Oral History of Andy Grignon

Interviewed by Hansen Hsu and Marc Weber on 2017-04-18 in Mountain View, CA X8181.2017 ©Computer History Museum
Andy Grignon had been a Macintosh and Newton fan in college when he landed an internship in Apple’s Advanced Technology Group to work on QuickTime Conferencing, a technology that grew into QuickTime Streaming. Grignon later joined the internet startup @Home, until it was acquired by Excite. From there, Grignon joined Pixo, a startup that was making a mobile operating system for pagers and cell phones, until it was contracted by Apple to produce the OS for the original iPod. Grignon decided to rejoin Apple, and worked on the first version of the iChat messaging application on Mac OS X, where he began to take part in user experience demos to Steve Jobs. Grignon then developed the Dashboard, a feature of Mac OS X in which little widgets could be written in JavaScript and would live in a separate desktop-like area. From there, Grignon moved to Tony Fadell’s iPod hardware division, where he became involved in developing the original iPhone. After completing work on the original iPhone, Grignon followed Jon Rubinstein to Palm and lead the team that created WebOS for the Palm Pre smartphone.
* Note: Transcripts represent what was said in the interview. However, to enhance meaning or add clarification, interviewees have the opportunity to modify this text afterward. This may result in discrepancies between the transcript and the video. Please refer to the transcript for further information - www.computerhis...
Visit computerhistory.org/collections/oralhistories/ for more information about the Computer History Museum's Oral History Collection.
Catalog Number: 102740146
Lot Number: X8181.2017

[@deviantech]

Wow, this is like the perfect successor to the legendary Rubinstein interview, filling in so many of the details that i would have loved to dive into. Andy finally answered many questions first hand and had so many insights, connections and assessments i was not aware of before or had only speculated about. I cannot express enough gratitude towards the CHM, Jon and Andy for taking the time, openness and honesty to preserve and share this. Whenever i thought "Oh god, please don't stop that subject there", they didn't stop. Thank you.

[@anthonyrossi1763]

What an amazing and informative interview

[@arefsharif]

I've been waiting for this interview

[@aviduser1961]

Great interview. iChat AV, Dashboard and Widgets were exciting developments at the time. I remember Steve Jobs demoing Widgets and how excited he was with the ripple animation. That excitment was shared with my friends and I.

[@AndreAmorim-AA]

Nice conversation, see you 🎲

[@AndreAmorim-AA]

How did you do with patent trolls?

[@AndreAmorim-AA]

What the CPU inside?

[@sydneygrignon]

why the fuck do people watch this

[@AndreAmorim-AA]

⚙️🌎🔧🏳️