The series overall has made Holmes' admiration for Apple and their leadership quite clear. This episode shows Avie Tevanian joining Theranos' board. Avie was a long time partner of Steve Jobs, working with him at NeXT as one of the principal software engineers, designing Mach OS, the core of The NextStep operating system. When Apple bought NeXT in 1997, Avie became became the Vice President of Software Engineering at Apple and transformed NextStep into the modern MacOS and iOS that powers modern Apple devices.