By Khalida Sarwari
Ask Howard Miller what the best part about his recent vacation in Greece was, and the first thing he’d tell you is waking up every morning and not having to check his email. Or going to bed every night without needing to crack open his laptop and checking for bugs. In retirement, he has finally found a liberation that took him more than four decades to earn.
“I have always had a plan since I was 7 years old, and I have had a job since I was 12,” the 54-year-old said. “It’s just nice to not have that level of responsibility and intensity anymore.”
Still, that impulse was hard to fight at first.
“I still remember waking up the first morning and thinking, ‘I should check my email,’ and then realizing, ‘No, I don’t have to get up at all.’ It was liberating, but let’s say I got used to it very easily.”
The two-week trip to Greece was Miller’s first visit to Europe and second longest vacation he’s ever taken. Miller hopped on a plane with his wife, Sandy, and 16-year-old daughter, Erin, just days after his final shift at Apple on June 8, where he spent the last 23 years of his career, most recently as a senior engineering manager in the imaging division.
At Apple, he’d often start his presentations by quipping he was managing the company’s only 4,000-year-old-plus technology: “putting black dots on white paper.”
“Printing is a really, really old technology,” he said. “It’s still fundamental to the way the world works. You would think that technology would become advanced enough to where we wouldn’t need it, but that’s kind of the world, right? Someday I am hopeful that no more pages are printed and everything is electronic.”
Until that day, companies will still need guys like Miller. He leaves Apple as the co-inventor of AirPrint, helping to drive the transition of the printing industry from driver-based printing to AirPrint-based printing. AirPrint is a feature on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch that enables users to print wirelessly to just about any printer that is connected to the same local wireless network. Miller and his team launched the technology in 2010 and it remains his proudest accomplishment at the company, because he played a role in “fundamentally reducing the complexity of printing,” he said.
“I didn’t know anything about printing when I started at Apple and I leave Apple as the world’s foremost expert,” he said.
He is quick to give credit to the people he worked with, namely Richard Blanchard, David Gelphman, Andrew Platzer and Michael Sweet, saying, “These guys are some of the top, most creative, brightest people in the world when it comes to technology.”
During his tenure at Apple, Miller managed more than 100 engineers, having hired more than half of them.
“I loved the people I worked with, and that’s what made the whole thing worthwhile,” he said. “For me, Apple was working with brilliant, brilliant people on amazing technology.”
To date, Miller has 19 patents, which he says is the most of any elected official in Silicon Valley. He explains that most of his patents are “sort of esoteric,” related to printing technologies. One names Steve Jobs as a co-inventor, which Miller said is “a funny turn of fate.”
Having worked at Apple for more than 20 years, Miller is bound to have a few stories about the iconic inventor. One of his favorites to recount involves a 15-minute demo he gave in 2002 to Jobs, during which Jobs told Miller, “This is no different that what I have today,” and to which Miller said he responded, “No, you are wrong.”
Despite Jobs’ initial rejection of the printer demo, Miller was able to get his approval and the product was shown a week later at the Macworld expo in New York.
“Today, every network printer by every manufacturer supports this technology,” he said.
Prior to joining Apple in 1993, Miller worked at Hewlett-Packard. He graduated from Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo with a degree in electronic engineering and Stanford University with a master’s in computer science.
Miller, whose other job is serving as a city council member in Saratoga, has lived in the city for 22 years with his wife and five children. When asked how he’s managed to juggle a demanding profession, family life, running a soccer league and his role as an elected official, among other responsibilities, he cited his “weird philosophy.”
“If you’re going to do something, you should do it right,” he said. “It really bothers me when people show up and don’t follow through. For me, when I sign up for something, I always show up.”
Still, a hectic schedule often meant sending emails at 11:59 p.m. and making calls at 8 a.m. “You just end up using all your time to make good on all your commitments,” he said.
If anyone was short-changed by this arrangement, it was usually his family, Miller said. So while he isn’t certain of what’s next for him, he acknowledges that some re-prioritizing is in order.
“My wife deserves some of my time and my kids deserve some of my time,” he said.
In high school, Miller said he was voted the senior with the “most warped mind” and “most unorganized.” At the time, this left him scratching his head in puzzlement, thinking his classmates didn’t have a clue about him. But, now at the end of his career, those descriptions make sense, he said.
“I look disorganized, but yet somehow I’m exceptionally well organized,” he said. “I think I’ve always been creative and looked at problems in different ways and looked for unique ways to solve them.”
Link:
Saratoga City Councilman Miller retires from Apple after 23-year career
