
What did Alan Kay and Steve Jobs talk about at the 2007 iPhone keynote? - tambourine_man
https://www.quora.com/What-did-Alan-Kay-and-Steve-Jobs-talk-about-at-the-2007-iPhone-keynote/answer/Alan-Kay-11?share=1
======
AceJohnny2
> _(the Mac was done in 1984, 11 years after the more powerful and capable
> Parc Alto, which started working in 1973)._

I find this comment mildly irritating. The Alto apparently cost $40k [1] in
(or around) 1973, which was equivalent to $95k in 1984 (or $232k today).
Compare with the Mac which cost $2.5k in 1984.

Sure, the Alto may have been more powerful, but if it was financially out of
reach of almost everybody, it's no wonder it had a limited direct impact.

I wonder if it's a trend that Alan underestimates the importance of economics
for technology to actually have an impact.

[1] [http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/input-
output/14/34...](http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/input-
output/14/347)

~~~
alankay
We understood Moore's Law, so it made sense in the early 70s to make a
personal computer in 1973 that would have the power of much less expensive
personal computers 10 or more years later. Why? Because the new SW and UI
takes a lot of work to invent -- this allowed us to show Steve "the 80s" in
1979.

(Worth pondering this way of going about things.)

What was disappointing is that the market couldn't value personal computing,
especially the general market. For example, the Lisa with its hard disk was
really the better machine to be the flagship for Apple. In the early 80s it
was priced at less than an average car -- ~$10K -- a mass market price if you
could see that this would be your "information and speculation vehicle".

Instead, PCs could only be sold at consumer price levels, more or less as
novelties and in business as spreadsheet machines -- and this forced the Mac
to be much smaller (both in RAM and disk) so that it was more like a toy than
a vehicle.

So, no, _we_ (not I - I was part of a research community) did not
underestimate the importance of economics. Note that my original Dynabook
paper in 1972 said these would eventually be sold for the same price as color
TV sets. But we did underestimate the ability of the early market to value
computing.

~~~
BjoernKW
There were machines like the Commodore C64 - and later to some extent the
Amiga as well - that more fully embraced and valued computing in that they
booted into an environment which allowed you to create programs right away.

With the C64 in particular there was no real distinction between the operating
system and the programming language, the programming language actually WAS the
operating system. The machine booted into an empty canvas for you to create
something with.

I still find that idea fascinating. Absurdly enough, the closest we've come to
this again afterwards is Microsoft Excel. A spreadsheet application today is
the closest general purpose computing equivalent to 'an empty canvas everyone
can use to create something with right away'.

~~~
Nition
My memory on this is super vague because this was way back in the mists of
time, but I _think_ some old versions of DOS used to have a BASIC interpreter
built in, where you could just start writing BASIC code at the DOS prompt.

~~~
mbroncano
QBasic was included in some of the later DOS versions.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QBasic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QBasic)

------
slap_shot
Steve revealed at D10 that the iPad actually did get prototyped first. IIRC,
he tasked a team with creating a keyless keyboard tablet thing (forgive my
terrible paraphrasing). They came back with a tablet. When Steve scrolled up
and saw the rubber band effect, he said "oh my god we can make a phone with
this" and they went the phone first.

Edit: Below is the interview. He "had an idea of being able to type on a multi
touch glass display"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5f8bqYYwps](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5f8bqYYwps)
@ 37:00

~~~
nashashmi
He called the iPad at the time a glass keyboard. Because he didn't want to
give it away.

And let's not forget that a Microsoft guy provoked him into creating a tablet
called the iPad.

~~~
peterkelly
_" This guy badgered me about how Microsoft was going to completely change the
world with this tablet PC software and eliminate all notebook computers, and
Apple ought to license his Microsoft software. But he was doing the device all
wrong. It had a stylus. As soon as your have a stylus, you’re dead. This
dinner was like the tenth time he talked to me about it, and I was so sick of
it that I came home and said, “Fuck it, let’s show him what a tablet can
really be."_

 _Jobs went into the office the next day, gathered his team, and said, "I want
to make a tablet, and it can’t have a keyboard or a stylus."_

[https://www.cultofmac.com/126116/steve-jobs-created-the-
ipad...](https://www.cultofmac.com/126116/steve-jobs-created-the-ipad-to-show-
one-microsoft-employee-what-a-tablet-really-can-be/)

~~~
adamson
Who really won though? Does anyone buy tablets anymore? I feel like I haven't
seen one since 2015.

~~~
scarface74
Apple publishes how many iPads they sell every quarter.

This is another example of the old internet trope "Do people still watch Tv? I
haven't had a TV in 10 years".

------
gok
I always find the “make it this size and you’ll rule the world” quote
interesting. The users I know who really love their iPads/tablets are closer
to @alankay1’s generation. Younger generations don’t have much use for device
that can’t fit in a pocket. I wonder how much the interest in iPad-sized
devices came from years of using paper about that size.

~~~
hyperpallium
Fitting in a pocket is a great advantage for a portable device, to everyone.

The market seems to be saying: if I need something that I have to lug around,
I might as well have a keyboard. i.e. a laptop.

Another effect is people are doing everything they can on a phone, because of
the convenience. This leads to slightly larger phones every year, and now a
5.5" phone is no longer considered a "phablet", and apple is rumoured to
having a 6.5" phone next (their smallest tablet is 7").

So... tablets _will_ rule the world, but they'll be "phones". The barrier to
adaption was changing consumer behaviour... as always.

~~~
TeMPOraL
iOS and Android turn tablets into oversized phones, so no surprise they lose
against phones - they have the same (or usually worse, at a given price point)
capabilities while being larger, thus less convenient to carry and more
fragile.

These days I'm not using much Windows for desktop (HN took over the time I had
for games), but I do sincerely hope this OS will live on for at least couple
more years, because _Microsoft is the only company that knows how to do
tablets_. Seriously. A proper operating system, with real capabilities and
proper user interface that can make use of the tablet form, makes a world of a
difference. And I say that as someone who owned a decent Android tablet in the
past. As someone who's friends and family with people owning currently decent
Android tablets. My little Windows 10 el-cheapo tablet/netbook I picked up
second-hand for ~$130 is much more useful than the top-of-the-line Samsung
tablet offering. Hell, it already earned me many times more than its own value
back, as it's good enough to do some meaningful dev work on the bus/train.

~~~
icc97
Windows did try the same as Android and iOS with Windows RT, thankfully that
was a disaster. Netbooks are ridiculously useful, I used to have a 15 minute
bus ride to work with an Asus EEE and would manage to fill that 15 minutes
with active moonlighting development time every day. The work I did on that
bus became the frontend for what now 10 years later is a $50m company.

I realise I'm making a slightly different point as I'm purely talking about
netbooks/laptops. But having the full power of an OS on a tablet is definitely
the way to go.

Certainly that's one of the bad points about iOS and Android they are so
locked down that you have to jump through hoops if you wanted to use them as a
work machine.

For my current job I bought myself a $350 refurbished Thinkpad (T430 8GB SSD
core i5), this brings me in all my income. You can compare this to my nephew
that is paying $1000 for an iPhone X because he got bored of his iPhone 8.

Further to that I bought exactly the same spec Thinkpad for my 5 year old
daughter. The Thinkpad T-series are great because you can pour a litre of
liquid over them without problem [0] plus they're built like a brick, so
basically perfect for kids. My daughter immediately covered the grey brick
with shiny stickers and gave it a name (she has an iPad, but that's always
just called 'iPad'). It has the full capability to do everything she'll ever
need in theory for the rest of her life/career. Further to that it's got
Ubuntu installed and I can then install Sugar [1] for her to use (the same
used for One Laptop Per Child).

The possible drawback is that it doesn't have a touchscreen. But with my
experiment of buying a laptop with a touch screen I found I pretty much never
wanted to use the touch screen, it's a slower interface than keyboard and
mouse. You want the screen in front of you at arms length but then you have to
reach with your arm to touch the screen.

I can now teach her over the years what it means to have real freedom with
your software and hardware.

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U5n2WaMMHo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U5n2WaMMHo)

[1]: [https://sugarlabs.org/](https://sugarlabs.org/)

~~~
hyperpallium
Sadly, netbooks seem to be gone. Even chromebooks are full-size, full-weight.

Do you know of termux.com, for linux without rooting? It's basically a linux
distribution, adjusted for android's slightly odd filesystem. The app itself
is tiny, and you install from its repository. e.g. there's latex, youtube-dl,
curl, vim, clang, ecj, python, ruby, perl, lua, erlang etc.

A bluetooth keyboard completes the DIY linux netbook... sadly, bluetooth
keyboards are also almost gone, presumably as people adjust themselves to
"touch" typing.

------
marschr
Didn't really knew that Kay was so active on Quora. Now I'm about to read
everything.

------
pietroglyph
It always amazes me how many questions or Quora solicit an answer from someone
so close to the subject at hand.

~~~
girvo
I feel the same way about HN. It’s both platforms major point of difference to
other platforms I think.

------
da02
What is it about Quora that draws so many prestigious people to answer?

~~~
adventured
The same reason Facebook took off like it did.

In Facebook's case, it was famously harvard.edu. A lot of people want to
belong to or participate in exclusive clubs. Something other people are widely
excluded from. The commons is Answers.com or Yahoo Answers. The people writing
junk and spam questions & answers on Yahoo Answers, are not participating on
Quora.

In Quora's case, it was that it originated / spread out of prestigious tech
circles. A small group of connected, rather elite, techies out of Silicon
Valley seeded the site in its early days. Those people were connected to other
prestigious tech people, and so it went.

Adam D'Angelo is one of Quora's two founders, the former CTO of Facebook, and
is a near-billionaire that went to Exeter with Zuckerberg and then CIT. Elite
+ connected.

Then last but not least, Quora enforces fairly high standards on quality,
similar to why Stack Overflow isn't overflowing with trash despite its immense
scale.

~~~
tambre
> similar to why Stack Overflow isn't overflowing with trash despite its
> immense scale

Oh boy. You haven't checked out the newest questions page on SO, have you?
There are oh so many new low-quality questions. That said, they're mostly so
badly written, that they rarely show up on Google. _But_ if you're actually
trying to answer questions, then good luck finding any worth answering.

I simply gave up answering questions unless I stumble upon them while
googling.

------
jstewartmobile
The entire Fast Company interview is gold, but a few quotes on the iPhone:

" _Think about this. How stupid is this? It’s about as stupid as you can get.
But how successful is the iPhone? It’s about as successful as you can get, so
that matches you up with something that is the logical equivalent of
television in our time._ "

...

" _Yeah. We can eliminate the learning curve for reading by getting rid of
reading and going to recordings. That’s basically what they’re doing:
Basically, let’s revert back to a pre-tool time._ "

[https://www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-
ab...](https://www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-about-the-
iphone-and-technology-now)

------
bogomipz
>"“Have I got a deal for you: a Honda with a one-quart gas tank!”. Steve did
not like this memo, but what could he do given the history, and that it was
quite true?"

Can someone explain the joke?

Also does anyone know how long Alan was with Apple?

~~~
gok
I believe he left in 1997 when Jobs returned and Advanced Technology Group was
shut down.

~~~
alankay
1996 before the return of Steve

------
iamgopal
Faster computer has increased everyone's free time, which in turn are being
used to eat other persons free time. Does that means computer will never
increase our free time ? ( Or increase and eat up in point less video games
and ad watching ? ). The ultimate benefit I think is, because millions use
computer for point less thing, but ultimately investing their time and money
in to it, are kind of crowd sourcing the technology advances that are other
wise was not possible. So on that look out, kudos to cat video and ads. It
that is what it takes to make human kind forward so be it.

------
peter303
iPhone first helped them get the mobile OS right. Because MicroSoft had a
tablet for a decade and its OS was horrible- a cluttered version of shrunk
windows. If Apple had shrunk MacOS as an interface, that would have been awful
too.

