I chose to look at Joy Mountford’s interview, because she seems to have one of the more interesting and varied backgrounds. She started her training at a company called Honeywell, which did a lot of work for the military. Her major work at the company focused on flight simulation, a type of interactive system in and of itself. She moved on to get a graduate degree where she learned even more about man-machine systems, and then went to work for Apple where she teamed up with Mike Mills. Together they created the first version of QuickTime movie software, which was also the first video playback software to give the user any sort of real control over the content. She went on to continue this work for Apple, developing video applications for the iPod and musical processing products. Now she oversees interface development and design for Apple.
What I find interesting about Joy Mountford is how she went from being involved with large military operations to the relatively small iPod. It may seem at first that flight simulation and QuickTime are totally unrelated, but they both involve controlling video playback. With the flight simulators, it’s about taking the mechanical data of the simulator’s movements and creating a visual representation of it. QuickTime doesn’t really need to generate the images and sounds that make up video; it just needs to be able to manipulate them.
I think that Mountford’s level of expertise accounted for the smiles on peoples faces when they’ve used the video call software on the ipod. And she has evolutionized the world that surrounds us, because we can watch each other through a quick time analysis faster. I think she is very sensitive, yet and still to the wants and needs of people eventhough, not so much as big and useful as before.
You did a great job connecting and explaining the relation between flight simulation and QuickTime!