
A Steve Jobs masterclass from a decade ago - mh_
https://blog.thinkst.com/2020/07/a-steve-jobs-masterclass-from-decade-ago.html
======
jedberg
The whole interview was fascinating, but what I found most interesting was
when he was talking about a "post PC world" (as in post desktop/laptop). He
envisioned a world in which 95% of casual computing was done on a tablet or
phone.

He said PCs would still be there for work, but most consumers won't own one,
just like all vehicles used to be trucks, until people moved to cities and
switched to cars, and now some people use trucks but most people use cars.

The other really interesting part was when he talked about the need for paid
journalism, and how he "doesn't want to live in a society that's just
bloggers". Even a decade ago he could see the danger in most people getting
their news from un-curated, un-vetted content.

~~~
kunai
> He said PCs would still be there for work, but most consumers won't own one,
> just like all vehicles used to be trucks, until people moved to cities and
> switched to cars, and now some people use trucks but most people use cars.

And I'm thankful every day that he was so wrong. Even though there are bad
faith actors encircling the world of electronics and software attempting to
turn everything into a walled garden (and succeeding in many cases), the PC
lives. Hurrah.

On top of that his analogy makes no sense. By no means were all early cars
trucks. Automobiles in cities didn't even really exist in any considerable
number until after WWII and the suburban housing boom enabled by exclusionary
FHA housing subsidies.

Before cars we all rode the streetcar and train. Open systems that allowed
mobility without placing a premium on using your own two feet.

~~~
ksec
There are roughly 1.5B PCs, half of those are business usage in Office.

There are now closing in to 4B Smartphone users, and about 1B Tablet users.

PC usage isn't really shrinking, Office, Gaming and Productivity are still
holding up. But most "consumer" usage has definitely shifted to Post PC.

~~~
realharo
I remember one keynote where he was talking about slowing PC sales and a huge
rise in iPad sales (tablets were relatively new back then). Yet he didn't
credit the two most obvious reasons - market saturation (everyone already has
a PC) and slowing upgrade cycles - today's PCs are "good enough" for many more
years than they used to be, as hardware improvements have stagnated.

Years later, the same kind of slowdown happened with tablets (especially
Android tablets which are basically dead, but iPad wasn't completely spared
either), and will eventually happen with smartphones as well.

The _" we are now in a post-PC era"_ hype of 2010 (after the iPad's release)
has eventually led to many _" tablets are dead"_ articles by 2016.

~~~
kungtotte
As a datapoint to support your argument: I bought a new PC in 2020, the one I
bought prior to that was in 2013 and it still runs here at home only relegated
to server duty as the HW is good enough for that but lags behind for gaming.

I don't know how long I'll be able to run that server for before needing to
upgrade something, but I suspect its lifetime is until something
catastrophically fails.

~~~
ChuckNorris89
2013 PC?! That would be brand new for my folks back home which are using my
old gaming PC from 2007 with a Core 2 Quad and 6GB of RAM.

For Web browsing and office work it works flawlessly. One day I'll throw in a
cheap SATA SSD that I'll find on sale as the OS drive and it'll be good for
even more years.

~~~
kungtotte
Oh it was absolutely fine for everyday desktop/office type stuff, if I weren't
into gaming I wouldn't have upgraded it at all. It still worked for gaming,
but newer games were taking their toll.

------
resu_nimda
My favorite Jobs masterclass is his talk at Apple's developer conference in
1997 [1]. He had just returned to the company, and a lot of people were
unhappy with him and/or Apple at the time. He decided to do an hour long off-
the-cuff Q&A session with the developers. Famously, one of the questioners was
harsh and insulting, and he handled it with grace.

I honestly can't think of another tech CEO that could have pulled off this
performance. Maybe Bill Gates? I get the sense that the reality distortion
field was very real because he was so clear and eloquent about his mission, it
never needed to be scripted or rehearsed, it just came out of him at all
times.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnO7D5UaDig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnO7D5UaDig)

~~~
pastrami_panda
If someone knows the timestamp of this particular exchange please share.

~~~
als0
Here is the moment where Steve Jobs receives the harsh question
[https://youtu.be/GnO7D5UaDig?t=3022](https://youtu.be/GnO7D5UaDig?t=3022)

~~~
pharaohgeek
I'd really love to know if the individual asking the question is still with
Apple. I'd also love to know what he thinks of the company now.

~~~
resu_nimda
The conference was not just for Apple employees but anyone developing within
the Apple ecosystem. According to a Quora post [1], the guy worked for a
security firm contracted by Sun. I’m not aware of any follow-ups with him
though.

[1] [https://www.quora.com/History-of-Apple-Inc-Whos-the-guy-
who-...](https://www.quora.com/History-of-Apple-Inc-Whos-the-guy-who-insults-
Steve-Jobs-in-this-clip-of-WWDC-1997)

------
ksec
I have probably watched all of his talk more than a dozen times. The way he
articulate his ideas, something that current Apple is missing. Tim Cook tries
very hard to put those message forward, but for some reason he is just not
very good at it. ( To me at least ) It doesn't feel sincere. You could feel
Steve _actually_ cares.

 _Mac OSX has been living a secret double life for the past 5 years._ \- Cant
believe it has been 15 years since those words. Apple is about to make another
transition. And Mac will reach new height, taking even more market shares.

It is sad Steve never gets to see this. Apple now has 1B iPhone user, 100M Mac
Users, 200M+ iPad users, and a fast growing Apple Watch user base.

I know this may sound wired, but I miss him.

~~~
zpeti
Another great insight from him is that companies go downhill once a sales
person runs it, not a product person.

While I'm sure he thought Tim Cook was the best choice to take over, he's just
not a product person, and it shows. I wouldn't say Tim Cook is sales either,
just operations. He is very good at that, and he's done a decent job at
leaving the product with product people.

But after 10-15 years it starts to show. Apple to me clearly isn't what is
used to be. The UX issues are creeping in. The products aren't that
innovative. There's no industry disruption any more.

~~~
whywhywhywhy
>Another great insight from him is that companies go downhill once a sales
person runs it, not a product person.

Here's the video if anyone hasn't seen it [1], think it rings so true to Tim
Cook's Apple. The purity of the product vision just isn't there anymore and
things are actively made worse for the user just to scrape back a few measly
dollars: e.g no longer shipping a short power cable with $2000 laptops.

Think it's sad that a lot of the fans of Apple who used to say believe that it
doesn't matter if Windows sells more, Mac OS is the better product.

Now if you say anything negative about Tim Cook's Apple you just get told how
successful it is as if thats a metric for a good product. Just because
something is successful and profitable doesn't mean it's good by following
that logic there is literally no reason for the Macintosh to exist, everything
before it was already successful and it was actually less successful for
decades.

[1] :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4)

------
shaabanban
I have to say he was spot on about user privacy 10 years ago and it shows in
the platforms today. Starts at around 1:10.

> We do a lot of things like that to ensure that people understand what these
> apps are doing

> Privacy means people know what they are signing up for in plain English and
> repeatedly.

Edit:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i5f8bqYYwps](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i5f8bqYYwps)

------
_448
His talk[0] at sloan school when he was young is also good.

His answer to buiness school students (some of whom were in consulting
business) is quite revealing of his personality. Doesn't hesitate to talk
straight in a very calm way. And very clear in his mind about the views he
expresses. Also, very eloquent in putting his views forward.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXUhLbV8Nrg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXUhLbV8Nrg)

~~~
DonHopkins
I transcribed the words and body language of his classic "Focusing is about
saying no" talk at WWDC '97:

“Focusing is about saying no.” -Steve Jobs, WWDC ‘97

As sad as it was, Steve Jobs was right to “put a bullet in OpenDoc’s head”.

Jobs explained (and performed) his side of the story in this fascinating and
classic WWDC’97 video: “Focusing is about saying no.”

[https://medium.com/@donhopkins/focusing-is-about-saying-
no-s...](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/focusing-is-about-saying-no-steve-
jobs-wwdc-97-ff0174c171d0)

------
dilippkumar
Full interview:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i5f8bqYYwps](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i5f8bqYYwps)

------
dvt
> It would have been trivial for Apple at that point to hire a team or two to
> shoehorn a so-so version of Flash onto their devices. (This seemed like an
> even bigger mistake on the iPad which had just launched). But he is clear
> and adamant. They are going to make calls they believe are best to shape
> great products.

I don't really think the Flash decision had anything to do with "better
products," and simply ecosystem control. Apple had _always_ wanted to keep a
very tight control of any ecosystem they inhabited. From their decision to
stick with PowerPC as long as they did, to their zoo of Apple-specific
dongles, to the Apple Store and beyond. Steve Jobs was a genius in
understanding that an ecosystem is orders of magnitudes more valuable if you,
as an entity, control it. Valve is another company that did the same thing.

> It takes courage to look at a feature that lots of people “want” and make
> the call to exclude it.

This is a lot easier to do when you control the ecosystem. It's not like
someone could migrate to using a Samsung-made iPad or something.

> In a moment of self-deprecation/levity he quips “We never saw ourselves as
> in a platform war with Microsoft and maybe that’s why we lost”. It’s a quick
> flash of him taking himself less-seriously and it’s disarming.

This is absolutely untrue, and Jobs is playing the crowd. Not only did Apple
_definitely_ see themselves in a platform war, they doubled-down on this with
the iPhone. It was _always_ about platforms. Jobs just happened to lose the
first time, but he decidedly won the second.

> Jobs: We are about making better products, and what I love about the
> consumer market that I always hated about the enterprise market, is that: we
> come up with a product, we try to tell everybody about it and every person
> votes for themselves. They go yes or no, and if enough of them say yes, we
> get to come to work tomorrow. You know that’s how it works. It’s really
> simple. Whereas with the enterprise market, it’s not so simple, the people
> that use the products don’t decide for themselves, the people that make
> those decisions sometimes are confused. We love just trying to make the best
> products in the world for ppl and having them tell us by how they vote with
> their wallets whether we’re on track or not.

Not sure exactly how forthright Jobs is here, but -- honest or not -- man, I
just want to say this is an incredible answer and motivates me to get off my
ass and go build something :)

~~~
jjtheblunt
Internal discussions in Apple, in the hardware division where I was, were
obsessed with the Flash runtime (and apps runnning on it) devouring battery.
It's worth remembering that, at the time, the iPhone was quite new and
establishing a foothold in the cellular product ecosystem, not the app
ecosystem, wasn't guaranteed, and as such was very self conscious about
battery life compared to things like a Treo.

~~~
majormajor
I ran Flash (for ESPN streaming) on a 2010 HTC and yeah, it chewed through
battery pretty quickly.

It was also a pretty shitty user experience, forcing inflexible web-optimized
flash into the phone form factor.

Those problems could've been overcome, but it's definitely not like Flash on
day 1 would've been good for any users.

~~~
scarface74
2010 was four years after the iPhone.

~~~
coldtea
So? It's not like Flash was better 4 years before.

If anything, it was much crappier, without 4 years of any kind of optimization
for mobile use.

~~~
scarface74
That’s kind of my point. Everyone claims that Apple alone stopped Flash from
being on the iPhone. But, Adobe could barely get it running on a 2010 era
Android phone that had a 1GHz processor and 1GB RAM.

How would they get it running on a 2007 era iPhone that had a 400Mhz processor
and 128MB RAM?

~~~
p_l
Considering that iOS barely ran without stuttering...

(Reminds me of the iOS 1.0 jokes that Nokias run iOS apps faster, which was
true - back when all "apps" were HTML boondoggles)

------
mrgreenfur
Pretty refreshing to hear a company leader just say "we want to make the best
product". No fluff, no ecosystem, just seemingly straightforward best products
and best features. It seems almost bizarre today.

~~~
victords
To be fair, that is not uncommon today.

Amazon itself proud themselves in claiming they're "the most customer
obsessive company". Or Facebook's and its mission to connect the world.

So, I wouldn't say it's bizarre to see that today, but it's bizarre to believe
their leaders today.

~~~
nicoburns
> Amazon itself proud themselves in claiming they're "the most customer
> obsessive company". Or Facebook's and its mission to connect the world.

Neither of those are really a product focus though.

------
replwoacause
I don't know what it is, but Kara Swisher annoys me. I feel her questions are
usually of poor quality and I'm just not a fan of her interviewing style. Can
someone fill me in on what has made her so successful? I think I may be
missing something.

~~~
tclancy
Wouldn’t it make more sense to ask the reverse and what you might be missing
given any number of people do like her?

~~~
replwoacause
I am not clear on what you are saying. Can you rephrase? I _am_ asking what I
may be missing given so many people seem to like her. What are you saying I
should have asked instead? Thanks.

------
AnonC
To @mh_, the poster of this article on HN and the author of the thinkst blog:

Your site doesn’t have a responsive mobile layout on iOS. All I see is a weird
version with large fonts that I either have to pan around to read or a “web
version” that provides the desktop layout with tiny fonts. You may want to
test your site with don’t blockers and ad blockers (I use both).

------
alanfranz
> It’s super telling that this 55 year old billionaire would be “working on a
> presentation he was giving” at 02h00 in the morning. It is probably possible
> to do great things without burning the midnight oil, I’ve just never seen it
> personally, or been able to do it that way myself.

It is probably possible to survive in good health and shape and reach your 80s
while continuously burning the midnight oil, I’ve just never seen it
personally.

Sure, "burning the midnight oil" is something that can (and IMHO should) be
done sometimes. But is that the only (and main) key to success? I doubt it.
The lesson about focus is far more valuable.

------
mips_avatar
I love reading about Steve Jobs, but I get nervous when Apple's moves get put
on a pedestal and blindly emulated. I think a lot of industries are tempted by
the myth of Steve Jobs to go for vertical integration. Sometimes a better move
is for a company to ride on the waves of innovation in layers below them in
the technology stack/supply chains. If there's enough innovation below,
picking horses like apple loves to do (firewire, etc.) is a bad move. Setting
up your company to benefit from innovations below you is what won Microsoft
the PC-wars.

------
santix
The full interview:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5f8bqYYwps](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5f8bqYYwps)

------
darepublic
> There’s been a huge push in recent times for balance, wellness and rest.
> People are quick to point out how burning the midnight oil translates to
> diminished capacity and actually increases your rate of errors, but I’ve
> never seen consistently great work from people unless they too, were working
> deep into the night on projects they believe in.

------
whywhywhywhy
Remember this interview being particularly frustrating with them constantly
pressing him to reveal what their future plans are despite absolutely everyone
knowing he'd never actually tell you anything so it's just wasting time.

------
teekert
Ads are getting smarter ;)

------
baron816
Sorry that this is off topic, but what’s the situation with the term
“masterclass” now that we’ve determined that we shouldn’t use the word
“master”. Same with “masterpiece,” “master craftsman,” “headmaster,” “master
Jedi,” etc.

edit: I’m genuinely curious about this, and don’t have a position on the
“master” thing. Not trying to start a flame war.

~~~
dijit
I think words like 'masterclass' will not change. "Mastery" of a skill or
topic is largely different than being a 'master' of a set of nodes.

Saddens me that you got downvoted for asking an earnest question, I guess
people are scared of what this topic will devolve into.

~~~
blacklivesmatr1
I'm curious as well. I 100% support black lives matter and started to rename
some git repos from master to main but I notice this master used in git isn't
a master/slave type of master but the master copy, the version that every
thing looks to as the source of truth. This is not the same as the original.
Version 75 is not the original, version 1 is, but it is the master.

I don't mind renaming those to main in fact I started looking into automating
the conversion but at the same time it does seem like mission creep. main
doesn't actually have the same meaning. In pressing CDs/DVDs/Blu-rays we have
"gold masters" which are used to create the molds for the presses for the
discs. A master key opens all locks. Those usages all seem unrelated and
arguably so does the git usage.

Removing master/slave from tech seems 100% correct. Removing all uses of the
word "master" like Darth Vader "I was but a learner but now I am the master"
seems wrong and if we aren't going to remove all of them then why are we
remove it from git since like those others usages it and zero relation to the
problem?

~~~
dijit
You can think of it more as a return to normalcy, "master" in VCS is
relatively unique to git.

p4/piper is MAIN

SVN is 'trunk'

mercurial is 'default'

\--

I'd be upset if we were changing commonly held terminology or if it had more
meaning.. but it's completely arbitrary and all it costs is the minor
reeducation of all github/git users and the invalidation of all prior
documentation.

~~~
viklove
So let me get this straight, if p4/piper, svn, and mercurial all used
"master," then you would be against the reeducation?

~~~
dijit
Very much, yes.

The piety of those who wish everyone to be re-educated and the corpus of
documentation to be rendered invalid would be sickening. At least in this
instance it brings concepts more in line.

We need less confusing and diverse verbiage in the industry generally
speaking, when we refer to the same concepts (server/instance/machine/node
being examples), so I think the change is welcome on those merits alone, and
if it happens to make people feel better, though there's no evidence of that,
then great.

However it's important to understand that if the motivation is purely
political, then this can be classified as political correctness, which has
proven time and time again to be ineffective and actually /harmful/ to the
left; as the right are clever to use it as a recruiting tool- often openly
pissing off the left and making them hypersensitive to anyone not towing the
line. This was true in the early 90's and it's true again today.

To quote Stephen Fry on political correctness: "if someone wants to shout
faggot at me, I don't care, as a gay man. I know I'm supposed to, but I'm
supposed to care on behalf of people who are, supposedly weaker than me. and I
think it's the most patronising thing in the world. It's exactly the same
political correctness that I grew up with which was then, the kind of
religious political correctness; which is people complaining about television
programmes, about swearing and nudity and violence: 'I am not shocked myself,
it's just the vulnerable young minds, you see!'; well, fuck that, that's just
not good enough. It really isn't. and that's my objection. it's.. denouncing
from the pulpit.. I mean, Russia has political correctness, but in Russia the
political correctness is that you can't say Tchaikovsky was gay."[0]

These comments were given before a debate (which unfortunately was derailed
frequently) on the efficacy of political correctness; and he made detailed
points about words being immediately co-opted to mean hateful things, if there
is hateful intent, and largely intent is the most important factor to control
for, certainly not language.

I will link to the full debate below;[1]

So, typically I'm against these kinds of measures, and that's the foundation
on what this change was about.

If a change can stand by other merits, then sure, but to assume that this will
help even a little, with no evidence provided- and to attribute such little
weight to the human time in reconfiguring and reeducating is not just
patronising in of itself, it's a little dehumanising to those it supposedly
supports and forces re-education and labour on the entire development world.

I believe that to be immoral; unless, of course, the change can stand on other
merits.

[0]: [https://youtu.be/vsR6LP7Scg0?t=422](https://youtu.be/vsR6LP7Scg0?t=422)
(13m)

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST6kj9OEYf0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST6kj9OEYf0)
(2h)

------
PaulDavisThe1st
the story jobs tells [ deleted because i was full of BS ]

~~~
saurik
(The iPod touch was released after the iPhone.)

------
racl101
He wasn't really an .....

oh never mind.

