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Steve Jobs describes iCloud experience at WWDC 1997
- tylerrooney 15y agoThere's also one choice moment before this point where a developer is asking what Apple can do about getting beat up in the press and the stockmarket. For emphasis, in December of 1997 AAPL hit an 11-year low of $3.53 (split adjusted). Today, mainstream media eats out of Steve Jobs' hand and their stock price is, as I type this, $332.
- forgottenpaswrd 15y agoYeah, he says something like: "You should buy stock... it is what I have done"
- ufuk 15y agoGreat find... If you continue listening to Steve ramble on about the what we now call "the Cloud", you can hear him mention hardware-thin/software-thick clients, eg. the iPhone and the iPad. I wonder what held him back from achieving that vision is the first place. AFAICS, Apple is now playing catch-up to Google and Amazon in the cloud computing space.
- dualboot 15y agoDoing it themselves and doing it right is my guess. Just look at Sony for an example of rushing into doing something yourself (PSN.)
- cmgarcia 15y agoExactly this, I think most would agree that Apple attempts to either do it right or not at all.
- adambyrtek 15y agoI disagree. They tried exactly that with .Mac and MobileMe and failed. The problem is that the proprietary approach that worked so well in case of hardware and software isn't compatible with the web. I don't know much about iCloud, but I really hope they had learned the lesson and made it more open by providing APIs, allowing data migration, and supporting tools for other platforms. However, this might be just my wishful thinking.
- dualboot 15y agoWhen they launched MobileMe there were no iPads or iPad Touches. It's a different ballgame now I think.
- smackfu 15y agoWhat held them back? Probably two things: 1. They only had the Mac platform (and non-connected iPods). Can you change the world with a 5% market share? 2. They wanted to charge for it. Now, they could have done this a couple of years ago after they conquered #1, but they were still hung up on point #2, and just tried to make a better pay service.
- YooLi 15y ago1. In 1997, technology held him back, not market share. The iPhone changed the world with no market share. The iPad changed the world with no market share. Etc. 2. Who gives their service away for free? Apple still charges for it. It's included in the devices you buy, etc.
- smackfu 15y agoOn (2), you're right, but Apple always wanted above that, charging $100 a year.
- ry0ohki 15y agoIn 1997, the lack of widely available high speed Internet was probably the biggest thing preventing this.
- sfgfdhgfdshdhhd 15y agoThe same thing that has held everyone else back until now. 1. Bandwidth started to become conveniently fast and widespread around year 2000, people are just starting to be familiar with that. He's talking about gigabit ethernet in the video, even today most people don't even have 1/1000 of that. 2. Computers in general have just started to become widespread among the general population until now. 3. Trust, 10 years ago privacy had a much higher price than now. Especially considering the people who used computers then were the tinfoil hacker kind as opposed to every random person today. 4. User interfaces was horrible 10 years ago. Just imagine setting up a network connection with settings like baudrate and hundreds of other funny things that nobody except the programmer of the application cares about. 5. Money and effort. Hard drives are cheap, big enough, and last long enough to not scare people away from them. People don't want to complicate things more than necessary. And to be fair, most big companies has had the kind of thin-client setup he's talking about for quite long. You just need a VPN-tunnel and you can access it from everywhere in the world. (again, back to user friendlyness).
- paramaggarwal 15y agoA true visionary.
- otterley 15y agoThis was Sun Microsystems' vision of computing in 1982, 15 years earlier.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- dmix 15y ago"It's not so new but to the average person its new" - Steve Jobs in the linked video.
- Apocryphon 15y agoI would love to watch a video of Bill Joy or whomever giving a talk about that.
- namastasyai 15y agoBill Joy spoke of this at the Institute for Advanced Study, circa 1999. I don't know if anyone took a video of his talk, but he did it (and I was there.)
- 6ren 15y agoHe was even using NFS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_File_System_(protocol) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_File_System_(protocol) Your dreams may still be here tomorrow, but you may not.
- Hoff 15y agoAnd prior to that, Digital Equipment was using "the network is the system" back the late 70s. But then ideas and slogans are rather cheap, and neither DEC nor Sun are around any more. Apple is still around, and Apple is still executing on their ideas.
- va_coder 15y agoA coworker of mine worked with Eric Schmidt when he was at Novell. He was talking about the cloud back then. Now his vision is coming alive with Chrome OS.
- JackWebbHeller 15y agoFascinating to see how much more technical vocabulary he uses when speaking in '97. I don't remember any recent keynotes where he used so much tech jargon onstage. I guess this is because now, every word he says is analysed and reported by mainstream media. He has to communicate to the entire world because of Apple's popularity, and not just a room full of WWDC developers.
- JackWebbHeller 15y agoI actually remember when he was announcing FaceTime, he had a list of all the FaceTime protocols and technologies onscreen - H264, AAC, SIP, IMTC, STUN, TURN, ICE, etc. I remember him pausing, then saying something along the lines of "... whatever the hell those are", or some quip like that.
- powertower 15y agoIt's more of early adapters (1997) vs. mainstream (2012). The first is much more techy. And the latter is much greater in numbers. Apple wasn't even a blimp on the radar screen back in 1997. Now they are a continent.
- lukifer 15y agoSpooky to hear Jobs speak so well of Rubenstein ("I trust him with my life"), knowing that Palm will hire him away for WebOS a decade later.
- padmanabhan01 15y agoafaik palm didn't hire him away. He quit and after few months of break in mexico, he decided to join palm.
- Steko 15y agoIt seems like he didn't really quit either but was let go gracefully. As head of iPod division it seemed as though he was more protective of the iPod's role as Apple's superstar product then of the big picture Jobs wanted to push. Rumor was he wanted to use the iPod OS for the phone and then he gave an interview about how converged devices were lame and 3 weeks later they announced his "reduced role" as a consultant and shortly after that he was out. Granted that's mostly based on rumors but it gives an interesting contrast to Microsoft's failure in tablets because of things like the Office division's execs refusing to make it touch friendly.
- ugh 15y agoExactly, a decade. Something like that is not really spooky. A decade is a long time.
- saturdaysaint 15y agoFunny when he corrected himself after saying "Apple controls the marketing and distribution... I mean the marketing" - perhaps Apple stores were on his mind back then?
- snikch 15y agoThe experience he's talking about is the same experience domain based Microsoft networks have had available for a long time, and it was an awful experience as it relied on network connectivity for your files. It was nothing revolutionary. What's happened in the last decade+ is the infrastructure to support all these devices, and their network connectivity, has increased so we can finally have a good user experience doing it. Without the infrastructure to support it, the product would end up instilling a sense of hate in people who use it. And we all know Apple is about creating the most seamless and easy to use experience for the user.
- jchrisa 15y agoThe key is they design for offline mode first. Then add connectivity.
- mikecane 15y agoWhat's especially interesting in this video is when he's insulted by someone during the Q&A. How differently he handled that than what stars, politicians, and many business people would do and do! Amelio was also still in charge of Apple, yet it seems Jobs already had his plans worked out for what he would do with Apple if he was in charge.
- siglesias 15y agoMore like when he was in charge.
- jonursenbach 15y agoWhere in the video is this?
- mikecane 15y agoSorry, I watched it several days ago and didn't note the time. I'm thinking of watching it again to extract that bit.
- farlington 15y agoIt's at around 50:20.
- jessedhillon 15y agoAt around 50:10, someone asks him sarcastically to use his cloud to make sure than when TV commercials are made, they're good ones. Steve Jobs smiles, nods and thanks him.
- jakelear 15y agoI think he says clout, as in influence.
- jessedhillon 15y agoYeah, that's what I heard. I just had cloud on the mind, and made that typo.
- jpadvo 15y agoIt sound more like he is describing Chrome OS, actually.
- philwelch 15y agoAt the time, Larry Ellison was on Apple's board, and Oracle was pushing the "Network Computer" concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Computer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Computer
- edge17 15y agoFundamentally, the idea is the same to the end user, but this is true about a lot of ideas that started on the desktop, then were recreated in the web, and are now being recreated in mobile. Like anything, ideas are a dime a dozen and execution is everything. Building network storage for tethered devices on reliable connections and building network storage for untethered devices on unreliable connections are two different problems. The way this post is titled gives him credit for the idea, which is a silly thing. If iCloud works as advertised, kudos for the execution. But I have no doubt in my mind that the architecture under the hood would be very different if it were 1997 and Apple was building cloud storage in the pc era.
- peterquest 15y agowow, remember when keynote addresses contained technical information? When's the last time you heard Jobsy mention NFS at a conference?
- biot 15y agoThis could be a description of the iPhone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LEXae1j6EY&feature=youtu.be&t=1h3m14s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LEXae1j6EY&feature=youtu...
- TechNewb 15y agoSteve Jobs describes the iPhone experience at WWDC 1997 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LEXae1j6EY&feature=youtu.be&t=1h3m17s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LEXae1j6EY&feature=youtu...