Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

longform.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 157 posts

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#71

Post by TaoloModisi »

Jobs: I actually lost $250,000,000 in one year when the stock went down. [laughs]

Playboy: You can laugh about it?

Jobs: I’m not going to let it ruin my life. Isn’t it kind of funny? You know, my main reaction to this money thing is that it’s humorous, all the attention to it, because it’s hardly the most insightful or valuable thing that’s happened to me in the past ten years.

I believe that Jobs laughed because- the value of starting or investing in a business is in making meaning first; by making meaning you are looking to change the world. Starting or investing in a business on the sole purpose of making money, means that if you don't make money, you’ll quickly lose interest and on top of that you’ll be left with a meaningless company that doesn’t change the world.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#72

Post by coldtea »

sopooneo wrote: post #29
coldtea wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So is this only a good response because apple succeeded so well or should they have done market research and done even better? The gist is that it's not about how "well you do" money wise, but how well you do in producing what you think is good. It's not advice for those who would prefer something subpar that would make them more money to something good that might not do as well. etc).

But this approach did make them more money.

Not that much. Machintosh wasn't a huge success at the time.

And anyway, that's beside the point. They didn't go to that approach to make more money, but because they felt they had to go to that approach.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#73

Post by simonh »

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…

IBM never gained control of that market sector though. What happened is that they lost control of the technical standards they created, accidentaly launching an open platform they never intended to be open. If IBM had retained control of the PC and had as a result dominated the desktop computer industry, history would be very different.

I don't think Jobs ever really intended to win the dsktop wars in that way though. He never even tried to compete in every market segment and control every standard. I think his conception of Apple was always (since the lanuch of the Mac anyway) as a premium brand capturing the top end of the market, where the profits are. There would always be a mass market and enthusiast community in a world in which Apple was the dominant desktop brand, because Apple had no interest in competing with it. Conversely Microsoft has always ben about market share first, with an MS computer on every desk running MS software. That's not a Jobsian vision. Even when the iPhone was the only 'modern' smartphone and Android devices were years away from competing effectively with it, Apple never went for the market share play. At the time this was roundly criticised in the media as a grave strategic error, in some circles it still is, but that was to completely misunderstand Apple's strategy.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#75

Post by Uhhrrr »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #54
urs2102 wrote: post #14

> Jobs: I think that the scale of the business has gotten large enough so that it’s going to be very difficult for anyone to successfully launch anything new. Playboy: No more billion-dollar companies hatched in garages? Jobs: No, I’m afraid not in computers. And this puts a responsibility on Apple, because if there’s going to be innovation in this industry, it’ll come from us. It’s the only way we can compete with t…

Looks like he couldn't have been more wrong on that one. Now we have messaging apps and minecraft selling for billions.

Well, he said "not in computers". Dell already existed at that point; I can't immediately think of any other qualifying company.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#76

Post by CmonDev »

mkolodny wrote: post #24
urs2102 wrote: post #14

> Jobs: I think that the scale of the business has gotten large enough so that it’s going to be very difficult for anyone to successfully launch anything new. Playboy: No more billion-dollar companies hatched in garages? Jobs: No, I’m afraid not in computers. And this puts a responsibility on Apple, because if there’s going to be innovation in this industry, it’ll come from us. It’s the only way we can compete with t…

Oculus VR / Facebook definitely has that potential.

Apple did not sell itself though. I hope one of the emerging competitors will turn out better than Oculus.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#77

Post by CmonDev »

morbius wrote: post #17
urs2102 wrote: post #14

> Jobs: I think that the scale of the business has gotten large enough so that it’s going to be very difficult for anyone to successfully launch anything new. Playboy: No more billion-dollar companies hatched in garages? Jobs: No, I’m afraid not in computers. And this puts a responsibility on Apple, because if there’s going to be innovation in this industry, it’ll come from us. It’s the only way we can compete with t…

CoreOS was hatched in a garage. But I don't see them getting Apple-level anytime soon.

They were building physical computers manually, not forking an established OS.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#78

Post by CmonDev »

ekianjo wrote: post #46

> Jobs: No, I’m afraid not in computers. And this puts a responsibility on Apple, because if there’s going to be innovation in this industry, it’ll come from us. Always like to see how pretentious Jobs has always been, thinking he was the only source of innovation in the whole world. He has been proven wrong many times.

But the strategy was right, the image of Apple as innovator still stands strong in consumers' minds, despite obvious incorrectness.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#79

Post by ekianjo »

pedalpete wrote: post #62
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.

All platforms were not necessarily equal when the Internet/WWW came around. The browsers eventually came to be multi-platform and support standards but it took a very long time to move away from platform specific software. Look at the legacy created by IE, for example.

Re: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

#80

Post by ekianjo »

simonh wrote: post #73
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…

IBM never gained control of that market sector though. What happened is that they lost control of the technical standards they created, accidentaly launching an open platform they never intended to be open. If IBM had retained control of the PC and had as a result dominated the desktop computer industry, history would be very different. I don't think Jobs ever really intended to win the dsktop wars in that way though…

> That's not a Jobsian vision. Even when the iPhone was the only 'modern' smartphone and Android devices were years away from competing effectively with it, Apple never went for the market share play

Yet Apple achieved a large market share and was perfectly happy with it even when Jobs was on the board. I'd find it hard to believe that you don't want Market Share anyway, even if you target premium users. You don't want to be a Ferrari maker in the end with a minuscule market share. I'd rather say Apple was always trying to keep a substantial market share while having "better" products (just like P&G for example, they win on the market with more expensive products) but failed until they entered the Portable Music Players and Smartphone market.

Post reply on HN