I was taking apart an old MacBook Pro recently. I always said this is the best laptop I ever had. It was bought in 2013, and did me 10 years, until I gave it to my Mam. In 2025, it developed its first fault, a buzzy speaker, and I opened it up to replace the speaker.
I was curious to see the inside, and on opening it, I was reminded of what Steve Jobs, relating a lesson from his father on cabinet-making:
“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.” — Steve Jobs
I won't say it was beautiful on the inside, but it was certainly elegant:
And I noticed for almost all parts I had to remove, it was a single screw, which seemed very efficient.
The Jobs quote though seems a bit strange, even to me. We live in a society that emphasises surface, image and performative values. Why would you use a good piece of wood for a part that will never be seen?
I think maybe Matthew Crawford is maybe getting at this in his book Shop Class as Soulcraft:
"As a residential and light-commercial electrician, most of my work got covered up inside walls. Still, I felt pride in meeting the aesthetic demands of a workmanlike installation. Maybe another electrician would see it someday. Even if not, I felt responsible to my better self. Or rather, to the thing itself—craftsmanship has been said to consist simply in the desire to do something well, for its own sake." Matthew Crawford
If you're only doing a thing for the surface value, what people will see, it will never have a strong foundation. People might never see the back of the cabinet, but without it, the cabinet would never be as good.