In early 1982, Apple’s young engineer Chris Espinosa faced a challenge familiar to many: how to satisfy Steve Jobs’s relentless perfectionism. Jobs spent hours critiquing the initial calculator interface for the upcoming Macintosh, pushing Espinosa to find a creative workaround. His solution? He created the “Steve Jobs Roll Your Own Calculator Construction Set,” a modular design that allowed Jobs to experiment freely with menus and layout.

This amusing anecdote, shared by Andy Hertzfeld on Folklore.org, highlights how Jobs’s intuitive approach to user interface design often involved hands-on experimentation. Instead of lengthy meetings, a few minutes of direct interaction with menus enabled him to shape the product’s look and feel. Today, such design agility contrasts sharply with modern team-based development, where consensus often dominates.

Innovation Through Simplicity

Chris Espinosa, who joined Apple at just 14, was one of its youngest employees and a key contributor to early Macintosh development. By 1981, he and others learned that Steve Jobs valued quick, visual testing over abstract discussions. According to industry experts, Jobs’s emphasis on direct user experience testing accelerated the creation of intuitive interfaces that remain influential today.

David Nield

Dave is a freelance tech journalist with over 20 years covering gadgets, apps, and the web. From Stockport, England, he covers news, features, and reviews for TechRadar, focusing on phones, tablets, and wearables. He ensures top weekend breaking news and has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci, and others. He edited PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook for years. Read me on x.com or linkedin.