Hillman

"The news was equal parts gratifying and terrifying. It validated all of Hillman’s efforts over the prior eighteen months, but it would also be a source of sleepless nights and anxiety for his team. It’s not that Riccio’s announcement implied that Hillman had to come up with wholly new designs, one more each for the “good” and “better” models; but his team would have to go to every supplier they’d been working with, in multiple countries, and get them to produce way more of whatever they’d been planning. Then they’d have to spec these units into three models with varying computer processors, memory, and other features."

"Rubinstein says it was about to be approved for production. But when Hillman presented the process matter-of-factly, describing how the vertebrae would first attach to the base, and then be moved to the next line for the internal computer components to be stuffed inside, the challenges of the complicated design became clear. The process was in opposition to standard procedures, because usually you’d want to build each component and then, as a last step, bring them all together in the enclosure. But Hillman, responding to the demands of ID, was instead beginning with the enclosure, introducing the possibility of scratches and dings that could result in expensive manual rework. Jobs was listening and watching intently. He leaned over the table, pointed at parts, and picked a few up as he digested the process. Then he stood up abruptly and was right in Hillman’s face. “Are you telling me *that’s* the assembly method?” Jobs asked. As Hillman started to answer, Jobs interjected: “That’s so fucking stupid!”"

"In Hillman’s view, Apple hadn’t entered China with a clear strategy to build industrial clusters; it was just something that evolved with time as the company solved one problem after another. “That whole process started early on and kept growing and growing,” he says. “So it wasn’t some genius move; it was just a gradual accretion of capability, and Apple taking advantage of it, and then you combine that with our contracting getting ever more sophisticated, and the amount of control authority that Apple had. We could basically call the rules.”"