Playboy Interview with Steven Jobs Circa 1985
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Playboy Interview with Steven Jobs Circa 1985
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Re: Playboy Interview with Steven Jobs Circa 1985
#2Interesting retrospective future-predicting-ish:
Playboy: More important, are you ignoring your potentially biggest rival, A.T.&T.?
Jobs: A.T.&T.. is absolutely going to be in the business. There is a major transformation in the company that's taking place right now. A.T.&T. is changing from a subsidized and regulated service-oriented company to a free-market, competitive-marketing technology company. A.T.&T.'s products per se have never been of the highest quality. All you have to do is go look at their telephones. They're somewhat of an embarrassment. But they do possess great technology in their research labs. Their challenge is to learn how to commercialize that technology. Also, they have to learn about consumer marketing. I think that they will do both of those things, but it's going to take them years.
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and this:
Jobs: I'll always stay connected with Apple. I hope that throughout my life I'll sort of have the thread of my life and the thread of Apple weave in and out of each other, like a tapestry. There may be a few years when I'm not there, but I'll always come back.
Re: Playboy Interview with Steven Jobs Circa 1985
#3Funny how much has changed in 25+ years, yet most of Steve's ideas are just as relevant today.
Re: Playboy Interview with Steven Jobs Circa 1985
#4I love his answer to "Maybe we should pause and get your definition of what a computer is. How do they work?"
It would be really interesting to see how he would answer that question now.
Re: Playboy Interview with Steven Jobs Circa 1985
#5Jesus, I never realized how on message the guy has been for 30 years. If you showed that 1985 Steve Jobs an iPhone, I don't know if he would be impressed or be nonplused and see it as some obvious progression that he's had in mind for a long time.
Re: Playboy Interview with Steven Jobs Circa 1985
#6What a great article. There is a lot of insight into what makes him tick. Reading this article 25 years into the future makes me think his "reality distortion field" is no distortion at all, just the reality!
Re: Playboy Interview with Steven Jobs Circa 1985
#7Jesus, I never realized how on message the guy has been for 30 years. If you showed that 1985 Steve Jobs an iPhone, I don't know if he would be impressed or be nonplused and see it as some obvious progression that he's had in mind for a long time.
His consistency seems really important to me, but it isn’t as remarked upon as, for example, his perfectionism.
When you look at Apple’s product timeline, you can see he’s always thinking several years ahead. Plenty of good products were just bridges to great products. Some products didn’t make any sense until later.
Probably one reason that people like to speculate about Apple’s plans is that Apple actually uses plans, as opposed to hopes. I doubt Microsoft or Google could give more accurate pictures of where they’ll be in 10 years.
Re: Playboy Interview with Steven Jobs Circa 1985
#8I love the absolute irony of an article, printed in its day to carefully explain to people what Silicon Valley was, what a computer was, and what it was all about. Preserved for eternity on the internet and readable only on computers.
Re: Playboy Interview with Steven Jobs Circa 1985
#9Jesus, I never realized how on message the guy has been for 30 years. If you showed that 1985 Steve Jobs an iPhone, I don't know if he would be impressed or be nonplused and see it as some obvious progression that he's had in mind for a long time.
His consistency seems really important to me, but it isn’t as remarked upon as, for example, his perfectionism. When you look at Apple’s product timeline, you can see he’s always thinking several years ahead. Plenty of good products were just bridges to great products. Some products didn’t make any sense until later. Probably one reason that people like to speculate about Apple’s plans is that Apple actually uses pla…
> I doubt Microsoft or Google could give more accurate pictures of where they’ll be in 10 years.
I doubt that 10 years ago SJ could have guessed Apple would make money mostly on phones and music player.
Re: Playboy Interview with Steven Jobs Circa 1985
#10Compare & contrast, Playboy Interview with Bill Gates (1994): http://www.playboy.com/articles/bill-gates-playboy-interview...
Of particular interest are the somewhat different take on the established giants like IBM, as well as this new "information highway" development.