Saving Lives

In this web content from August 1983, Andy Hertzfeld recounts a conversation between Steve Jobs and Larry Kenyon about the speed of the Macintosh computer’s boot time. Despite the Macintosh being relatively faster than the Apple II, the floppy disk was a significant bottleneck in terms of loading data. Steve was particularly bothered by the time it took to boot the Macintosh, so he approached Larry to make it faster. Steve made a clever argument, pointing out that shaving off just 10 seconds from the boot time could save dozens of lives over a year, considering the number of Macintosh users. Motivated by this, the team managed to improve the boot time even further.

https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Saving_Lives.txt

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