
Steve Jobs describes iCloud experience at WWDC 1997 - tylerrooney
http://youtu.be/3LEXae1j6EY?t=14m10s
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JackWebbHeller
Fascinating to see how much more technical vocabulary he uses when speaking in
'97. I don't remember any recent keynotes where he used so much tech jargon
onstage.

I guess this is because now, every word he says is analysed and reported by
mainstream media. He has to communicate to the entire world because of Apple's
popularity, and not just a room full of WWDC developers.

~~~
JackWebbHeller
I actually remember when he was announcing FaceTime, he had a list of all the
FaceTime protocols and technologies onscreen - H264, AAC, SIP, IMTC, STUN,
TURN, ICE, etc.

I remember him pausing, then saying something along the lines of "... whatever
the hell those are", or some quip like that.

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saturdaysaint
Funny when he corrected himself after saying "Apple controls the marketing and
distribution... I mean the marketing" - perhaps Apple stores were on his mind
back then?

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tylerrooney
There's also one choice moment before this point where a developer is asking
what Apple can do about getting beat up in the press and the stockmarket.

For emphasis, in December of 1997 AAPL hit an 11-year low of $3.53 (split
adjusted). Today, mainstream media eats out of Steve Jobs' hand and their
stock price is, as I type this, $332.

~~~
forgottenpaswrd
Yeah, he says something like:

"You should buy stock... it is what I have done"

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otterley
This was Sun Microsystems' vision of computing in 1982, 15 years earlier.

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Apocryphon
I would love to watch a video of Bill Joy or whomever giving a talk about
that.

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namastasyai
Bill Joy spoke of this at the Institute for Advanced Study, circa 1999. I
don't know if anyone took a video of his talk, but he did it (and I was
there.)

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va_coder
A coworker of mine worked with Eric Schmidt when he was at Novell. He was
talking about the cloud back then. Now his vision is coming alive with Chrome
OS.

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mikecane
What's especially interesting in this video is when he's insulted by someone
during the Q&A. How differently he handled that than what stars, politicians,
and many business people would do and do!

Amelio was also still in charge of Apple, yet it seems Jobs already had his
plans worked out for what he would do with Apple if he was in charge.

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jonursenbach
Where in the video is this?

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jessedhillon
At around 50:10, someone asks him sarcastically to use his cloud to make sure
than when TV commercials are made, they're good ones. Steve Jobs smiles, nods
and thanks him.

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jakelear
I think he says clout, as in influence.

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jessedhillon
Yeah, that's what I heard. I just had cloud on the mind, and made that typo.

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lukifer
Spooky to hear Jobs speak so well of Rubenstein ("I trust him with my life"),
knowing that Palm will hire him away for WebOS a decade later.

~~~
padmanabhan01
afaik palm didn't hire him away. He quit and after few months of break in
mexico, he decided to join palm.

~~~
Steko
It seems like he didn't really quit either but was let go gracefully. As head
of iPod division it seemed as though he was more protective of the iPod's role
as Apple's superstar product then of the big picture Jobs wanted to push.
Rumor was he wanted to use the iPod OS for the phone and then he gave an
interview about how converged devices were lame and 3 weeks later they
announced his "reduced role" as a consultant and shortly after that he was
out.

Granted that's mostly based on rumors but it gives an interesting contrast to
Microsoft's failure in tablets because of things like the Office division's
execs refusing to make it touch friendly.

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snikch
The experience he's talking about is the same experience domain based
Microsoft networks have had available for a long time, and it was an awful
experience as it relied on network connectivity for your files. It was nothing
revolutionary.

What's happened in the last decade+ is the infrastructure to support all these
devices, and their network connectivity, has increased so we can finally have
a good user experience doing it.

Without the infrastructure to support it, the product would end up instilling
a sense of hate in people who use it. And we all know Apple is about creating
the most seamless and easy to use experience for the user.

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jchrisa
The key is they design for offline mode first. Then add connectivity.

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philwelch
At the time, Larry Ellison was on Apple's board, and Oracle was pushing the
"Network Computer" concept: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Computer>

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ufuk
Great find... If you continue listening to Steve ramble on about the what we
now call "the Cloud", you can hear him mention hardware-thin/software-thick
clients, eg. the iPhone and the iPad.

I wonder what held him back from achieving that vision is the first place.
AFAICS, Apple is now playing catch-up to Google and Amazon in the cloud
computing space.

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smackfu
What held them back? Probably two things:

1\. They only had the Mac platform (and non-connected iPods). Can you change
the world with a 5% market share?

2\. They wanted to charge for it.

Now, they could have done this a couple of years ago after they conquered #1,
but they were still hung up on point #2, and just tried to make a better pay
service.

~~~
YooLi
1\. In 1997, technology held him back, not market share. The iPhone changed
the world with no market share. The iPad changed the world with no market
share. Etc.

2\. Who gives their service away for free? Apple still charges for it. It's
included in the devices you buy, etc.

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smackfu
On (2), you're right, but Apple always wanted above that, charging $100 a
year.

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TechNewb
Steve Jobs describes the iPhone experience at WWDC 1997
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LEXae1j6EY&feature=youtu...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LEXae1j6EY&feature=youtu.be&t=1h3m17s)

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biot
This could be a description of the iPhone:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LEXae1j6EY&feature=youtu...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LEXae1j6EY&feature=youtu.be&t=1h3m14s)

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edge17
Fundamentally, the idea is the same to the end user, but this is true about a
lot of ideas that started on the desktop, then were recreated in the web, and
are now being recreated in mobile.

Like anything, ideas are a dime a dozen and execution is everything. Building
network storage for tethered devices on reliable connections and building
network storage for untethered devices on unreliable connections are two
different problems.

The way this post is titled gives him credit for the idea, which is a silly
thing. If iCloud works as advertised, kudos for the execution.

But I have no doubt in my mind that the architecture under the hood would be
very different if it were 1997 and Apple was building cloud storage in the pc
era.

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jpadvo
It sound more like he is describing Chrome OS, actually.

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paramaggarwal
A true visionary.

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peterquest
wow, remember when keynote addresses contained technical information? When's
the last time you heard Jobsy mention NFS at a conference?

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sambeau
Jobsy?

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pathik
El Jobso.

