11 ms·

Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

284 points by gscott 7y ago

ozmaverick72 7y ago
I used to buy the magazine for the articles - honest
- harrygeez 7y ago
  Not gonna lie. Bought for the pics, stayed for the articles.
- ralfd 7y ago
  At least that was a great interview with good questions/answers.
simonh 7y ago
I love the analogy between early command-line computer interfaces and the telegraph, versus graphical computer interfaces and the telephone. It's also funny to that when he elaborates on this by saying we prefer not to describe where something is but just point to it, he did so with his finger. Of course in context he meant on a computer it's better to point with a mouse than enter commands, but it so nicely foreshadows his intuitive embrace of touch interfaces decades later.
- acqq 7y ago
  Yes, his vision was permanently very clear. In this 1985 interview he already had: "The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people—as remarkable as the telephone."
- globular-toast 7y ago
  I don't agree with the analogy. Telephones derive their power from the use of language just like command-line interfaces. Point and click interfaces will never surpass the power of language because it is language that makes us human.
  - simonh 7y ago
    You're completely missing the point. Language is about an awful lot more than words, it's about expressiveness and emotional content as well as just textual information. He talked about telephones letting people sing - express themselves though voice beyond mere words. A command line interface isn't a great medium for singing, but graphical interfaces enabled sophisticated music production software, desktop publishing using beautiful fonts and images (examples he used). It enables expressiveness beyond what can be captured in mere text. But it can do plain text just fine too. But the main point he made was not that these things can't be done using a command line, it's that a graphical interface democratises access by removing the need to learn special incantations to interact creatively with content.
    - swiley 7y ago
      There’s an awful lot of folk music notated in ABC (the musical equivalent of markdown.) IMO unless you’re actually drawing or looking at an image GUIs really kind of suck but are very sexy and help people sell a lot of software.
    - ekianjo 7y ago
      Your examples are not very convincing. Desktop publishing powers tabloids while a great book remains a great book even in pure text format. Expressiveness is not limited to a medium, and if you ever used a command line interface you would understand the concept it pipes and arguments is way more expressive than a round of 100 clicks to do the same thing thru a GUI. GUI do democratise access to capabilities, but unless you work only with pixels GUIs are inferior in every single way.
      - simonh 7y ago
        "If you ever used a command lien interface". That's a good one, I've been using Unix/Linux systems daily since the early 90s and test people on their Bash skills in job interviews.
        IggleSniggle 7y ago
- zozbot234 7y ago
  > It's also funny to that when he elaborates on this by saying we prefer not to describe where something is but just point to it, he did so with his finger "One evening, Master Foo and Nubi attended a gathering of programmers who had met to learn from each other. One of the programmers asked Nubi to what school he and his master belonged. Upon being told they were followers of the Great Way of Unix, the programmer grew scornful. 'The command-line tools of Unix are crude and backward,' he scoffed. 'Modern, properly designed operating systems do everything through a graphical user interface.' Master Foo said nothing, but pointed at the moon. A nearby dog began to bark at the master's hand. 'I don't understand you!' said the programmer. Master Foo remained silent, and pointed at an image of the Buddha. Then he pointed at a window. 'What are you trying to tell me?' asked the programmer. Master Foo pointed at the programmer's head. Then he pointed at a rock. 'Why can't you make yourself clear?' demanded the programmer. Master Foo frowned thoughtfully, tapped the programmer twice on the nose, and dropped him in a nearby trashcan. As the programmer was attempting to extricate himself from the garbage, the dog wandered over and piddled on him. At that moment, the programmer achieved enlightenment."
acqq 7y ago
So it's right there in 1985 (emphasis mine): "Jobs: That’s inevitably what happens. That’s why I think death is the most wonderful invention of life. It purges the system of these old models that are obsolete." (He was speaking about the computer hardware). 20 years later "2005 Stanford Commencement Address": https://singjupost.com/steve-jobs-2005-stanford-commencement-address-full-transcript/?singlepage=1 https://singjupost.com/steve-jobs-2005-stanford-commencement... "About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. (...) Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." There is also a coda: in 2010, at D8 conference (Jobs died 2011), Jobs got a question: "Q: A few years ago you gave a preparation speech at Stanford (...) Now few years later and a couple of years wiser would you add anything to that speech?" "Jobs: Oh, I have no idea. Probably I would have just turned out the volume on it because the last few years have reminded me that life is fragile." (Or was it "turn up"? Do we hear what we want to hear there? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5f8bqYYwps&t=4400 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5f8bqYYwps&t=4400 )
- torstenvl 7y ago
  Definitely sounds like "turn up" to me. Plus "turn out the volume" isn't idiomatic in Standard American English.
  - acqq 7y ago
    > "turn out the volume" isn't idiomatic Indeed, thanks.
dantondwa 7y ago
> The famous story about the boxes is when Woz called the Vatican and told them he was Henry Kissinger. They had someone going to wake the Pope up in the middle of the night before they figured out it wasn’t really Kissinger. These were really different times.
- dwoozle 7y ago
  https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/10/lindsey-graham-trump-hoax-call-043991 https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/10/lindsey-graham-trum...
deleted 7y ago
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pentae 7y ago
Playboy: That’s what critics charge you with: hooking the enthusiasts with premium prices, then turning around and lowering your prices to catch the rest of the market. Seems like old tricks are the best tricks, eh?
- jcims 7y ago
  More like good tricks are timeless. Lots of old tricks are obsolete because information is so easy to access.
- ekianjo 7y ago
  Apple was pretty much always premium though. Way more expensive than equivalent hardware.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    Define equivalent. Every time I go to find an "equivalent" laptop from a PC vendor I end up in the same ballpark of money, give or take (and often give) $200 or so. As soon as I add the Hi-Dpi screen, 16GB RAM, equally fast SSD, equal GPU, equal CPU, USB-C ports, try to match the size (not some "desktop replacement" monstrosity), and go for a vendor like Lenovo, Dell, Alienware, Razer, etc, it's usually a tie. And usually I'm still getting a worse build quality, a slightly worse display (gamut, etc), and a worse trackpad. At least today though you get a better keyboard with PC vendors.
  - ubermonkey 7y ago
    Price wasn't the main driver, either. Dealer network mattered a LOT. Lots of kids who grew up away from larger cities ended up with computers from Radio Shack, because they were EVERYWHERE, while Apple or Commodore dealers were harder to find. But I'm still curious, because I don't remember: How did (e.g.) Apple II pricing compare to equivalent-ish, contemporaneous models from Commodore or Tandy?
    - dfxm12 7y ago
      How did (e.g.) Apple II pricing compare to equivalent-ish, contemporaneous models from Commodore or Tandy? Apple ][: $1,298 Commodore PET: $795 Tandy TRS-80: $600 At these prices, in 1977, only the Apple had color graphics.
lnsru 7y ago
I really enjoyed description of an environment where Jobs grew up. Now kids see electronics only as a screen of smartphone or tablet. No space for technical creativity unless your parents are doing something in this domain. Selling printed circuit board in European Union is a great adventure taking care of CE and WEEE even for experienced adult.
- numismatex 7y ago
  Even the ability to access code has been deprecated almost by the force of financial investment and intellectual property investment.
- fiala__ 7y ago
  Do they really? I'm not sure I agree, these days we have things like Arduino and Raspberry Pi which have been a huge success, and I'd argue they attract a much wider range of children than middle-class white boys who just happened to grow up near innovation centres.
- pjc50 7y ago
  It is kind of annoying that there's a two tier market: as a consumer, you can buy all sorts of extremely cheap nifty boards to connect to the Arduino, by having them posted from China to circumvent all the rules. But you can't circumvent the rules yourself. (Well, you can, the enforcement is pretty adhoc, but there is still a nonzero chance of getting spotted and fined and they can actually collect against you in the EU)
blazespin 7y ago
A jerk, but a visionary jerk.
- pentae 7y ago
  You say jerk, I love the fact he's honest, unfiltered, and usually dead right.
ponyous 7y ago
> Then there was the time Wozniak made something that looked and sounded like a bomb and took it to the school cafeteria. Oh my. That's funny.
- ekianjo 7y ago
  In 2019 that would have ended with a SWAT team guns blazing.
  - delinka 7y ago
    And, if not death, prison time for the 'prankster.'
tompccs 7y ago
People talk about CEOs with "vision", and usually it's a substitute for a more concrete explanation of what the value-add of non-technical upper management is. Reading this exchange is fascinating. Jobs doesn't spell out the future - he doesn't know it either - but he has an unwavering faith that computers will be central to it, and can even quite effectively explain how and why. The interviewer seems in retrospect hopelessly naive, but he no doubt represented the mainstream opinion of the time. For Jobs to understand this and bet his career on it (remember, most people betting their careers on computers would have been able to find work even if they had never left the science lab or big corporations - Jobs was speculating on a completely different future) shows, I think, that he deserves the place and high-regard in technological history he has been given.
- taude 7y ago
  I'd probably use the term quaint over naive, in 1985, only the most hardcore of households had an Apple IIe, IIc, IBM PC, etc. And no cell phones, so it really was so early on. Consumer tech hadn't really come into its own yet. It pre-dated CD (for music), and the Sony Walkman with cassettes and an Atari/Intellivision game console were about the extent most people had with computers. I'm not even sure if there was traditional tech journalism at the time? I mean, my family had some Apple-centric magazine that came every now an then....
  - codehalo 7y ago
    Not sure what your context of "traditional" is, but Computer Shopper and Dobbs were around then. 1985 is also the year the Amiga came out. Got chills when I saw the commercial.
- lisper 7y ago
  "Jobs: The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people—as remarkable as the telephone." Steve saw the internet coming in 1985. Wow.
deleted 7y ago
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francescopnpn 7y ago
In the interview at the end Jobs says he loves Sushi. What's the deal here? I thought he only ate fruit or at least certainly not meat/fish. Can someone explain?
- kortilla 7y ago
  Pescatarian - fish was the only meat he would eat.
- dasKrokodil 7y ago
  He is said to have been a fruitarian for some time during his youth, but not later.
- geden 7y ago
  There's plenty of sushi that doesn't involve fish or meat. Sashimi is raw fish. Sushi is more about rice.
  - pentae 7y ago
    And do you think people in 1985 understood that distinction?
- guyzero 7y ago
  Eating sushi wasn't something normal people in the US did in 1985. It was a bit of a class marker that he was sophisticated and did crazy things. I realize that sushi is pretty commonplace now but in 1985, for white Americans it was probably the craziest thing you could think of doing. It really freaked people out. Raw fish?
  - mixmastamyk 7y ago
    Time traveler from the 80s here to confirm, people freaked out about sushi.
  - cardiffspaceman 7y ago
    Not so much "crazy" because it was in multiple places in my suburban location at that time. The 'Claire' character of "The Breakfast Club" movie of 1985, brought sushi in (what I remember to be) a bento box with her and I only read her as spoiled, not crazy.
k__ 7y ago
1985 haha, that's when I was born! When I grew up, I had the feeling computers weren't much of a thing in private. Sure, I had a C64 when I got 8 years old and my first PC with 11, but until I got my PC I knew basically nobody in any age group that had a computer. To me, the dream Jobs had, that anyone had a computer, became reality end of the 90 and beginning of the 00. Which is kinda funny. The time everyone really had a computer at home probably didn't even last more than 10 years when it was superseeded by smartphones. Life is very crazy in retrospect... I remember talking to some friends at school when I was 16. They told me I should become an administrator and not a developer, because everything we need is already developed. They had games, videos, mp3s what more was there?
- ubermonkey 7y ago
  "Sure, I had a C64 when I got 8 years old and my first PC with 11, but until I got my PC I knew basically nobody in any age group that had a computer." Wild. Where did you grow up? I ask because I was born in 1970, and by the time I got a computer (a TRS-80 Color Computer 2; 16K of RAM, baby!) in about 1982, I was far from the first kid I knew to have one (though I definitely was on the leading edge). I wrote all my high school papers on it, and by the time I graduated in 1988 I'd say at least half the papers being turned in had those tell-tale rough edges from tractor-feed paper run through dot-matrix printers. By then, several friends had moved up from CoCo/C64/Apple II style machines to PCs (or, in one case, an early Mac). My family was firmly middle/upper-middle class, but we were in a very poor state (Mississippi). Now, most of these were household computers, shared by everyone in the house, but still: the upshot was "lots of PC penetration in homes in south Mississippi by 1988."
  - irremediable 7y ago
    AFAIK the US got computers earlier than most places, even other First World countries. Large disposable incomes and a large, relatively homogeneous market. My family were middle class (teachers) in the UK, and moderately early adopters; we still only got our first PC in the mid-90s.
    - 7y ago
victor106 7y ago
This interview offers so many insights, it’s unbelievable. Who are some visionaries/ industry leaders that have this kind Realistic future insight that are worth paying attention to?
- Yajirobe 7y ago
  Donald John Trump
- petilon 7y ago
  Elon Musk. How many companies has he created or is running? Zip2, PayPal, SpaceX (a rocket company? that takes guts), Tesla (a new car company to compete against GM, Ford, Mercedes, BMW etc? that's nuts!), SolarCity, The Boring Company. And now he is promising self-driving cars by next year. (That's nuts!)
peter303 7y ago
Tech revolutions are often ushered in by people in their early 20s one pop economist noted. That is when they have some education, lots of energy and few family responsibilities. The PC revolution was by people born in the mid 1950s, dot.com by mid 1970s, mobile by early 1990s ...
- casefields 7y ago
  Wars have also fought by that same age group since the beginning of time.
archeantus 7y ago
RIP, Steve. I have ached since he died not only for the loss of what he was, but also for the loss of what could have been. Whatever your view of Apple now, I feel strongly that it is a fraction of what it would have been if Steve had been able to continue on for another 10 years.
faissaloo 7y ago
It really saddens me that the Apple I read here is an Apple that would be saddened by the Apple of today
ericmcer 7y ago
"Jobs: When I went to school, it was right after the Sixties and before this general wave of practical purposefulness had set in. Now students aren’t even thinking in idealistic terms, or at least nowhere near as much. They certainly are not letting any of the philosophical issues of the day take up too much of their time as they study their business majors. The idealistic wind of the Sixties was still at our backs, though, and most of the people I know who are my age have that engrained in them forever." This was pretty striking for me, the goal of becoming rich, or being 'a millionaire' has been pounded into me from a young age to the point where I have difficulty picturing myself obtaining any kind of happiness without some level of financial success. Hopefully the current generations can find fulfillment in different areas. Tying happiness to money is kind of a cruel road to send entire generations down.
dubeux 7y ago
What's really cute is how Jobs expresses contempt for money, for being a millionaire, praising the Sixties idealism (needless to say, the very spirit of the beginning of internet) at the same time he builds up the most closed, proprietary-obsessed company possible.
chrisieb 7y ago
>> 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. Ironically, the first US IKEA store opened in June that same year.

284 points by gscott 7y ago

ozmaverick72 7y ago

I used to buy the magazine for the articles - honest

harrygeez 7y ago
Not gonna lie. Bought for the pics, stayed for the articles.
ralfd 7y ago
At least that was a great interview with good questions/answers.

simonh 7y ago

I love the analogy between early command-line computer interfaces and the telegraph, versus graphical computer interfaces and the telephone. It's also funny to that when he elaborates on this by saying we prefer not to describe where something is but just point to it, he did so with his finger. Of course in context he meant on a computer it's better to point with a mouse than enter commands, but it so nicely foreshadows his intuitive embrace of touch interfaces decades later.

acqq 7y ago
Yes, his vision was permanently very clear. In this 1985 interview he already had: "The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people—as remarkable as the telephone."
globular-toast 7y ago
I don't agree with the analogy. Telephones derive their power from the use of language just like command-line interfaces. Point and click interfaces will never surpass the power of language because it is language that makes us human.
- simonh 7y ago
  You're completely missing the point. Language is about an awful lot more than words, it's about expressiveness and emotional content as well as just textual information. He talked about telephones letting people sing - express themselves though voice beyond mere words. A command line interface isn't a great medium for singing, but graphical interfaces enabled sophisticated music production software, desktop publishing using beautiful fonts and images (examples he used). It enables expressiveness beyond what can be captured in mere text. But it can do plain text just fine too. But the main point he made was not that these things can't be done using a command line, it's that a graphical interface democratises access by removing the need to learn special incantations to interact creatively with content.
  - swiley 7y ago
    There’s an awful lot of folk music notated in ABC (the musical equivalent of markdown.) IMO unless you’re actually drawing or looking at an image GUIs really kind of suck but are very sexy and help people sell a lot of software.
  - ekianjo 7y ago
    Your examples are not very convincing. Desktop publishing powers tabloids while a great book remains a great book even in pure text format. Expressiveness is not limited to a medium, and if you ever used a command line interface you would understand the concept it pipes and arguments is way more expressive than a round of 100 clicks to do the same thing thru a GUI. GUI do democratise access to capabilities, but unless you work only with pixels GUIs are inferior in every single way.
    - simonh 7y ago
      "If you ever used a command lien interface". That's a good one, I've been using Unix/Linux systems daily since the early 90s and test people on their Bash skills in job interviews.
      - IggleSniggle 7y ago
zozbot234 7y ago
> It's also funny to that when he elaborates on this by saying we prefer not to describe where something is but just point to it, he did so with his finger "One evening, Master Foo and Nubi attended a gathering of programmers who had met to learn from each other. One of the programmers asked Nubi to what school he and his master belonged. Upon being told they were followers of the Great Way of Unix, the programmer grew scornful. 'The command-line tools of Unix are crude and backward,' he scoffed. 'Modern, properly designed operating systems do everything through a graphical user interface.' Master Foo said nothing, but pointed at the moon. A nearby dog began to bark at the master's hand. 'I don't understand you!' said the programmer. Master Foo remained silent, and pointed at an image of the Buddha. Then he pointed at a window. 'What are you trying to tell me?' asked the programmer. Master Foo pointed at the programmer's head. Then he pointed at a rock. 'Why can't you make yourself clear?' demanded the programmer. Master Foo frowned thoughtfully, tapped the programmer twice on the nose, and dropped him in a nearby trashcan. As the programmer was attempting to extricate himself from the garbage, the dog wandered over and piddled on him. At that moment, the programmer achieved enlightenment."

acqq 7y ago

So it's right there in 1985 (emphasis mine): "Jobs: That’s inevitably what happens. That’s why I think death is the most wonderful invention of life. It purges the system of these old models that are obsolete." (He was speaking about the computer hardware). 20 years later "2005 Stanford Commencement Address": https://singjupost.com/steve-jobs-2005-stanford-commencement-address-full-transcript/?singlepage=1 https://singjupost.com/steve-jobs-2005-stanford-commencement... "About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. (...) Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." There is also a coda: in 2010, at D8 conference (Jobs died 2011), Jobs got a question: "Q: A few years ago you gave a preparation speech at Stanford (...) Now few years later and a couple of years wiser would you add anything to that speech?" "Jobs: Oh, I have no idea. Probably I would have just turned out the volume on it because the last few years have reminded me that life is fragile." (Or was it "turn up"? Do we hear what we want to hear there? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5f8bqYYwps&t=4400 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5f8bqYYwps&t=4400 )

torstenvl 7y ago
Definitely sounds like "turn up" to me. Plus "turn out the volume" isn't idiomatic in Standard American English.
- acqq 7y ago
  > "turn out the volume" isn't idiomatic Indeed, thanks.

dantondwa 7y ago

> The famous story about the boxes is when Woz called the Vatican and told them he was Henry Kissinger. They had someone going to wake the Pope up in the middle of the night before they figured out it wasn’t really Kissinger. These were really different times.

dwoozle 7y ago
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/10/lindsey-graham-trump-hoax-call-043991 https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/10/lindsey-graham-trum...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

pentae 7y ago

Playboy: That’s what critics charge you with: hooking the enthusiasts with premium prices, then turning around and lowering your prices to catch the rest of the market. Seems like old tricks are the best tricks, eh?

jcims 7y ago
More like good tricks are timeless. Lots of old tricks are obsolete because information is so easy to access.
ekianjo 7y ago
Apple was pretty much always premium though. Way more expensive than equivalent hardware.
- coldtea 7y ago
  Define equivalent. Every time I go to find an "equivalent" laptop from a PC vendor I end up in the same ballpark of money, give or take (and often give) $200 or so. As soon as I add the Hi-Dpi screen, 16GB RAM, equally fast SSD, equal GPU, equal CPU, USB-C ports, try to match the size (not some "desktop replacement" monstrosity), and go for a vendor like Lenovo, Dell, Alienware, Razer, etc, it's usually a tie. And usually I'm still getting a worse build quality, a slightly worse display (gamut, etc), and a worse trackpad. At least today though you get a better keyboard with PC vendors.
- ubermonkey 7y ago
  Price wasn't the main driver, either. Dealer network mattered a LOT. Lots of kids who grew up away from larger cities ended up with computers from Radio Shack, because they were EVERYWHERE, while Apple or Commodore dealers were harder to find. But I'm still curious, because I don't remember: How did (e.g.) Apple II pricing compare to equivalent-ish, contemporaneous models from Commodore or Tandy?
  - dfxm12 7y ago
    How did (e.g.) Apple II pricing compare to equivalent-ish, contemporaneous models from Commodore or Tandy? Apple ][: $1,298 Commodore PET: $795 Tandy TRS-80: $600 At these prices, in 1977, only the Apple had color graphics.

lnsru 7y ago

I really enjoyed description of an environment where Jobs grew up. Now kids see electronics only as a screen of smartphone or tablet. No space for technical creativity unless your parents are doing something in this domain. Selling printed circuit board in European Union is a great adventure taking care of CE and WEEE even for experienced adult.

numismatex 7y ago
Even the ability to access code has been deprecated almost by the force of financial investment and intellectual property investment.
fiala__ 7y ago
Do they really? I'm not sure I agree, these days we have things like Arduino and Raspberry Pi which have been a huge success, and I'd argue they attract a much wider range of children than middle-class white boys who just happened to grow up near innovation centres.
pjc50 7y ago
It is kind of annoying that there's a two tier market: as a consumer, you can buy all sorts of extremely cheap nifty boards to connect to the Arduino, by having them posted from China to circumvent all the rules. But you can't circumvent the rules yourself. (Well, you can, the enforcement is pretty adhoc, but there is still a nonzero chance of getting spotted and fined and they can actually collect against you in the EU)

blazespin 7y ago

A jerk, but a visionary jerk.

pentae 7y ago
You say jerk, I love the fact he's honest, unfiltered, and usually dead right.

ponyous 7y ago

> Then there was the time Wozniak made something that looked and sounded like a bomb and took it to the school cafeteria. Oh my. That's funny.

ekianjo 7y ago
In 2019 that would have ended with a SWAT team guns blazing.
- delinka 7y ago
  And, if not death, prison time for the 'prankster.'

tompccs 7y ago

People talk about CEOs with "vision", and usually it's a substitute for a more concrete explanation of what the value-add of non-technical upper management is. Reading this exchange is fascinating. Jobs doesn't spell out the future - he doesn't know it either - but he has an unwavering faith that computers will be central to it, and can even quite effectively explain how and why. The interviewer seems in retrospect hopelessly naive, but he no doubt represented the mainstream opinion of the time. For Jobs to understand this and bet his career on it (remember, most people betting their careers on computers would have been able to find work even if they had never left the science lab or big corporations - Jobs was speculating on a completely different future) shows, I think, that he deserves the place and high-regard in technological history he has been given.

taude 7y ago
I'd probably use the term quaint over naive, in 1985, only the most hardcore of households had an Apple IIe, IIc, IBM PC, etc. And no cell phones, so it really was so early on. Consumer tech hadn't really come into its own yet. It pre-dated CD (for music), and the Sony Walkman with cassettes and an Atari/Intellivision game console were about the extent most people had with computers. I'm not even sure if there was traditional tech journalism at the time? I mean, my family had some Apple-centric magazine that came every now an then....
- codehalo 7y ago
  Not sure what your context of "traditional" is, but Computer Shopper and Dobbs were around then. 1985 is also the year the Amiga came out. Got chills when I saw the commercial.
lisper 7y ago
"Jobs: The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people—as remarkable as the telephone." Steve saw the internet coming in 1985. Wow.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

francescopnpn 7y ago

In the interview at the end Jobs says he loves Sushi. What's the deal here? I thought he only ate fruit or at least certainly not meat/fish. Can someone explain?

kortilla 7y ago
Pescatarian - fish was the only meat he would eat.
dasKrokodil 7y ago
He is said to have been a fruitarian for some time during his youth, but not later.
geden 7y ago
There's plenty of sushi that doesn't involve fish or meat. Sashimi is raw fish. Sushi is more about rice.
- pentae 7y ago
  And do you think people in 1985 understood that distinction?
guyzero 7y ago
Eating sushi wasn't something normal people in the US did in 1985. It was a bit of a class marker that he was sophisticated and did crazy things. I realize that sushi is pretty commonplace now but in 1985, for white Americans it was probably the craziest thing you could think of doing. It really freaked people out. Raw fish?
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  Time traveler from the 80s here to confirm, people freaked out about sushi.
- cardiffspaceman 7y ago
  Not so much "crazy" because it was in multiple places in my suburban location at that time. The 'Claire' character of "The Breakfast Club" movie of 1985, brought sushi in (what I remember to be) a bento box with her and I only read her as spoiled, not crazy.

k__ 7y ago

1985 haha, that's when I was born! When I grew up, I had the feeling computers weren't much of a thing in private. Sure, I had a C64 when I got 8 years old and my first PC with 11, but until I got my PC I knew basically nobody in any age group that had a computer. To me, the dream Jobs had, that anyone had a computer, became reality end of the 90 and beginning of the 00. Which is kinda funny. The time everyone really had a computer at home probably didn't even last more than 10 years when it was superseeded by smartphones. Life is very crazy in retrospect... I remember talking to some friends at school when I was 16. They told me I should become an administrator and not a developer, because everything we need is already developed. They had games, videos, mp3s what more was there?

ubermonkey 7y ago
"Sure, I had a C64 when I got 8 years old and my first PC with 11, but until I got my PC I knew basically nobody in any age group that had a computer." Wild. Where did you grow up? I ask because I was born in 1970, and by the time I got a computer (a TRS-80 Color Computer 2; 16K of RAM, baby!) in about 1982, I was far from the first kid I knew to have one (though I definitely was on the leading edge). I wrote all my high school papers on it, and by the time I graduated in 1988 I'd say at least half the papers being turned in had those tell-tale rough edges from tractor-feed paper run through dot-matrix printers. By then, several friends had moved up from CoCo/C64/Apple II style machines to PCs (or, in one case, an early Mac). My family was firmly middle/upper-middle class, but we were in a very poor state (Mississippi). Now, most of these were household computers, shared by everyone in the house, but still: the upshot was "lots of PC penetration in homes in south Mississippi by 1988."
- irremediable 7y ago
  AFAIK the US got computers earlier than most places, even other First World countries. Large disposable incomes and a large, relatively homogeneous market. My family were middle class (teachers) in the UK, and moderately early adopters; we still only got our first PC in the mid-90s.
  - 7y ago

victor106 7y ago

This interview offers so many insights, it’s unbelievable. Who are some visionaries/ industry leaders that have this kind Realistic future insight that are worth paying attention to?

Yajirobe 7y ago
Donald John Trump
petilon 7y ago
Elon Musk. How many companies has he created or is running? Zip2, PayPal, SpaceX (a rocket company? that takes guts), Tesla (a new car company to compete against GM, Ford, Mercedes, BMW etc? that's nuts!), SolarCity, The Boring Company. And now he is promising self-driving cars by next year. (That's nuts!)

peter303 7y ago

Tech revolutions are often ushered in by people in their early 20s one pop economist noted. That is when they have some education, lots of energy and few family responsibilities. The PC revolution was by people born in the mid 1950s, dot.com by mid 1970s, mobile by early 1990s ...

casefields 7y ago
Wars have also fought by that same age group since the beginning of time.

archeantus 7y ago

RIP, Steve. I have ached since he died not only for the loss of what he was, but also for the loss of what could have been. Whatever your view of Apple now, I feel strongly that it is a fraction of what it would have been if Steve had been able to continue on for another 10 years.

faissaloo 7y ago

It really saddens me that the Apple I read here is an Apple that would be saddened by the Apple of today

ericmcer 7y ago

"Jobs: When I went to school, it was right after the Sixties and before this general wave of practical purposefulness had set in. Now students aren’t even thinking in idealistic terms, or at least nowhere near as much. They certainly are not letting any of the philosophical issues of the day take up too much of their time as they study their business majors. The idealistic wind of the Sixties was still at our backs, though, and most of the people I know who are my age have that engrained in them forever." This was pretty striking for me, the goal of becoming rich, or being 'a millionaire' has been pounded into me from a young age to the point where I have difficulty picturing myself obtaining any kind of happiness without some level of financial success. Hopefully the current generations can find fulfillment in different areas. Tying happiness to money is kind of a cruel road to send entire generations down.

dubeux 7y ago

What's really cute is how Jobs expresses contempt for money, for being a millionaire, praising the Sixties idealism (needless to say, the very spirit of the beginning of internet) at the same time he builds up the most closed, proprietary-obsessed company possible.

chrisieb 7y ago

>> 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. Ironically, the first US IKEA store opened in June that same year.