So there I was, working at Apple Computer Corporation, at what used to be the corporate headquarters (Mariani One for any Apple dorks out there, which is the building addressed in the Inside Mac books for support and other mailings). At the time, I was a total Apple lover, so this was like a dream-come-true.

This was good, because the actual job at hand was little better than what I had been originally charged with at SuperMac. My task was to test this new gadget (what ended up being the Power Macintosh Upgrade Card) for compatibility with a number of publicly-shipping applications. It was fun because it was all new and I got to play with all of this cool hardware, and it was during the time when Apple switched over to PowerPC, so it was all really impressive.

The project ended, eventually, and it even shipped, I think. We had "Ramped Down" when the "Head Count" was cut. New words to me, and all sort of strange, but no matter. My contract was continued onto the Blackbird project, which was the first Apple Powerbook to have that touchpad thing in it. I was testing the MacOS (er, System 7) finder. How tremendously boring!!! Portables are also very small and painful to sit at for extended periods, and I learned that those touchpads get really painful after about two hours of continuous use.

If it sounds like I disliked that position, well, I hated it. I was also getting a feel for Apple politics by this time, and I didn't really dig them all that much. It was April by this point, and I decided that once Blackbird was ready to ship, I was going to take a week off. So I did.

But wait, because those new words cropped up again, and I somehow found myself out of a job. Almost. I was sucked up into the API Test Group, which was a rag-tag bunch of nerds who were just a little bit smarter than your average tester, but not quite in the big leagues. Sort of. I don't want to harsh on testers here, so suffice to say that it was more of the same, but very different.

I worked in the API group until November 11, 1994, when I called it quits. I had had enough, and got tired of going out to lunch with my co-workers only when it was someone's last day (which was about once a week for some reason). When I told my manager that I was to be departing, he was shocked, particularly when I told him that nothing was following that job. Just time off.

I should point out that while I was contracting as a QA person at Apple, I went on at least four separate job interviews inside the company, since I had heard that the easiest way to get in to engineering was from the inside. Most popular reason for not getting hired: "Not enough experience." I guess in retrospect, I am glad I didn't stick around long enough to get a whole lot more Apple experience.