Everything we ever built at Apple always came with an element of surprise, it’s the surprise unveiling moment that always made product launches feel like making history together.
This year at the One More Thing Conference for WWDC25, I had a chance to sit down with James Dempsey whose history keeping music alive in the developers community made him the ideal person to give a retrospective and moment of silence for Bill Atkinson. Bill made skeuomorphic inventions like the lasso tool, MacPaint, MacDraw and HyperCard a part of the DNA of Apple’s patented processes.
I sometimes still wish I could be writing using the Chicago Font that he designed.
In this rare look and intimate moment with the Apple developers community, I had a chance to reflect and field questions about some of my biggest takeaways from Apple’s great turnaround story. We premiered ‘King of Cupertino’ by ALANA and Another Sun and I did my best to draw everyone in to a day in the life working under Steve’s leadership to the best of my memory (20 years later).
Thank you to ALANA, Henry Binns, David Etherington, James Dempsey, J’aime and to all of the One More Thing volunteers who made this special presentation possible. It was such an honor to get to be the one who presented it.
Nothing Apple launches is ever done in a conventional way and we didn’t think this song release should be either.
🕊️ Much Love and Peace
