14 ms·

New Steve Jobs recordings from the '80s released

360 points by mindcrime 6y ago

dewey 6y ago
Anyone else who can't look at the page at all? I get the "Your Choices Regarding Cookies" popup but there's no button to confirm my choice.
- mindcrime 6y ago
  I'm not having that same problem, but maybe try this? https://outline.com/7fmau4 https://outline.com/7fmau4
  - dewey 6y ago
    Thanks, that works. That's what I saw FWIW: https://imgur.com/a/ZeuoQrq https://imgur.com/a/ZeuoQrq
Reedx 6y ago
The recordings and actual story: https://www.fastcompany.com/90541084/this-unheard-steve-jobs-tape-is-part-of-an-amazing-trove-of-tech-history https://www.fastcompany.com/90541084/this-unheard-steve-jobs...
dewey 6y ago
The full story is actually here: https://www.fastcompany.com/90541084/this-unheard-steve-jobs-tape-is-part-of-an-amazing-trove-of-tech-history https://www.fastcompany.com/90541084/this-unheard-steve-jobs...
- coldcode 6y ago
  When you listen to some of these early recordings, you realize how far ahead Job's thinking was from almost everyone else. Then you realize it took him decades to eventually ship these things. Despite being often a dreadful person to deal with, he was an original thinker who could actually ship things even it took most of a lifetime. I left Apple a year before he came back, I still regret it.
  - mbesto 6y ago
    > Despite being often a dreadful person to deal with, he was an original thinker who could actually ship things even it took most of a lifetime. Honestly, what is so admirable about this? There are a lot of people who take visionary stances and ultimately fail - these stories rarely get talked about. I'm sure there are more than a handful of visionary stances that Jobs took that never formed. It's survivorship bias at its finest. Don't get me wrong, Jobs is/was an impressive person, but he gets a Midas-like reputation that is beyond cult like.
S_A_P 6y ago
If news orgs are hurting in general why do they insist on spending so much money in bandwidth and hosting costs to force feed me video that has nothing to do with the article Im reading? I suppose this has to generate some sort of revenue stream but it is user hostile... I attempted to block the object with uBlock Origin which proved unable to do so. I then just went into the DOM and deleted the nodes containing the player and that instantly caused Firefox to consume mass CPU quantity. I will say this here, and Im a sample set of 1. I would be 100% more sympathetic to the cause of paying for news if I wasnt part of the shell game that is click through, engagement, page view and ad revenue metrics.
thu2111 6y ago
I dunno, I'd be more interested in long-form talks he gave when he was older, after he'd rebuilt Apple. Even though I've read his biography there's a surprising dearth of information out there about topics that seem important, at least if you want to learn management skills from his example. Take the question of how technical he actually was. The famous books and movies about Jobs hardly cover this at all. There's not even any agreement today about it, look at the contradictory answers to this question: https://www.quora.com/Was-Steve-Jobs-technical?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Was-Steve-Jobs-technical?share=1 And I'm always reminded of this story where he asks about the light well gathering characteristics of CMOS vs CCD: https://www.quora.com/How-did-Steve-Jobs-thrive-in-a-technical-field-with-a-non-technical-background https://www.quora.com/How-did-Steve-Jobs-thrive-in-a-technic... The biographies that are out there are OK as far as they go, but they're ultimately made by people who are in love with the idea of a humanities student getting rich running a tech company and telling those nerds where to go. They don't explore how he was able to recruit and keep people with strong skills, how he could tell them apart from those who just weren't as sharp. They don't explore how involved he was with at the time radical decisions like the macOS Aqua UI, merging BSD/NeXT/MacOS Classic, what exactly shipped in the first iPhone and so on. I've heard he was very involved with all kinds of minor things like the decision to keep using Objective-C well past its sell-by date, but again, such details come out in scraps here and there. If you look at other tech firms like Yahoo, after being taken over by people without a strong engineering background they went into decline and failed. Merely being "not a nerd" is hardly sufficient. To match what he accomplished requires skill in deal making, recruitment, retention, skills evaluation, technology, marketing, etc. Yet this story remains largely untold.
- ksk 6y ago
  Well, the other thing is that smart people like Steve Jobs can easily learn new skills and acquire knowledge even after college. He worked in tech for decades, so I'm sure he's read more a few books and/or experimented with tech hands-on :) Heck isn't programming one of those skills that we say you don't need to go college for?
  - reaperducer 6y ago
jkcorrea 6y ago
For those interested, AllAboutSteveJobs.com keeps a pretty good repository of Jobs moments. My personal favorite is his 1997 WWDC talk [1]. In one talk he demonstrates what it is to be a great leader organizationally, publicly, and as a product visionary. He also opens himself up to harsh criticism from people who were, in a lot of ways, rightfully pissed at him. He takes both tough questions and ad hominem attacks gracefully and reframes the narrative in a positive way without disparaging the questioner [2]. To me, this is in stark contrast to the staged events with canned/screened questions that most tech leaders run today. He also lays out much of the vision for products that are still being rolled out 10-20 years later. Crazy. Really recommend watching the full thing if you have time, but also linking to a little excerpt from one of the best moments. [1] (full video): https://archive.org/details/wwdc-1997-fireside-chat-steve-jobs https://archive.org/details/wwdc-1997-fireside-chat-steve-jo... [2] (insult excerpt): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o
- mrpippy 6y ago
  It's a fascinating talk. I've uploaded a much better quality version to the Internet Archive (after Apple had it taken down from YouTube): https://archive.org/details/wwdc-1997-fireside-chat-steve-jobs https://archive.org/details/wwdc-1997-fireside-chat-steve-jo...
  - jkcorrea 6y ago
    Ahh that is much better, I'll update my link. Thanks :)
  - imglorp 6y ago
    Why would they want it removed? It's free advertising.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      Apple frequently takes down older videos for the same reason I assume they don't want old iPhone 6 videos floating around alongside iPhone 11 ads.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Dig1t 6y ago
Ahh what is this website!? sfsgate.com is so horrible. GIANT ads everywhere, popups, everything is jumping down as the page loads. The actual recordings are on Soundcloud here: https://soundcloud.com/user-626311220 https://soundcloud.com/user-626311220 Please save yourself the pain of visiting this travesty of a website.
- ciarannolan 6y ago
  Do you use an ad blocker? Or browse with js off by default? I do both and this site looks fine, like any other article online.
  - tambourine_man 6y ago
    I think we can agree that one shouldn't need that in order to have a decent experience on the web.
    - crawlcrawler 6y ago
      Yes indeed! Can we also agree that we don't need JS in order to produce a decent experience on the web?
      - distrill 6y ago
        Not really to be honest. The web does a lot more today than just transmit text documents. SPAs are overused and generally too bloated, but the idea that JS is not necessary (or should not be necessary) is a non starter.
        crawlcrawler 6y ago
        For a decent browsing experience I'll take a plain ol' HTTP POST that causes my browser to reload the whole page giving me as a user a clear indication the app has understood my intentions (I wanted to submit information) over the initial page load time, elements jumping around, making me click the wrong element, any day of the week.
est31 6y ago
On a related note, I remember watching shareholder meeting like events from Tesla on youtube where Elon Musk admitted that the first roadster prototype didn't work and had to be cooled after the demo. I can't find it any more. Is this still public?
ChickeNES 6y ago
At about 35 minutes in there was a video demonstrating their automated PCB assembly line, and luckily it's on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSj6kvv7_Sg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSj6kvv7_Sg
- gscott 6y ago
  At the very end they simply slide in the motherboard into the case. That is the way it should be.
- amatecha 6y ago
  Thank you! I'll post this as a comment on the SoundCloud post itself, with credit to you for finding the link
b0rsuk 6y ago
Seems like Steve Jobs is the modern equivalent of a saint in US.
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  Then you've got a bubble to break out of
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
laksdjfkasljdf 6y ago
> "If you want to make a revolution, you've got to raise the lowest common denominator in every single machine," [...] "You can not use features that are not built into every computer." * Looks around. See the entire Gaming market and Apple dongles. Yeah. spot on.
spsrich2 6y ago
Theres a nice one of him on stage at the 1988 "Monsters of Rock" singing "Bomber"
steve_taylor 6y ago
Talking about the App Store in 1982: https://soundcloud.com/user-626311220/steve-jobs-and-steve-wozniak-at-applefest-1982 https://soundcloud.com/user-626311220/steve-jobs-and-steve-w...
amatecha 6y ago
Actual audio recording, in case you just want to listen to it: https://soundcloud.com/user-626311220/steve-jobs-demos-next-in-boston-1988 https://soundcloud.com/user-626311220/steve-jobs-demos-next-...
sgt 6y ago
I had to laugh when he said having a high speed hard drive with a magnetic head over a platter is like flying a Boeing 747 six inches above the ground.
vilifiedtwin 6y ago
When I think about the cult of Steve Jobs, I then immediately think of this skit by Bill Burr - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3s-qZsjK8I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3s-qZsjK8I I recommend you have a look in case you haven't.

360 points by mindcrime 6y ago

Anyone else who can't look at the page at all? I get the "Your Choices Regarding Cookies" popup but there's no button to confirm my choice.

mindcrime 6y ago
I'm not having that same problem, but maybe try this? https://outline.com/7fmau4 https://outline.com/7fmau4
- dewey 6y ago
  Thanks, that works. That's what I saw FWIW: https://imgur.com/a/ZeuoQrq https://imgur.com/a/ZeuoQrq

Reedx 6y ago

The recordings and actual story: https://www.fastcompany.com/90541084/this-unheard-steve-jobs-tape-is-part-of-an-amazing-trove-of-tech-history https://www.fastcompany.com/90541084/this-unheard-steve-jobs...

dewey 6y ago

The full story is actually here: https://www.fastcompany.com/90541084/this-unheard-steve-jobs-tape-is-part-of-an-amazing-trove-of-tech-history https://www.fastcompany.com/90541084/this-unheard-steve-jobs...

coldcode 6y ago
When you listen to some of these early recordings, you realize how far ahead Job's thinking was from almost everyone else. Then you realize it took him decades to eventually ship these things. Despite being often a dreadful person to deal with, he was an original thinker who could actually ship things even it took most of a lifetime. I left Apple a year before he came back, I still regret it.
- mbesto 6y ago
  > Despite being often a dreadful person to deal with, he was an original thinker who could actually ship things even it took most of a lifetime. Honestly, what is so admirable about this? There are a lot of people who take visionary stances and ultimately fail - these stories rarely get talked about. I'm sure there are more than a handful of visionary stances that Jobs took that never formed. It's survivorship bias at its finest. Don't get me wrong, Jobs is/was an impressive person, but he gets a Midas-like reputation that is beyond cult like.

S_A_P 6y ago

If news orgs are hurting in general why do they insist on spending so much money in bandwidth and hosting costs to force feed me video that has nothing to do with the article Im reading? I suppose this has to generate some sort of revenue stream but it is user hostile... I attempted to block the object with uBlock Origin which proved unable to do so. I then just went into the DOM and deleted the nodes containing the player and that instantly caused Firefox to consume mass CPU quantity. I will say this here, and Im a sample set of 1. I would be 100% more sympathetic to the cause of paying for news if I wasnt part of the shell game that is click through, engagement, page view and ad revenue metrics.

thu2111 6y ago

I dunno, I'd be more interested in long-form talks he gave when he was older, after he'd rebuilt Apple. Even though I've read his biography there's a surprising dearth of information out there about topics that seem important, at least if you want to learn management skills from his example. Take the question of how technical he actually was. The famous books and movies about Jobs hardly cover this at all. There's not even any agreement today about it, look at the contradictory answers to this question: https://www.quora.com/Was-Steve-Jobs-technical?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Was-Steve-Jobs-technical?share=1 And I'm always reminded of this story where he asks about the light well gathering characteristics of CMOS vs CCD: https://www.quora.com/How-did-Steve-Jobs-thrive-in-a-technical-field-with-a-non-technical-background https://www.quora.com/How-did-Steve-Jobs-thrive-in-a-technic... The biographies that are out there are OK as far as they go, but they're ultimately made by people who are in love with the idea of a humanities student getting rich running a tech company and telling those nerds where to go. They don't explore how he was able to recruit and keep people with strong skills, how he could tell them apart from those who just weren't as sharp. They don't explore how involved he was with at the time radical decisions like the macOS Aqua UI, merging BSD/NeXT/MacOS Classic, what exactly shipped in the first iPhone and so on. I've heard he was very involved with all kinds of minor things like the decision to keep using Objective-C well past its sell-by date, but again, such details come out in scraps here and there. If you look at other tech firms like Yahoo, after being taken over by people without a strong engineering background they went into decline and failed. Merely being "not a nerd" is hardly sufficient. To match what he accomplished requires skill in deal making, recruitment, retention, skills evaluation, technology, marketing, etc. Yet this story remains largely untold.

ksk 6y ago
Well, the other thing is that smart people like Steve Jobs can easily learn new skills and acquire knowledge even after college. He worked in tech for decades, so I'm sure he's read more a few books and/or experimented with tech hands-on :) Heck isn't programming one of those skills that we say you don't need to go college for?
- reaperducer 6y ago

jkcorrea 6y ago

For those interested, AllAboutSteveJobs.com keeps a pretty good repository of Jobs moments. My personal favorite is his 1997 WWDC talk [1]. In one talk he demonstrates what it is to be a great leader organizationally, publicly, and as a product visionary. He also opens himself up to harsh criticism from people who were, in a lot of ways, rightfully pissed at him. He takes both tough questions and ad hominem attacks gracefully and reframes the narrative in a positive way without disparaging the questioner [2]. To me, this is in stark contrast to the staged events with canned/screened questions that most tech leaders run today. He also lays out much of the vision for products that are still being rolled out 10-20 years later. Crazy. Really recommend watching the full thing if you have time, but also linking to a little excerpt from one of the best moments. [1] (full video): https://archive.org/details/wwdc-1997-fireside-chat-steve-jobs https://archive.org/details/wwdc-1997-fireside-chat-steve-jo... [2] (insult excerpt): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o

mrpippy 6y ago
It's a fascinating talk. I've uploaded a much better quality version to the Internet Archive (after Apple had it taken down from YouTube): https://archive.org/details/wwdc-1997-fireside-chat-steve-jobs https://archive.org/details/wwdc-1997-fireside-chat-steve-jo...
- jkcorrea 6y ago
  Ahh that is much better, I'll update my link. Thanks :)
- imglorp 6y ago
  Why would they want it removed? It's free advertising.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Apple frequently takes down older videos for the same reason I assume they don't want old iPhone 6 videos floating around alongside iPhone 11 ads.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Dig1t 6y ago

Ahh what is this website!? sfsgate.com is so horrible. GIANT ads everywhere, popups, everything is jumping down as the page loads. The actual recordings are on Soundcloud here: https://soundcloud.com/user-626311220 https://soundcloud.com/user-626311220 Please save yourself the pain of visiting this travesty of a website.

ciarannolan 6y ago
Do you use an ad blocker? Or browse with js off by default? I do both and this site looks fine, like any other article online.
- tambourine_man 6y ago
  I think we can agree that one shouldn't need that in order to have a decent experience on the web.
  - crawlcrawler 6y ago
    Yes indeed! Can we also agree that we don't need JS in order to produce a decent experience on the web?
    - distrill 6y ago
      Not really to be honest. The web does a lot more today than just transmit text documents. SPAs are overused and generally too bloated, but the idea that JS is not necessary (or should not be necessary) is a non starter.
      - crawlcrawler 6y ago
        For a decent browsing experience I'll take a plain ol' HTTP POST that causes my browser to reload the whole page giving me as a user a clear indication the app has understood my intentions (I wanted to submit information) over the initial page load time, elements jumping around, making me click the wrong element, any day of the week.

est31 6y ago

On a related note, I remember watching shareholder meeting like events from Tesla on youtube where Elon Musk admitted that the first roadster prototype didn't work and had to be cooled after the demo. I can't find it any more. Is this still public?

ChickeNES 6y ago

At about 35 minutes in there was a video demonstrating their automated PCB assembly line, and luckily it's on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSj6kvv7_Sg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSj6kvv7_Sg

gscott 6y ago
At the very end they simply slide in the motherboard into the case. That is the way it should be.
amatecha 6y ago
Thank you! I'll post this as a comment on the SoundCloud post itself, with credit to you for finding the link

b0rsuk 6y ago

Seems like Steve Jobs is the modern equivalent of a saint in US.

klmadfejno 6y ago
Then you've got a bubble to break out of
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

laksdjfkasljdf 6y ago

> "If you want to make a revolution, you've got to raise the lowest common denominator in every single machine," [...] "You can not use features that are not built into every computer." * Looks around. See the entire Gaming market and Apple dongles. Yeah. spot on.

spsrich2 6y ago

Theres a nice one of him on stage at the 1988 "Monsters of Rock" singing "Bomber"

steve_taylor 6y ago

Talking about the App Store in 1982: https://soundcloud.com/user-626311220/steve-jobs-and-steve-wozniak-at-applefest-1982 https://soundcloud.com/user-626311220/steve-jobs-and-steve-w...

amatecha 6y ago

Actual audio recording, in case you just want to listen to it: https://soundcloud.com/user-626311220/steve-jobs-demos-next-in-boston-1988 https://soundcloud.com/user-626311220/steve-jobs-demos-next-...

sgt 6y ago

I had to laugh when he said having a high speed hard drive with a magnetic head over a platter is like flying a Boeing 747 six inches above the ground.

vilifiedtwin 6y ago

When I think about the cult of Steve Jobs, I then immediately think of this skit by Bill Burr - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3s-qZsjK8I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3s-qZsjK8I I recommend you have a look in case you haven't.