Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)
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I'm very glad that IBM and its compatible equivalents won the market, we would certainly be in much Darker Ages should Apple have won the desktop war, with their close-minded view on the world and its strict control on contents, peripherals and whatever gravitates around the Brand.
Apple first bet on the 68K line, then moved to IBM (the Power series CPU), then finally joined that 'closed' culture with the advent of the second generation iMac.
Each of those machines was as closed as they could make them without welding them shut (and your present day iMac is no exception to this, it doesn't have to be designed in such a way that it is hard to open).
I don't think Jobs ever really intended to win the dsktop wars in that way though. He never even tried to compete in every market segment and control every standard. I think his conception of Apple was always (since the lanuch of the Mac anyway) as a premium brand capturing the top end of the market, where the profits are. There would always be a mass market and enthusiast community in a world in which Apple was the dominant desktop brand, because Apple had no interest in competing with it. Conversely Microsoft has always ben about market share first, with an MS computer on every desk running MS software. That's not a Jobsian vision. Even when the iPhone was the only 'modern' smartphone and Android devices were years away from competing effectively with it, Apple never went for the market share play. At the time this was roundly criticised in the media as a grave strategic error, in some circles it still is, but that was to completely misunderstand Apple's strategy.
Yet Apple achieved a large market share and was perfectly happy with it even when Jobs was on the board. I'd find it hard to believe that you don't want Market Share anyway, even if you target premium users. You don't want to be a Ferrari maker in the end with a minuscule market share. I'd rather say Apple was always trying to keep a substantial market share while having "better" products (just like P&G for example, they win on the market with more expensive products) but failed until they entered the Portable Music Players and Smartphone market.
A good example of when Apple became a market share elader is the iPod. If you look at Apple's product strategy though, they never did anything to gain market share at the cost of profits and premium branding. The combination of devices and services via iTunes created a dominant platform. They didn't do anything to avoid that, it's not that beign dominant is itself a bad thing, it's just that it wasn't a strategic goal. They never under-cut competitors to achieve it. Yet at the height of their market dominance, when they were best placed to use their position to exert market control, instead of using that power against customers to increase lock-in, they used it to force reluctant labels to embrace DRM free content. They then used it again to coerce the labels to sign up to iTunes Match. They did this becaue these moves ease customer pain points and improve the customer experience, making their products more attractive and therefore more valuable.
Can you imagine Microsoft or IBM making moves like that? I can't. As another example, Apple has always maintained that they don't allow third party keyboards, or third party browsers to use the accelerated Webkit engine for security reasons. These explanations were widely derided as fig leaves to cover a lock-in strategy, yet as soon as Apple has implemented controls to open these restrictions securely, it did so. It turns out their stated reasons for doing that really were their actual reasons for doing it. So if you want to make your 'Apple lockin would be worse than IBM' thesis stand up, you need to explain why their actual behaviour when they're in that situation doesn't match the thesis.
Except for Sony, every other media player disregarded DRM. You may not have noticed this if you only had an iPod. The fact that they joined the ranks of their competitors in this regard should not be seen as a positive, it should only be seen as PR.
The Sandisk Sansa Fuze[1] had the bizarre "slot radio". http://gizmodo.com/5126743/how-sandisks-slotradio-turned-a-g...
Surprising that it's from 2009. I thought that the big players had worked out the public's opinion by then, but it may be that that product was in development during the DRM battles and Sandisk had to either release it, or scrap the product.
The record labels only stepped in when your quoted companies/brands entered the fray.
But then Zunes and iPods could also always run DRM free MP3s copied from other sources as well, so I'm not sure what you think the difference was, or what advantage you think these independent players had with respect to DRM.
You almost had me choke on that one. Yeah, yeah, they did everything for the best interests of the customers. Oh wait, like preventing to put your own songs if you did not use their proprietary software (iTunes) that ran like shit on Windows (Hey, even I had to use it) and was impossible to run under Linux or anything else. And let's not forget they did not embrace the non-DRM MP3 until everyone else started to do it - they were far way from leading the trend to benefit customers in providing interoperable devices. As a matter of fact, iPods were locked and you were NOT able to use the songs you licensed on iTunes with any other music player.
Yeah, what a great experience that was. Thumbs up for User Freedom! But I'm sure you will build a case to tell me that Freedom is not good, and everyone is better in an Apple jail.
Very frustrating.
Anyway, don't you think we'd all be better off with 3 or 4 desktop and mobile choices?
Compare this to modern Web Development. There is only one family of targeted platforms: html and Javascript. That's it. Don't like Javascript? Tough. But at least you don't have to learn and pay for multiple, vendor-centric tech. I actually long for a standard platform for native mobile development.
It's funny because Apple is now in that same situation. Apple isn't exactly known for innovation anymore (as much as they would like to lead you to believe in their keynotes).
This is not unique to Apple. When a business has market dominance through regulation, lockin or high entry cost, they usually spin it as being simply because they provide the absolute latest and best service.
It's especially easy to see among internet providers that provide stoneage speeds, as they will brag about their amazing cutting edge internet service.
One may say "no shit sherlock" to that, but there is a lot of potential advertisement that wouldn't be equally deceptive in that context. They could advertise themselves as "tried and true" or "the enduring provider you can rely on".
The problem with that is that consumers nowadays are far more focused on "cutting edge" and "latest and greatest". Not much is made to last anymore (especially in the consumer electronics industry) and most people seem fine with that. I know buying a smartphone isn't the same as buying services from an ISP, but I think the same principle applies. Faster speeds are more important to consumers than "tried and true" services and so if ISPs want to maximize the effectiveness of advertisement, that's what they'll do.
In the worst case scenario, "tried and true" and "the enduring provider you can rely on" would turn consumers away from your service because they would make your ISP seem old and boring (again, not something that's bad per se, but bad going by the preferences of the average consumer).
"The term innovation can be defined as something original and, as a consequence, new, that "breaks into" the market or society."
Making technologies acessible and useful to people, where previously they were the domain of specialists and geeks, is pretty much definitive of Apple's entire business model and core competency from 1997 to the present day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation
http://www.asymco.com/2014/04/16/innoveracy-misunderstanding...
And despite Microsoft and its practices, the fact that the PC was open, hardware-wise, made it possible for Linux to exist. That's how flexible the PC platform is.
"Playboy: Maybe we should pause and get your definition of what a computer is. How do they work?
Jobs: Computers are actually pretty simple. We’re sitting here on a bench in this café [for this part of the Interview]. Let’s assume that you understood only the most rudimentary of directions and you asked how to find the rest room. I would have to describe it to you in very specific and precise instructions. I might say, “Scoot sideways two meters off the bench. Stand erect. Lift left foot. Bend left knee until it is horizontal. Extend left foot and shift weight 300 centimeters forward…” and on and on. If you could interpret all those instructions 100 times faster than any other person in this café, you would appear to be a magician: You could run over and grab a milk shake and bring it back and set it on the table and snap your fingers, and I’d think you made the milk shake appear, because it was so fast relative to my perception. That’s exactly what a computer does. It takes these very, very simple-minded instructions—“Go fetch a number, add it to this number, put the result there, perceive if it’s greater than this other number”—but executes them at a rate of, let’s say, 1,000,000 per second. At 1,000,000 per second, the results appear to be magic.
That’s a simple explanation, and the point is that people really don’t have to understand how computers work. Most people have no concept of how an automatic transmission works, yet they know how to drive a car. You don’t have to study physics to understand the laws of motion to drive a car. You don’t have to understand any of this stuff to use Macintosh—but you asked. [laughs]"
See:
The problem isn't that I missed his point. It's that he makes the wrong one. We understand physics just fine. But I bet most folks have little understanding of how a combustion engine works, but they drive the car just fine. That's the analogy he's going for.
Jobs was clearly talking about studying theoretical physics from a textbook.
The same is not true of computer science except in the vaguest possible uses of "language".
Study: 1. the devotion of time and attention to acquiring knowledge on an academic subject, esp. by means of books
You're willfully ignoring that. You're making a point that would be valid if Jobs had said something dumber. That's called a strawman argument.
He wasn't making that point about computer science. We need know nothing about how computers work to use them. A decent, correct analogy to driving is combustion engines.
To be clear, you mean: it's a poor analogy to say we don't need to know physics to drive, because we have thousands of hours learning physics from our normal experience. A better analogy would have been we can use a combustion engine without knowing the science.
I think you're right, then.
"The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people—as remarkable as the telephone."
"...no online database will replace your daily newspaper..."
"Newsweek now back in print!"
[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/road.html
"With Web-based software, most users won't have to think about anything except the applications they use. All the messy, changing stuff will be sitting on a server somewhere, maintained by the kind of people who are good at that kind of thing. And so you won't ordinarily need a computer, per se, to use software. All you'll need will be something with a keyboard, a screen, and a Web browser. Maybe it will have wireless Internet access. Maybe it will also be your cell phone. Whatever it is, it will be consumer electronics: something that costs about $200, and that people choose mostly based on how the case looks. You'll pay more for Internet services than you do for the hardware, just as you do now with telephones."
Jobs' observations seem spot on and they are, but I think this was already in the consciousnesses for the industry at that time. It only seems out there compared to what "regular people" outside the niche would have said. Or possibly to those of us who are too young to remember the kind of attitudes you'd hear in the 80s. (I barely remember this, but it was definitely there...)
Your pg quotes are also notable for what they got wrong. I read that as a "web browser as dumb terminal" view - not unconventional for its time. As we've seen, first with JavaScript and then with mobile apps instead of the browser, complexity in the client and running code locally is still a good thing. For many tasks the web has lost.
The story of the birth of the internet is an interesting one that had little to no involvement from guys like Jobs, who were fixated on the new desktop market and were shockingly short-sighted in regards to networking. When did we even have an integrated by default modem in the 80s? The desktop guys talked a big game regarding the future, but knew their bread was buttered by hardware and software sales and this whole dial-up thing wasn't profitable for them. In fact, it was kinda a threat. I spent a lot more time playing things like Tradewars (or other doors games) or MUDs, for free, than buying the AAA titles of the time, which I found boring because they couldn't do online multiplayer.
But we shouldn't elevate it to something it's not. The cynical view, and to an extent a correct one, is that this is 1980s conventional wisdom mixed with a guy trying to sell computers.
1984.
Which wasn't a huge prediction; CompuServe's consumer offering had been available for years (and they had at least one smaller national competitor, The Source), and the BBS scene including BBS networks was already a thing. The value of computers as communication devices especially in a network with wide penetration wasn't something that the many observers at the time who made similar comments were extrapolating from scant evidence, its something that people had concrete experience with in the mid-1980s where the trend toward it becoming a key use of computers was widely recognized in social commentary, fiction, etc.
"Jobs: Let me compare it with IBM. How come the Mac group produced Mac and the people at IBM produced the PCjr? We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren’t going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build. When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through."
So is this only a good response because apple succeeded so well or should they have done market research and done even better? I ask because the logic for every startup is do market research (now called validation) in some fashion - even if it is the landing page approach.
I guess I am asking, prior to the success of the Mac would any business person have gone along with the "no market research" approach?
If you are inside the PC revolution and you have a chance to define where it is going, then who knows better than you?
How exactly can one do market research and arrive at something like the Mac? Okay, it may help indicate there is an opportunity, but this is the easy part, anyone can do that. It does nothing to indicate how to fulfill that opportunity, it's not the client's job to give a blueprint, and that's the hard part.
Imagine starting a restaurant business by asking people on the street what they like or what they think you should have on the menu... let's just say it's not going to star on Michelin.
> I guess I am asking, prior to the success of the Mac would any business person have gone along with the "no market research" approach?
There's a quote often attributed to Henry Ford:
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
I can think of plenty of prior successes that I doubt having started with a survey.
I guess you could get a bunch of different people to come in and try to use it, and do different stuff? See how they react to it, survey them afterwards?
In addition, they made a lot of changes post launch due to market acceptance, e.g. size of storage, cost etc. The Mac benefited from the fact that Apple was willing to stick with it even though the Apple II was still the cash cow and the Mac struggled.
So it's bull in the sense that they were quite attuned to what the market had to say.
But it's not bull in the sense that they really did go their own way, almost fatally (e.g. no floppy -- http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Hide_Under_This_D...).
Apple pays very close attention to market data, and it obviously informs their product development (see the big iPhones now, for example). What they tend not to do is market research: surveys, polls, focus groups, etc.
The gist is that it's not about how "well you do" money wise, but how well you do in producing what you think is good.
It's not advice for those who would prefer something subpar that would make them more money to something good that might not do as well. etc).
And anyway, that's beside the point. They didn't go to that approach to make more money, but because they felt they had to go to that approach.
edit: One place where Market Research does have value in the "soul" model is for refining the product to fit the market better. The germ of the idea is still intensely personal to the founder.
That's all anyone asks of Market Research.
Do you mean this? I can see you might or might not. To satisfice would mean stopping at the first minimally acceptable solution to save time and effort. To invoke art and once-in-a-life-time product seems to suggest you want the opposite concept - optimising i.e. to strive relentlessly towards the maximal solution despite the extra time and effort it takes.
That's exactly how we got most of the Beatles' songs. The Beatles' function in the music industry was to repeat and popularize the ideas of other artists and to follow nascent trends, the same as any pop artist.
Also, it would be unfortunate if the takeaway was "market research has no value". Indeed, later in the interview, when discussing "Why the mouse?" he says:
'We’ve done a lot of studies and tests on that, and it’s much faster to do all kinds of functions, such as cutting and pasting, with a mouse, so it’s not only easier to use but more efficient.'
Clearly, in this case, they didn't trust that they could create "the best thing we could build".
It's quite funny that Apple became the most valuable company in the planet when they let go of this obsession and instead focused on beating the old Apple.
How so? I'm actually surprised how little they seem to have reacted to the competitive pressure of Android than pursuing their agenda at their own pace.
Playboy: No more billion-dollar companies hatched in garages?
Jobs: No, I’m afraid not in computers. And this puts a responsibility on Apple, because if there’s going to be innovation in this industry, it’ll come from us. It’s the only way we can compete with them. If we go fast enough, they can’t keep up.
I'm not sure I agree, but what kind of hardware company do you guys think could ever reach a near Apple level? I feel that perhaps something in robotics, but was curious what you all thought...
His definition was focused on computing.
Even then, Tesla was decidedly not hatched in a garage.
I'm talking in a literal sense, not the marketing lingo "find the pain!" sense. For example, I stand a lot at work and my feet are throbbing right now from working over the weekend. I would pay good money for an elegantly designed device of some sort that would soothe this pain without me having to really do anything. No matter what walk of life you come from, every single day you will hear someone complain about some kind of pain they're feeling -- e.g. "Ahh, my x is killing me right now!"
> Jobs: The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people—as remarkable as the telephone.
> Jobs: The developments will be in making the products more and more portable, networking them, getting out laser printers, getting out shared data bases, getting out more communications ability, maybe the merging of the telephone and the personal computer.
edit: note, Windows 95 originally didn't have a TCP/IP stack! The point is, plenty of smart people missed this boat for years, and I don't think it was at all obvious in 1985 that getting on a network would be the driving use case for widespread computer adoption by "non-techie" people.
What it didn't have was a web browser, you needed the plus pack for that.
Having a good TCP/IP stack core isn't about figuring out that plugging into a national computer network is one of the key values of a computer, its about knowing which national network will be the key one (and, more specifically, which technology stack that one will be built on.)
The web -- the bit that made the Internet win that battle as the consumer-facing network that would matter -- was fairly new when Windows 95 was released and hadn't even been invented when work on Windows 95 began. At that time, dialup, largely-text mode offerings that didn't rely on a TCP/IP stack not only dominated local BBS's (some of which were part of national interBBS networks), but also represented some of the biggest (inter)national consumer-facing services to which computer users were likely to connect (like CompuServe, which had already secured leadership in that space when Jobs gave his 1985 interview.)
> The point is, plenty of smart people missed this boat for years, and I don't think it was at all obvious in 1985 that getting on a network would be the driving use case for widespread computer adoption by "non-techie" people.
It was widely accepted. Its true that in 1985 it wasn't at all obvious that the Internet or any specifically TCP/IP-based network would be the specific network, the recognition that connecting to a large-scale network was a compelling feature and likely to become the most compelling feature was widespread in 1985.
Yeah, it's really that prescient.
The fact that BBS existed and there was some networking in colleges is irrelevant. Most people didn't even think a PC would be important for everybody, much less internet. It was seen as a totally geek / big business thing.
Read how the media pundits and even large corporations talked and wrote about the web in 1992-3 for example (as a fad, novelty, for nerds only, etc). Heck, even Microsoft took years to get it, and got behind Netscape.
You mean exactly the same way that electric cars were being addressed over the last 4 years or so?
Shockwave Rider covered it in 1975, and described a network worm.
(Speaking of Ted Nelson and ubiquitous microcomputers, the desirability of microcomputers in homes and schools was already received wisdom; the BBC had been evangelising it since 1981. I have colour-printed computer-programming books released by a major children's publisher (Usborne) around 1983-5 sitting behind my monitor here.)
So Jobs' statement wasn't remarkably prescient. Certainly, a lot of other people weren't as clearly aware of what was coming in 1985; but for someone whose job was to be the leader and chief visionary of a forward-looking computer company, "respectably well-informed" would be closer to it.
(I didn't downvote you.)
Literally every single teacher I had in elementary school (which overlapped the time of this interview) raised this -- that learning to use and deeply understand computers would be broadly important for everyone was, if anything more prevalent in the 1980s than today (while its assumed today that everyone will use computers, its controversial that anyone but the tech high priesthood will need to learn to use them specifically.)
> much less internet.
The internet specifically, maybe not; people were widely recognizing the value to the public of consumer-focussed online information services like CompuServe, but "the internet" -- while it existed -- hadn't yet connected with the consumer-focussed world.
The part of Job's quote that can be said to be innovative is he said "for the home" when most at the time were assuming "for the office".
I recently watched a BBC Horizon documentary on microprocessors filmed in 1977 and was very impressed with how they described the world we live in today. They clearly stated the exciting bit was enabling information networks so I don't think the possibilities of internet-like-things was ever in much doubt.
the battery tech is still a ways off though. right now they are only really good for commuting, and lots of people still like to travel, or at least have the option to.
This technology exists, but the people who are saying that Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general will change people's lives are way ahead of the curve. People will look at quotes from 2012 and say "Bitcoin came out in 2009 so people were already aware of cryptocurrency for years"
But more than 99% of the population right now are completely missing the boat on cryptocurrency. I think in five years it's going to be bigger than most people imagine.
As I recollect the times, computers were rare enough at the time that we passed as a truly geeky family. And in spite of being fairly early adopters of IT as consumers, I can't recollect internet in our household before the early 1990s.
The 1980s was a period where most businesses were beginning to equip themselves with computers. The process took roughly two decades and closed the century with the dotcom bubble. Networking was on the radar all along, yes, but recall that this primarily was for private networks or intranets. Internet as we think of it today was on nobody's radar until into the 1990s.
I can't imagine a single tech-minded person in 1985 not dreaming of a connected world, and the myriad dangers it could bring. It's the speed with which it has spread and become mainstream that is astonishing.
And CompuServe's nation-wide, consumer-oriented offering (started out as a way to get some revenue for unused capacity on their business-oriented offering) had been available for several years.
Always like to see how pretentious Jobs has always been, thinking he was the only source of innovation in the whole world. He has been proven wrong many times.
You can't argue that their brand is based off the perception of grand innovation. Take a look at every Apple keynote ever.
There are also books with the interviews only [the directors (Clint Eastwood, Billy Wilder, Orson Wells etc.), larger than life etc.]. Great reads.
me too
Indeed, the interviews were designed to give more credibility to the Playboy and give a wider range of men an excuse to buy them. This worked out perfectly, if you ask me.
But, the interviews developed into much more than just an excuse. They are a genuine piece of great journalism. Even though they are surrounded with boobs - which isn't totally uncomfortable for the reader, too - is it?
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/06/news/la-jc-the-readi...
Apropo today given Notch's announcement.
It occurs to me that programming languages are like the telegraph: you can do amazing things with them, but at the end of the day they require someone to learn a "whole sequence of strange incantations," and the majority of people will never learn how to use them.
I wonder who will invent the "telephone" for computers -- which would, in this case, allow ordinary people to create software with languages they already know how to use (speak). I know it sounds far-fetched given how computers work, but I'm sure the telephone also sounded far-fetched to telegraph operators at the time.
People just gesture at the terminal, and the software interprets it.
-Hitchhiker's Guide (1979?)
We’re living in the wake of the petrochemical revolution of 100 years ago. The petrochemical revolution gave us free energy—free mechanical energy, in this case. It changed the texture of society in most ways. This revolution, the information revolution, is a revolution of free energy as well, but of another kind: free intellectual energy. It’s very crude today, yet our Macintosh computer takes less power than a 100-watt light bulb to run and it can save you hours a day. What will it be able to do ten or 20 years from now, or 50 years from now? This revolution will dwarf the petrochemical revolution. We’re on the forefront.
---------
What I think is interesting is that the computer revolution is, and will continue to be, dependent on the petrochemical revolution.
We are in the process of finding out whether we can replace petrochemicals with renewables. If we can't, or only partially can, computing gets more expensive. This goes contrary to our expectations of more and cheaper computer, indefinitely.
Playboy: You can laugh about it?
Jobs: I’m not going to let it ruin my life. Isn’t it kind of funny? You know, my main reaction to this money thing is that it’s humorous, all the attention to it, because it’s hardly the most insightful or valuable thing that’s happened to me in the past ten years.
I believe that Jobs laughed because- the value of starting or investing in a business is in making meaning first; by making meaning you are looking to change the world. Starting or investing in a business on the sole purpose of making money, means that if you don't make money, you’ll quickly lose interest and on top of that you’ll be left with a meaningless company that doesn’t change the world.
Jobs: "Radio Shack is totally out of the picture. They have missed the boat." - "...their model of retailing, which in my opinion often meant selling second-rate products or low-end products in a surplus-store environment."
And the nail in the coffin: "I don’t anticipate that they’re going to recover and again become a major player."
http://www.theonion.com/articles/even-ceo-cant-figure-out-ho...
When you needed an RS-232 cable or a box of floppy discs, sometimes Radio Shack was all you had.
It's easy to toss rocks at them today. But it's hard to understate their importance to the early PC industry.
Ultimately Jobs was right. This sort of hobbyist market wasn't going to last (and RadioShack has completely missed the boat on the 3d printing and "maker" movements). We don't have smartphones with BASIC installed. Computer makers don't even care about that aspect of their devices (that is, that they are programmable). Things have changed quite dramatically.
I'm sure a lot of people were and still are asking that about Tesla. His response is basically he doesn't know how the future will respond to the computer but he knows it will definitely change the world and before long it won't be an act of faith.
A car, by now, is just a car. It's 2014, they are a known quantity, and the big change they were to bring, they have brought already.
Plus the key in the era of Mac and IBM PC was that the personal computer was just beginning and exploding from only nerds and large enterprises to billions of people. The personal computer was something genuinely new and disruptive for all kinds of markets, business processes and personal life. An electric car is just an incremental innovation on the car everybody already has.
Now, if it was a flying car, or a self driving car, that would have been more impressive in its possibility for change, but still nothing like a computer in the pre-mass computer era.
I have the same thought as you, what Tesla may accomplish as a company may not be affordable electric vehicles but leaps in battery and power storage.
Looks like the iPhone was in his mind for a long time.