“On the observation floor they have these plaques that display lists of recognized tradesmen who built the damn thing. ”

I don’t think this would happen anymore. Workers don’t get much respect these days. They are kept anonymous. The first Macs had the names of the developers somewhere. No way this would fly these days.

Not just the Macs themselves, but also the software in old Macs often had the names of its programmer(s) on the About box as opposed to a generic company name. I think this was sort of part of the Macintosh culture at the time since the software that came with the OS itself had the programmers' names instead of Apple too.

Today you only see that only on open source software... and Adobe (for some reason :-P). Although in both cases it is usually tacked under an "Authors" or "Credits" button (mainly because the credits is usually a laundry list with tons of names).

> and Adobe (for some reason :-P)

Possibly because Adobe software has a long history with the entertainment industry. Games have credits, albums list their performers and composers, and movies end with 10 minutes of everyone who showed up on the set one day (and their dog). Attribution is very important in the artistic fields.

On the other side of the aisle, Excel began as a tool for financial calculations, and it has never included any names in its about panel, even back in the 1980's: https://winworldpc.com/product/microsoft-excel/1x

There are all these stories about Hertzfeld, Atkinson and others from the early Mac days. I have never heard similar stuff about iPhone development. Who are the heroes of iOS?

Steve Jobs.

I really don't mean for that to sound in any way snarky or whatever. I'm also not trying to diminish the role Jobs played as a visionary, driving the company to create the right product. Not a Jobs cultist, and I'm also not wishing to denigrate him. It's just that, in light of the point being made, I think it really illustrates that point so well that there are only two names that I feel are championed as the heroes of the iPhone & iOS—Jobs and Ive. Sure, there are other execs who show up in keynotes/events, and they get some praise for their roles/departments ... and I think that really drives the point home. People doing the work aren't highlighted and recognized. It's the execs who get the praise, accolades, awards, etc. Maybe there are individual contributor names on patents or something, but nobody really seems to know who they are.

It comes down to a cognitive trade off. No one can or wants to remember or contemplate the tens, hundreds or thousands of people whose efforts went into completing something. It's just easier, calorically speaking, to give the attention to a few.

There's a recent book called Creative Selection by Ken Kocienda which details how the iPhone touch keyboard was built. So there's bits and pieces here and there.

There isn't a Homeric saga which details all the subsystems and who built them however.

Some (not sure if all) Microsoft Sidewinder joysticks had cast signatures of the engineering team:

https://imgur.com/GBi5cjR

https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/4g678s/found_on_the_c...

The work itself is poor quality, even in the high budget projects. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-yorks-super-mall-hudso...

"Poor quality" would probably apply to most tech projects too :-). Most of the stuff we produce is short term and disposable.

Most computer games have credits.

That seems to be an expected thing in entertainment products. Getting in the credits is very important to one's career and place in the field(s) involved.