__NOTOC__ Steve Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) appeared in numerous speaking engagements, interviews, media appearances, and product introductions throughout his life. He spoke about a vast array of subjects including technology, entrepreneurship, society, philosophy, education, communication, movies, music, television, role models, industry, etc.
Interviews, appearances, and speaking engagements
Year City Occasion Media Subject Matter1980Presentation donated to Computer History MuseumVideo Tools to amplify human ability. Computer is a bicycle for the mind VisiCalc Early word processors Computing in education Ease of use Ratio of computers to users Interactive software Interactive video The future of Apple Computer Computing power applied to ease of use Origin of Apple Computer name Differences between hardware and software Obsolescence 500 employees Sales dollars per employee Maintaining creativity in the long term1980Cork, IrelandRTÉ InterviewVideoPersonal computers will be used in homes, businesses and education. Apple II on the Space Shuttle1981Cupertino, CAABC 20/20 interview by Bob Brown at Apple offices 2/18/1981Video (YouTube) Video (Archive.org)1981San Francisco, CACBS Evening News; Barry Petersen interviewVideo (YouTube) Video (Archive.org) Life is seducing you into learning calculators, ATMs, and now desktop computers It is not a Nineteen Eighty-Four-ish vision It's going to be very gradual and very human1981Nightline; Ted KoppelVideoInvasion of privacy Computer literacy Children learning to use computers1981Cupertino, CAABC News; Ken KashiwaharaVideo (ABC News) Video (YouTube)Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial risk culture "The penalty for failure, for going and trying to start a company in this Valley is nonexistent. There really isn't a penalty for failure either psychologically or economically in the sense that, if you have a good idea and you go out to start your own company, even if you fail, you're generally considered worth more to the company you left because you've gained all this valuable experience, in many disciplines."1982Academy of AchievementAudio (YouTube)Money does not define success To be intelligent is to have a bird's eye view of the city while others are navigating the streets below. The key to making connections that lead to innovation is to have a collection of out of the ordinary experiences to draw from. Bright people are corralled onto a beaten path. Consider alternative paths. Visit a third world country Fall in love with two people at once Walt Disney took LSD once and that's where the idea for Fantasia came from. A variety of experiences will enable unique solutions. Don't walk by a Zen Buddhist, buy him lunch. The people that run the world aren't that different from you The most ecstatic feeling is to give back to the pool of human innovation which we have all benefited from. You inherit the responsibility to be a guardian of the earth.1982Boston, MAApplefestAudio (SoundCloud)Steve Wozniak speaks about software protection It's impossible to protect software. Computer architecture requires that software is insecurely loaded into memory, enabling it to be copied out of memory. Apple Computer consulted Martin Hellman and Ron Rivest cryptographers. The issue of software protection goes away when economic and convenience demands are satisfied. Growth of the computer marketplace will create competitive pressure on software prices. Software distribution will transition from retail stores to electronic distribution "over telephone lines", improving convenience. Similar issues exist with bootlegging in the record (music) industry and shoplifting in retail. Consumers end up paying higher prices for sales lost to piracy.1983CaliforniaNBC Interview with Steve Jobs. VideoThe Personal Office System Market is a major new market and Apple will approach it in a step by step approach to ensure high-quality customer support and feedback. To avoid adding complex specialized keys in the keyboard, the mouse allows the user to navigate the Graphical User Interface (GUI), eliminating the vast knowledge needed to use the computer.1983Aspen, ColoradoInternational Design Conference in Aspen (IDCA) - Apple Lisa Presentation Keynote VideoThe way computers have been built in the past won't work in the future anymore. Studies of new architectures are needed. A lot of people are studying how the human brain architecture works to eventually emulate it with a computer. The Artificial Intelligence community is researching self-consciousness and whether a computer can ever be self-conscious. The Apple Lisa Personal Computer is designed for the office marketplace, but its technology will be refined for use in future consumer products Lisa's productivity enhancement doesn't come from its performance, but from the ease of use of its Graphical User Interface (GUI).1983Aspen, ColoradoInternational Design Conference in Aspen (IDCA) - 'The Future Isn't What It Used To Be' keynote Video (YouTube) Audio (Soundcloud) Audio (Archive.org) Computers are only 36 years old Kids growing up now will be part of the computer generation Computers are simple, adaptive, and fast The oldest person with a degree in Computer Science is 39 Computers are very fast. They run a million instructions per second Programmers build a collection of low level instructions into higher level instructions Early electric motors of the late 1890s initially were large thus were applied to large scale applications. They didn't proliferate quickly Later electric motors drove a shaft through a factory to empower multiple workstations simultaneously The fractional horsepower electric motor was a breakthrough because it was applied to small individual applications There are approximately 55 fractional horsepower motors in every household The history of computers parallels the history of electric motors ENIAC the first computer, was giant, hardly anyone got a chance to use it A 1960s computing breakthrough was Time-sharing. Many people could share a large computer e.g. on a college campus "The reason Apple exists is because we stumbled on to the fractional horsepower computer 5 years before anybody else." "We made a computer that was about 13 pounds" The first PC was invented in 1976. In 1983 the industry will ship 3 million personal computers By 1986, we will ship more computers than automobiles in the USA "...I need your help. If you've looked at computers, they all look like garbage. All of the great product designers are off designing automobiles/buildings but hardly any of them are designing computers." The industry will sell 10 million computers whether they look ugly or great because people are going to be spellbound/elated "It doesn't cost any more money to make it look great" They are going to be these new objects that are going to be in everyone's working environment, educational environment, and home environment "We have a shot at putting a great object there (work, school, home) and if we don't, we are going to put one more piece of junk object there" By 1986 people will be spending two or three hours a day interacting with computers Industrial design, the software design should be given the same consideration that we give automobiles if not a lot more "Most of the objects of our life are not designed in America. We've blown it" "Computers and society are out on a first date in the 80s." "We have a chance to make these things beautiful. We have a chance to communicate something through the design of the objects themselves." Apple alone will spend over 100 million dollars over the next 12 months on media advertising. IBM will spend at least that amount The personal computer is a new medium of communication. One of the media. e.g. books, radio, television, newspapers Computer communication is different from other mediums. Telephone demands both parties of a conversation be simultaneously present. Computers do not have this requirement. "One of these days when we have portable computers with radio links, they can be walking around Aspen and retrieve it. (e-mail)" "The process of communication changes as the mediums evolve." When a new media emerges, we tend to fall back into old media habits The first TV shows are basically radio shows with a television camera pointed at them It took the better part of the 1950s for television to come 'into its own' as a medium John F. Kennedy funeral television broadcast gave people a level of intensity that would not have been possible with radio The Apollo program landing. That experience was not possible with the previous medium It took 20 years for television to evolve away from radio "Optical video discs" (Laserdisc) can store 55 thousand images on a side, or an hour of video randomly accessible. What are we using it for? Movies. We're dropping back into old media habits." 5 to 10 years from now, random access storage will 'come into its own' 1979 MIT experiment, Aspen Movie Map. A precursor of Google Street View is stored on laserdisc and reveals that random access storage will differentiate itself from other media We are still running historic applications on personal computers e.g. business accounting, COBOL Apple Lisa enables a person with little talent to draw artistic pictures, transmit them via e-mail Computer programs are an idea expressed on paper. They enable thousands of individual experiences based on one set of underlying principles Hamurabi video game. 7 year old kids are playing with a macro economic model. Interactive learning Books were a way to learn without an intermediary teacher. "The problem was, you can't ask Aristotle a question." Maybe in the next 50 to 100 years we will enable computer to capture an individual's underlying spirit, set of principles, world so that after they are gone we can ask the computer a question and receive an answer consistent with that individual Ultimately computers are going to be used for communication and over the next 5 years the standards for interconnecting computers are going to evolve. They all speak different languages right now. Early Xerox PARC local area network list server revealed special interest groups in the office. Soon there were more interest groups than there were employees. As computers are networked (on the internet), they will facilitate the creation of special interest groups and bring together the people in those groups. (Social Networking) Office local area network are about 5 years away Home local area network are about 10 to 15 years away "We want to put an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you, that you can learn how to use in 20 minutes. That's what we want to do. And we want to do it this decade. And we really want to do it with a radio link in it so that you dont have to hook up to anything. So you are in communication with all of these larger databases and other computers." Apple sets out "To design the computer that we want to put into the book eventually even though we cannot put it into the book now and it's called Lisa." Apple Lisa is sold out for the first year Eventually we will get to the point where people can create images as good as any other way. Apple is injecting liberal arts into the computers, adding proportionally spaced fonts, multiple fonts and graphics. There’s a lot of information in the world, but no tools to take that information and make it useful. People are more concerned with the privacy of Electric Funds Transfer than the privacy of giant databases. Apple’s “Kids Can’t Wait” program gives a computer to every school in America. "Over half of the gross national product is contributed by companies and people that are already in the information business today." Free sampling service for software as there is for the record industry. Using telephone lines to transmit the data that composes the software, to offer a free trial period