Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing (1996)

http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs_pr.html

by _hv99 • 12 years ago

102 86 12 years ago

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imd23• 12 years ago

This is one of the best interviews I've ever read/seen from him. Why? because it's different. It really seems it was made in a very pessimist time for him, he didn't even believed he could revolutionize anything anymore with tech.

It's amazing the passion he had for design in the product creation.

M4v3R3• 12 years ago

He learned some humility back then in NeXT when not much went as planned for him, a quality, which would help him in later years in Apple. Jobs himself said that this experience was necessary and would define his future years.

This shows that nearly every bad thing that happens to you ends at some point, and it is up to you to convert it to something good.

bsbechtel2• 12 years ago

>He learned some humility back then in NeXT when not much went as planned for him, a quality, which would help him in later years in Apple. Jobs himself said that this experience was necessary and would define his future years.

Could you expand on this? Was it a move to more consumer testing and validation of product development ideas, or something else?

shaanvp5• 12 years ago

Great read. Definitely worth a read.

Interestingly, Apple has become the middleman on mobile that he warned us Microsoft might be on web.

lectrick6• 12 years ago

How is that? Android has FAR more marketshare relative to what Apple has in this space now, than what Microsoft had relative to Apple on desktops

bennyg8• 12 years ago

I hate that statistic. Apple makes far more money from their App Store sales than Google does, and Google supposedly owns a substantially larger part of that market. I'd like to see breakdowns of this market share geographically. I'd like to see U.S. market share, and then regionally in the U.S. how that market share pans out. And then demographically how that pans out. In my demographic, in the Southeast U.S., I can anecdotally tell you that Android does not have anywhere close to the market share that iPhone does.

easytiger• 12 years ago

What's wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology. No amount of technology will make a dent.

Completely agree. Ironically one of the issues now is the pushing of tablets into schools for the sake of it with no real educational use case

DavidSJ• 12 years ago

We've been promised that computers would revolutionize education for the last 30 years. Computers are amazing tools for open-ended play and exploration. But there's no place for open-ended play and exploration in our school system.

Desktop computers -- and today, tablets -- have been round-pegged into the existing school structure: they're aids to do your homework, and that's about it. You can look something up on Wikipedia for your history essay, but want to dick around in Python for 6 hours or build something amazing in Minecraft with people from another continent? Good luck.

lostcolony• 12 years ago

You can look something up on wikipedia, then be told by the teacher that Wikipedia is not a primary source when you try and cite it. So you look at Wikipedia's citations, and find they're paywalled.

The internet is conducive to learning; it's not conducive to our educational establishment's hoops.

Decade• 12 years ago

Utopian ideas never play out as intended in reality. Re: The history of radio and TV, how people thought they would be educational tools.

Computers are tools of limitless possibility, but I hardly ever see them used that way. Much more often, I see kids use the computers to play shooting games and watch pirated streams of sports broadcasts.

I think this is partly the baneful legacy of Bill Gates, with his attitude that only he gets the privilege of modifying his software and ordinary people pay him to receive his perfect writings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists

Computers and the Internet are a major challenge to traditional schooling, however. I see very few kids try to wrestle with the questions. For example, in the Great Gatsby, why would Tom lie about Daisy being a Catholic? http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/why-would-tom-lie-about-... Change a few words, homework is done, time for more League of Legends.

The whole curriculum needs to be redone. We need the freedom to dick around, but we must also recognize that very, very few kids will make anything good out of it.

bsbechtel2• 12 years ago

Agreed, but also, ironically, many kids learn more about technology on their own today, without any formal education on the subject. Look at how many programmers reside in SV w/o a college degree.

Shivetya• 12 years ago

It is the same problem in schools which is on our streets. The government employee unions wield so much power that teachers are absolved from teaching and the police are absolved from behaving properly. They own the politicians.

insensed• 12 years ago

Here's an interesting thought. When Jobs spoke of "Objects", did he fundamentally mean C++? Obj-C? Smalltalk? Or perhaps another level of abstraction like containerization?

nostromo• 12 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebObjects

M4v3R3• 12 years ago

He spoke about Object Oriented Programming as a paradigm, but many times he referred to WebObjects, an OOP web framework that NeXT developed. Interesingly, Apple Store and other Apple websites still use this tech.

leoc• 12 years ago

In fact when Jobs first arrived back at Apple, "objects" was (apparently) http://arstechnica.com/staff/2008/04/rhapsody-and-blues/ still his intended way forward:

'The defining event of the Jobs 2.0 era relationship between Apple and Adobe was the creation and subsequent scuttling of the Rhapsody project. Rhapsody was Apple's original plan for a new operating system based on the recently purchased NeXT technology.

Rhapsody's proposition for Mac software developers was simple: write your applications using these NeXT-derived APIs. These are the APIs that eventually became Cocoa, and there was much to recommend them even back then. But for Mac developers with substantial existing code bases, the proposition was more aptly phrased, "rewrite your applications using these NeXT-derived APIs."

It was a hard sell, to be sure. The sweetener that Apple hoped would push the deal over the top was that applications written using this API could also be compiled to run on Windows. And so the complete pitch to the Adobes and Microsofts of the world was this: rewrite your huge existing applications using these APIs and end up with a single code base for both Mac and Windows. Alternately, just rewrite the Mac versions of your applications using these new APIs.

The answer from the Mac development community was, essentially, "Yeah, uh, no thanks."'

coldcode• 12 years ago

I started with WO on NeXT in 1998, it was a amazing way to build web applications (in the pre-JS days). There are still WO apps in use today. The biggest benefit was Enterprise Objects, which Core Data is based on today on iOS, which made messing with big databases pretty easy. It was written in Objective-C at the time which was pretty oddball, but at Apple it eventually moved to Java and then become less supported as Apple clearly had other priorities. But WO was a lot of fun to work with even on large projects.

dzhiurgis• 12 years ago

The way he pushes WebObjects sounds like yet another API standard. We keep chasing this integration/communication/data interchange unicorn to todays date.

calinet66• 12 years ago

It was more just a web framework based on containers.

AngularJS directives are the most modern version of it I can think of. Something somewhat reusable and modular that you can just plug in and run on any page.

But it perhaps has a long way to go before it fulfills what he talked about here, such as encapsulation of CSS in an elegant way, and remote loading.

sehr• 12 years ago

Web Components do that exact thing!

JacobAldridge• 12 years ago

Single page http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs_pr.html

snlacks2• 12 years ago

Interesting, on page 2:

"There are three parts to the Web. One is the client, the second is the pipes, and the third is the servers.

...

On the client side, there's the browser software. In the sense of making money, it doesn't look like anybody is going to win on the browser software side, because it's going to be free.

...

And then there's the typical hardware. It's possible that some people could come out with some very interesting Web terminals and sell some hardware.

...

But with Web server software, no one company has more than a single-digit market share yet. Netscape sells hardly any, because you can get free public-domain software and it's very good. Some people say that it's even better than what you can buy."

I'm not an apple fan, nor a Steve Jobs fan, but this prediction changed a lot of our preceptions about the internet and what computing means.

Whether this vision shaped the internet and computing or it was truly prophetic, I don't know. But still, really interesting to think about how our visions might turn into.

snlacks2• 12 years ago

I'd guess that it was his vision that made this happen, because he was wrong about browsers. The browser makers who see/saw potential for income generation came out on top of the browser market.

adventured• 12 years ago

This is interesting:

"It's certainly not going to be like the first time somebody saw a television. It's certainly not going to be as profound as when someone in Nebraska first heard a radio broadcast. It's not going to be that profound."

That's exactly what it was like for me, back in the mid 1990s, using WebChat Broadcasting System for the first time.

I didn't care much for computers growing up in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I found them useful primarily for gaming. When I first used the Internet, it was like lightning struck, I knew immediately what it would mean, and how big it could be one day. I viewed it as an infinite canvas. Watching the early explosion of web sites just reinforced that. The computer became nothing more than a vehicle to get to the Internet for me, and it still is to this day. It completely altered my life, growing up in the middle of nowhere Appalachia. It exposed me to a world I would have never touched otherwise. I started my first Internet company with a bunch of Australians circa 1996/97 as a teenager... from nowhere Appalachia. Not as profound as someone in Nebraska hearing a radio broadcast for the first time? I beg to differ.

MrBuddyCasino• 12 years ago

Yes, I think he was wrong on that one, also the objects hype seems a little strange to me. But the rest? Pretty much spot on. In 1996, he saw the critical issues and where the web would go, at a time where most people weren't even aware of its existence. Very impressive.

300bps2• 12 years ago

also the objects hype seems a little strange to me

Well, to someone who was used to procedural level programming, the concepts of object oriented coding were pretty revolutionary. Not surprising if someone who started programming in the last decade finds OOC obvious though.

somehnreader• 12 years ago

also the objects hype seems a little strange to me

That passage struck me as odd as well, the answer is: He is selling something to you as you read it.

A bit obscure because the product doesn't really exist anymore as we read it 18 years later.

jpswade• 12 years ago

Here's everything on one page: http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs_pr.html

dang• 12 years ago

Thanks! Changed.

dkyc• 12 years ago

W: People who have something -

SJ: To sell!

W: To share.

SJ: To sell!

W: You mean publishing?

Funny how the reporter just hears what he wants to hear. Makes me wonder which of the questions asked today will sound like this in 10 years.

calinet66• 12 years ago

"The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have."

A cogent argument for more liberal arts education.

Jgrubb3• 12 years ago

I have a blog post brewing in my head to the effect of "in defense of a liberal arts education". Teaching people how to think for themselves is highly underrated in the current economy, imo.

calinet66• 12 years ago

Yeah, the sad part is that it needs defending. I'd be interested to read it.

alexirobbins• 12 years ago

I too would like to read this. Also worth taking a look at this article from last year, Sci-Fi Will Save the Liberal Arts: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113670/sci-fi-will-save-l...

collyw2• 12 years ago

Maybe get out of your books, away from the computer, and experience life yourself in some way that challenges your comfort zone. Start your own adventure.

calinet66• 12 years ago

Having been through all of, "getting out of my books," "away from the computer," "experiencing life myself," and liberal arts education, I still assert that the education has value.

desouzt• 12 years ago

Another reminder, not that it was needed, of just how tragic his death was, and what a great loss it is.

delinka• 12 years ago

Even sadder to me that he seems to have had a hand in his early death. I realize the advantage of hindsight, and the nearly-pointless pontification of what might have been, but I wish he'd taken the advice he was given and had the surgery much sooner.

techrat• 12 years ago

And entirely preventable. Dude was an arrogant shitehead.

raverbashing• 12 years ago

Sure he was.

That's (part of) how he got there.

Apple might have just become another PC manufacturer if they had someone more centered

lectrick6• 12 years ago

I'm 42 and I've been programming since I was 12. I really always liked this guy and never understood the knee-jerk hate around him. I of course know he's far from perfect- who isn't?- but as far as interesting, game-changing people go, he's up there. At least this interview is showing some of why I felt that way... I read this back when it was published (as I pretty much devoured everything about the computer industry ever since I first touched one around 12 years old)

And as a guy who ended up being a web developer, he was TOTALLY right about the "dark ages" thing. When Internet Explorer had hegemony, web dev was close to torture... It's what made me a back-end developer. Frontend was too painful.

thirsteh4• 12 years ago

It's not knee-jerk hate. He was a business genius, but a fairly rotten person. The latter is why a lot of people don't like him. To see why, read about his behavior at Apple, his daughter Lisa, and check out the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley which gives a taste of both.

bennyg8• 12 years ago

Everyone has flaws. MLK, Jr. was a terrible womanizer but nobody brings that up because it, rightly so, shouldn't taint his civil rights legacy.

legohead• 12 years ago

What I dislike about Jobs was his lack of philanthropism. He had all the money in the world and gave away nothing, which means he didn't give a shit about the rest of the world. He was approached by Gates as part of the Giving Pledge and declined.

Then his decision of alternative medicine to treat his curable cancer. He created technology that touched millions if not billions of people, and a lot of those are kids who probably looked up to him, and then he does stupid shit like that which will influence them in a bad way.

Yes, people are free to do what they want, but I'm also free to call out their stupidity and selfishness.

kevando• 12 years ago

Most prolific people are polarizing by nature. Look at PG

lectrick6• 12 years ago

People disagree with Paul Graham? ;)

digi_owl• 12 years ago

IMO he may be the closest to a P. T. Barnum of tech.

dcgoss• 12 years ago

"The desktop computer industry is dead."

I'm not sure the desktop computer industry will ever really die, at least not soon. Sure, the focus may be shifting more to mobile and web tech, but are we really one day going to be writing apps on our iPhones? Computers, laptop or desktop still have a large foot in the door of the industry, and as long as we still use them they will continue to develop and get better. I'm sure they'll be with us for a while.

simongray• 12 years ago

You're taking his quote out of context. He was talking about competition between Microsoft and Apple in the mid-nineties, not about smartphones (which did not even exist back then). The industry was dead in the sense that no one was innovating in the field of desktop operating systems at the time, according to Jobs.

Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing (1996)

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