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He says he's completely ignorant about the technology. That's not how I've always interpreted it. Seems more like he's admitting he's not an expert in it, in d

He says he's completely ignorant about the technology. That's not how I've always interpreted it. Seems more like he's admitting he's not an expert in it, in deference to the audience member who's clearly pretty invested in the technology. Despite the tech potentially being better and him not knowing, he sidesteps his ignorance and damns the messenger with faint praise "I'm sure you could make some cool-looking demo" Wasn't Jobs right? What was OpenDoc good for other than tech demos? Was there ever a killer app? Document-based computing was intriguing, and in some ways it was of course a GUI extension of the Unix philosophy of chaining together multiple tools. But how well did it ever work? How do you sell that? Considering how badly companies struggle with GUIs to begin with, wouldn't we have compounded that by passing around these Frankenstein OpenDocs that were mashed together chunks of data that you had to use multiple bits of commercial software to manipulate? What if your fancy OpenDoc has 28 types of documents and the recipient only has 27 of the required viewers/editors installed? What about software version hell? What about document version hell? Maybe open and well-defined interchangeable data formats were the answer, but when has that ever worked out and why would software vendors even want to buy into that? Ultimately, in some ways it would have been cool to email a Lotus 1-2-3 doc embedded in a Word doc mashed together with an AutoCAD file but what was this solving? It's at best slightly more elegant than just three separate files, and at worse a complete and utter nightmare. Consensus seems to be that it was truly a solution without a problem, and at any rate not the kind of thing that would turn around a consumer-facing tech company. before moving on to platitudes about "people over tech". Again, not how I interpreted it. Seemed to me he pretty blunt - he didn't see how OpenDoc could be productized. It wasn't solving anybody's problems, and even the biggest OpenDoc fan (do they exist?) would probably have to admit it seems like more of a backend or groupware foundation. Not a way to sell Macs. has completely forgotten the second question existed. I'd say it was within his right to ignore a personal question. Especially since a lot of what he'd done during the years in question was quite public - NeXT, Pixar, etc. I support the first part of the guy's query, I guess, but it was rather graceful for Jobs to merely sidestep the question rather than address it more bluntly.

linguae 6y ago
I am a huge fan of the idea of OpenDoc and component-based software in general, to the point that one of my side projects is writing a desktop environment in Common Lisp that is inspired by OpenDoc is not a clone; the emphasis is not on document embedding, but on increasing programmability and flexibility while maintaining a GUI environment. It would be kind of like a modern Lisp machine running on Linux. I was also inspired by a Hacker News post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13573373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13573373) about the Linux desktop could have benefitted from component-based software, where some of the commercial problems of OpenDoc would have been sidestepped by the wide availability of free, open source components instead of building FOSS analogues of large proprietary software packages. But with that being said, I agree with you that OpenDoc would have been a tough sell in the proprietary software world for the reasons that you gave. There's also the fact that 1997-era Apple was in no position to challenge Microsoft head-on by promoting component software. In order for the Mac to survive, Apple needed the backing of large software developers like Microsoft and Adobe who were willing to continue writing Mac versions of their popular, industry-standard software packages. OpenDoc might have made business sense in the late 1980s or even in the early 1990s as an alternative to the growing Windows ecosystem, but by 1996 it was too late; Microsoft Windows was the clear winner in the marketplace by a long shot, and Apple was spiraling down the drain before Steve Jobs returned. That's why it was a very big deal at MacWorld Boston 1997 when Steve Jobs declared that "the era of setting this up as a competition between Apple and Microsoft is over."
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  That's very fascinating. Good luck on your project! Convert some non-believers =)

linguae 6y ago

I am a huge fan of the idea of OpenDoc and component-based software in general, to the point that one of my side projects is writing a desktop environment in Common Lisp that is inspired by OpenDoc is not a clone; the emphasis is not on document embedding, but on increasing programmability and flexibility while maintaining a GUI environment. It would be kind of like a modern Lisp machine running on Linux. I was also inspired by a Hacker News post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13573373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13573373) about the Linux desktop could have benefitted from component-based software, where some of the commercial problems of OpenDoc would have been sidestepped by the wide availability of free, open source components instead of building FOSS analogues of large proprietary software packages. But with that being said, I agree with you that OpenDoc would have been a tough sell in the proprietary software world for the reasons that you gave. There's also the fact that 1997-era Apple was in no position to challenge Microsoft head-on by promoting component software. In order for the Mac to survive, Apple needed the backing of large software developers like Microsoft and Adobe who were willing to continue writing Mac versions of their popular, industry-standard software packages. OpenDoc might have made business sense in the late 1980s or even in the early 1990s as an alternative to the growing Windows ecosystem, but by 1996 it was too late; Microsoft Windows was the clear winner in the marketplace by a long shot, and Apple was spiraling down the drain before Steve Jobs returned. That's why it was a very big deal at MacWorld Boston 1997 when Steve Jobs declared that "the era of setting this up as a competition between Apple and Microsoft is over."

JohnBooty 6y ago
That's very fascinating. Good luck on your project! Convert some non-believers =)