Comments on: Cutting the Waste of Waiting with PC Bootup http://www.leanblog.org/2008/10/cutting-waste-of-waiting-with-pc-bootup/ Mark Graban's leanblog.org - Lean Healthcare, Lean Thinking, Lean Manufacturing, Toyota Production System Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:01:31 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Anonymous http://www.leanblog.org/2008/10/cutting-waste-of-waiting-with-pc-bootup/#comment-4148 Anonymous Thu, 30 Oct 2008 04:35:00 +0000 http://leanblog.bigbigdesign.net/2008/10/cutting-the-waste-of-waiting-with-pc-bootup/#comment-4148 You captured the essence of the story but here is a first hand account of Jobs prodding the developers to cut time from booting up:<br/><br/>Andy Hertzfeld<br/>Date: August 1983<br/>Characters: Steve Jobs, Larry Kenyon<br/>Topics: Software Design, Inspiration<br/>Summary: Steve wants us to make the Macintosh boot faster<br/>Revision: most recent of 3<br/><br/>We always thought of the Macintosh as a fast computer, since its 68000 microprocessor was effectively 10 times faster than an Apple II, but our Achilles heel was the floppy disk. We had limited RAM, so it was often necessary to load data from the floppy, but there we were no faster than an Apple II. Once we had real applications going, it was clear the floppy disk was going to be a significant bottleneck.<br/><br/>One of the things that bothered Steve Jobs the most was the time that it took to boot when the Mac was first powered on. It could take a couple of minutes, or even more, to test memory, initialize the operating system, and load the Finder. One afternoon, Steve came up with an original way to motivate us to make it faster.<br/><br/>Larry Kenyon was the engineer working on the disk driver and file system. Steve came into his cubicle and started to exhort him. "The Macintosh boots too slowly. You've got to make it faster!"<br/><br/>Larry started to explain about some of the places where he thought that he could improve things, but Steve wasn't interested. He continued, "You know, I've been thinking about it. How many people are going to be using the Macintosh? A million? No, more than that. In a few years, I bet five million people will be booting up their Macintoshes at least once a day."<br/><br/>"Well, let's say you can shave 10 seconds off of the boot time. Multiply that by five million users and thats 50 million seconds, every single day. Over a year, that's probably dozens of lifetimes. So if you make it boot ten seconds faster, you've saved a dozen lives. That's really worth it, don't you think?"<br/><br/>We were pretty motivated to make the software go as fast as we could anyway, so I'm not sure if this pitch had much effect, but we thought it was pretty humorous, and we did manage to shave more than ten seconds off the boot time over the next couple of months. You captured the essence of the story but here is a first hand account of Jobs prodding the developers to cut time from booting up:

Andy Hertzfeld
Date: August 1983
Characters: Steve Jobs, Larry Kenyon
Topics: Software Design, Inspiration
Summary: Steve wants us to make the Macintosh boot faster
Revision: most recent of 3

We always thought of the Macintosh as a fast computer, since its 68000 microprocessor was effectively 10 times faster than an Apple II, but our Achilles heel was the floppy disk. We had limited RAM, so it was often necessary to load data from the floppy, but there we were no faster than an Apple II. Once we had real applications going, it was clear the floppy disk was going to be a significant bottleneck.

One of the things that bothered Steve Jobs the most was the time that it took to boot when the Mac was first powered on. It could take a couple of minutes, or even more, to test memory, initialize the operating system, and load the Finder. One afternoon, Steve came up with an original way to motivate us to make it faster.

Larry Kenyon was the engineer working on the disk driver and file system. Steve came into his cubicle and started to exhort him. “The Macintosh boots too slowly. You’ve got to make it faster!”

Larry started to explain about some of the places where he thought that he could improve things, but Steve wasn’t interested. He continued, “You know, I’ve been thinking about it. How many people are going to be using the Macintosh? A million? No, more than that. In a few years, I bet five million people will be booting up their Macintoshes at least once a day.”

“Well, let’s say you can shave 10 seconds off of the boot time. Multiply that by five million users and thats 50 million seconds, every single day. Over a year, that’s probably dozens of lifetimes. So if you make it boot ten seconds faster, you’ve saved a dozen lives. That’s really worth it, don’t you think?”

We were pretty motivated to make the software go as fast as we could anyway, so I’m not sure if this pitch had much effect, but we thought it was pretty humorous, and we did manage to shave more than ten seconds off the boot time over the next couple of months.

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]]> By: Anonymous http://www.leanblog.org/2008/10/cutting-waste-of-waiting-with-pc-bootup/#comment-4146 Anonymous Thu, 30 Oct 2008 04:13:00 +0000 http://leanblog.bigbigdesign.net/2008/10/cutting-the-waste-of-waiting-with-pc-bootup/#comment-4146 I guess the antithesis of Apple's Mac is Microsoft. I think every time my corp upgrades to a newer version of excel that the bugs and quirks will be fixed but they never do. I can imagine some discussion at Microsoft about how the users have become so adept at overcoming the bugs and quirks that users will miss them if they get fixed. On the other hand, am using Vista at home and am duly impressed. I guess the antithesis of Apple’s Mac is Microsoft. I think every time my corp upgrades to a newer version of excel that the bugs and quirks will be fixed but they never do. I can imagine some discussion at Microsoft about how the users have become so adept at overcoming the bugs and quirks that users will miss them if they get fixed. On the other hand, am using Vista at home and am duly impressed.

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]]> By: Anonymous http://www.leanblog.org/2008/10/cutting-waste-of-waiting-with-pc-bootup/#comment-4143 Anonymous Wed, 29 Oct 2008 02:20:00 +0000 http://leanblog.bigbigdesign.net/2008/10/cutting-the-waste-of-waiting-with-pc-bootup/#comment-4143 Well, legend has it that back in the development days of the Macintosh (1983?) Steve Jobs used to drive the OS development team to cut every second possible off of the boot-up time by saying something like, "millions of people are going to be using the Mac, every second you shave off of the boot-up time is going to save days, weeks, and months for humanity!" Anyway, could we say that Jobs was a lean visionary? Well, legend has it that back in the development days of the Macintosh (1983?) Steve Jobs used to drive the OS development team to cut every second possible off of the boot-up time by saying something like, “millions of people are going to be using the Mac, every second you shave off of the boot-up time is going to save days, weeks, and months for humanity!” Anyway, could we say that Jobs was a lean visionary?

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]]> By: Greg http://www.leanblog.org/2008/10/cutting-waste-of-waiting-with-pc-bootup/#comment-4141 Greg Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:00:00 +0000 http://leanblog.bigbigdesign.net/2008/10/cutting-the-waste-of-waiting-with-pc-bootup/#comment-4141 "Functionality in layers" is a good idea, but in my experience (as and IT professional), most end users want one-touch functionality right now.<br/><br/>However, a consistent two-minute start up time should be bearable. While I know an exception exists somewhere, could that missing two minutes NOT be made up somewhere in the work day (like taking time to comment on blogs). “Functionality in layers” is a good idea, but in my experience (as and IT professional), most end users want one-touch functionality right now.

However, a consistent two-minute start up time should be bearable. While I know an exception exists somewhere, could that missing two minutes NOT be made up somewhere in the work day (like taking time to comment on blogs).

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]]> By: Karthik Chandramouli http://www.leanblog.org/2008/10/cutting-waste-of-waiting-with-pc-bootup/#comment-4140 Karthik Chandramouli Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:25:00 +0000 http://leanblog.bigbigdesign.net/2008/10/cutting-the-waste-of-waiting-with-pc-bootup/#comment-4140 In Toyota's perspective on Standardized Work, you may hear someone say, "It's a sin for the operator to wait for the machine to complete it's work." If people are the most valuable resource, we want to make their work efficient, fully productive, and value-added.<br/><br/>So, it's ok (although undesirable) for the machine to wait for the worker to complete his/her work.<br/><br/>On my Toshiba laptop, there are buttons that allow me to startup a DVD quickly (without loading Windows). Why can't Microsoft re-architect Windows to do the same thing and turn on functionality in layers?<br/><br/>Partly, this has to do with the batch size of software -- if they built the OS as a series of widgets, perhaps it would perform more efficiently and match the takt time of the user (customer)... In Toyota’s perspective on Standardized Work, you may hear someone say, “It’s a sin for the operator to wait for the machine to complete it’s work.” If people are the most valuable resource, we want to make their work efficient, fully productive, and value-added.

So, it’s ok (although undesirable) for the machine to wait for the worker to complete his/her work.

On my Toshiba laptop, there are buttons that allow me to startup a DVD quickly (without loading Windows). Why can’t Microsoft re-architect Windows to do the same thing and turn on functionality in layers?

Partly, this has to do with the batch size of software — if they built the OS as a series of widgets, perhaps it would perform more efficiently and match the takt time of the user (customer)…

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]]> By: Matthieu http://www.leanblog.org/2008/10/cutting-waste-of-waiting-with-pc-bootup/#comment-4124 Matthieu Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:09:00 +0000 http://leanblog.bigbigdesign.net/2008/10/cutting-the-waste-of-waiting-with-pc-bootup/#comment-4124 I'm quite pissed of by that lag, so at work my daily routine includes turning the computer on, then leaving to grab a cup of coffee. At home, my PC is always in wake mode (except the few times it crashes) and I love my eeePC that boots fully operational (like, no waiting for antivirus software, MSN, or the like) in 20 sec timed.<br/><br/>But there's definitely some lean efforts to be done in this area. Go Asus and Mac ! I’m quite pissed of by that lag, so at work my daily routine includes turning the computer on, then leaving to grab a cup of coffee. At home, my PC is always in wake mode (except the few times it crashes) and I love my eeePC that boots fully operational (like, no waiting for antivirus software, MSN, or the like) in 20 sec timed.

But there’s definitely some lean efforts to be done in this area. Go Asus and Mac !

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