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"Take a really expensive technology and pull it down to a price point that is affordable". That's what he did with the iPad too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is that fascinating?
Because all you ever hear about Jobs is that he was a dominating bully. She shows that people did stand up to him (at least when the facts were on their side).
"Take a really expensive technology and pull it down to a price point that is affordable". That's what he did with the iPad too.
In the video, Jobs says that three grand is the upper bound on what their polled potential customers are willing to pay. The first NeXT cube had a base price of $6,500.00. They also didn't meet their original deadline either, going over by more than a year.
"Take a really expensive technology and pull it down to a price point that is affordable". That's what he did with the iPad too.
That might have been NeXT's goal, but they didn't achieve it. In the video, Jobs says that three grand is the upper bound on what their polled potential customers are willing to pay. The first NeXT cube had a base price of $6,500.00. They also didn't meet their original deadline either, going over by more than a year.
If you think about it, when he went back to Apple, he didn't have to worry about logo, coffee machines etc.
In fact, one point he made on the video was that over at NeXT they had forgotten "how to be scrappy", and hustle for discounts.
That said, it's a different perspective, which is nice. I just disagree with Panzarino's implicit assertion that a) Isaacson's biography missed this, and b) this gem of a video fills that purported void.
The author's assertion that this is better than Isaacson's coverage of the same topic rings hollow. Isaacson definitely addresses the hallucinatory '87 deadline, Joanna's resistance, the "honeymoon is over" intro to the second Pebble Beach meeting. I wouldn't be surprised if Isaacson had access to this video as a source. That said, it's a different perspective, which is nice. I just disagree with Panzarino's implicit…
So yes, he may have pulled some quotes from the players involved, but I feel that this short video tells you more about Jobs' operational methods at the time than the entire section on NeXT in the bio.
Thank you very much for your thoughts though, it is definitely a possibility that this was part of the material used by Isaacson, good point.
Great to see this old NeXT stuff. I still have my NeXTStation Turbo Color, and shockingly, it still runs! Other than my current iMac, it's easily my favorite computer ever. To be using a NeXT in the early 1990s truly was like being 15 years ahead of what everyone else had.
That and Irix were my first forays into the net and Unix incidentally.
e.g. the last time I worked in someone else's startup (6 years ago) I remember looking around the room and thinking that every one of the $2000 desks that were bought from a local artist is a server we could have bought.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's Joanna Hoffman, who was also part of the Macintosh team. The Isaacson bio shares an anecdote about how the Mac team would annually give out an award to the team member who had proven most able to stand up to Jobs, and Hoffman won it the first two years. It was fun to see an example of why.
Thanks! I didn't recognize her. Added that info to the article.
It got me wondering : although a commercial failure, this computer made a big impact. I wonder if, in 20 years time, all the cool kids will have an old NeXT on prominent display in their home? What other bits of hardware/software combos are going to be classics?