As our team continues to build out the iMedExchange platform, I've been thinking a lot about a piece of technology folklore from the bad old days of the early 80's. Many of us are familiar with the recent exploits of Steve Jobs -- the often lauded and maligned "inspirational-genius-ego-maniac" behind Apple's success. But, in my opinion, the greatest Jobs stories come from the early days when Apple was truly blazing a new trail.

My personal favorite involves a 1983 interchange between Jobs and Larry Kenyon, one of the key architects of the first Macintosh computer (the successor to the Apple II). The Macintosh was 10 times faster than the Apple II when actually running programs but it took several minutes boot the computer. Jobs found this unacceptable. The following account of the conversation comes from http:// folklore.org, a web site dedicated to preserving the stories behind the creation of the first Macintosh
computer:

Steve came into [Larry's] cubicle and started to exhort him. "The Macintosh boots too slowly. You've got to make it faster!"

Larry started to explain about some of the places where he thought that he could improve things, but Steve wasn't interested. He continued, "You know, I've been thinking about it. How many people are going to be using the Macintosh? A million? No, more than that. In a few years, I bet five million people will be booting up their Macintoshes at least once a day."

"Well, let's say you can shave 10 seconds off of the boot time. Multiply that by five million users and that's 50 million seconds, every single day. Over a year, that's probably dozens of lifetimes. So if you make it boot ten seconds faster, you've saved a dozen lives. That's really worth it, don't you think?"

Steve's math was wildly off: 50M seconds is only about a year and half. But his heart was in the right place -- miss no opportunity to make the product better for the user. It may be too much to expect iMedExchange to actually save lives but I know we're making every effort to create a product that will save time for those who really do help improves lives and even saves lives every day -- you, the doctors. And who knows, maybe some day that few seconds or few minutes that iMedExchange saves you really will make an important difference in the outcome of a patient. If that ever happens, I hope that you'll share that with us.


The early Machintosh team, ca. 1984.