I miss my conversations with Gary Starkweather and helping others remember him is one of the things that reinforces what I got out of knowing Gary. The WSJ, WaPo, NYTimes, LATimes and many other publications wrote about Gary’s passing in Dec 2019. Gary’s wife texted me a day after Gary had passed and that started me thinking about my relationship with Gary.
When we met, Gary lived in Saratoga, CA which is same city I grew up in. Gary had moved to the Bay Area to work at Xerox PARC which is one of the places I thought of working with I was in college, but went to HP which also has its roots in Palo Alto. Gary and I met at Apple. Chatting with Joyce, Gary’s wife she told a funny story how Gary ended up at Apple. Joyce had been working as an admin and one day while someone said they were looking for a person with imaging background and Joyce put Gary’s resume on a person’s desk. Upon reading the resume the executive quickly went to Joyce and asked this is your husband? Yes. We want him at Apple. Gary joined Apple and worked in the research group which is the same building that had the Cray super computer in it.
So how did I meet Gary. The first meeting I had with Gary was in the research building and we were discussing imaging and Gary showed me a beta version of Photoshop which had not been bought yet by Adobe. Thinking back to 1988 why did I want to talk to Gary. What was I doing in 1988. Oh I was project leader for the 8 bit monochrome scanner and was investigating a 24 bit color scanner project. From then on I would have regular chats with Gary about color, imaging, printing, fonts. When I left Apple I had just finished Japanese TrueType fonts for the Mac and in 1992 went to be project leader on all the Far East fonts for Win3.1.
When I went to Microsoft in Redmond I would come back to Saratoga regularly to see my family and visit a few Apple friends. And Gary would be one of those people who I would see regularly to talk about color, imaging, printing, and fonts. At one point chatting with David Weise who was also a super smart physicists like Gary we were discussing color management in Windows and I said let’s call Gary Starkweather and chat about Apple ColorSync to see if we can come up with a way to use color profiles in the same way.
Five years later in 1997 talking to Gary he said he had had it with Apple after 10 years and needed to get out. I suggested why not come to Microsoft. Gary immediately said it rains too much in Seattle. And I said if you have not been there how do you know? Gary could not argue with that point. I passed Gary’s resume to Microsoft HR who of course took all the credit for bringing Gary to Microsoft. Nice thing is Gary always credits our friendship is why he went to Microsoft.
Here is how I helped Gary. Gary invented the laser printer for Xerox and his financial reward for the patents was enough to buy 2 Toyota Corollas. Working at Apple for 10 years 1987-1997 was not a big stock windfall. Working at Microsoft as a senior architect from 1997-2005 gave Gary the financial security he deserved for being the inventor of the laser printer.
To this day I can remember so many things Gary pointed out and hear his laugh. Nice thing there is a person in Microsoft Research who worked closely with Gary and we can continue to discuss how Gary would do things. Friends help friends.