alt Hacker News> For one, Apple was unwilling to have visible barcodes printed on the envelopes — but it wanted every step of the shipping and delivery of your card tracked. That wasn’t something the US Postal Service did. Apple and the printing company created an invisible barcode that was sprayed on the envelope, visible only under certain UV light, so that the envelope itself would remain unadulterated. And the USPS agreed to scan cards when sent, when processed at mail facilities, up to and including when they went out on a mail truck for delivery.
This is classic Steve Jobs. Sheer force of will.
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Sheer force of stupid, no one cares if a bar code is on the envelope.
Less "sheer force of will" and annoying arrogance and stubbornness.
Reminder that Jobs is not a good role model. A lot of his decisions were erratic and based on what might as well have been undiagnosed BPD.
The amount of work that went into getting regulators IN EVERY JURISDICTION IN THE WORLD to let Apple put the regulatory markings behind an info button in the OS (instead of printed on the device) just so that the back of the phone can be clean of all text and iconography except the Apple is absolutely mindblowing.
I appreciate it SO MUCH. I remember on the 7 or 8 when it happened how totally blown away I was.
Now there’s less visual/symbol spam in my daily view of an object I (and billions of others) use constantly. This stuff is way more important than people think.