Steve Jobs' Apple Cards: a project so disastrous a witness still fears Apple 15 years later
Fifteen years later, the Apple Cards origin story
In 2011, Apple launched Cards, an app that let you design custom letterpress cards and have them shipped. The origin story is pure Steve Jobs: a dinner walk inspired the idea. But behind the scenes, the project—codenamed Speed Racer—was a logistical nightmare. A printing partner describes invisible barcodes, custom heart stamps, and launch-day demand that could fit in a shoebox. He still won't go on the record.
In my decade working with Apple and in fact my 30-year career, this project — code named Speed Racer and dreamed up by Steve Jobs himself — stands unsurpassed as a pinnacle of incompetence, project mismanagement and intercontinental mayhem. I hope to never top it.