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Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

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Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#61

Post by leoc »

coldtea wrote: post #28
tdicola wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really that prescient? By 1985 there were lots of BBSes you could dial into and connect with people from across the nation. In fact what would become America Online was just starting out as a BBS. The internet was available at most colleges, and tools like email and usenet were in full use. I think his statement is like someone right now saying electric cars will be a huge thing in the future.

> Is it really that prescient? By 1985 there were lots of BBSes you could dial into and connect with people from across the nation. 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…

Not really. By '85, the idea that an all-encompassing global computer network was coming was pretty well established. SMTP and DNS were up and (as tdicola noted) there were already a fair number of people on a recognisable modern Internet. The ITU was already well into a very serious and high-profile push for its own alternative to TCP/IP. Sun Microsystems had already launched, and afaik had already made "the network is the computer" its slogan. CompuServe CIS was running two-page ads http://www.amazon.com/CompuServe-Computer-Information-Servic... ; Minitel was several years old. Doug Engelbart and Ted Nelson had been celebrated or mocked figures in computing circles for many years. Flipping Neuromancer had come out the previous year.

(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.)

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#62

Post by pedalpete »

ekianjo wrote: post #39

> Jobs: my personal feeling is that we are going to enter sort of a computer Dark Ages for about 20 years. Once IBM gains control of a market sector, they almost always stop innovation. They prevent innovation from happening. 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 a…

I think the "Dark Ages" of the desktop was inconsequential due to adoption of the internet.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#63

Post by zurn »

treblig wrote: post #33

Jobs, conceptually articulating what would become the Internet in 1985: "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."

These predictions were very commonplace by then. In 1983, TCP/IP came along and MILNET was split off. This is commonly considered to mark the start of the Internet. First .com domain was registered in 1985.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#64

Post by megablast »

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #23
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We weren’t going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build. 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 succes…

> So is this only a good response because apple succeeded so well or should they have done market research and done even better? 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 tha…

> How exactly can one do market research and arrive at something like the Mac?

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?

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#65

Post by boomlinde »

coldtea wrote: post #32
joshmlewis wrote: post #13

> Playboy: Then for now, aren’t you asking home-computer buyers to invest $3000 in what is essentially an act of faith? 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.

Only the Tesla won't change the world. It's just an electric car.

The Macintosh was just a computer.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#66

Post by clarky07 »

tdicola wrote: post #11
ddebernardy wrote: post #2

Quite prescient: > 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.

Is it really that prescient? By 1985 there were lots of BBSes you could dial into and connect with people from across the nation. In fact what would become America Online was just starting out as a BBS. The internet was available at most colleges, and tools like email and usenet were in full use. I think his statement is like someone right now saying electric cars will be a huge thing in the future.

fwiw, people have been saying that about electric cars for literally decades. perhaps this time really is different. if tesla ever makes a care normal people can afford it might happen.

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.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#67

Post by [deleted] »

ekianjo wrote: post #39

> Jobs: my personal feeling is that we are going to enter sort of a computer Dark Ages for about 20 years. Once IBM gains control of a market sector, they almost always stop innovation. They prevent innovation from happening. 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 a…

[deleted]

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#68

Post by ricket »

[deleted] wrote: post #67
ekianjo wrote: post #39

> Jobs: my personal feeling is that we are going to enter sort of a computer Dark Ages for about 20 years. Once IBM gains control of a market sector, they almost always stop innovation. They prevent innovation from happening. 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 a…

[deleted]

10 years. Interview is dated 1985, Windows 95 is obviously 1995.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#69

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #67
ekianjo wrote: post #39

> Jobs: my personal feeling is that we are going to enter sort of a computer Dark Ages for about 20 years. Once IBM gains control of a market sector, they almost always stop innovation. They prevent innovation from happening. 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 a…

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#70

Post by coldtea »

boomlinde wrote: post #65
coldtea wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only the Tesla won't change the world. It's just an electric car.

The Macintosh was just a computer.

A computer is a general purpose machine, with capabilities for business, clerical work, arts (graphics, multimedia etc), entertainment (games, web tv, media distrubution) and of course communications.

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.

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