Doom Creator John Carmack Shares His Interactions With Steve Jobs

[lionsy]

John Carmack is such a delight to listen to in interviews, there are so many people like that from that particular time period of game development, Carmack, Ed Boon, Peter Molyneux, Lord British himself, Richard Garriot and so many others.

Every time I've ever seen a talk or interview by one of them, they seem articulate and knowledgeable about whatever they're talking about, I can only assume Carmack must have found arguing with Steve Jobs absolutely infuriating.

It's also saddening to hear *again* about Jobs' personal dislike for gaming on the mac platform, when you consider around the time of this conversation some retailers were pushing mac gaming pretty hard, around this time and until probably the early 2000s I remember a british retailer John Lewis/Heelas used to have a massive selection of Mac games, there were big mac sections in Electronic Boutique, etc, it was a great time to have a mac.

 

[Horselover Fat]

In the history of manufacturers and platforms I don't see anyone who is so explicitly AGAINST gaming. This has consequences to this day: no tower, no upgradeability, no PCI slots, no proper nvidia support. I really wonder what Jobs was thinking sometimes or probably he was just being unreasonable as Carmack suggests.

 

[0248294]

Connectix and killed off all Mac projects.

It was Sony who killed off VGS though. When they failed to sue Connectix for copyright infringement, they bought VGS and promptly discontinued it.

 

[Whathappened]

John Cormack can come off as a complete d*ck, but he knows his stuff.

Yeah, that always was his advantage compared to Jobs who did not even have the vision to see the importance of video games.
Jobs was lucky that he had so many good people around.
I have no clue why people here are Jobs as a kind of messiah while he hurt so many people and was so wrong about the future.
Guess some people simply need other people to look up to.

 

[antonis]

To be fair, though, it's not like Apple invested much in Mac gaming after Jobs passed away. So...

 

[star-affinity]

To be fair, though, it's not like Apple invested much in Mac gaming after Jobs passed away. So...

I guess not, but they seem pretty serious about it on iOS.

 

[honglong1976]

Maybe this is why Jobs was disinterested in games:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Pippin

 

[whooleytoo]

It was VERY obvious Jobs cared very, very little for games. Even when they featured in keynotes, devs had a few minutes to plug their stuff, then shuffle off and it's back to the meat of the keynote.

On the other hand, I lost hours of my life watching through never-ending iMovie / iDVD demos waiting for them to get to the good stuff..

 

[coder0000]

I was amongst the 3-4 people who saw the entire thing unfold in front of us. After the keynote, everyone had filed out of the auditorium except for handful of people at the front. I was chatting with Carmack about some texture streaming stuff on his new game engine when Jobs came up. This is all from memory, so paraphrased:

SJ: "Hey John, thanks for being a part of the Keynote..."
JC: "I think your iPhone strategy is a mistake. Your phone is going to fail unless you open up the platform so people can write proper apps for it."

SJ: "We're not going to do that. We have to worry about security and we can't have a rogue app bring down a cell tower"
JC: "Well that's your own fault. If you guys knew how to write a proper OS to protect your baseband you wouldn't have to worry about such security issues!"
SJ: "Well John, if you're so damn smart why don't you come work for me and show us how it's done?"

This is the point where I started staring down at my shoes and inching away from Carmack because I thought Jobs was going to deck him after he said that! It went back and forth like this for a good 5-6 minutes with zingers like:

JC: "Yeah but I want to launch and control my rockets from my phone"
SJ: "Well clearly the iPhone isn't meant for people like you"

It was absolutely incredible to be standing literally a 2 feet away from these two industry giants verbally slugging it out. I have a huge amount of respect for Carmack's technical acumen, and I think the part that surprised me most was how well Jobs was able to articulate his position and come back with pretty good responses to each criticism that Carmack brought up. There was so much else said, but I don't remember it all.

In the end, SJ's assistant finally ended the thing by reminding him that he had to be somewhere. I remember saying to John after that, "Well, I guess that's the last time you're going to be invited to an Apple keynote" and he laughed "Yeah I guess so"

When the native app strategy was officially announced a few months later (Fall 2007?), I wondered how much this particular conversation contributed to SJ's about-face on this issue. He was notorious for vigorously disagreeing with people, then going off and realizing he was wrong after thinking about it, only to come back and position it like it was his idea in the first place There's no question in my mind that a native app strategy would have eventually unfolded, perhaps even on Android first if SJ had dug his heels in, but it's also clear that the iPhone would not have been the huge success that it has, had it not been for native apps launching the following summer.

 

[ChrisCW11]

John Carmack is about as relevant to gaming as the iPod is to music these days. Stick him in the technology hall of fame.

 

[shadowmatt]

This is my biggest disappointment with Apple, and my most negative viewpoint about Steve.

Just because, HE, INDIVIDUALLY did not want/like gaming, he utterly destroyed Apple in the gaming market for literally decades and still to this very day it's nowhere.

Apple could have RULED gaming, and right now even have a world beating console out as part of it's product line, but no. Steve single-handedly destroyed this from being a reality.

And I think it's to late to recover. Tim and Ive are so far each other's butt holes re the whole health and fitness sales pitch, and saving the planet, blah blah, blah, I cannot see until they go (hurry up) and fresh bllod may come in to start to develop something for the "Entertainment Market"

That would mean putting decent cooling and GPUs in their machines. That will never happen, you will always get middle of the line hardware.
[doublepost=1526384868][/doublepost]

John Carmack is about as relevant to gaming as the iPod is to music these days. Stick him in the technology hall of fame.

Isn't there a massive lawsuit going on about his work in VR?

Didn't he help solve a lot of the issues around VR and helped turn it into a consumer product?

Isn't his engine, based on concepts he invented, still going strong and being used in hit games?
[doublepost=1526384903][/doublepost]Carmack was just as arrogant. When the SEGA Saturn came out the developers used both its processors to develop a version of Doom which was far more advanced than any other system, and probably one of the few games to use the Saturn to its full potential.

Carmack had the developer rewrite it as software rendering as he didn't want a port looking better than his version of Doom, so the Saturn got a really slow port that was terrible to play.

 

[xnu]

When Steve Jobs came back to Apple, he'd always show off game demos like Quake and Unreal Tournament. He even demoed a PS1 emulator once.

Then out of nowhere he quit caring about games. At times I was hoping the Intel switch would bring games to the Mac via Cider but that never happened.

Was it after the Halo Demo?

 

[DNichter]

Steve was a jerk, I think everyone recognizes that. He also felt his vegan diet allowed him to not shower or wear deodorant. He stunk. Good businessman though.

 

[Rocketman]

His style was abrasive precisely to get you motivated to tell him your view, even on topics that were in the NDA world. He intentionally frustrated you to see what your response would be.

I often do the same thing, and when I do, people don't like me very much. They just like what pops out the other end.

Too bad, so sad.

John Carmack is a rocket geek BTW.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Metal allows you to access the GPU without an API. OpenGL still exists and is still used by the OS and any games you care to mention.

Metal actually is an API, just a lower level one than OpenGL. I think the word I wanted to convey was "engine". By choosing to use home-grown Metal instead of supporting what will be the OpenGL replacement STANDARD (Vulkan), Apple has created a situation where it's asking game developers to have to write/rewrite a hefty portion of their code for a system that probably has far less than 1% of the market. We had poor enough support when we were using the same standard as Linux and that Microsoft Windows ALSO had available. You COULD write ONE game using OpenGL for all three platforms. This is something Valve did and it's the reason Half Life 2 (and Steam in general) has support for the Mac. You can convert DirectX to OpenGL via something like "Cider" but you lose efficiency once again and the Mac's GPU and drivers are inefficient enough as it is. This makes the Mac games SLOW compared to their PC counterparts.

Vulkan will be available for the PC and Linux. It's an uphill battle to displace DirectX, for sure, but at least it's technically possible to do so. With Apple being as secretive an closed-door as they are in macOS development, it's unlikely that Vulkan will be available for the Mac. So then what? Valve should make a special version of a game JUST for the Mac? If the Mac had a huge gaming market, this would make sense despite the extra effort involved. But it makes far less sense when the Mac is regarded as "not for gaming" as it is. By using Metal, Apple has ejected the Mac to the realm of ALMOST NO SUPPORT (i.e. Pre-Steam era) just as Steam and Valve were actually finally getting a lot of games to appear on the Mac. One had to notice how many fewer games appeared from ASPYR after Metal as adopted and OpenGL put on permanent hiatus.

As for OpenGL, it was never updated to the last/final version. That means a number of games that could have appeared for the Mac either ran slower (had to make up the calls in software rendering) or never appeared at all.

The point is that Apple chose to move away from a STANDARD off to its own closed system, just like with Lightning and going back, things like AppleTalk. Hey, why use an industry standard for interoperability and more choices available for hardware or software when you can pen your own and charge to use it and make a fortune instead??? That's the business way. The money making way. The way to FRAK consumers over! Thanks Apple for going BACKWARDS in time once again! We all LOVE using loads of expensive dongles and hubs to replace the once dedicated ports that used to exist on your computers too....

 

[AmazingRobie]

Great read. Enjoyed. As much as a cocky, cult of personality type person Jobs was, he's always been the reason mac keynotes and Apple in general appealed to me. Miss the man's showmanship and style greatly on a daily basis. Thanks for the article.

 

[tipoo]

Reminds me of this gem, when he walked on the stage after Jobs and said something like "Now that the Mac finally has passable graphics"

 

[LordVic]

he could talk, with complete confidence, about things he was just plain wrong about

Who knew that Steve had so much in common with a lot of people around here.

Where do you think a lot of people learned it from? The reality distortion field was absolutely impressive while Jobs was alive. Many MANY people grew up to idolize him, even with his negative character traits that would get him in trouble.
[doublepost=1526397035][/doublepost]

John Carmack is about as relevant to gaming as the iPod is to music these days. Stick him in the technology hall of fame.

He's Chief Technical Officer for Occulus... not sure how irrelevant you think he is. But yes, he should also be in the tech hall of fame.

 

[curtvaughan]

He was an important man. Even I felt sad.
[doublepost=1526360417][/doublepost]Funnily , iOS is now one of the biggest games platform in the world.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates had a rocky relationship over the decades, but toward the end they developed a friendly dialogue in interviews. They obviously had mutual, if begrudging, respect. Gates was teary-eyed after Jobs' death. It's hard to find any successful CEO who is nice all the time. That's how competition usually works - someone has to win/lose.

 

[rolsskk]

SJ was plain wrong on web apps back then. The iPhone wasn’t 3G, slow connection, and data plans expensive. Things are different now, much more mature, web apps work well. Native apps have their place, as do web apps.

You say that like data plans were cheap and common at the time of the debut of the iPhone, but when in reality, they weren't.

 

[oliversl]

Great story, many thanks for sharing! Having OpenGL on iPhone is one the key decision that made it a success!

 

[Millah]

Wait til Apple announces their own car. This place will be off the hook with kool aid.... then again, it already is.

But lets be serious, NOBODY fanboys as hard as an Apple fanboy. Remember iJustine after Steve Jobs died? It looked like someone ran over her dog. It's pathetic.

Lol, you sure about that?

Unless my eyes are deceiving me, seems to me like Macrumors has become the complete opposite of that. You can’t scroll through the first page of ANY thread without complaints or criticisms of Tim Cook, or people such as yourself who try to act like the “non-fanboy” who is above all of us weak minded zealots.

In other words, Macrumors has become worse than fanboy-land. At least fanboys are positive. This place is nothing but negativity and cynicism nowadays.

 

[bladerunner2000]

Maybe. But this is a one-sided report from a person who had a falling out with him. So, it was never going to do anything but describe jobs poorly and its author highly.

I wonder why he and others had a falling out with Steve Jobs... ?

The common denominator suggests that Steve Jobs was the problem.

 

[curtvaughan]

Lol, you sure about that?

Unless my eyes are deceiving me, seems to me like Macrumors has become the complete opposite of that. You can’t scroll through the first page of ANY thread without complaints or criticisms of Tim Cook, or people such as yourself who try to act like the “non-fanboy” who is above all of us weak minded zealots.

In other words, Macrumors has become worse than fanboy-land. At least fanboys are positive. This place is nothing but negativity and cynicism nowadays.

I wouldn't call that "worse" - it's a dose of reality reflected by Apple's hardware decisions the last five years, most especially with Macs. Regardless of how you feel about the personalities of the leadership, if competent engineering decisions and the production of creative, high quality hardware and software resulted, most of the negativity would drop off. When / if that were to happen, you'd probably find overall participation in Macrumors would also fall off, as most people wouldn't bother to post if they were satisfied/pleased with the products. I'd be interested to read an archive of posts from the Steve Jobs period and see what the overall trends were at the time. I'll bet there were fewer posts, and most of those would be positive. The negative posts were likely from Microsoft/PC/Android "fanboys" of the time; these days, most of the negative posts are from longtime Apple customers dissatisfied with the latest offerings and Apple support.

 

[bladerunner2000]

Lol, you sure about that?

Unless my eyes are deceiving me, seems to me like Macrumors has become the complete opposite of that. You can’t scroll through the first page of ANY thread without complaints or criticisms of Tim Cook, or people such as yourself who try to act like the “non-fanboy” who is above all of us weak minded zealots.

In other words, Macrumors has become worse than fanboy-land. At least fanboys are positive. This place is nothing but negativity and cynicism nowadays.

Good, because it's deserved. If Apple didn't treat it's consumers like garbage releasing garbage product after garbage product filled with garbage limitations, perhaps the criticisms would stop?