Chris Espinosa
Chris Espinosa | |
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Born | September 18, 1961 |
Nationality | American |
Education | University of California, Berkeley |
Occupation | Engineer, Inventor |
Known for | Joined Apple Inc at the age of fourteen in 1976 and is the longest-serving employee. |
Chris Espinosa is a senior employee of Apple Inc., officially employee number 8.[1] Having joined the company at the age of fourteen in 1976 when it was still housed in Steve Jobs' parents' garage, writing software manuals and coding after school, he is the company's current and all-time longest-serving employee.
Career
Espinosa met Steve Jobs at Paul Terrell's Byte Shop while the former was installing an Apple I, and later became friends with Steve Wozniak, despite having been warned against the two by his teachers at Homestead High School, where Jobs and Wozniak had also been students. In 1976 the 14-year-old Espinosa began working for Apple, making him one of the company's youngest employees. Officially he was Apple employee number eight. He began writing BASIC programs in Jobs' garage, and has worked his entire life at Apple, with the exception of a brief hiatus during which he studied at the University of California, Berkeley,[2] where his freshman advisor was graduate student Andy Hertzfeld, who along with Barney Stone, had started a local Apple user group.[3] In 1981 Jobs convinced Espinosa to drop out of school to work in Apple's publications department. Although Espinosa did not participate in the company's initial public offering, Wozniak had offered up to 2,000 pre-IPO shares at $5 a share to a group of 40 employees, including Espinosa, whom he thought were undervalued, which became known as the Woz Plan.[2][4] Espinosa has worked in a variety of different positions during his time at Apple, including as an AppleScript engineer and in-developer support.[2]
As of 2014, Espinosa works on the iOS Family Sharing system.[5]
His other work includes contributions to the classic Mac OS, A/UX, HyperCard, Taligent, Kaleida Labs, AppleScript, Xcode and macOS. He is a frequent speaker at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference and occasionally appears as a panelist at its Stump the Experts session.
In media
Actor Eddie Hassell portrayed Espinosa in the 2013 film, Jobs.[6]
References
- ↑ Sivers, Derek (July 6, 2009). "Tom Williams: Hired by Apple at 14. His full story.". sivers.org. Retrieved October 18, 2015.
- 1 2 3 O'Grady, Jason D. (December 30, 2008)). Apple Inc. (Corporations That Changed the World). Greenwood, p 30. Archived at Google Books. Retrieved 18 October 2015.
- ↑ Pang, Alex (13, June 2000). "Interview with Chris Espinosa". Stanford University.
- ↑ "Jobs (2013)". History vs. Hollywood. Retrieved October 18, 2015.
- ↑ Kosner, Anthony Wing (June 14, 2014). "Apple's New Family Plan Makes It Easy To Solve The iTunes Identity Crisis". Forbes.
- ↑ Cwelich, Lorraine (August 16, 2013). "Eddie Hassell Talks 'Jobs', Working with Ashton, and Driving Fast Cars". Elle.
External links
- Lemmons, Phil (February 1984). "An Interview: The MacIntosh Design Team". Byte Vol 9, No 2
- "The Original Macintosh: Anecdotes about the development of Apple's original Macintosh, and the people who made it (4 stories)". Folklore
- Holland, James (February 24, 2011). "Apple’s longest serving employee: It's not Steve Jobs". Electricpig.