
Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985) - valuearb
http://reprints.longform.org/playboy-interview-steve-jobs
======
thecompilr
> Jobs: Computers are actually pretty simple. We’re sitting here on a bench in
> this café [for this part of the Interview]. Let’s assume that you understood
> only the most rudimentary of directions and you asked how to find the rest
> room. I would have to describe it to you in very specific and precise
> instructions. I might say, “Scoot sideways two meters off the bench. Stand
> erect. Lift left foot. Bend left knee until it is horizontal. Extend left
> foot and shift weight 300 centimeters forward…” and on and on. If you could
> interpret all those instructions 100 times faster than any other person in
> this café, you would appear to be a magician: You could run over and grab a
> milk shake and bring it back and set it on the table and snap your fingers,
> and I’d think you made the milk shake appear, because it was so fast
> relative to my perception. That’s exactly what a computer does. It takes
> these very, very simple-minded instructions—“Go fetch a number, add it to
> this number, put the result there, perceive if it’s greater than this other
> number”—but executes them at a rate of, let’s say, 1,000,000 per second. At
> 1,000,000 per second, the results appear to be magic.

Wow, I don't know why but this explanation blows me away. So simple and yet so
accurate.

~~~
eradicatethots
I don’t know, should it be special to be able to explain things? I think it
should actually be normal

~~~
Sangermaine
Most people are actually pretty bad at explaining things in a clear, concise,
helpful way, very often especially people well-versed in the field they are
trying to explain. Communicating complex concepts to non-experts is indeed a
fairly rare skill.

~~~
WalterBright
> pretty bad at explaining things

I find this difficult to believe. An innate ability of humans is to teach
others - evolution has selected for it, because humans need to be taught, as
their living skills are not innate.

~~~
jjeaff
I don't see how the ability to teach others would be an evolved ability.
Learning from others, yes. But teaching others is a different skill than
learning.

~~~
WalterBright
For an obvious, everyday example, parents teach their children a heluva lot.

------
Synaesthesia
1984, pre-internet! Or at least pre WWW and big internet

>Playboy: Those are arguments for computers in business and in schools, but
what about the home?

...

This will change: Computers will be essential in most homes.

Playboy: What will change?

Jobs: The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the
home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. We’re just
in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for
most people—as remarkable as the telephone . Playboy: Specifically, what kind
of breakthrough are you talking about?

Jobs: I can only begin to speculate. We see that a lot in our industry: You
don’t know exactly what’s going to result, but you know it’s something very
big and very good.

~~~
julian_1
> reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it
> into a nationwide communications network.

It's difficult to avoid the comparison with Bill Gate's book "the road ahead"
published a decade later, that first neglected and then had to be revised in
hardback edition to include the internet.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Ahead_(Bill_Gates_boo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Ahead_\(Bill_Gates_book\))

~~~
adventured
Microsoft was utilizing the Internet for business by the mid 1980s, they
weren't oblivious to it. Gates viewed there as being two approaches that might
win, one he preferred to call the Information Superhighway (basically closed
platforms over high-speed cable), and the other being the Internet. He thought
the Internet would lose because of how slow it was in the early days, and it
was very mediocre at video and interaction initially. Gates and Microsoft were
fully aware of the coming value in networking up systems, the only debate was
what form that would take, not whether it would be a big deal.

~~~
julian_1
I remember when the tcp stack for Windows 3x was a third party application.
[https://thanksfortrumpetwinsock.com/](https://thanksfortrumpetwinsock.com/)

------
corford
Beautiful interview. Love him or hate him, you have to respect him.

I loved this passage:

Playboy: Do you know what you want to do with the rest of this lifetime?

Jobs: There’s an old Hindu saying that comes into my mind occasionally: “For
the first 30 years of your life, you make your habits. For the last 30 years
of your life, your habits make you.” As I’m going to be 30 in February, the
thought has crossed my mind.

Playboy: And?

Jobs:

And I’m not sure. I’ll always stay connected with Apple. I hope that
throughout my life I’ll sort of have the thread of my life and the thread of
Apple weave in and out of each other, like a tapestry. There may be a few
years when I’m not there, but I’ll always come back. And that’s what I may try
to do. The key thing to remember about me is that I’m still a student. I’m
still in boot camp. If anyone is reading any of my thoughts, I’d keep that in
mind. Don’t take it all too seriously. If you want to live your life in a
creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be
willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away.
What are we, anyway? Most of what we think we are is just a collection of
likes and dislikes, habits, patterns. At the core of what we are is our
values, and what decisions and actions we make reflect those values. That is
why it’s hard doing interviews and being visible: As you are growing and
changing, the more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you that
it thinks you are, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why
a lot of times, artists have to go, “Bye. I have to go. I’m going crazy and
I’m getting out of here.” And they go and hibernate somewhere. Maybe later
they re-emerge a little differently.

~~~
hellofunk
> For the first 30 years of your life, you make your habits. For the last 30
> years of your life, your habits make you.

So if you live longer than 60, I wonder that means of those years in-between,
after age 30.

~~~
cheez
Trying to undo the damage of the first 30 years.

------
fredliu
>Playboy: And in the meantime?

>Jobs: The developments will be in making the products more and more
portable... maybe the merging of the telephone and the personal computer.

Hard to believe this was 1984, it almost sounded like the original iPhone was
20+ years in baking

~~~
digi_owl
Depends on how much one read into the whole "merging" thing.

Hindsight is 20/20 as they say...

~~~
mikeash
Especially since not “telephone” and “computer” implied non-portability at the
time. A pretty prescient statement even so.

------
ggm
My first computer science lecture in 1979 was on digital convergence and my
lecturer said there, it was actually to all intents and purposes already over,
we were just living through a long tail transition. He put it back to 1962 and
telstar, although doubtless you could push back further.

So if you want to say Jobs was 'visionary' in '85, remember he had 6 years of
lead time, if all he did was pay attention to what was being said in academia
about ubiquitous networks.

The mouse was demo'd in 1968 at the mother by Engelbart. So Again, Jobs was
really just doing a good sell job on something we had pretty deep long insight
into.

Respect is due, but lets temper it. Standing on the shoulders of giants is for
physics. In computer science we stand on each others toes..

~~~
valuearb
Except that no one was building the future the way Jobs did. Having the idea
for something is only part of the battle, actually implementing it in a usable
fashion is the most important part of it.

If you look at the Xerox Alto, and the Macintosh, it's amazing how much more
advanced the Macintosh was at UI and how much easier to use it was, and how
much less expensive it was (Jobs actually supposedly helped design the Mac
mouse, which was really good and super cheap).

~~~
ggm
I think this is true. He was a master at removing things to get the essential
core, but sometimes it felt over-remorselessly. the one-button thing. A good
example of cheap and works: I'm told the floppy disk controller on the apple
II or III was a finite state machine implemented by gate logic and two PROM
memories. I used a lisa in its year of release and the difference between a
lisa and what emerged as that generation of mac was pretty high, but the core?
much the same. Appletalk on twisted pair? no addresses but zeroconf: every
device named itself. That was smart.

------
valuearb
I'm amazed at how mature he sounds in this interview at age 29, like far more
direct, honest, confident and smart than say, Zuckerberg. He was very
prescient and when wrong (he didn't anticipate the clone makers, saying there
wouldn't be another $200M+ PC company) it was an area he really didn't care to
be involved in.

~~~
tw1010
Compared to Zuckerberg, sure. But 29 is hardly that young to be this
articulate and wise. I feel like sentiments like this is much more about hero
worship than a statement about how unusually well spoken he his compared to
most people his age.

~~~
r00fus
Well, it's not meaningful to compare Jobs to Zuck in any way than that they
were founders of large, powerful companies.

I think the more interesting things is that Jobs embodies what Apple did best:
being able to explain/present technology in a very understandable way. I felt
that he didn't make you come to him, he brought it to you.

He was very intelligent, confident and opinionated. But what made him great
was his salesmanship combined with the above. I have yet to see/hear another
tech CEO/founder that made as much sense as Jobs for the things he cared
about.

------
leejoramo
> [the information] revolution will dwarf the petrochemical revolution.

I remember people thinking this was a crazy idea, but his forecast was largely
correct:

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?source=frontpage-
immediat...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?source=frontpage-immediate-
access&i=appl+vs+xom+market+cap)

~~~
barrkel
The petrochemical revolution is more than the market cap of an oil company.
The petrochemical revolution guides the way we've built our cities for the
past 100+ years, how we ship our goods and how we travel the world. The entire
transport system - cars, trucks, ships, planes - almost all petrochemical. And
the negative side too. Vast fields of tarmac (petrochemical) parking lots
(petrochemical) for strip malls. Urban sprawl. Well over a million people
killed on roads every year. Millions more affected by chemical byproducts.
Acid rain. Global warming.

Computers are only getting started. They'll get there eventually though;
computers are to the brain what engines are to the body.

~~~
louprado
> The petrochemical revolution guides the way we've

 _conducted foreign policy_ should have received top billing. Unless you were
intentionally excluding items not in both sets.

~~~
barrkel
Petrochemicals also enabled mechanized warfare. That's a bigger impact on
killing power than any squabbles in the Middle East. I expect deaths in
Levantine squabbles are also dwarfed by road accidents.

------
Tomminn
I've seen this a bunch of times on hn.

Each time I read a little more and notice/learn something new.

I'll be the first to point out his flaws, but goddam Steve Jobs was a smart
guy. It amazes how much he knew exactly what he was doing.

------
leoc
2014 comment thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8316559](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8316559)

(Also, previous postings from 2010
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4619869](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4619869)
and 2012
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4619869](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4619869)
with a single comment each.)

------
jansho
Beautiful interview. I forgot how young, bombastic and intellectual Jobs was
when he started Apple.

> _The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home
> will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. We’re just in
> the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for
> most people—as remarkable as the telephone._

The last bit made me laugh out loud. It's technically true (!) and probably
the iPhone was far more disruptive than personal computers.

------
mehrdada
> You know, Dr. Edwin Land was a troublemaker. He dropped out of Harvard and
> founded Polaroid. Not only was he one of the great inventors of our time
> but, more important, he saw the intersection of art and science and business
> and built an organization to reflect that. Polaroid did that for some years,
> but eventually Dr. Land, one of those brilliant troublemakers, was asked to
> leave his own company—which is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard of.
> So Land, at 75, went off to spend the remainder of his life doing pure
> science, trying to crack the code of color vision. The man is a national
> treasure. I don’t understand why people like that can’t be held up as
> models: This is the most incredible thing to be—not an astronaut, not a
> football player—but this.

Wow. Little did he know it would happen to himself not long after.

------
ykler
"People talked about putting a telegraph on every desk in America to improve
productivity. But it wouldn’t have worked. It required that people learn this
whole sequence of strange incantations, Morse code, dots and dashes, to use
the telegraph. It took about 40 hours to learn. The majority of people would
never learn how to use it." He is probably right. And yet, how tragic. Forty
hours is not that long. Imagine that the telephone hadn't been invented. Would
we still today be living in a society where people went to the telegraph
office to send telegraphs but basically no one could telegraph themselves?

------
dezzeus
> Jobs: [...] there’s been virtually zero innovation since IBM got dominant
> control of that market place 15 years ago. They are going to do the same
> thing in every other sector of the computer market place if they can get
> away with it. The IBM PC fundamentally brought no new technology to the
> industry at all. It was just repackaging and slight extension of Apple II
> technology, and they want it all. They absolutely want it all.

> This market place is coming down to the two of us, whether we like it or
> not. I don’t particularly like it, but it’s coming down to Apple and IBM.

> [...]

> Playboy: It’s not all competition [...]: You buy your disk drives from Sony,
> for instance.

> Jobs: We buy many of our components from [...]. We save a ton of energy not
> having to make and design floppy-disk drives or microprocessors that we can
> spend on software.

So, nowadays Apple is the new IBM and "needs" serious competition...

------
steve_adams_86
>Playboy: One of the experts in the field says that for this industry to
really flourish, and for it to benefit the consumer, one standard has to
prevail.

>Jobs: That’s simply untrue.

This is a little funny given the walled garden he oversaw the creation of (It
seemed like it was intended to improve chances of success by implementing a
single standard for an ecosystem), but I'm excluding some context and just
poking some fun. Overall it was a good read - he had some excellent foresight
about computing and the culture around it. Very cool.

~~~
jansho
It's interesting that the Japanese never really did their own personal
computers, as Jobs supposed. He was probably right though, computers are a
different beast to things like the stereo, because it's always changing a la
Moore's Law.

------
remir
Jobs definitely saw the bigger picture: computers must be tools for everybody,
not just technical people. The work that was done by Xerox PARC, Apple,
Microsoft, Google and countless others over the years to make complex tools
usable by everybody is simply phenomenal.

I don't think this would have been possible elsewhere on Earth. There was a
unique combination of people, places, events and things that allowed all of
these innovations to flourish.

------
drallison
I've always thought the Steve Jobs Playboy Interview was a PR coup for Apple
(and, in retrospect, Playboy). I suspect Regis McKenna had a hand in both the
questions and the answers.
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regis_McKenna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regis_McKenna))

------
Brendinooo
As someone who grew up in the era of PC clones, it's interesting to me to see
so much of the interview focus on the IBM vs. Apple angle. Apple was a non-
factor in the 90s and IBM didn't have a very strong presence in the consumer
market, at least not more than Dell, Compaq, Gateway, etc.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Other than the Commodore 64 that was entry level and about to crash, the
winners of the first half of the 80s were IBM then Apple:
[https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-
share/4/](https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/4/) (Scroll to
bottom for graph.)

The Amiga should have been a factor by ‘85, if there was parental supervision
over there. ;)

------
ykler
Dude is 29 years old and already this timeless bullshit that in my day kids
were idealistic and now they just care about money. (Although, maybe there are
fluctuations about the mean and 1985 was an extreme.)

------
kuharich
Prior discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8316559](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8316559)

------
orph4nus
Anyone knows why the "The Playboy Interview: Moguls" (kindle) ebook seems to
be no longer available at amazon?

------
erikb
Someone has to say it: So, there are really people reading the interviews!

------
shams93
Without the influence of LSD I don't think you would have gotten the Mac. You
would have gotten Guis inspired by Xerox park but the whole vision of the
computer as a work of art and a device to make art that was tied into Jobs
inspirations from his psychedelic experiences.

