It's 1996 and they're tossing around the term "apps."
I seem to remember it being commonly used at the time (and earlier) as a shortened form of "applications". I don't think Jobs invented the term. :)
Steve Jobs’s Interview with Red Herring (1996)
21–30 of 63 posts
Re: Steve Jobs’s Interview with Red Herring (1996)
#22I have absolutely no love for the man, but he had some amazing visions of the future back then.
He was an amazing man. All of the hate is because he dared to follow that vision where it went, instead of merely being a vendor of software for Microsoft, or subservient to Google (eg: Apple built the entire infrastructure to do maps merely because Google wanted to sell apple customers information.)
I've yet to meet a Steve Jobs hater who actually understood what the guy did.
The steve jobs hate is all ideological and comes form the Apple hate which comes from people getting sold PCs by pimply nosed kids in the 1990s and being jealous of their friends much superior macintoshes (which fwiw, since the mid 1990s have been cheaper than comparable PCs, yet the myth is spread otherwise still to this day, because you can go buy a tagamochi for $4.99 and claim it's cheaper than a macintosh, and therefore the mac is overpriced.)
So, yeah, you should re-think what you believe about this guy and learn a bit about the real history.
I've been following him since the late 1980s, and he's always been a passionate, compassionate, genuine, honest and opinionated guy.
Re: Steve Jobs’s Interview with Red Herring (1996)
#23It's 1996 and they're tossing around the term "apps."
STEVE JOBS is using the term apps.
Re: Steve Jobs’s Interview with Red Herring (1996)
#24The Herring: What do you think about Netscape’s vision that someday soon we will all be automatically hooked to the Net when we boot up our computers, and their Navigator platform will be our primary interface to the world? Jobs: I wish the world could work that easily, but it doesn’t. You are talking about ideas, I am talking about reality.
20 years later with Chromebooks this finally happened.
No, it happened four years later with the iMac.
At the time of the article, you had trouble getting a computer with a TCP/IP stack on it out of the box. The NeXT machines did, and Macs did, but most people had windows and didn't even have TCP/IP, IIRC
The iMac was the first internet connected out of the box machine.
Re: Steve Jobs’s Interview with Red Herring (1996)
#25Tho brings back memories of the biz-tech magazine heyday of the late 90s early 2000s which emphasized layout, graphics and story. Some were more buzz than substance, but they enlivened the scene and made tech more popular while feeding off the frenzy. Kind of like the techcrunches, gigaom, pandos of the day. So, red herring, the standard, fast company, business2.0, wired, others.
Sadly, tech journalism has only gotten worse in the past 20 years. As bad as it was then-- there was no surprise that reporters didn't understand technology-- now they think they do, which is worse.
Re: Steve Jobs’s Interview with Red Herring (1996)
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
20 years later with Chromebooks this finally happened.
No, it happened four years later with the iMac. At the time of the article, you had trouble getting a computer with a TCP/IP stack on it out of the box. The NeXT machines did, and Macs did, but most people had windows and didn't even have TCP/IP, IIRC The iMac was the first internet connected out of the box machine.
There's more to it than being connected to the Internet out of the box.
>> their Navigator platform will be our primary interface to the world
Replace Netscape with Google and Navigator with 'Chrome'
Re: Steve Jobs’s Interview with Red Herring (1996)
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its crazy that even today diehards defend the DOJ's insane war on MS in the 90s. Do you guys really want to pay for browsers or every single thing in a OS ala carte? MS was in the right here (the browser is just part of the OS) and the judgement just empowered OEMs to go apeshit with crapware and bundling, helping make the MS experience a lot crappier than it should be.
Your starting point is wrong there: the DOJ wasn't against them for making it free, but for bundling it with their OS. They could offer it for free all they want. Similar in the EU, they weren't against them for it being free, and once they stopped bundling it and windows media player, they were off the hook (even though they still offered them for free).
The browser was ultimately mid-level on the list of grievances the DOJ had with Microsoft. That's why MS can bundle IE and Edge with the operating system today and nobody cares, including the US government.
If all Microsoft had done is bundled a free browser with the OS, it would have never stood up in court in terms of anti-trust prosecution. It would have been a laughable case.
What the DOJ got them on, was restraint of trade issues with OEMs, restrictions on API access, deep integration of IE into the OS (lying about being able to remove it), and market place conduct through leveraging their monopoly, leading to (in the DOJ's opinion) harm to consumers. Microsoft also basically taunted the bull in the countless ways they tried to jam the government, the ways they acted like assholes at every turn (including to the judge), the quotes that came out on things they said about competition, etc. They ended up with nearly everyone against them and looked like the ultimate bullies. If you want to have a bad time, be a monopoly and pretend you're more powerful than the US Government, and pretend you can stone-wall them.
Re: Steve Jobs’s Interview with Red Herring (1996)
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its crazy that even today diehards defend the DOJ's insane war on MS in the 90s. Do you guys really want to pay for browsers or every single thing in a OS ala carte? MS was in the right here (the browser is just part of the OS) and the judgement just empowered OEMs to go apeshit with crapware and bundling, helping make the MS experience a lot crappier than it should be.
Your starting point is wrong there: the DOJ wasn't against them for making it free, but for bundling it with their OS. They could offer it for free all they want. Similar in the EU, they weren't against them for it being free, and once they stopped bundling it and windows media player, they were off the hook (even though they still offered them for free).
There's room for improvement here. The case wasn't against them bundling it with their operating system, they're perfectly free to do that. It wasn't about them being a monopoly either, which also is perfectly allowed.
The DOJ was against them as a result of abuse of monopoly power. Using their market dominance with Windows, they attempted to strangle out Firefox by demanding that their reselling partners would not also bundle Firefox on their Windows-based computers. If they did bundle Firefox, they would lose their Windows certification.
Free = allowed
Bundling = allowed
Monopoly = allowed
Leveraging partner relationships to unfairly disadvantage a competitor = antitrust violation.
Re: Steve Jobs’s Interview with Red Herring (1996)
#29Gotta love those timescales! I don't know what you can build in 4 hours but the Fedex (even in 1996) certainly is somewhat hyperbolic!
"For example, it took Federal Express four months to build its Web site – using WebObjects, you could build that same site in four hours."
Re: Steve Jobs’s Interview with Red Herring (1996)
#30Tho brings back memories of the biz-tech magazine heyday of the late 90s early 2000s which emphasized layout, graphics and story. Some were more buzz than substance, but they enlivened the scene and made tech more popular while feeding off the frenzy. Kind of like the techcrunches, gigaom, pandos of the day. So, red herring, the standard, fast company, business2.0, wired, others.
Sadly, tech journalism has only gotten worse in the past 20 years. As bad as it was then-- there was no surprise that reporters didn't understand technology-- now they think they do, which is worse.
Most amusing were the wild predictions and unbridled blind enthusiasm. How they might explain why webvan would be the next juggernaut, for example. Not sure they did a story on webvan in particular, but in general very frothy reporting.