June 29, 1998: Glenn Reid Tastes the Apple

by Chris Seibold Jun 29, 2011

In the olden days Apple programmers were exalted with such niceities as placing their name on the mold for the original Mac or getting some credit in the "About" box of a program. Sadly, Apple programmers, even those who do something very special, get much less credit today.

One of the most overlooked programmers has to be Glenn Reid. Glenn's overlooked claim to fame, iMovie, is the program that set the bar for all the iLife apps. Originally, iMovie was a freebie for Mac users but the price was not indicative of the power. Glenn and his team managed to put together a program that rivaled video studios, cost tens of thousands of dollars, and kept the process so easy that just about anyone could make a professional looking movie with little more than a Mac, a digital video camera and good lighting.

Glenn Reid managed to do a lot more than code the best consumer grade film-editing program to date; he was also responsible for iPhoto and later iterations of iMovie. The programmer who defined the Mac's iLife strategy began work at Apple on June 29, 1998. Word is that he spent most of the first day filling out forms, but after that it was pure gold!

Comments

  • I don’t use iMovie that much, but I have to say that the templates it has are very, very impressive.  I WANT to use it for home movies, but the workflow is different enough from FCP that it’s weird to get my mind around it.

    But I use the crap out of iPhoto.

    So hats off the Glenn.  Cheers.

    Beeblebrox had this to say on Jun 29, 2006 Posts: 2220
  • Hey Beeblebrox; thanks for the note.  All you need to get your mind around iMovie is to think “cut/copy/paste”.  It’s a selection metaphor, not an in/out-point metaphor.

    Glenn Reid

    Glenn Reid had this to say on Jun 29, 2006 Posts: 1
  • Turns out Beeb makes movies and TV for a living. I happen to know that a lot of film pros hated iMovie. But for non pros it was so freaking awesome words fail me

    Chris Seibold had this to say on Jun 30, 2006 Posts: 354
  • Damn, my calendar is way off…!

    TowerTone had this to say on Jul 29, 2007 Posts: 6
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