Most of the Macintosh software team members were between twenty and thirty years old, and with few family obligations to distract us, we were used to working long hours. We were passionate about the project and willing to more or less subordinate the rest of our lives to it, at least for a while.
As pressure mounted to finish the software in time for our January 1984 deadline, we began to work longer and longer hours. By the fall of 1983, it wasn't unusual to find most of the software team in their cubicles on any given evening, weekday or not, still tapping away at their keyboards at 11 p.m. or even later.
Team Expansion & Testing Marathons
The rest of the Macintosh team—now almost a hundred people (nearing Steve Jobs' sworn limit)—tended to work more traditional hours. But as the deadline loomed, many stayed late to help test the software during evening marathons. Food was brought in as teams competed to find the most bugs (of which there were still plenty).
The "90 Hours" Sweatshirt
Debi Coleman's finance team commemorated the effort in true Silicon Valley fashion: a T-shirt. To make it special, they chose a high-quality gray hooded sweatshirt with the tagline:
"90 Hours A Week And Loving It"
(A nod to Steve Jobs' press boast about the team's workload.)
Design details:
- "Mackintosh" in red (misspelled like a recent article, with a black squiggle crossing out the 'k').
- Tagline emblazoned in black on the back.
- Distributed as a reward during testing marathons.
Mixed Reactions & A Silent Protest
The software team wasn't thrilled—we were working that hard, while others weren't. But the sweatshirt was high-quality, so many engineers wore it frequently, including Burrell Smith.
When Burrell quit Apple in February 1985, he kept wearing it daily. But upon returning home, he used masking tape to cross out the first '9', transforming the motto:
"0 Hours A Week And Loving It."