Heroine of Computing: Joanna Hoffman
Originally Posted: July 26th, 2020
Who is Joanna Hoffman?
Joanna Karine Hoffman Nazarian was born in Poland and grew up in the Soviet Union, immigrating to America in 1968 at the age of 15. She has a background in anthropology, physics, and linguistics, and earned a Bachelor of Science in Humanities and Science from MIT. She studied archaeology at the University of Chicago, where she started her pursuit of a PhD. After using her computer skills in the field of archaeology for a while, she grew tired of looking at the past.
Hoffman was on a leave of absence from the University of Chicago when she was encouraged to attend a lecture at Xerox PARC in California. She ended up volunteering at Xerox PARC, interacting with all the things they were working on: the first graphical user interface, the first computer mouse, on-screen controls, object-oriented programming, and other truly revolutionary computing concepts and ideas. The work done by Alan Kay and his team at Xerox PARC would go on to form the basis of what became the Macintosh, and was the genesis of the modern graphical interface. Joanna was right there, watching history, and helping to shape it.
Employee #327: One of the Wizards Behind the Macintosh
Some of the original Mac team. Joanna is the 2nd in from the left.
While at a lecture at Xerox PARC in 1980, Joanna asked a lot of pointed questions. She also had a heated discussion with Jef Raskin, Apple employee #31. Jef wrote the original BASIC programming manual in 1977, and went on to start the Macintosh research project in 1979. He was the one who named it Macintosh, because it was his favorite kind of apple.
Joanna and Jef's discussion at Xerox PARC focused on what computers should look like, and how they could improve people's lives. Raskin was so impressed with Hoffman that he asked her to interview for a position at Apple. She became employee #327, joining in October 1980. She was originally hired to do user interface research and testing. At the time, the Mac research team consisted of Burrell Smith (hardware), Bud Tribble (software), Brian Howard (documentation/hardware/jack-of-all-trades), Jeff Raskin, and Joanna Hoffman.
In November 1980, a month after Joanna joined, Apple went public. Steve Jobs took over the Mac project in December 1980, merging it with the ongoing (and troubled) Lisa project. Steve decided the Mac should be more like what Xerox was doing, which Joanna was very familiar with. Shortly after taking over the project, Steve told Joanna that she could still research and test user interfaces, but she was going to be responsible for marketing, which she had never done.
Steve didn't have a typical marketing job in mind for her. He assigned her the task of making the first business plan, and figuring out who the customer of the Macintosh would be. Joanna ran the Macintosh marketing team by herself for the first year and a half. She defined the early markets, including higher education, which carried the Mac in its early days.
Joanna was also key in making the Macintosh an international product from the start. She wanted to make the Mac a tool that felt natural for international users, by making it speak their language. At the time, American products rarely bothered to do localization for foreign markets. Joanna helped make the first keyboard layout for the Mac. She insisted the Mac should have keys that used universal symbols instead or just English letters or words. She also pushed Apple to create software that separated program code from country-specific data, making localization much easier.
She wrote the first draft of the Macintosh User Interface Guidelines in two Mozart-fueled overnight sessions. That document was finished mostly by Caroline Rose, becoming Apple's first developer documentation. Inside Macintosh was almost 1000 pages long across three volumes, created by Joanna, Caroline, and the help of Bob Anders, Brad Hacker, Steve Chernicoff, and a few others. Inside Macintosh helped to define what a computer should do, standardize what it should look like, and how it should behave.
Joanna would go on to lead Apple’s international marketing team, which brought the Mac to Europe and Asia. She later followed Steve Jobs to NeXT, as one of its original members. Joanna's groundbreaking and important work didn't end with her jump to NeXT. During the early 1990s, Hoffman was vice president of Marketing at General Magic. General Magic was never commercially successful, but it arguably developed a lot of the computing concepts that became the basis for the iPhone. I highly recommend the documentary General Magic, if you're interested.
A Heroine of Computing
Joanna with a copy of the preliminary Macintosh business plan.
Hoffman had a reputation at both Apple and NeXT as one of the few who could successfully argue with Jobs. In both 1981 and 1982, she won a satirical award at Apple given to the person who did the best job of standing up to Steve Jobs. Here she is at an early meeting of NeXT, showing her ability to challenge Steve:
"I don't care what you say. Reality distortion is reality distortion, and it has its motivational value and that’s fine... however, when it comes to that date affecting the design of the product, that’s when we get into a rut. Real deep shit, because if we are unrealistic about this date, we make design decisions that we then have to go over, re-iterate, throw out, start all over again.”
Look at the way she gets talked over at 11:25. That is something many people, and many women, know all too well. That whole video is fascinating, and it is a testament to the power of Joanna Hoffman, and the respect Steve Jobs had for her. She is intelligent, incisive, and was key to the success of some of the most influential computing products of all time. She is an under-appreciated part of the original Mac team, and computing at large.
There are many other tales of her bold, decisive nature being key to Apple's success. While the sales of the Mac weren't doing well in late 1984, Joanna came back to the marketing team and realized they were still using unrealistic projections. Everybody was informally assuming more realistic numbers, but no one wanted to cut the official forecast, because they were afraid to tell Steve Jobs. Joanna immediately slashed the forecasts, to the relief of the sales and manufacturing team. Source
The world can always use more people like Steve Jobs, someone able to have a vision, and lead a team of people to create something Insanely Great. The world can always use more people like Joanna Hoffman too, someone able to stand up to people in power, challenge them, and push back on bad ideas. We all owe a debt of gratitude to Joanna. She is a true heroine of computing.
If you want to know more about Joanna, here's an excellent interview with her from 2015.
