Steve Jobs Insult Response (1997) [video] | Hacker News Reader

Steve Jobs Insult Response (1997) [video]

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206 pointsyagodragon160 comments

That 10 second pause before he responds — 25 seconds if you don't count the reference to the famous quote, which buys him a bit more time — is amazing.

What may be less well understood by people who weren't there is that he's addressing Apple employees just as much as he is Apple developers. Many Apple employees had the same question. [Source: Was at Apple at the time.]

"You've got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can't start with the technology and try to figure out where you're going to try to sell it." — Steve Jobs

I’d be better off in my relationships if I could master that technique.

Setting emails to a long waiting period, during which you can undo them, has been a game changer for me in that regard. Too bad you can't take back words that came out of your mouth. Or many instant messages.

You’d likely be less real and more distant

A very human thing is to say I don’t need to change and then rationalize it in some way. I think that’s what you’re doing here. Talking a pause before escalating with something hurtful could only be helpful, no matter if it’s “Less real” and has nothing to do with being distant at all.

that 10 second pause

I repeatedly learn this lesson just by being on accidental mute on Zoom calls.

Hmm… do I really want to repeat that?

The opposite is also true: when I wasn’t on mute, I was in a meeting and I was talking to my spouse about work-related stuff.

> "You've got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can't start with the technology and try to figure out where you're going to try to sell it."

Crypto still hasn't figured this out. The entire focus is on how to get people using the technology.

If you start out being completely unwilling to use a database, that should be a red flag you're falling into this trap.

Would a blockchain be better than a db for some ideas? Sure. But for many it wont be and if you're a) using a blockchain where a db would be better or b) searching for stuff to build in the small sliver of ideas where a blockchain is the right tech - you're not starting with the customer.

I think crypto just conveniently bypasses securities laws, that's the point, can't do that with a centralized db. It is sort of decentralized and you can issue tokens in different ways, and as the creator you "happened" to be an early adopter or have a foundation that got 10% of all supply.

The way most people use crypto to bypass securities laws is through exchanges, though, and regulators don't care if your exchange operates a centralized or a decentralized db. They will sanction you regardless.

(Also, all exchanges[1] use centralized dbs.)

[1] Except maybe FTX, it didn't seem much into bookkeeping of any sort.

Jobs importantly said the customer experience.

Remember Jobs also famously said:

“Some people say, "Give the customers what they want." But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, "If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse!'" People don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”

I think Jobs quoted Gretzky more than once too:

"Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been" - Wayne Gretzky

Alan Kay has explained this quote a bit, which I thought was insightful.

It's not about tracking the Puck. It's about seeing the big picture and positioning yourself such that it will be passed to you.

I think it's also about designing and selling a touch-screen phone when nobody knew they wanted one instead of making a slightly better phone with buttons.

Not nobody. I had a touchscreen phone for years before the iPhone appeared. All Windows Mobile platform, but there were Palm devices at the same time. The iPhone improved usability and stability, and its capacitive touch surface was a vast improvement over even the best resistive screens, but it was by no means at the vanguard. Its marketing was, though.

Better for responsiveness and appearance, but the accuracy of a good screen like on an iPAQ is still not matched without very special hardware.

Nokia had world firsts in a ton of categories, but they - as an organisation - sucked at vertical integration. Thus many of the features just were there, without any way to actually use them.

I remember my old Nokia phone having a feature that would detect people around me + my location and would change profiles accordingly. Something that Apple added around iOS 16.

The Nokia feature? It never worked, nobody knew how to make it work. It needed some mystical configuration that people in my company didn't know how to do. And I worked for a major Nokia subcontractor...

The structure of the above comment almost sounds as if it were in opposition to the parent quote. It is important to note that the two quotes are in harmony with one another.

Delivering something of value to those who didn’t even know it was needed is part of what has made Apple very successful. The technologist’s perspective may be “no wireless, less space than Nomad” but the improved focus on consumer experience and perception isn’t ”merely marketing,” it’s market making.

> If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse!'

Oddly, enough that’s what he ended up doing. We even describe the power of the engine in horsepower. Granted it’s not a 1:1 translation to an actual horse.

There were a lot of Ford models before the model T, as you might guess if you heard that they started with "A" and went through the alphabet (skipping some).

More than one of them really looked like a "horseless carriage". For example: https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digita...

That apparently came to an end after the model T.

And Ford's first car company failed.

Maybe you could draw a parallel between Steve Jobs and his "second act".

My previous job we had an amazing product owner. He never caved to customers demands. He always listened to them and deciphered what they actually wanted. He took 1 customers demands and figured out what everybody wanted. And every time we released a feature we got great feedback and praise.

I remember one customer said “wow this so much better than what we asked for!”

When he left it was all down hill. Because the product owners just wanted to pad their resume. Pump out features. And pretend like they cared about the product but ultimately the product got worse. To the point they started adding old features back in that they had removed thinking they knew better.

This seems like dangerous advice if taken as "ignore customers".

Someone else said you should never believe customers who tell you what they want, but you should always pay close attention to what customers do.

The latter is a type of market research, isn't it?

While you address crypto in general I would suggest that instead you go at the root of it: Bitcoin. The "customer" issue is well identified there, cash was already poised to disappear and any form for peer-to-peer exchange of value with a currency will eventually go with it. CBDCs will replace this, whether we like it or not and the writings of this have been on the walls for a long time. If you don't think this is true please observe countries which are well on their way to become cashless like Sweden or even China.

The idea "for the customer" of Bitcoin is to provided them with a digital alternative currency, an opt-in one, not mandated or controlled by a state. The previous attempts like Digicash, E-gold and few others all had the same fate and lasted very short periods of time because they did not combine a strong and independently verifiable data structure with a way to truely be the basis and incentive of a decentralized P2P network.

Bitcoin solved these issues by taking the best of many of the preceding failed experiments. This implies some compromises that apparently make you think it's unsuitable technology applied to a problem that could so easily be solved with a simple database... but that would be misidentifying the issue it is trying to solve, maybe you are not the current "customer" for it (yet), maybe you don't care about P2P transactions without intermediaries, that cannot be censored... but when (note: it isn't an "if") your government will tell you that you cannot pay for x or y with their CBDC which will be the only currency you will be allowed to earn/spend, then maybe you will rethink this position. And the minor inconvenience of Bitcoin will seem suddenly more acceptable (hopefully by that time progress like the Lightning Network will have ironed these out).

And again, do not take my word for it, observe the cases where Bitcoin has already been used and useful under oppressive regimes and in war times.

Bitcoin did "figure that out". You're referring I think to cashgrabs that slap the Blockchain term to try to milk some money.

Bitcoin originates from a concrete customer experience issue: lack of digital money with some cash like properties (non reversible, pseudonymous, trustless, etc). [1]

Something like that had been tried to create a few times before, but Blockchain was the first solution to that problem. In other words bitcoin solved a problem looking for a solution, not the other way around.

That being said, crypto UX has a LOT to improve. But let's not confuse projects that use "blockchain" because some manager thought it was cool, or literal cashgrabs, with actual crypto projects.

[1] You may think those properties aren't good or useful, but there clearly was and is people that find that useful, so let's not beat the dead horse with that debate.

Money is already digital, it’s not backed by gold or paper ledger, it’s stored digitally and used digitally on a daily basis.

Crypto currency is decentralised digital currency.

I was referring mostly to Ethereum and all of the smart contract chains and dapps that it spawned. I would agree what I said doesn't really apply to Bitcoin.

Precisely. Crypto is a solution in search of a problem.

It solves a problem that you don't realize is here yet, just like people in France didn't understand it was here yet and Rome and Weimar Germany...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debasement

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assignat

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL

It doesn’t solve anything. Currency used to be backed by gold. There was always a fallback value of currency in the form of gold.

Crypto falls back on the US dollar. If the US dollar collapses. As too does Bitcoin. And there is nothing in place to prevent this.

That's an interesting hypothesis - though one that is far from fact, that many would disagree with, and which has never been tested. As such, you might want to avoid fallaciously stating it as a certainty.

Crypto is in no way backed by the dollar. That would imply you could always trade Crypto for some minimum number of dollars after a crash. But as has been demonstrated repeatedly coins can and go to 0$.

Sure, coins can crash and turn to dust. But it doesn't change the fact its value is determined by the dollar. If the dollar crashes, bitcoin has 0 value. No one buys and sells in bitcoin so bitcoin has no real value at the end of the day. It solves no problem.

People buy and sell crypto in other currencies. It’s possible for the dollar to crash without destroying crypto, though it seems unlikely for the dollar to crash without severe global issues that would likely take down crypto as well.

"Crypto" is not a single entity! What hasn't figured this out yet is crypto markets, collectively — which were rewarding projects based on hype, not value provided to users. But there are some cases where people are building with real users in mind. Arweave and Uniswap come to mind.

I didn't feel like writing a novel that accounted for every edge case and I knew if my comment got any traction, folks like you would show up passionately pointing out the details I omitted or glossed over. Here we are.

You are correct, there are exceptions. You are correct, crypto is not a single entity. defi in particular is an area where there are a lot of products catering to real user needs as they're marketing to people who already own crypto. And for them, whether they need a db or not is irrelevant. Those users demand decentralized products, so if they want to serve them, they really don't have a choice. Uniswap would be committing suicide by deciding to use a db at this point.

The things blockchain is good at don’t get attention because people who hate crypto hate on everything and people who like crypto think the things are boring, which they are.

Blockchain isn’t good for some society disrupting change of finance… it’s a specialized accounting book. Very few people are excited by ledgers really, and the thing you can do with these new fancy ledgers have a lot to do with mostly mutually trusting businesses keeping track of balances between a small group. This is not exciting, will not change the world, but might make some details of finance folks and the people who write software for them a little easier.

I once worked at a robotics company that didn’t comprehend this. It’s amazing how frustrating it makes a job when every six months Product is sending us in a different direction. We ended up having to build such generic solutions and they sucked as a result.

Not sure if he can really use that extra 15 secs as it's really hard to multitask on thinking and speaking. Even if he's able to, it would be only some % of it, as even a robot will have to do context switching.

with the extra time his emotions will still continue cool, and much of thought is unconscious, and the unconscious is essentially parallel processing, i.e. multitasking. This is how good comedians or poets or Freudian-slippers are able to come up with les mots justes ("just the right words"), the words that do justice on multiple levels.

You should always pause when receiving criticism, it's a great psychological trick. Responding immediately and fiercely rewards the critic.

By pausing, the critic becomes doubtful. Did I go too far? Is something really bad brewing?

Not everything has to be a manipulation tactic. I think he was just thinking about how he would respond.

I think the Japanese language has a pregnant pause that's part of the language. Or I think that's the intent (I barely understand Japanese). But in many a meeting someone will say a long "anooooo" which I always understood as a pregnant pause as the speaker was collecting their next words and thoughts.

Many times I wish I could pull off a long, awkward pause and gather my thoughts and response.

In this view, the pause was most hostile action taken by Jobs towards the person asking the question.

For people who answer like this: what goes through your mind during the pause? Are you counting in your head? Are you planning out your answer? Are you playing the question in your head?

personally i try to appreciate the situation. rewind a bit and sense the context, what people said, what they might feel, what i might have miss or said wrong

basically slowing down before a tight curve

When I pause it’s because I’m trying to compose a response and my emotions. Sometimes too fast a response sounds less credible and often times it is — I’ll ramble on a bit longer than I’d like or talk my way into my larger point, possibly losing my audience or saying half baked things. It also often prompts more details from the person I’m talking to to fill the void. This gives me more context so I don’t just answer the superficial question. But mostly it helps keep emotion out of my response.

As an aside, while I’m OK-to-uncomfortable on the receiving end of the pause, I get wildly enraged when people say, “I don’t understand” without trying to play back or suss out meaning, eg “I don’t understand, are you saying…?” I find it wildly dismissive. But that’s probably on me.

One thing that's interesting here is how Jobs doesn't answer the specific technical question: How does Java address the ideas embodied in OpenDoc?

Instead, Jobs answers the question behind the question: What role should new technologies play at Apple going forward?

This is a very useful technique to practice. When asked a question whose premise you don't agree with, you can become confrontational on that point. Or you can reach in to grab the question behind the question and answer that instead.

Right. His answer effectively dismisses the question on the basis of it being invalid, or even dumb. And points out the larger philosophy that customer experience trumps technology.

It's a classy way to come out on top of an argument, but a) it doesn't work in all situations, and b) not everyone can think on their feet in that way in front of an audience.

It's an admirable trait of charismatic people, but it's also abused to manipulate the conversation to gain an upper hand. Typically used by politicians and lawyers.

Is Jobs' answer technically a non-sequitur rebuttal to a technical question? Only that charisma has "carried the motion" through

But it wasn't a sincere question; It was a statement disguised as a question in order to fit the format of the live Q&A, and the statement was "I think discontinuing OpenDoc makes you dumb and I want to humiliate you publicly for it".

> "I think discontinuing OpenDoc makes you dumb and I want to humiliate you publicly for it"

Wasn't it more like 'by discontinuing OpenDoc, you're throwing good work that I and others poured ourselves into for years, and reveal that your agreements to support it were made in bad faith. I'm calling you out for abandoning our team, you bastard'?

imo the sentiment is clearly one of indignation and hurt at perceived betrayal and dishonesty, not really intellectual superiority

> Jobs answers the question behind the question: What role should new technologies play at Apple going forward?

I saw the questions behind the question being more how do you, a non-technical person, lay claim to a technology company, and, why are you deprecating this technical thing I loved and may have worked on. There is an undeniable, underlying bitterness animating the ask, and one can’t ignore that if attempting to genuinely respond.

I'm not disputing your point - This is a very useful technique to practice - this awareness of what people are really asking. Unfortunately this is a twin edged sword - politicians for example will frequently reach in to the question they've been asked and answer the question they want to answer, not the real question that's beneath the surface. So much so, to the point that they look disingenuous or false. Jobs' speech here was very prescient or rather it was in essence him setting out what he wanted Apple to be, from where it was in 1997.

I want to second this being both a valuable talent used for good, and a method of deception.

In the use for good case, it can also be valuable to reference the asked question and explain how it’s related. In many cases this is a good heuristic for whether the answer was intended as help or misdirection.

This is the Robert McNamara strategy for answering questions: don't answer the question that was asked, instead answer the question you wanted to be asked, and by the end of it the asker will usually have forgotten that they actually asked a different question. It's pretty common, but I think few people were as explicit/honest about it as McNamara (later in life, that is).

No - the person asking will not have forgotten, but those around will have.

Generally - in my experience - folks that genuinely want to answer or explain something will first rephrase the question, and/or ask more questions to understand what you are trying to ask, and then after their answer they open the dialogue with something akin to "does that answer your question?".

This is known as ABCD: https://action-group.co.uk/the-art-of-bridging-how-to-use-th...

Why even have a pretend open q and a ? Just do your soliloquy and be done with it instead of lying that your are open to questions.

The question is just a prompt for the speaker. How the person reacts (dodge the question, address underlying concerns, answer directly, get emotional) can tell you a lot about them. This was 1997, right at Job's return to Apple phase. Job would go on the lead Apple to make the iPod and iPhone. Job's focus on customer experience, defending the quality and dedication of his team, and encouraging 3rd party support says a lot about what he cares about.

So like chatgpt, I am not convinced. It’s intellectually dishonest. Call it a prompt not a question then.

I think you're wrong, because Jobs actually does answer the question: "people like this gentleman are right, in some areas. there are some things opendoc does, even more that I'm not familiar with, that nothing else does". He does start talking about Apple in general, but simply in service of explaining why they're not supporting OpenDoc anymore. Politicians rarely support their views by saying 'no' then explaining why, instead diverting away to something only tangentially related and not addressing the initial concern.

For everyone talking about politicians and their BS: I want to point out that there's a difference between answering the question that should have been asked, and the question you wish had been asked. The former is honest, and genuinely educational if the answerer is correct in their judgement. The latter is a tactic for sophistry/bullshit and potentially deceptive, especially when it pretends to be the former.

The difference is primarily in intent: it's hard to tell externally, but advice basically takes an internal perspective to its recipient, so it's perfectly reasonable to suggest someone do something with good intentions.

I can't believe people compare Jobs with Musk. Jobs was so much better put together in public and seems like he can still be very coherent and persuasive even when angry (likely in this video) and insulted in public.

I don’t think he was anywhere close to angry. It seems to me by his affect that he regards the audience member as simply not knowing any better about the big picture and what needed to be done to turn Apple around from its darkest days.

I agree, he doesn't look even remotely angry. The guy asking the question sure did, but Jobs looked pretty relaxed. And his response was amazing. No wonder he could create the Reality Distortion Field ;).

I posit that Jobs was angry but that his Realty Distortion Field was extremely effective this time.

I think he was angry too, but that makes it all the more impressive.

He doesn’t strike me as angry as much as amused. This is probably not the first time he has been asked a very similar question. Maybe the first time he was annoyed, but what he actually does is explain the big picture, “why?” The question asker isn’t thinking big picture. He needs context. This person may never get it, but it is important for leaders to be able to convey direction.

It is the same struggle that Woz had regarding the Apple II. Woz was looking at all of the success the Apple II had and was still having and Jobs knew it would not last forever and he had to create the next thing and that that is where the company has to put time, money, and attention.

There’s no interesting comparison to be made, really. Both are rich CEOs, I guess. That’s it.

I think some people are drawn to this video because they want others to think that Jobs made big changes that were painful and he was very successful, therefore when Musk makes big changes that are painful he will also be successful. I disagree and think the similarities are only superficial, but I can see why some might think that.

I also disagree with this. This implicitly assumes that anyone who makes big changes that are painful will be successful. But this is manifestly untrue.

A big difference in what Jobs did and what Musk is doing is that Musk has fired people at Twitter pretty much indiscriminately. Jobs had a clear idea for a working product line. He brought NeXTSTEP with him to Apple, along with NeXT engineers. And he kept those teams that worked in critical areas.

i think elon has tried to emulate the superficial aspects of steve jobs presentation style, albeit very unconvincingly

He can hardly finish a sentence. Jobs was a master presenter. Good luck for him.

That’s because back then your interaction with the public was maybe twice a year. Now it’s daily. Apples and oranges.

> back then your interaction with the public was maybe twice a year. Now it’s daily.

If you choose it to be. Plenty of CEOs are relatively recluse. For example, Apple’s, today.

I seriously doubt Steve Jobs would be.

> doubt Steve Jobs would be

Jobs was alive when Twitter went mainstream. He didn’t fall for the bait.

Agree. Jobs saved his public appearances/commentary for big events.

He was also much more mellow then. Jobs in 1984 with Twitter might have been a different story.

Giving you the benefit of the doubt, is it possible that’s your impression because his carefully crafted public persona is more familiar to you than his famous-but-somewhat-posthumously-so privateness?

Sure he would. Jobs controlled his public persona and presence very carefully.

Being available to the world makes you the tail that wags the dog. It’s expensive to keep the mob happy. The big demagogues of our time aptly demonstrate that.

> can't believe people compare Jobs with Musk

Go back to Elon learning, during an interview, the things Buzz Aldrin—a childhood hero of his—said about SpaceX. I believe Musk once had the progenitors of this sense of reflection and maturity. Instead, he’s degraded where Steve Jobs learned.

> Go back to Elon learning, during an interview, the things Buzz Aldrin—a childhood hero of his—said about SpaceX.

Is there a typo here? Can someone explain what this means in slightly different words? I've love to hear what Buzz Aldrin has to say about Elon Musk, but I just can't parse this phrase.

Native speaker here!

Parsing backwards:

Buzz Aldrin said (implicitly negative) things about SpaceX.

Elon heard the comments he made for the first time during a recorded interview.

Elon (implicitly) reacted in a negative/foolish way during the interview, because he idolised Aldrin as a child and was upset to hear these comments.

Thank you. Sorry HN.

I was just trying to understand. No reason for apologizing, communication problems happen :)

> Elon (implicitly) reacted in a negative/foolish

He just looks very sad, to the point of fighting back tears. What was the negative/foolish part? (was it a different interview than the 60 minutes one linked above?)

Nope, that was just my assumption, given how Elon usually handles these things. Sad to hear that.

Here's a rewording of the phrase:

Go back to the time Elon learned about the things Buzz Aldrin—his childhood hero—said about SpaceX

I think this is the interview in question: https://youtu.be/23GzpbNUyI4?t=726

That was Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan, not Buzz Aldrin.

I love Apple products and have since childhood, and I have little doubt Jobs’ personality, thinking, and talent, are major factors in what I liked about Apple then and do now. And I detest Musk.

That disclosure out of the way… Jobs was notoriously quick to anger, imperious in his internal role, very selectively rational, and generally… well, often kind of a jerk. I know all of that can overlap with coherence and persuasion, in fact in a cynical sense it could be argued it was part of his persuasive strength.

But… this isn’t the most infamous, nor probably the most convincing, example, it’s just the one that always resurfaces in my own memory: dude chucked a camera at some poor soul whose job it was to hand it to him on stage, because he was frustrated by a technical glitch during a presentation. That’s how not “put together” he could be in one of the more publicly visible tech events of the time: he did violence to a person who was helping him with tons of people watching because of something which wasn’t that person’s fault.

I’m not saying Musk is any better, but I’m also not prepared to pretend that Jobs wasn’t an epic asshole.

That “poor soul” was a senior director of marketing, not some minimum wage assistant. And violence, a bit hyperbolic, it was an underhanded toss - no one calls that “chucking” where I’m from at least. Sure he had a temper but this is painting a misleading picture of that episode.

You know what, I looked it up, you’re right, and this is an incredibly poor example of the point. I will stop using this example of Steve Jobs being an asshole.

> no one calls that “chucking” where I’m from at least

not disagreeing in substance, but a couple of quibbles: that absolutely does qualify as chucking--it's the way woodchucks chuck--but it does not qualify as chucking at someone; so as an underhand toss, it wasn't underhanded

This is the best kind of pedantry: agreeing in spirit with the intent but clarifying words used to express it.

> but I’m also not prepared to pretend that Jobs wasn’t an epic asshole.

I think the video linked to (Steve Jobs Insult Response) is honestly one of Steve's finest moments (with regard to dealing with people that is). But to bolster your point, there are of course an overwhelming number of stories that capture Steve's less stellar moments.

The one where Gassee disses him for bad behavior is funny; wonder if it really happened.

https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Handicapped.txt

Gassée was always quick with a burn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lie3C2kjCjo

Steve Jobs was a tyrant being closed doors and would often cry in meetings. This sounds very similar to Musk.

Musk is undoubtably a genius, you can’t discount the success that Tesla and SpaceX have had. He’s just extremely heavy-handed and capricious. I heard from someone at Tesla that they loathe being in meetings with him because he will literally fire people on the spot. That type of arrogance did play during the era of tesla going to $1 trillion but now that it’s falling back to earth I wonder how much people will tolerate his arrogance and temper tantrums.

Steve Jobs was smart enough to not be dumb in public. That is a very, very important factor.

I haven’t seen Musk have a temper tantrum in public.

I find that difficult to imagine, but a recent one (over the past week) registered several times on the HN front page.

Calling someone a pedophile on Twitter withot evidence qualifies as a temper tantrum in my book.

Elon’s ego fluffers are clearly out tonight, but don’t be dissuaded. Your perception of reality is right.

mike lindell is a genius, you cant discount the success he has had with my pillow

I wouldn't stretch as far as calling Musk a genius - he's someone with a lot of business acumen, and understands how to use social media effectively to get what he wants (much like Trump), and has deep connections to make his ventures successful.

SpaceX, Tesla etc would not be where they are now without all the funding Musk was able to secure and source from governments (grants, tax breaks, investments etc), and then investors - that's probably his biggest contribution.

If you haven't heard Musk talk IN DEPTH about rocketry, rocket engines, etc, then you should definitely watch the videos (linked below). For all his flaws (which are many), Musk does really understand his companies to a depth I've never before seen with a CEO. I've worked with many VPs and Executive team folk and I've never met someone that can have such low-level discussions about how their tech works, the product design, tactics and strategy etc. Also, when you see Elon talk about rockets you also get to see passion and happiness he gets from discussing these topics. I personally wish he had never used social media in the first place as it clearly triggers the worst parts inside him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw&ab_channel=Every...

its such ridiculous grading on a curve. dan gelbart is an example of a billionaire ceo who shows a genuine mastery of machining fabrication and protyping. just watch him on youtube. musk is such a dilletante by comparison. his primary skill is as a financier.

Both Musk and Jobs are admired by the same kind of people. And for the reasons.

Much better put together? The guy who publicly threw away his life and then used his considerable funds to cheat the line of transplants and then died anyway. Musk is definitely not as well spoken as Jobs, but Jobs has Musk beat on the level of insanity by that alone.

>I can't believe people compare Jobs with Musk.

I know it is not a very nice thing to say but you may be surprised to learn, Most people cant really do comparison.

Everyone is cheering this on... But as far as I can tell Apple did not win the Document Editor and business computing war vs MS.

Microsoft clearly won with the Microsoft Office Suite and Microsoft Word... I'm not sure about this specific tech or if OpenDoc would have made any difference... But is it an impossibility that open standards could have been a strong weapon against MS market dominance?

Either way the man is undeniably a legendary public speaker.

I don't think people are cheering this on because the business decision led to product victory.

I think people are cheering this on because he gave a really thoughtful answer to an aggressive question, and how he did it is worth thinking about.

> A serious problem with the OpenDoc project that Cyberdog depended on, was that it was part of a very acrimonious competition between OpenDoc consortium members and Microsoft. The members of the OpenDoc alliance were all trying to obtain traction in a market rapidly being dominated by Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer. At the same time, Microsoft used the synergy between the OS and applications divisions of the company to make it effectively mandatory that developers adopt the competing Microsoft Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technology. OpenDoc was forced to create an interoperability layer in order to allow developers to use it, and this added a great technical burden to the project.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cyberdog

Such a great clip.

I’ve been on both sides of that one. Plenty of times where I’m trying to get some advanced tech into a given component, and the manager says No, it’ll increase our risk. “But this tech will enable advanced features A, B, and C.” And the reply: “We don’t need to have A, B, or C … we need the product to deliver on our earlier promise of the baseline capability.”

And a few times when I’m on the other side, shutting someone else down. Never as clearly or succinctly as this, of course. Definitely makes me feel like a turncoat in the tug of war between technologists and product people.

...if you think about it, it's the phrase "sell 8 billion dollars of product a year" that does the heavylifting, where he sets up the overall tone as "Me: Successful business tycoon. You: Angry nobody."

It would come across as less arrogant, if he had just resisted the temptation to say that at all. He probably realizes that himself as he speaks and then wraps it into a humblebrag when he says "And I've made this mistake probably more than anybody else in this room".

It's also a sentiment that one needs to be very careful with: Some people think they're right about everything because their success proves them right. It's this kind of hubris that, more often than not, will set you up for failure.

The substance of the argument: "Solution looking for a problem" vs "problem getting a solution" is a bit of a tired old cliche (although I don't know whether it already was, back then).

This is the crux of the argument, however arrogant it might sound.

Brilliant genius engineer guy with shiny thing needs to be able to articulate how to sell $8B of the thing. This of course has not happened, as OpenDoc had been failing for years until that point.

That statement is the final blow. And probably deserved by a person who just accused their boss in public of being uneducated on the topic. Something elitist engineers love to do and seem to get away with time and again. Yet when they are put on the spot about their own shortcomings, we are to assume this is some kind of attack? Please.

I don't know enough about the specifics of the OpenDoc thing to be able to comment on that.

I also don't know enough about the specifics of what happened to that guy. Was he an Apple engineer? Do we know whether he got fired the next day? If not, we don't really know whether he got away with anything at all, do we?

The morals of angrily accusing your boss of something in public take a bit of unpacking. In my experience, bosses throw angry accusations at their subordinates much more frequently than the other way around. In fact, many bosses seem to think it's their job description. And they get away with it pretty much all the time (again: my experience).

Why should the social norms that govern a boss's behaviour towards their subordinates differ so radically from those that govern subordinates' behaviour towards their bosses? I mean: If this is the Prussian army in the 19th century, I kind of get it. But if those are highly educated professionals working on a common cause like Apple and we're in California in 1997, then this asymmetry doesn't sit with me as easily. Any tech company that I would want to work for would have to be basically pretty egalitarian.

Even though I know nothing about the specifics of the situation, I can sort of empathise with the overall theme: Imagine you're an "individual contributor" who takes shit from their bosses all day long, and the higher-ups just thanked you for it by flushing your career down the tube when they decided to cancel some project or some commitment or something that was deeply important to you. You go home and tell your wife, and she thinks you're a f#ing loser to put yourself in a situation where they can just treat you like that. You aren't even doing anything (because: What can you do?) to stand up for yourself. You have a difficult time looking yourself in the mirror. Then some public event like this comes along, and it may be the only chance you'll ever have to directly interact with that CEO. If you air your grievance and show them how angry you are, it may well help you, psychologically. You may or may not have a job the next day, but, if you don't, then, at least in your own mind, you died an "honorable" martyr's death. Even though I've never done anything like that (and probably wouldn't), I can sort of relate to that.

My favorite part is when audience clap to “some mistakes will be made and that’s good because that means decisions will be made “. As a guy who just quit 18 year career at multi billion dollar corporation, that was the biggest reasons for my quitting.

Indecisive leadership was your reason for leaving? (just clarifying!)

“More is lost by indecision than by wrong decision.”

I heard this first on the Sopranos but probably a common phrase

Other comments rightfully address Jobs' extraordinary talent in presentation and persuasion. He was certainly right in the diagnosis about what ailed Apple at the time, and where it needed to get to (or get back to).

Having said that, I have to feel for the guy asking the question, and by extension, all the developers who invested time and money building on top of this platform (OpenDoc) that Apple previously championed. OpenDoc sucked, that's for sure, but Apple killing it they way they did, and the lack of empathy demonstrated here by Jobs to the developers facing the loss of their investment in the platform - basically telling them "tough shit" - must have felt like a real slap in the face.

One of the Jobs' virtues was that he didn't sugarcoat his opinions. It was pretty harsh a times, but what should he have said instead?

> “some people who don’t know what they’re talking about”

That was for the guy who asked the question. I love how Jobs had that elegant way of being an asshole back to those that deserved it, and in such a subtle way you hardly noticed him actually being an asshole.

It's actually perfect, because I don't know if he's occupying the vantage of the questioner and referring to himself from their perspective (which is how I interpreted it) or the way you interpreted it. Perhaps both are intended.

Here’s the high quality copy of the whole video:

https://archive.org/details/wwdc-1997-fireside-chat-steve-jo...

Jobs was a flawed man in many ways, but the way he handled and addressed that is a succinct glimpse into why he is rightfully seen as a titan in the computing industry.

I'm guessing for every mean comment he handled in public, behind the scenes Steve ripped apart some poor soul in private for doing much less or some soul for not even trying to incite anything.

No doubt. It's clear that he could be a real asshole. I think we're well-served to acknowledge the good and the bad (i.e., not deifying him or others of his ilk).

Apple would not exist today without his efforts.

Who asked the question? Curious for their response, even if years later.

Another great one from the same day is on the Newton. Spot on.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qyd0tP0SK6o&t=3665

When he stood up, he had everything he was going to say figured out. Pretty cool to watch. This was a common question he knew was coming then though, so some of it is showmanship.

Some context, all from wikipedia:

OpenDoc

In March 1992, the historic AIM alliance was launched with OpenDoc as a foundation.Taligent adopted OpenDoc, and promised somewhat similar functionality although based on very different underlying mechanisms. While OpenDoc was still being developed, Apple confused things greatly by suggesting that it should be used by people porting existing software only, and new projects should instead be based on Taligent since that would be the next OS. In 1993, John Sculley called Project Amber (a codename for what would become OpenDoc) a path toward Taligent.[5][6] Taligent was considered the future of the Macintosh, and work on other tools like MacApp was considerably deprioritized.

CyberDog

Cyberdog included email and news readers, a web browser and address book management components, as well as drag and drop FTP. OpenDoc allowed these components to be reused and embedded in other documents by the user. For instance, a "live" Cyberdog web page could be embedded in a presentation program, one of the common demonstrations of OpenDoc.

A serious problem with the OpenDoc project that Cyberdog depended on, was that it was part of a very acrimonious competition between OpenDoc consortium members and Microsoft. The members of the OpenDoc alliance were all trying to obtain traction in a market rapidly being dominated by Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer. At the same time, Microsoft used the synergy between the OS and applications divisions of the company to make it effectively mandatory that developers adopt the competing Microsoft Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technology. OpenDoc was forced to create an interoperability layer in order to allow developers to use it, and this added a great technical burden to the project.

Kaleida

Kaleida Labs formed in 1991 to produce the multimedia cross-platform Kaleida Media Player and the object oriented scripting language ScriptX that was used to program its behavior. The system was aimed at the production of interactive CD ROM titles, an area of major effort in the early 1990s. When the system was delivered in 1994, it had relatively high system requirements and memory footprint, and lacked a native PowerPC version on the Mac platform. Around the same time, rapid changes in the market, especially the expansion of the World Wide Web and the Java programming language, pushed the interactive CD market into a niche role. The Kaleida platform failed to gain significant traction and the company was closed in 1996.

Taligent

Taligent OS and CommonPoint mirrored the sprawling scope of IBM's complementary Workplace OS, in redundantly overlapping attempts to become the ultimate universal system to unify all of the world's computers and operating systems with a single microkernel. From 1993 to 1996, Taligent was seen as competing with Microsoft Cairo and NeXTSTEP, even though Taligent didn't ship a product until 1995 and Cairo never shipped at all. From 1994 to 1996, Apple floated the Copland operating system project intended to succeed System 7, but never had a modern OS sophisticated enough to run Taligent technology.

In 1995, Apple and HP withdrew from the Taligent partnership, licensed its technology, and left it as a wholly owned subsidiary of IBM. In January 1998, Taligent Inc. was finally dissolved into IBM. Taligent's legacy became the unbundling of CommonPoint's best compiler and application components and converting them into VisualAge C++[5][6] and the globally adopted Java Development Kit 1.1 (especially internationalization).[7]

In 1996, *Apple instead bought NeXT and began synthesizing the classic Mac OS with the NeXTSTEP operating system.*

The Apple then and Apple now.

These days it is all going backwards to MBA style business decisions. Instead of making insanely great product and services that will make them lot of money, they are now thinking what product and services they could do to make them lots of money.

I thought It was also important to note the term "Customer", which is still being used in today's Apple. Comparing to most in Silicon Valley using the term "Users" instead.

Steve Jobs anticipated what was coming, and handled that very maturely.

Even though he says technology should not be in search of a solution, he does say that as soon as he saw the Canon printout, he realized it will sell itself. So his theme, with that nuance, seems to be that a technology should not be in search of a solution, unless it is so good as to sell itself.

That is... so much nicer than I expected.

The title is "insult response" because he is responding to an insult. Not that he is responding with an insult. At least that is how I interpreted it.

Oh same here, but Jobs's reputation was for... not suffering fools gladly. Based on that reputation, I expected him to come down on the guy like a hammer.

Jobs was a showman. And a leader. He was hard on fools at close range, mostly behind closed doors. He had a really high bar of excellence. But punching down at someone in the audience, whether a fan or an employee, that isn't anything he was ever really known for.

I mean if you listen closely Jobs straight up contradicts himself.

People who don't understand the dude's question on a technical level don't realize how much doublespeak Jobs is using here.

Can you elaborate? I don't understand the dude's question on a technical level.

To my mind it’s a bit of a trick question intended to bait Jobs into comparing apples to oranges. OpenDoc’s goal seems to be something of an early fediverse (shoot me if you disagree): a component framework that would allow applications to aggregate/compose/edit/display documents or subfragments thereof simultaneously from a federated network of sources, in an open standard that would allow anybody to roll their own UI. Java, completely different, is I suppose most comparable to this in the notion that Java is portable/run anywhere. Perhaps there was some equal footing between the two in the realm of licensing as well.

Jobs straight up dances around the question to basically say (in pretty unclear terms) “I don’t know how or want to sell OpenDoc because of my product philosophy, so we’re not gonna bother with it.”

However, instead of just bluntly stating ‘I don’t know how to sell OpenDoc’, Jobs goes on a self contradictory rant about asking his executive staff “what great things can we give our customers (why would the exec staff know)” rather than “what great tech can we sell”. They’re the same fucking question, unless you’re Steve Jobs, and decide that you can force people to work insane hours to build something that doesn’t exist and then take all the credit for it.

What an utterly strange reply. Did you actually watch the video? He danced around nothing. He simply stepped back one level and addressed the larger source of the angry comment from the audience member. He was very clear - all decisions of this scale will make some people upset. He admitted to what he didn't know, and then directly gave credit to his team and the people working under them for their hard work and long hours. Your entire reply is literally a fabrication.

> They’re the same fucking question…

I really don’t see it that way. One is customer-focused and one is tech-focused.

I think Jobs is explaining that he killed OpenDoc because, regardless of how great the tech was, it didn’t lead to something great Apple could make for its customers.

Look don’t get me wrong. I understand Jobs is smart. He was a shrewd businessman and a hell of a product/advertising guy, I don’t discredit Apple’s achievements and his lasting impact on them. But the man was also a bullshit peddler and a reality distortion field, and sniffing his own fumes is what ultimately killed him in the end, poetic hubris and all.

> Start with what great benefits can we give our customer, not with what tech do our engineers have

* The Apple I was Jobs looking at Wozz’ creations and salivating dollar signs

* The whole mouse & windowed UI was stolen from Xerox (engineers)

* The iPod was born out response to existing CD player and MP3 design (engineering)

* The magnifier genie effect on the dock was literally how an engineer got his foot in the door at Apple (I’m an engineer use my software employ me)

* The keyboard on the iPhone is something that arose out of engineering

* Every single instance of Steve Jobs walking on stage and calling the latest CPU in the MacBook & family a “screamer”

* Every company Apple bought to build iLife

> something great Apple could make for its customers

Something great Apple could sell to its customers. Apple stuff is awesome but it’s all overpriced and defended by the mystique of Job’s persona.

Fediverse?? I don't think so. OpenDoc is just a standard for creating documents with dynamic content. A competitor to OLEII. Basically covers a lot of what pdfs do, but can also be used to build basic apps.

Jobs fires the entire OpenDoc team and then goes off on a tangent on how java (a completely different thing - a virtual machine based programming language) will replace it. Perhaps Jobs was referring to NetBeans? In any case, the engineer was right to be pissed. Apple (and maybe Jobs) had spent years pulling devs onto their OpenDoc standard, then kill it abruptly effectively killing app developers overnight with a handwaving technically ignorant explanation on how Java could replace it.

Interestingly, years later Microsoft has killed OLE II, Oracle killed NetBeans, and we all moved to WebApps/JavaScript shit (yet somehow PDFs are still ubiquitous) so perhaps Jobs was right on a business level, but this is an example of his reality distortion field in effect.

Yeah but werent the files fragmentable across networks in an open standard that anybody can roll a UI for?

Could someone mention the context for the question? I have seen this clip before and it always escapes me.

Here it comes...

staged, I assume

What makes you think that?

honestly, staging the question is something I can see Steve Jobs doing. Does anybody know who the guy that asked the question is?

Here's one report about who it was: https://www.quora.com/History-of-Apple-Inc-Whos-the-guy-who-...

Thank you! Sad the what I think is one of the most useful contributions in this thread is buried on the bottom of the page...

Also found this short article that also discusses the clip [1]. Would be nice if someone could find the guy and verify it was him, and also ask him how he feels now about the whole thing.

1: https://kottke.org/15/10/focus-means-saying-no

He was part of the Silicon Valley Linux User Group in the late nineties.

That last bit about making mistakes but at least decisions are being made is important. Also connects well with what we have seen in the first 6 weeks of Elon Twitter.

Salesmen gonna sell. Not sure what the value of this video is.

The value is the approach that sales and product are integrated so much it comes from the mind of a single person.

Remember that this is the early days of technology products. While most of the industry was working from the tech and finding usecases for it, Jobs’ approach was the opposite.

Sales is not just about dollars. It’s about earning the delight and trust of your customer that you have something of value that they want. The dollars flow automatically from that.

I don't think this video sells that though. It comes off as a pivoting non answer to me.

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