia. My itinerary called for three hours from Armenia to Qatar, a 3-hour layover in Doha, and then 14 straight hours to Philly.

All in coach.

Although I’d never done this particular trip, I have flown many similar trips that were 13-16 hours on one leg of the journey. I’ve been to China nine times.

Always in coach.

If you’ve ever spent 14 hours in coach, you know that your personal seating arrangement on that long flight can make all of the difference between tolerable and miserable.

You have your preference — window, aisle, or middle. The correct one for you makes all the difference. And an empty seat next to you? That’s the emotional equivalent of hitting the $300M lottery.

I’m twitchy, and I prefer the perceived freedom of the aisle. Just the fact that I can get up whenever or flop my leg into the aisle, if even for just a few seconds, satisfies my twitchy mind like a calming balm.

When booking this particular trip, I chose the best under-the-circumstances seat for the leg from Doha to Philly — seat 23D on the inside aisle.

As perfect as can be expected for 14 hours in coach.