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Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

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Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#61

Post by leoc »

digi_owl wrote: post #46
twoodfin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. This is only 5 years after Jobs’ visit to Xerox PARC, where he would later say he “missed [their developments in] networking” because he was so fascinated by their GUI work.

He probably missed it, but others at the company probably didn't. Then again there is very little detail in the statement, and much of it could already be true with the modems and BBSs of the time. Hell, a year after this interview LucasArts opened up Habitat for beta testing on Quantum Link. The client side running on C64 no less. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_(video_game) As Gibson likes to put it: the futu…

(I am not an expert on anything.)

At this stage Sun was already selling networked workstations and trumpeting that "the network is the computer". DNS ramped up in 1985, while SMTP was already a few years active, and from a user's POV the good ole modern IPv4-on-Unix-machines Internet was already a reality if still not open to all comers. Speaking of Gibson, Neuromancer was already out, too. Basically Jobs was, for someone in his position—and for someone who iirc was in regular contact with Apple employee Alan Kay at this stage—more or less up to speed here, not really visionary. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8317553

Speaking of Sun workstations though, remember that at the time of this 1985 interview Jobs was about four months from being fired from Apple. The Big Mac project he'd been pushing at the time looks very much like his attempt to do basically a NeXT—a networked Unix workstation with a new GUI layer and Mac/Apple fairy dust—inside Apple as the next Macintosh, and he founded NeXT by the end of the year in response to Gassée's termination of Big Mac after he (Jobs) left (basically in favour of the more incremental Macintosh II, it seems).

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#62

Post by ggm »

valuearb wrote: post #51
ggm wrote: post #43

My first computer science lecture in 1979 was on digital convergence and my lecturer said there, it was actually to all intents and purposes already over, we were just living through a long tail transition. He put it back to 1962 and telstar, although doubtless you could push back further. So if you want to say Jobs was 'visionary' in '85, remember he had 6 years of lead time, if all he did was pay attention to what…

Except that no one was building the future the way Jobs did. Having the idea for something is only part of the battle, actually implementing it in a usable fashion is the most important part of it. If you look at the Xerox Alto, and the Macintosh, it's amazing how much more advanced the Macintosh was at UI and how much easier to use it was, and how much less expensive it was (Jobs actually supposedly helped design th…

I think this is true. He was a master at removing things to get the essential core, but sometimes it felt over-remorselessly. the one-button thing. A good example of cheap and works: I'm told the floppy disk controller on the apple II or III was a finite state machine implemented by gate logic and two PROM memories. I used a lisa in its year of release and the difference between a lisa and what emerged as that generation of mac was pretty high, but the core? much the same. Appletalk on twisted pair? no addresses but zeroconf: every device named itself. That was smart.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#63

Post by WalterBright »

Sangermaine wrote: post #14
eradicatethots wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know, should it be special to be able to explain things? I think it should actually be normal

Most people are actually pretty bad at explaining things in a clear, concise, helpful way, very often especially people well-versed in the field they are trying to explain. Communicating complex concepts to non-experts is indeed a fairly rare skill.

> pretty bad at explaining things

I find this difficult to believe. An innate ability of humans is to teach others - evolution has selected for it, because humans need to be taught, as their living skills are not innate.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#64

Post by valuearb »

digi_owl wrote: post #44
ggm wrote: post #43

My first computer science lecture in 1979 was on digital convergence and my lecturer said there, it was actually to all intents and purposes already over, we were just living through a long tail transition. He put it back to 1962 and telstar, although doubtless you could push back further. So if you want to say Jobs was 'visionary' in '85, remember he had 6 years of lead time, if all he did was pay attention to what…

Bingo. There were a whole lot of informed people running around Apple. Jobs and his like have a knack of picking up ideas, and then spin round and present them as their own without ever giving a hit of attribution.

if you read the entire interview you may note he didn’t take personal credit for anything.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#66

Post by jjeaff »

panic wrote: post #40
agumonkey wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand but it's easy to imagine jobs only as a salesman that just grabs others ideas blindly.

Most salespeople take a product that exists and convince you to buy it. Steve took a product that didn't exist and convinced you to build it. His talent was organizing people around a common vision, not just selling the result.

I think more importantly was getting together the people to sell it. Much or even all of the product apple had built were already products. But Steve was able to package it and spin it in a way that made it exciting and must have.

One of their watershed products was the iPod. I had a several mp3 players before the iPod was created. But apple made them cool and thus mainstream.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#67

Post by jjeaff »

WalterBright wrote: post #63
Sangermaine wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people are actually pretty bad at explaining things in a clear, concise, helpful way, very often especially people well-versed in the field they are trying to explain. Communicating complex concepts to non-experts is indeed a fairly rare skill.

> pretty bad at explaining things I find this difficult to believe. An innate ability of humans is to teach others - evolution has selected for it, because humans need to be taught, as their living skills are not innate.

I don't see how the ability to teach others would be an evolved ability. Learning from others, yes. But teaching others is a different skill than learning.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#70

Post by mikeash »

WalterBright wrote: post #63
Sangermaine wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people are actually pretty bad at explaining things in a clear, concise, helpful way, very often especially people well-versed in the field they are trying to explain. Communicating complex concepts to non-experts is indeed a fairly rare skill.

> pretty bad at explaining things I find this difficult to believe. An innate ability of humans is to teach others - evolution has selected for it, because humans need to be taught, as their living skills are not innate.

The same is true of many other animals, but I wouldn’t say a cat is particularly good at explaining how to hunt.
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