4 ms·

I distinctly remember the way Steve Jobs presented it: "It's a phone, it's an iPod, and it's an Internet communications device." That just comes off to me as t

I distinctly remember the way Steve Jobs presented it: "It's a phone, it's an iPod, and it's an Internet communications device." That just comes off to me as though even he didn't realize how ubiquitous phones would become, and how integral to our lives they would become, even replacing computers for so many tasks. It's my phone, my iPod, my work outside of office hours, schedules and times my workouts, my alarm clock, my camera, my GPS and mapbook, my library, my notebook, my flashlight, my scanner, my TV, the way I look at cat pictures and the way I look up where to find an AED in an emergency.

visakanv 9y ago
"There will be web dialtone everywhere." – Steve Jobs, 1996 – https://www.wired.com/1996/02/jobs-2/ https://www.wired.com/1996/02/jobs-2/
- nickpsecurity 9y ago
  I found the school voucher idea to be the best part of that article. I didn't know the cost was so close for some of those public and private schools: "I have a 17-year-old daughter who went to a private school for a few years before high school. This private school is the best school I've seen in my life. It was judged one of the 100 best schools in America. It was phenomenal. The tuition was $5,500 a year, which is a lot of money for most parents. But the teachers were paid less than public school teachers—so it's not about money at the teacher level. I asked the state treasurer that year what California pays on average to send kids to school, and I believe it was $4,400. While there are not many parents who could come up with $5,500 a year, there are many who could come up with $1,000 a year. If we gave vouchers to parents for $4,400 a year, schools would be starting right and left. People would get out of college and say, "Let's start a school." You could have a track at Stanford within the MBA program on how to be the businessperson of a school. And that MBA would get together with somebody else, and they'd start schools. And you'd have these young, idealistic people starting schools, working for pennies."
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > I asked the state treasurer that year what California pays on average to send kids to school, and I believe it was $4,400. While there are not many parents who could come up with $5,500 a year, there are many who could come up with $1,000 a year. > If we gave vouchers to parents for $4,400 a year, schools would be starting right and left. But if the public spends $4,400, that's not what goes to the school, since the total includes state and district oversight that is outside of the school. This money would not be available to alternative schools unless you are suggesting that they should receive public funds without equal accountability.
    - nickpsecurity 9y ago
      Im just quoting it in case knowledgeable people show up with links to good info, proposals, or precedents. I haven't done research on it myself. I'm not suggesting anything since Im not informed enough on the topic. :)
    - PeterisP 9y ago
      Fine, assuming that the accountability overhead is 10% over the cost of actually doing the job and maintaining the facilities, so get a $4000 voucher.
gutnor 9y ago
Personally I think that Jobs/Apple were expecting the Apple TV to be the next big thing. In the world of 2007, TV was still almighty and winning the living room should have been a revolution. It should have been the entry into the post-PC world, with iPad-like and maybe real TV devices following a few years later. The iPhone was really mostly an iPod phone with internet thrown in like on the kindle. This is obviously based 100% on gut feeling :-)
michaelmarion 9y ago
"That just comes off to me as though even he didn't realize how ubiquitous phones would become, and how integral to our lives they would become, even replacing computers for so many tasks." No one did, though. Go back and watch that keynote — there's thunderous applause for the iPod and phone portions of that sentence, and (relative) awkward silence for the "internet communicator" bit. Reading through the Jobs biography, there's a great segment on the development of the iPod wherein Tony Fadell (I believe) details how he was coached to present the best mockups to Steve last. Given the ordering of the three statements in that sentence you quoted, I have to imagine that someone at Apple — maybe not Steve — understood the eventual ubiquity of the smartphone.
- nashashmi 9y ago
  Wasn't there a really big article about this? http://www.theverge.com/2017/6/13/15782200/one-device-secret-history-iphone-brian-merchant-book-excerpt http://www.theverge.com/2017/6/13/15782200/one-device-secret... The gist of it is the entire company wanted to do a phone because of how cool it would be. The work of three secret teams unbeknownst to Steve Jobs came together in just the right ways to make the iPhone.
InitialLastName 9y ago
> the way I look up where to find an AED in an emergency. Is that a specific thing, or would you just plan to map it?
- TallGuyShort 9y ago
  It's a specific thing: PulsePoint has a couple of related apps. One will notify you (if you tell them you're CPR / AED certified) when there's a medical emergency you can help with in a public place near you (assuming the local emergency services work with them), and it'll tell you if there's an AED nearby. The other app lets you update their database of AEDs with GPS coordinates, photos, landmarks, etc. The latter is how I pass a lot of time in airports :)
MattSayar 9y ago
That list is pretty overwhelming when viewed all at once. None of it could have happened with the sub-3G speeds we used to have, though.
jimbokun 9y ago
Read back the quote again to yourself. Phone + iPod + Internet communications device...you are pretty much describing a general purpose computer, no? And if you go back to the keynote, that was kind of the joke. He started out describing these as if they were separate products being introduced. The punch line was it was just one device. In other words, subtly mocking the idea you needed a separate device for each kind of functionality you wanted. Lastly, Apple was a computer company from top to bottom. How else would they envision a solution to the problem of crappy phones, but to turn them into computers with really good software? That's just who Apple was. So the idea of the Apple strategy being replacing the mobile phone with a mobile computer is only obvious in hind sight just isn't true, it was obvious as soon as the iPhone was introduced.
- devdas 9y ago
  A general purpose computer, or a very locked down thin client. Like the world of AOL users. I would have suggested the latter, otherwise the system would have been a lot more open. General purpose computers give purchasers administrator/root access by default. If you don't have that, you have a thin client run by someone else.
alaskamiller 9y ago
The Mac is Steve's baby. The i in iMac means internet. Back in early 2000s, the prevailing silicon valley view is that the internet is and will forever be the greatest thing ever. The iPod was already a success. Adding a phone to it is merely a formality, and an annoying one at that considering how much negotiations and concessions and leverage had to be applied to Verizon and Cingular before they settled. But when writing trios, the best is always last. An internet communications device, an iDevice, is really the evolution of the iMac. The state of mind at Apple back then is that everyone absolutely knew the iPhone will be ubiquitous.

visakanv 9y ago

"There will be web dialtone everywhere." – Steve Jobs, 1996 – https://www.wired.com/1996/02/jobs-2/ https://www.wired.com/1996/02/jobs-2/

nickpsecurity 9y ago
I found the school voucher idea to be the best part of that article. I didn't know the cost was so close for some of those public and private schools: "I have a 17-year-old daughter who went to a private school for a few years before high school. This private school is the best school I've seen in my life. It was judged one of the 100 best schools in America. It was phenomenal. The tuition was $5,500 a year, which is a lot of money for most parents. But the teachers were paid less than public school teachers—so it's not about money at the teacher level. I asked the state treasurer that year what California pays on average to send kids to school, and I believe it was $4,400. While there are not many parents who could come up with $5,500 a year, there are many who could come up with $1,000 a year. If we gave vouchers to parents for $4,400 a year, schools would be starting right and left. People would get out of college and say, "Let's start a school." You could have a track at Stanford within the MBA program on how to be the businessperson of a school. And that MBA would get together with somebody else, and they'd start schools. And you'd have these young, idealistic people starting schools, working for pennies."
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > I asked the state treasurer that year what California pays on average to send kids to school, and I believe it was $4,400. While there are not many parents who could come up with $5,500 a year, there are many who could come up with $1,000 a year. > If we gave vouchers to parents for $4,400 a year, schools would be starting right and left. But if the public spends $4,400, that's not what goes to the school, since the total includes state and district oversight that is outside of the school. This money would not be available to alternative schools unless you are suggesting that they should receive public funds without equal accountability.
  - nickpsecurity 9y ago
    Im just quoting it in case knowledgeable people show up with links to good info, proposals, or precedents. I haven't done research on it myself. I'm not suggesting anything since Im not informed enough on the topic. :)
  - PeterisP 9y ago
    Fine, assuming that the accountability overhead is 10% over the cost of actually doing the job and maintaining the facilities, so get a $4000 voucher.

gutnor 9y ago

Personally I think that Jobs/Apple were expecting the Apple TV to be the next big thing. In the world of 2007, TV was still almighty and winning the living room should have been a revolution. It should have been the entry into the post-PC world, with iPad-like and maybe real TV devices following a few years later. The iPhone was really mostly an iPod phone with internet thrown in like on the kindle. This is obviously based 100% on gut feeling :-)

michaelmarion 9y ago

"That just comes off to me as though even he didn't realize how ubiquitous phones would become, and how integral to our lives they would become, even replacing computers for so many tasks." No one did, though. Go back and watch that keynote — there's thunderous applause for the iPod and phone portions of that sentence, and (relative) awkward silence for the "internet communicator" bit. Reading through the Jobs biography, there's a great segment on the development of the iPod wherein Tony Fadell (I believe) details how he was coached to present the best mockups to Steve last. Given the ordering of the three statements in that sentence you quoted, I have to imagine that someone at Apple — maybe not Steve — understood the eventual ubiquity of the smartphone.

nashashmi 9y ago
Wasn't there a really big article about this? http://www.theverge.com/2017/6/13/15782200/one-device-secret-history-iphone-brian-merchant-book-excerpt http://www.theverge.com/2017/6/13/15782200/one-device-secret... The gist of it is the entire company wanted to do a phone because of how cool it would be. The work of three secret teams unbeknownst to Steve Jobs came together in just the right ways to make the iPhone.

InitialLastName 9y ago

> the way I look up where to find an AED in an emergency. Is that a specific thing, or would you just plan to map it?

TallGuyShort 9y ago
It's a specific thing: PulsePoint has a couple of related apps. One will notify you (if you tell them you're CPR / AED certified) when there's a medical emergency you can help with in a public place near you (assuming the local emergency services work with them), and it'll tell you if there's an AED nearby. The other app lets you update their database of AEDs with GPS coordinates, photos, landmarks, etc. The latter is how I pass a lot of time in airports :)

MattSayar 9y ago

That list is pretty overwhelming when viewed all at once. None of it could have happened with the sub-3G speeds we used to have, though.

jimbokun 9y ago

Read back the quote again to yourself. Phone + iPod + Internet communications device...you are pretty much describing a general purpose computer, no? And if you go back to the keynote, that was kind of the joke. He started out describing these as if they were separate products being introduced. The punch line was it was just one device. In other words, subtly mocking the idea you needed a separate device for each kind of functionality you wanted. Lastly, Apple was a computer company from top to bottom. How else would they envision a solution to the problem of crappy phones, but to turn them into computers with really good software? That's just who Apple was. So the idea of the Apple strategy being replacing the mobile phone with a mobile computer is only obvious in hind sight just isn't true, it was obvious as soon as the iPhone was introduced.

devdas 9y ago
A general purpose computer, or a very locked down thin client. Like the world of AOL users. I would have suggested the latter, otherwise the system would have been a lot more open. General purpose computers give purchasers administrator/root access by default. If you don't have that, you have a thin client run by someone else.

alaskamiller 9y ago

The Mac is Steve's baby. The i in iMac means internet. Back in early 2000s, the prevailing silicon valley view is that the internet is and will forever be the greatest thing ever. The iPod was already a success. Adding a phone to it is merely a formality, and an annoying one at that considering how much negotiations and concessions and leverage had to be applied to Verizon and Cingular before they settled. But when writing trios, the best is always last. An internet communications device, an iDevice, is really the evolution of the iMac. The state of mind at Apple back then is that everyone absolutely knew the iPhone will be ubiquitous.