
Vintage Steve Jobs footage on Apple (1980) - taylorbuley
http://www.computerhistory.org/highlights/stevejobs/video/
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skore
Interesting video, particularly seeing him reminisce about their hacker roots
("liberating" designs, "studying" what other companies are doing, buying parts
on "thin air and enthusiasm") and "building tools". His justification for that
is talking about how technology enables people. The same rhetoric that he used
ever since, even if his position on "liberation" of technology changed
somewhat over the years. I really still enjoy his presentations, particularly
the more intimate and insightful ones like this one. But with all the talk
about building bicycles, I wish he hadn't spent his later years building so
many cars.

Don't get me wrong - I love to see how the iPad just shattered the barrier of
entry for non-technical users, even though I'm a FOSS guy. But I do think that
it was at too great (and an unnecessarily so) a cost to the understanding of
that technology.

[edit]Oh yeah, forgot to say: A post mildly critical of Mr. Jobs - Keep the
downvotes coming!

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appleflaxen
That's exactly the part that stuck out to me, too (2:36 for the curious, and
again at 3:05).

It makes him look like a complete hypocrite. It's not unique to Steve Jobs;
it's human nature. But it's still kind of distasteful to see.

~~~
skore
I wouldn't got as far as saying that it makes him look like a complete
hypocrite. After all, much of the rest of the talk, he makes no secret of his
business-sense ("saw dollar signs"). To me, Mr. Jobs was above all a
pragmatist, which is how he can reconcile both the hacking in his early and
the position against hacking in his later career.

I suppose it's all just part of the natural circle-of-life thing - in his
later days, he would probably just brush off questions about this with "being
young and wild" or something similar. This change of focus is typical for a
matured businessman and puts him at a disadvantage against fresh entrepreneurs
and innovators. But that's just how the world turns.

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mbateman
Steve Jobs was definitely not a pragmatist. He believed there is a moral
dimension to his work and products.

~~~
skore
Those are not mutually exclusive. He certainly cared about the moral
dimension, but it was never a priority. He always introduced as much of his
moral dimension as possible, which is what he deserves credit for.

But again - that's a pragmatic thing to do. He'd never let it ruin good
business. In fact, quite the opposite is true - he did embrace it if it was
good business.

~~~
mbateman
Well, they are contraries as you present it, and they aren't mutually
exclusive only insofar as someone is being inconsistent. "Pragmatic" usually
means someone who doesn't act on principle, who is willing to be inconsistent
to satisfy his desires, etc.

I don't know if I can prove it but I think the moral had priority for Steve.
This can be seen most clearly in his anger in certain cases (like the Gizmodo
phone theft, or his view that Android was intellectual theft), in which he
stated explicitly that he would rather act on principle rather than do the
pragmatic thing, e.g. (paraphrasing) "I would rather give up the company than
let them get away with this." But it can also be seen in other cases as well.

I think he was unusually consistent and principled, but with an unusual
conception about what is morally right. I don't think he saw making money as
pragmatic and bringing technology to the masses as moral, for example. I think
he saw shaping the world according to his vision as moral, and thought both
money and technology played an important role in that.

~~~
skore
I go by the wiktionary definition here: "Practical, concerned with making
decisions and actions that are useful in practice, not just theory". To me,
"pragmatic" does not carry any negative connotation.

Say for instance when Apple changed to greener manufacturing technology. They
didn't do that outright, in fact, it took long years of public scrutiny to tip
the scales to a direction where selling "green" technology was actually a
smart business decision. In a way, they _had_ to play the game that way and
they often do - by keeping their position undefined until there is an
opportunity to make a big statement to differentiate themselves. Now, other
companies making similar pledges carry no meaning anymore.

I don't think that the "intellectual theft" in terms of Android really amounts
to much but hot air to please stockholders. The facts certainly do not justify
his anger. Over all the years, Apple has had to suffer a very basic issue -
they do existing things, just a lot more refined. (To me, most of Apples
innovation is in how they sell technology, not in what it is or does.) There
is tons of prior art that they built upon themselves and being _that_ outraged
by the case of android following in their footsteps is simply not logical.

Like any salesman, Mr. Jobs did not like to show his cards, as there is always
a necessary amount of building-on-sand-near-water, when you create theater
like he did to sell his products. And I believe that's also the reason why he
was so enraged by the Gizmodo phone theft. Not because his morals were hurt.
It was that people messed with his game.

I also don't think that he saw "bringing technology to the masses" as moral,
but it sure is a good way to sell technology. His beliefs about empowering
people with technology may or may not have been important to him, but he sure
selected them and portrayed them as means to a certain end.

So yes, maybe we only differ on our definition of pragmatic. I agree that his
big thing was following his vision, but I maintain that to realize that
vision, he had to make a lot of very pragmatic decisions. Turning his
"inspired" hacker youth into a walled-garden adulthood is a sign of that to
me.

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famousactress
_We attract people on the basis of an opportunity to work your butt off and
get it done right, and see it get out the door without getting all screwed
up._

I wish someone had said this out loud in my presence a long time ago. It's
always been the most important thing about my satisfaction with employment,
but I honestly hadn't really 100% understood how important it was to me until
working at my current gig (some 12 years into my career).

But yeah. That. Exactly that.

~~~
buro9
I've managed to do that throughout my career... until my current position. And
not shipping, let alone not shipping quality, has been the biggest hit on my
morale.

For me, quitting the day job to return to being my own boss is very much about
re-focusing on shipping quality. It's less about the chance to be rich, and
more about a chance to feel proud in what I've accomplished.

Job satisfaction is such an undefined term, but this is a big part of that
definition for me.

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dabent
It's something to see how people asked "What we've got right now is just fine,
VisiCalc runs fast enough. Some of the database stuff runs fast enough. What
are we going to do with this extra awesome power?" and what Jobs' response
was.

He wanted to use that power to get that one-on-one interaction go smoother,
which is what exactly it look like he did, up to the iPad.

It's also interesting that he mentioned the possibility of World War III,
which was indeed on people's minds at the time.

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lazerwalker
I love at 19:50 when he's talking about diversifying Apple's product line to
have a bunch of different computers that each have a different emphasis in
interaction. Not only does it sound like he's describing a business model that
lends itself to creating something like the iPad, but he even uses the exact
same car/truck metaphor he ended up using to describe the difference between
the Mac and the iPad.

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akamaka
Fantastic! I highly recommend watching the bit starting from 2:30. It goes
against the myth of Steve Jobs as having a magical talent for envisioning
finished products.

He says that when they started out: -They had no idea what people would use
these things for -Designed for 6 months and finally built their first computer
-All their friends wanted one, but it took 40 hours to build and debug a
single machine -They spent all their spare time helping their friends build
computers -So they decided to print circuit boards and sell them, to cut down
assembly to 5-10 hours -They scrounged up $1300 to have a circuit board laid
out -One day, when Jobs was out selling circuit boards, he met someone who
wanted to buy 50, but insisted that the machines be fully assembled -And so
on...

Quite a different story than the usual version, which portrays Jobs as a
natural genius of knowing exactly what people want before they knew
themselves.

~~~
johnx123-up

       Liberated some parts from HP
    

What is the meaning of it? Copying? or?

~~~
fjarlq
It means instead of buying their own computer parts, they helped themselves to
the supplies at HP and Atari, where Woz and Jobs worked during the day.

HP and Atari probably didn't notice or didn't care.

He's referring to when Apple was just starting out and they didn't have much
capital.

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dsulli
I just finished reading his biography, so it's interesting to see the young
Steve. For historical context, their main products at the time were the Apple
II and Apple III, so this was before the GUI / Lisa / Mac.

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robinhowlett
It's interesting to see how many of the same anecdotes he reuses. I think this
must be the fourth time I've heard him tell the "bicycle" story.

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veesahni
on youtube: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lvMgMrNDlg>

~~~
yeggeyegge
Thanks this link works on iOS

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mkramlich
a master communicator and inspirer

