"As you know, Microsoft eventually kind of grabbed the gold ring out of Apple's hands, I guess"
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"Kind of grabbed the gold ring" is doing a lot of work here: it’s a soft-gloved way to describe a brutal transfer of power. Hertzfeld, a key Macintosh engineer, isn’t offering a courtroom brief about who copied whom; he’s capturing the lived feeling inside Apple as the company watched its own ideas become someone else’s empire. The “gold ring” metaphor frames success as a carnival prize or a storybook trophy - something almost fated for the hero - and then “grabbed” punctures that romance with a blunt, physical verb. Innovation, he implies, isn’t just brilliance. It’s leverage.
The hedges matter: “as you know,” “eventually,” “kind of,” “I guess.” That’s not uncertainty so much as cultural diplomacy. He’s speaking from within a famously mythologized origin story, where Apple is the visionary and Microsoft the opportunist. By cushioning the accusation, Hertzfeld avoids sounding bitter while still signaling allegiance to the Mac narrative: we had it first; they scaled it better.
The context is the GUI revolution: Apple’s early lead in user-friendly computing, Microsoft’s Windows push, and the messy overlap of inspiration, licensing, and imitation that defined 1980s tech. Hertzfeld’s line lands because it’s not technical history; it’s emotional history. The subtext is a warning to every inventor: the “ring” doesn’t go to the purest idea, but to the player who can turn it into the default.
The hedges matter: “as you know,” “eventually,” “kind of,” “I guess.” That’s not uncertainty so much as cultural diplomacy. He’s speaking from within a famously mythologized origin story, where Apple is the visionary and Microsoft the opportunist. By cushioning the accusation, Hertzfeld avoids sounding bitter while still signaling allegiance to the Mac narrative: we had it first; they scaled it better.
The context is the GUI revolution: Apple’s early lead in user-friendly computing, Microsoft’s Windows push, and the messy overlap of inspiration, licensing, and imitation that defined 1980s tech. Hertzfeld’s line lands because it’s not technical history; it’s emotional history. The subtext is a warning to every inventor: the “ring” doesn’t go to the purest idea, but to the player who can turn it into the default.
Quote Details
| Topic | Business |
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