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Steve Jobs Interview in 1981 [video]
- duxup 6y agoWhen I was younger I never quite got what Steve talked about sometimes / wasn't interested. I think I dismissed it as PR hype or whatever (don't listen to the man in the suit!). Now I hear it and with hindsight and probably just being in the future decades later it seems so on point and such a simple explanation for what to me earlier (if I really thought about it) seemed like "Man for that to be there has to be... <brain seizes up>". His explanations seem effortless.
- uniqueid 6y agoin the suit In the tee shirt! SJ may have worn a suit or a turtle-neck, but Apple culture back then was anti-IBM and tee shirts were part of that.
- duxup 6y agoMe when I was younger "Don't fall for the lack of a suit, it's still there!"
- etempleton 6y agoThis is Steve's gift. He understands complex and abstracts concepts and is able to offer up a simple analogy or explanation that anyone can understand. It seems easy, but if you have spent time around enough highly intelligent and technical folks you will know it is not a common trait.
- WalterBright 6y agoThis was Feynman's superpower, too.
- th0ma5 6y agoI found this audio recording of an Apple user's group meeting very fascinating from 1978. https://archive.org/details/camvchm_000069/camvchm_000069_t01_a_access.mp3 https://archive.org/details/camvchm_000069/camvchm_000069_t0... Woz at one point talks about how if you don't understand the undocumented instructions maybe they aren't for you. Anyway, kind of nice ambience to it as well.
- uniqueid 6y agoWow, Apple was two years old at that point!
- cronix 6y agoOfficially, but Jobs/Woz were making and selling illegal blue tone boxes 10 years before that around 1972. They allowed you to basically steal phone time from the phone companies by simulating the sounds that nickles/dimes/quarters made when inserting them into a payphone so you didn't have to pay to use the phone for local or long distance calls. https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/10/27/blue-box-circuit-board-designed-by-steve-wozniak-to-hit-auction-block https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/10/27/blue-box-circuit-...
- wittjeff 6y agoA 'blue box' routed calls through the network. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box A red box simulated the tones made when coins were inserted into a pay phone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_box_(phreaking) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_box_(phreaking)
- ChrisArchitect 6y agoshrug Everyone still called it blue boxing when you were putting tones into the phone
- teddyh 6y ago
- ChrisArchitect 6y agosource of the interview or location??
- uniqueid 6y agoI don't know who posted the clip on Youtube. I assume the location is Bandley 1. I don't know what the show was. It's around the same time as the ABC Nightline clip which has done the rounds on the internet for a few years, but probably unrelated since none of this footage is in the Nightline segment.
- RareSirMix 6y agoThis was done for ABC News on technology and computer gaming becoming more prevalent from what I remember. As for location other people probably have better guesses than me. I didn't include the footage but later on the computer behind him gets shown off by someone not Steve. The piece later goes to an arcade machine manufacturing plant. I'll have to review the footage again and get back on all that.
- Tenal 6y agoJobs looked bored. I'm bored. This guy wasn't a God. This is just a rudimentary PR-enforced interview capture. The way people hang on every mundane word that comes out of certain people's mouths is tribalistic to a disturbing monkey degree.
- kaliszad 6y agoCertainly people hang on words from Steve Jobs. Some for a good reason and others as worshippers maybe. A good reason to listen might be, he has some useful insights, he has actually shown the overall approach and execution is desirable/ works.
- raymond_goo 6y agoAnyone knows who that person in the framed picture is?
- bjornlouser 6y agoJoan Baez?
- mwcremer 6y agoYes. They dated in the 80's.
- js2 6y agoNo, that’s not her. Also, they didn’t meet till 1982. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/new-steve-jobs-bio-reveals-details-of-his-relationships-with-bob-dylan-bono-189977/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/new-steve-jobs...
- matthoiland 6y ago> Man riding a bicycle was twice as [efficient] as the condor - way off the end of list [compared to all other animals]. And what it really illustrated was mans ability as a toolmaker, to fashion a tool that can amplify an inherent ability that he has. > That's exactly what we think we're doing here – we think we're basically fashioning a 21st century bicycle here, which can amplify an inherent intellectual ability that man has and really take care of a lot of drudgery to free people to do much more creative work. My takeaway of this perspective really illuminates the value of augmented reality (AR) over virtual reality (VR). The escapism of VR is fine for entertainment, but amplifying our understanding of the real-time real world with AR is very exciting as a species.
- mlyle 6y agoSo much of our reasoning is abstract and removed from immediate physical reality, and VR alone may very well prove to be a powerful tool for understanding, reasoning, and conceptualizing these things. Even when I'm designing physical things there often isn't a real-world context to relate them to, yet. That is-- the jury is out on how much augmented reality is necessary to be "useful" versus immersion/"escapism". And even seemingly escapist things can be great for increasing intuition or our strengths in reasoning about things... witness Kerbal Space Program or Poly Bridge.
- matthoiland 6y agoI really like your argument concerning reasoning – especially considering how we can experiment with the "shadows" of four dimensional shapes in VR. Science, research, reasoning – all very likely to be revolutionized with VR. But in daily life – always on – I believe AR will be as common as putting on shoes to protect our soft feet.
- nkrebs13 6y agoI think VR will be much more important than AR in the long run. The technology isn't there yet, obviously, but in the long run. I think viewing VR as an escapism entertainment medium is far too close minded. Sufficiently advanced VR would be able to simulate your actual environment* and anything else AR could simulate. There are also many more functional applications of VR than AR. Random examples to illustrate my point: * Can train on the "real thing" instead of watching videos, doing exercises/drills, or reading books (e.g. military, pilots, surgeons, construction workers). * You and your coworkers could all go to an "in office" meeting without being in the same hemisphere (i.e. it would look like you were all sitting in an office together) * Students wouldn't have to sit through another boring lecture to learn, they could go there and watch it unfold for themselves (even if the lecture content takes place over a large period of time!) *by this I mean within the scope and context of whatever you're doing and not that the VR simulation would be created perfectly down to the last atom
- _the_inflator 6y ago"I know the privacy issue is very, very hot in the media these days" https://youtu.be/DbfejwP1d3c?t=613 https://youtu.be/DbfejwP1d3c?t=613 Funny to be reminded of that fact by someone from 1981.
- criddell 6y agoAbout a minute after that he starts talking about how more and more of the computer's power will be used to adapt the computer to a more human-friendly way of working. A simpler UI requires a more sophisticated computer. Pretty insightful.
- kaliszad 6y agoOf course much of this lost power is due to browsers providing mostly terrible, inconsistently implemented and at times buggy APIs that are suited for blogs and news papers but not really any graphically demanding stuff. Yes, you can hack around the APIs, you can also just do everything from scratch again obviating much of the browser but I don't think that is something laudable... and then we have Safari which is basically the modern IE. Somebody misspoke and said Sahara instead of Safari on a call and I found that quite fitting actually. Nothing of what I describe makes the UX better for anybody, not even the developers of the web browser.
- criddell 6y agoFrom a user perspective, putting things in a browser is a lateral move at best and probably a bit of a regression. Desktop computing really hasn't changed much since the 90's. Wiring everything together was the big change after that. Since then more interesting things are happening elsewhere like voice assistants. I can just say "play hound dog by elvis" while I'm driving and within seconds it's playing. Or "navigate home" and I get turn-by-turn directions. That's pretty remarkable. If somebody figures AR out, that could be the next big UI/UX frontier.
- kaliszad 6y ago
- temp8964 6y agoWho is in the portrait behind him?
- petercooper 6y agoNice little bit after the interview is over (at 18:30) where Steve says: "I haven't taken a vacation in a long time. That's how I measure whether I'm successful, is whether I can take off for three months. So far I'm not successful."
- azinman2 6y agoThree months is a long time! I've never understood who 'summers' somewhere and how. You have to have enough money to go spend 3 months somewhere expensive, yet don't you also need to work a ton in order to do that (which would also include the summer)? It's a common enough expression that it can't just be only retired people who do that...
- nicbou 6y agoContractors who get paid more and take time off between contracts. Seasonal workers. People whose work is not tied to hours worked. People whose work can be set aside temporarily. For example, I run a content-based website. Though it requires content updates, if I only work 5 hours a week, no one will really notice. I can and do work on the road.
- johbjo 6y agoThe bicycle quip appears in so many videos from around that time. Interpret Jobs videos as case studies in a type of marketing. He's framing Apple marketing as "it's so exciting that we can help people so much", but it's honest and actually true. The best videos of Jobs are the rare internal ones. Also, he's 25 in this video? wtf
- JKCalhoun 6y agoIt bothers me a bit. Having heard it now in so many contexts it is clear it was not spontaneous ... in fact several other tells in this interview make it clear very little was spontaneous when Steve was facing the media. I suppose I am not surprised by that — that's what marketing does. The bicycle analogy looks particularly transparent though: there's a pseudo-intellectual aspect to it, even name-dropping "Scientific American" seems to be there to make the speaker appear well-read, a deep thinker. It works though a lot better than his electric motor analogy that he lead off with. ;-)
- anonymouse008 6y agoThis. Though I will say, he was still brilliant and quick outside of these settings. Perhaps the training to prepare for these appearances made his moment at Macworld taking on the 'Mr. Jobs' question a thousand times easier, but still in that moment was a critical one - a public challenge - and Steve knew how to move that whole conversation back from himself to supporting his team, which was brilliant, because everyone wants to feel they have someone fighting for them... especially when the landscape/future is squishy and uncertain.
- Hammershaft 6y ago> his moment at Macworld taking on the 'Mr. Jobs' question a thousand times easier, but still in that moment was a critical one - a public challenge What was this? I've never heard of it.
- AlanYx 6y ago
- beforeolives 6y agoIt's interesting to see him at a point when he's still figuring out his style and way of speaking. Most of the answers that he gives sound like stuff that he's clearly said before in different context. As if he has a prepared list of analogies and references that he reaches for every time instead of genuinely answering the question. At the time of the video he's still learning how to do this and it seems very different from the sharp Jobs from later years.
- haydenlee 6y agoCool to see hear his 1984 analogy a few years before they made it into the famous 1984 super bowl ad.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tpmx 6y agoThat moment 4m15s in when he realizes his answer is way too complicated, stops talking in the middle of a sentence (thereby making that recorded video unusable) and asks if he could have another shot at answering the question. The next iteration is dramatically simplified. This is communication masterclass level, already back then. How the heck did he get to there, so early?
- duxup 6y agoIt's a funny contrast considering his comment about lowest common denominator at the start ;) He knows he has to play that game too.
- adventured 6y agoThe skills we use at ~26 are being actively developed throughout childhood and our teen years, just typically not consciously. Most likely the device he's employing he had utilized frequently when he was growing up, perhaps as a means to convince other kids to do what he wanted or otherwise to get his way (whether with his peers, parents or other authority figures). It's Tom Sawyer's whitewashed fence. Jobs is trying to manipulate your mind and I don't mean that in a sinister way. Also keep in mind, Dale Carnegie's book How to Win Friends and Influence People was published in 1936 and was a very well-known book throughout Steve's life. There is a pretty good chance he ran across a few books like that which would have aided his advancement in manipulating impression, narrative or outcomes. He didn't have to entirely invent the wheel in that sense.
- mynameishere 6y agoI mean, he just flubbed it and asked for a retake. Happens all the time. By the way, he's dead. You can quit kissing his ass.
- tpmx 6y agoYeah, there is no ass-kissing going on here - on the contrary... I think he was brilliant at marketing and communication, but that's not what technology (primarily) should be about. I do think it's interesting to find out how he got so insanely good at marcom so early, though.
- tdaltonc 6y ago40 years later and video games still make Apple very uncomfortable.
- sneak 6y agoIf a personal computer is like a bicycle for your mind, augmenting and expanding your own intellect, what does that make a modern smartphone, where the what and how you use it is dictated by remote parties instead of your own needs and ideas? It's really interesting to see Apple leading the way toward "impersonal" computing devices like this, considering.
- ALittleLight 6y agoI think a phone is a huge step forward in fulfilling the bicycle for the mind analogy. The phone makes it really easy to Google things, take notes, send messages, pictures, etc. If you don't like notifications you can reconfigure them.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Nelkins 6y agoIncredible that he was only 25 when this was recorded...
- suyash 6y agoListen to what Steve said - just replace when he says "computer" with "ai" - it will totally make sense today!
- criddell 6y agoIn 1981 you could replace "computer" with "ai" and it would have made sense. I suspect that forty years from now it will still be true.
- ksec 6y agoWe are in 2021 and there are still new ( old ) video and audio resources from Steve Jobs that we had never seen before. Did someone somehow had a VHS type and discover we had this video and upload it? If not what the story behind the discovery of this video and interview? And I sort of think Steve is still very much Steve even in his early 20s. His understanding of market, business, computing and user experience. Apple just isn't the same without him.
- tpmx 6y agoProbably some broadcaster employee who saved some tapes from destruction a decade or two later. See also: r/DataHoarder. Aren't we all lucky?
- RareSirMix 6y agoThis is all thanks to ABC archiving everything, not an employee saving a tape. However that does happen sometimes at other networks. ABC and WGBH/PBS are some of the better ones you can find almost full digitized archives of online. Other broadcasters like NBC didn't save tapes until 1980 (multiple Late Night with Letterman episode masters being lost as an example). CNN is another somewhat bad one, they literally threw all the masters to their theme music in the dumpster, but an employee saved them all. They have an internal archive of tapes as well as the "CNN Collection" but it's spotty.
- tpmx 6y agoOh, ABC/PBS have mostly digitized archives online? Where? How did you get access to this video to post it on Youtube? (Anyway, thanks for doing it!)
- RareSirMix 6y agoYep. ABC is less digitized and hides most full broadcast programs from the public (gotta be an employee for that). But https://www.abcnewsvsource.com/ https://www.abcnewsvsource.com/ is the Silverlight run site with everything. Someone should probably archive everything incase the Silverlight shutdown this year kills the site. Ripping it is mildly easy. PBS/WGBH stores everything at https://americanarchive.org/ https://americanarchive.org/ which for copyright reasons, some stuff can only be viewed at the LOC or WGBH. The physical only content includes a number of interesting items though like the few Mr. Rogers episodes not aired on Twitch, or around 2000 non-public but aired Sesame Street episodes.
- wiremine 6y agoThanks for sharing, this is great. The level of discourse of the interview feels so much higher than a lot of the interviews I see today. I was just a kid back in the early 1980s, so I don't have a good frame of reference, but does anyone have any data to support that feeling?
- blacktriangle 6y agoAnother famous interview I remember from the 80s was Phil Donahue interviewing Ayn Rand. Regardless of what you think of either of them, the conversation is more like this video and way above the sadness that is a contemporary interview.
- khazhoux 6y agoNah. You're seeing the raw footage. The final cut, after edits and splices, will be shorter and less detailed. And there's plenty of great interviews today, and terrible interviews back then. Just pick your forum.
- Austin_Conlon 6y agoAnother interesting one from 1991: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_t-iKeWdRI&t https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_t-iKeWdRI&t.
- kaliszad 6y ago8m36s This is exactly what we see as well at OrgPad.com Instead of writing long text where you have to think about form to structure your thoughts linearly, OrgPad lets people just write those thoughts down in little cells or bubbles and connect them freely. We let people include pictures, videos, other websites (like Google Maps, Google Calendar, Wikipedia a document from Google Docs, other OrgPages etc.) and files into such cells. The way such a document is structured already conveys so much subtle hints about the topic and the person writing about it. If used frankly and deeply, OrgPad can be like a mirror to ones mind as the tool is simple and out of the way letting you work, think, enjoy. Listening to Steve Jobs even when he was quite young is very much resonating with us because he valued simplicity, creativity and wanted to empower individuals to do great things. We are also influenced greatly by Rich Hickey and Clojure/ ClojureScript that we use to write OrgPad. Thanks to mostly my colleague Pavel Klavík, we have some quite smart things in our code base. Some of those will go live in the next few days such as physical animations using differential equations calculated live in JS and written as CSS transform or SVG animate for greater efficiency. Everybody else either uses simulation and rewrites the position each frame (if they don't miss it) or just use linear animations that are frankly not very pretty. We are also writing our own collaborative rich text editor that should be ready to ship sometime at the end of summer. It will be similarly sophisticated as Google Writer/ Sheets where it makes sense and much simpler at that. We have the advantage, that OrgPad is much more about the content and connections between ideas and not at all about printing to paper or following established norms. Therefore, it is much more useful in the current digital world.
- als0 6y agoThere's another great one of Jobs in 1991, ten years later. The footage is equally raw! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_t-iKeWdRI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_t-iKeWdRI
- jimmaswell 6y agoWhy does anyone still talk about Steve Jobs on technical forums? He was an extraordinary salesman and a functioning but abusive top-level product manager, nothing more.
- Tycho 6y agoNapoleon, Caesar, Paton - functioning but abusive top-level battle managers, nothing more.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoAnd now 40 years later, we are back into 1984. Centralized systems ("the cloud" and large companies) have taken over privacy.
- Black101 6y agoPrivacy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbfejwP1d3c&t=612s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbfejwP1d3c&t=612s
- bern4444 6y agoVery cool video, I enjoyed how even then he was thinking about "intelligent devices" when he talks about intelligent ATMs and intelligent video games. I wonder if this was always present in his mind and helped lead to the term "smart phone".
- wunderflix 6y agoI miss him every day... RIP
- mtalhaashraf 6y agoWhat I see is that he has gone way ahead in understanding the technicalities of the problems and then come back in the explanation to help it make sense. My experiences have also shown the same strategy to be effective. Just understanding a problem and its solution is not enough. One has to simplify its explanation so that everyone can grasp it.