
Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing (1996) - _hv99
http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs_pr.html
======
lectrick
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.

~~~
thirsteh
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.

~~~
legohead
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.

~~~
S_A_P
I may be wrong about this, but I believe that Steve Jobs did give away quite a
bit of money. I think he always did it anonymously, which, if true I admire
much more than someone who has a lot of pomp and circumstance around their
philanthropic activities. I cant say this with certainty though, but few
people really know what he did with his money so Im in no position to judge...

~~~
chongli
_I admire much more than someone who has a lot of pomp and circumstance around
their philanthropic activities_

Why? People who make a big deal about their philanthropy often do so in order
to encourage others to join the cause. How is that in any way a bad thing?

~~~
S_A_P
I think that some people may flaunt their philanthropy as a trophy of what a
"great person" they are. I personally think there are ways to encourage people
to join/support a cause without flaunting the XX millions of dollars you have
given to it.

I admire someone who supports a cause because they believe in it and not for
the kudos the support may bring them. That isn't to say that I don't admire
the super wealthy like Bill Gates and his philanthropic causes. I am really
glad he has dedicated such a large chunk of wealth to humanitarian causes.

~~~
chongli
_I think that some people may flaunt their philanthropy as a trophy of what a
"great person" they are_

Do you have an example of someone like this? Someone who flaunts philanthropy
and actual harm occurs as a consequence of this?

------
adventured
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
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.

~~~
300bps
_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.

------
calinet6
"The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we
will have."

A cogent argument for more liberal arts education.

~~~
Jgrubb
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.

~~~
alexirobbins
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...](http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113670/sci-fi-will-save-liberal-
arts)

------
imd23
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.

~~~
M4v3R
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.

~~~
bsbechtel
>>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?

~~~
M4v3R
I remember reading that in the "Steve Jobs" by Isaacson book. Basically, pre-
NeXT jobs was a douche thinking that he is above everyone and everything.
While some of this didn't change later, he began to appreciate other people
more and learned how to find and take care of great people that helped build
the empire that Apple is today.

~~~
altcognito
By insuring they couldn't find better jobs elsewhere.

~~~
300bps
In case anyone is wondering what you mean:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/24/us-apple-google-
se...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/24/us-apple-google-settlement-
idUSBREA3N1Y120140424)

------
easytiger
> 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
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
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.

~~~
bluedino
And before computers you had to use more sources than just the encyclopedia.

------
shaanvp5
Great read. Definitely worth a read.

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

~~~
lectrick
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

~~~
bennyg
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.

~~~
danoprey
Prime example of anecdotal evidence not being worth much. You're subject to
bias based on your income level: [http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/05/android-
iphone-state/](http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/05/android-iphone-state/)

~~~
bennyg
I meant demographically age-wise not job-wise. Either way, you're right, it's
just anecdotal. But I'd love to see the breakdown for 18-30 year olds in
geographic regions around the country, and then for countries in general.

------
insensed
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?

~~~
M4v3R
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
In fact when Jobs first arrived back at Apple, "objects" was (apparently)
[http://arstechnica.com/staff/2008/04/rhapsody-and-
blues/](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."'

------
dkyc
_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.

------
JacobAldridge
Single page
[http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs_pr.html](http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs_pr.html)

~~~
snlacks
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.

~~~
snlacks
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.

------
dcgoss
"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
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.

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

~~~
techrat
And entirely preventable. Dude was an arrogant shitehead.

~~~
raverbashing
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

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jpswade
Here's everything on one page:
[http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs_pr.html](http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs_pr.html)

~~~
dang
Thanks! Changed.

