SUMMARY

In a rediscovered 1995 interview, journalist Robert X. Cringely engages Steve Jobs on his childhood fascination with computers, founding of Apple, innovations like the Macintosh, corporate struggles, and visionary predictions for technology's role in communication and human potential.

STATEMENTS

• Steve Jobs encountered his first computer at age 10 or 11 through a time-sharing terminal at NASA Ames Research Center, sparking a lifelong passion.
• Computers in the early 1970s were mysterious, often depicted in media as large boxes with tape drives or flashing lights, inaccessible to the public.
• Jobs worked at Hewlett-Packard at age 12 after cold-calling Bill Hewlett for parts, gaining early insights into corporate culture and employee treatment.
• Hewlett-Packard provided perks like daily donut and coffee breaks, emphasizing that employees were the company's true value.
• Jobs visited HP's Palo Alto Research Labs regularly, where he first saw the HP 9100, the earliest desktop computer, which captivated him.
• Jobs met Steve Wozniak around age 14 or 15, bonding over electronics and collaborating on projects inspired by an Esquire article on phone phreaking.
• The duo built a blue box to make free long-distance calls by mimicking AT&T's signaling tones, discovering they could control vast infrastructure with simple tools.
• Blue boxing taught Jobs and Wozniak that young individuals could build devices to influence billion-dollar systems, a lesson pivotal to Apple's creation.
• Necessity drove the shift to personal computers; lacking funds for a terminal, Jobs and Wozniak built one, evolving it into the Apple I.
• The Apple I was hand-built for personal use from scavenged parts, taking 40 to 80 hours per unit, but friends requested help assembling theirs.
• To streamline production, they created printed circuit boards, funding it by selling personal items like Jobs' Volkswagen bus and Wozniak's calculator.
• Paul Terrell of the Byte Shop ordered 50 assembled Apple I boards, forcing Jobs and Wozniak to source parts on credit and scale production.
• They assembled and sold the initial batch within 30 days, entering business but facing a profit realization issue with unsold units.
• Mike Markkula joined as an equal partner, providing funding and expertise to package the Apple II for non-hobbyists, enabling mass appeal.
• The Apple II debuted at the West Coast Computer Faire in 1977, showcasing advanced color graphics and attracting dealers with its projection demo.
• Jobs learned business by questioning conventional practices, rejecting "folklore" like standard costing for real-time cost tracking in automated factories.
• Programming teaches structured thinking, akin to law school, and should be a liberal art required for everyone to enhance cognitive skills.
• Wealth from Apple's IPO at ages 23 to 25 was secondary to the company's mission, products, and enabling user creativity over personal gain.
• Xerox PARC demonstrated graphical user interfaces in 1979, convincing Jobs that all future computers would adopt this intuitive paradigm.
• Xerox failed due to sales-driven leadership eroding product innovation, prioritizing market share over craftsmanship and customer needs.
• IBM's entry into PCs was scary for Apple, but their strategy of ecosystem partnerships turned a flawed product into a success.
• Apple's early hires from HP resisted GUI concepts like mice and proportional fonts, underestimating their feasibility and cost.
• Companies falter by institutionalizing processes over content, confusing management rituals for true innovation, as seen in IBM's decline.
• The Lisa project mismatched Apple's affordable image, priced at $10,000, alienating customers and distribution channels.
• After losing internal battles, Jobs formed a skunkworks team for the Macintosh, reinventing manufacturing, distribution, and marketing for affordability.
• Macintosh development involved crafting amid trade-offs, evolving ideas through daily problem-solving and team friction to polish outcomes.
• Great products emerge from A-players collaborating intensely, self-policing talent and avoiding mediocrity in high-stakes environments.
• Feedback on work must directly address quality without undermining confidence, focusing on team goals to realign efforts.
• Apple's LaserWriter pioneered desktop publishing by partnering with Adobe, sharing via AppleTalk, despite internal resistance to its high cost.
• Jobs' 1985 departure from Apple stemmed from clashing visions with John Sculley, who prioritized survival over bold leadership during recession.
• Apple's 1995 state showed stagnation, with Macintosh barely evolved despite massive R&D, eroding leads to Microsoft through inaction.
• Microsoft succeeded via opportunism and persistence, leveraging IBM's platform, but lacks taste, culture, and enlightenment in products.
• NeXT focuses on object-oriented software, enabling 10x faster development and infiltrating business as a competitive weapon.
• The web fulfills computing's shift from calculation to communication, democratizing access and innovation beyond Microsoft's control.
• Computers amplify human abilities like the bicycle does locomotion, ranking as humanity's greatest tool for future progress.
• Innovation requires taste, stealing great ideas from diverse fields, blending liberal arts with technology for products with spirit.
• Hippies embody seeking deeper meaning beyond materialism, infusing products with passion that users sense and love.

IDEAS

• Encountering a computer as a child through a primitive terminal ignited a profound sense of power in executing personal ideas via code.
• Corporate perks like communal breaks humanize companies, reinforcing that employee well-being drives true organizational value.
• Cold-calling industry leaders at 12 opened doors to mentorship and employment, highlighting boldness in pursuing opportunities.
• Building unauthorized devices to hack phone networks revealed how simple innovations can command global infrastructures.
• Scavenging and hand-assembling tech from necessity fostered self-reliance, turning personal projects into communal demands.
• Selling personal assets to fund prototypes demonstrated sacrifice as essential for bootstrapping groundbreaking ventures.
• Assembling on credit and fulfilling orders rapidly showcased the thrill and risk of sudden scalability in startups.
• Packaging hardware for non-experts expanded markets from hobbyists to everyday users, democratizing technology access.
• Questioning business "folklore" uncovers inefficiencies, replacing guesses with precise systems for better decision-making.
• Learning to program mirrors legal training, sharpening logical thought and positioning computing as a core liberal art.
• Sudden wealth pales against mission-driven work, where products' impact on users outweighs financial rewards.
• Graphical interfaces at Xerox PARC were an inevitable evolution, blinding observers to other innovations like networking.
• Monopolies breed complacency, elevating sales over product genius and rotting innovative cores from within.
• Ecosystem alliances can salvage flawed entries, turning corporate giants' weaknesses into industry dominances.
• Resistance from process-oriented hires stifles vision; prototyping bypasses doubt to prove feasibility quickly.
• Institutionalizing success formulas confuses process for essence, leading large firms to forget content's primacy.
• Skunkworks teams, driven by urgency, reinvent entire ecosystems from manufacturing to marketing for survival.
• Team friction polishes ideas like rocks in a tumbler, transforming raw talent into refined brilliance through conflict.
• Dynamic ranges in tech far exceed life's norms, where elite performers outshine averages by 50-100 times.
• Intense collaborations self-select top talent, creating self-sustaining pockets of excellence that propagate.
• Direct, work-focused feedback preserves egos while realigning efforts, prioritizing collective success over individual pride.
• Canceling internal projects for superior external partnerships accelerates innovation despite internal backlash.
• Survival instincts in leadership can scapegoat innovators, fracturing visions during economic pressures.
• Stagnation erodes leads; massive R&D without direction yields minimal progress against agile competitors.
• Opportunism plus persistence turns platforms into empires, but without taste, products remain pedestrian.
• Object-oriented tech revolutionizes software creation, amplifying business competitiveness in an infiltrating digital era.
• The web morphs computing into communication, enabling tiny entities to rival giants in global reach.
• Tools like computers elevate human potential, akin to bicycles outpacing natural locomotion efficiencies.
• Stealing from arts infuses tech with soul, where diverse backgrounds yield products users emotionally connect with.
• Hippie ethos seeks existential depth, channeling anti-materialist sparks into creations that resonate beyond utility.

INSIGHTS

• Early exposure to technology's magic fosters lifelong innovation by demystifying its power and encouraging personal experimentation.
• Bold outreach to influencers bypasses barriers, revealing that directness unlocks mentorship and resources in nascent fields.
• Hacking infrastructures teaches empowerment, showing how individual ingenuity can interface with and alter massive systems.
• Bootstrapping from scarcity builds resilience, transforming limitations into scalable models through communal needs.
• Challenging entrenched practices exposes systemic flaws, enabling precise, real-time adaptations over outdated conventions.
• Programming as a liberal art cultivates disciplined thinking, bridging technical and humanistic realms for broader societal benefit.
• Mission over money sustains drive, where product impact creates enduring value beyond transient wealth.
• Visionary interfaces herald paradigm shifts, but blindness to complements like networking limits holistic adoption.
• Corporate monopolies dilute innovation by prioritizing sales metrics, eroding the craftsmanship that built dominance.
• Strategic partnerships amplify flawed launches, leveraging vested interests to forge market leadership.
• Process obsession eclipses content, causing giants to institutionalize irrelevance while agile teams thrive on essence.
• Urgent, insular teams reinvent holistically, navigating trade-offs to birth affordable, revolutionary products.
• Collaborative abrasion refines ideas, where talented friction yields superior outcomes unattainable in isolation.
• Elite talent clusters amplify performance exponentially, self-perpetuating excellence in high-stakes environments.
• Candid feedback on work aligns efforts without ego damage, fostering growth toward shared excellence.
• External collaborations outpace internal silos, demanding tough decisions to integrate superior innovations swiftly.
• Economic crises expose leadership voids, where survival tactics scapegoat visionaries, stalling progress.
• Inaction squanders leads, as undirected R&D fails to evolve against persistent, opportunistic rivals.
• Cultural infusion elevates products, blending arts and tech to inspire rather than merely function.
• Digital communication platforms democratize power, fulfilling computing's relational destiny over mere calculation.

QUOTES

• "You could write a program in BASIC let's say or Fortran and actually this machine would sort of take your idea and it would sort of execute your idea and give you back some results."
• "We learned was that us too you know we didn't know much we could build a little thing that could control a giant thing and that was an incredible lesson."
• "I don't think there would have ever been an Apple computer had there not been blue boxing."
• "If we could make what's called a printed circuit board... we could sell them to all our friends for you know as much as it cost us to make them and make our money back."
• "Throughout the years in business I found something which was I'd always ask why you do things and the answers you invariably get are oh that's just the way it's done."
• "I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer... because it teaches you how to think."
• "It wasn't that important uh because I never did it for the money uh I think money is wonderful thing because it enables you to do things."
• "It was obvious to me that all computers would work like this someday... you couldn't argue about the inevitability of it."
• "The people at Xerox PARC used to call the people that ran Xerox toner heads uh and they just had no clue about what they were seeing."
• "Companies get confused when they start getting bigger they want to replicate their initial success... before very long people get very confused that the process is the content."
• "A team of people doing something they really believe in is like... through the team through that group of incredibly talented people bumping up against each other... they polish each other and they polish the ideas."
• "When you get enough A players together... they really like working with each other because they've never had a chance to do that before and they don't want to work with B and C players."
• "Their products have no Spirit to them their products have no sort of spirit of Enlightenment about them they are very pedestrian."
• "The web is going to be the defining technology the defining social moment for computer and I think it's going to be huge."
• "The personal computer was the bicycle of the mind and I believe that with every bone in my body."
• "Good artists copy great artists steal."
• "There's something more going on there's another side of the coin that we don't talk about much."
• "They've work with computers because they are the medium that is best capable of transmitting some feeling that you have that you want to share with other people."

HABITS

• Cold-call industry leaders for parts or advice to gain early access to resources and opportunities.
• Attend regular research lab meetings to explore cutting-edge prototypes and build technical familiarity.
• Collaborate on side projects with skilled peers to experiment and refine electronics knowledge.
• Scavenge parts from various sources to prototype affordably and iteratively improve designs.
• Question every business practice deeply to uncover inefficiencies and innovate processes.
• Expose oneself to diverse arts, literature, and histories to infuse technology with broader cultural taste.
• Assemble products by hand initially to master construction and identify scalability needs.
• Visit global factories extensively to study automation and adapt manufacturing techniques.
• Form small, mission-driven teams for focused innovation, emphasizing content over process.
• Provide direct, specific feedback on work quality to align efforts without ego involvement.
• Steal and integrate great ideas from other fields shamelessly to enhance product soul.
• Surround oneself with top A-players to foster self-policing excellence and mutual growth.
• Prioritize product evolution through daily trade-off navigation and problem-solving.
• Seek existential depth beyond materialism to channel passion into meaningful creations.

FACTS

• In 1971, at age 12, Jobs secured a summer job at Hewlett-Packard after calling Bill Hewlett directly.
• The HP 9100, seen by Jobs in the early 1970s, was the first self-contained desktop computer with a CRT display.
• Jobs and Wozniak built the world's best digital blue box in 1972, using no adjustments for precise tone generation.
• The Byte Shop in Mountain View was the first computer store, ordering 50 Apple I boards in 1976.
• Apple II debuted at the 1977 West Coast Computer Faire, featuring the era's most advanced personal computer graphics.
• Xerox PARC demonstrated GUI, object-oriented programming, and networked Altos to Jobs in 1979.
• Macintosh team developed a $15 mouse in 90 days, countering skeptics' $300, five-year estimates.
• Apple introduced the first LaserWriter in 1985, becoming the world's largest printer company by revenue upon Jobs' departure.
• NeXT, in 1995, employed 300 people and generated $50-75 million annually from object-oriented software.
• The web, by 1995 projections, would shift 15% of U.S. catalog and TV sales to digital, totaling tens of billions.
• A Scientific American article ranked human bicycle efficiency highest among species, surpassing the condor.
• Apple's 1995 R&D spend totaled about a billion dollars, yet Macintosh evolved only 25% since 1985.

REFERENCES

• Esquire magazine article on Captain Crunch and phone phreaking.
• AT&T Technical Journal detailing phone network signaling tones.
• NASA Ames Research Center time-sharing terminal.
• Hewlett-Packard 9100 desktop computer.
• Stanford Linear Accelerator Center technical library.
• Apple I and Apple II computers.
• West Coast Computer Faire 1977 event.
• Xerox PARC's Alto computer, graphical user interface, object-oriented programming, and networked systems.
• Lisa computer project.
• Macintosh computer and automated factory.
• LaserWriter printer and Adobe PostScript software.
• Canon laser printer engine.
• NeXT object-oriented software platform.
• Scientific American article on locomotion efficiency across species.
• Picasso's saying: "Good artists copy, great artists steal."

HOW TO APPLY

• Identify a personal passion like early computer access and pursue hands-on experimentation to build foundational skills.
• Cold-call experts in your field for resources, turning audacity into mentorship and entry-level opportunities.
• Form alliances with complementary talents, like electronics whizzes, to tackle ambitious side projects collaboratively.
• Research hidden technical secrets in libraries or obscure sources to uncover exploitable system flaws or innovations.
• Prototype from scavenged materials out of necessity, evolving personal tools into shareable designs for friends.
• Sell assets to fund initial production runs, committing fully to validate and scale your creation.
• Approach retailers with prototypes, adapting to demands like full assembly to enter markets unexpectedly.
• Secure parts on credit terms from suppliers, assembling and selling batches to cycle capital rapidly.
• Package products for non-experts, designing intuitive enclosures to broaden appeal beyond hobbyists.
• Question every operational norm, digging into "why" to eliminate folklore and implement precise tracking.
• Visit pioneering labs like Xerox PARC to absorb underdeveloped ideas, envisioning their inevitable dominance.
• Assemble core visionaries, bypassing skeptics, to prototype dismissed concepts like mice affordably and swiftly.
• Form skunkworks teams during crises, reinventing supply chains and marketing for affordable revolutions.
• Foster team friction through passionate debates, polishing ideas via daily refinements and trade-offs.
• Hire only A-players, allowing self-policing to build excellence pockets that attract more elite talent.
• Provide blunt work critiques focused on quality, realigning without doubting abilities to meet goals.
• Partner externally over internal development, canceling redundant projects to integrate superior tech quickly.
• Nudge industry vectors early, blending arts into tech for products with enduring cultural spirit.
• Channel deeper life meanings into creations, seeking hippie-like essence to make tools emotionally resonant.
• Predict shifts like web communication, developing software to enable direct, global distribution channels.

ONE-SENTENCE TAKEAWAY

Embrace bold experimentation and liberal arts infusion in technology to amplify human potential through innovative, soulful products.

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Pursue early tech exposure via public resources to spark innovative thinking from youth.
• Build unauthorized prototypes to grasp infrastructure control, empowering small-scale impacts.
• Question business conventions relentlessly to dismantle inefficiencies and foster true efficiency.
• Mandate programming education universally as a tool for logical, structured cognition.
• Prioritize product missions over financial gains to sustain long-term creative drive.
• Absorb emerging paradigms from labs, adapting them swiftly despite internal resistance.
• Counter monopoly complacency by championing product craftsmanship over sales dominance.
• Leverage partnerships to bolster weak entries, creating vested success ecosystems.
• Prototype visionary elements rapidly to silence doubters and prove viability.
• Avoid process worship, focusing on content mastery for sustained innovation.
• Launch skunkworks during threats, holistically reinventing operations for survival.
• Cultivate team abrasion intentionally, refining talents through intense collaboration.
• Recruit elite performers exclusively, harnessing self-reinforcing excellence dynamics.
• Deliver precise, ego-sparing feedback to elevate work toward collective excellence.
• Embrace external innovations boldly, overriding internal projects for acceleration.
• Navigate economic pressures with visionary execution, avoiding scapegoating tactics.
• Invest R&D in directed evolution, preventing stagnation against agile competitors.
• Infuse products with artistic taste, elevating utility to inspirational levels.
• Develop object-oriented tools to multiply software development speed and quality.
• Harness web potentials for communication, democratizing access and innovation globally.

MEMO

In the dim glow of a 1995 interview rediscovered from a garage, Steve Jobs, then 40 and steering the underdog NeXT, reflects on a life intertwined with the silicon revolution. Conducted by journalist Robert X. Cringely for the series Triumph of the Nerds, the conversation peels back the layers of Apple's founding myth, revealing a boyish hacker's ascent from a NASA terminal at age 10 to corporate titan. Jobs recounts cold-calling Hewlett-Packard's Bill Hewlett at 12 for parts—securing not just scraps but a summer job—and bonding with Steve Wozniak over blue boxes that hijacked AT&T's vast network. These devices, born of Esquire-inspired curiosity, taught a pivotal lesson: two teenagers could command billions in infrastructure, a spark that ignited Apple.

The narrative pivots to bootstrapping grit. Lacking funds for a terminal, Jobs and Wozniak hand-built their first, scavenging parts and enduring 40-hour assemblies. Friends clamored for replicas, prompting a pivot to printed circuit boards funded by selling a Volkswagen bus and calculator. Paul Terrell's Byte Shop order for 50 units forced assembly on net-30 credit, birthing Apple's precarious commerce. Mike Markkula's entry professionalized the Apple II, packaging it for software hobbyists—not just tinkerers—with color graphics that dazzled at the 1977 West Coast Computer Faire. Jobs, at 21, learned business not from books but by interrogating "why," dismantling folklore like standard costing for real-time precision.

Xerox PARC's 1979 demo of graphical interfaces blinded Jobs to networking and object-oriented programming, yet crystallized computing's future: intuitive, inevitable. Xerox's downfall, he muses, stemmed from "toner heads"—sales suits eroding product genius in monopoly comfort. IBM's PC scared Apple but succeeded via ecosystem alliances, a genius Jobs admits. Internal HP transplants resisted Macintosh visions, scoffing at mice as $300, five-year follies; Jobs outsourced a $15 prototype in 90 days. The Lisa's $10,000 mismatch alienated Apple's everyman ethos, fueling Jobs' skunkworks rebellion. Macintosh reinvented everything—factories toured in Japan, volume pricing on chips—yielding a $2,500 machine that saved the company.

Team dynamics emerge as Jobs' philosophy: A-players, dynamic-ranged 50-to-1 above averages, self-police excellence in friction-filled tumblers, polishing raw ideas into gems. Feedback cuts direct—"your work is shit" signals misalignment, not doubt—prioritizing success over rightness. Desktop publishing via LaserWriter and Adobe crushed resistance, making Apple the top printer firm by Jobs' 1985 exit. That departure, painful under John Sculley's survival instincts during recession, scapegoated Jobs' vision for bolder Macintosh investment, exiling him to Siberia. Apple's values eroded, he laments in 1995; a billion in R&D yielded a stagnant Mac, gliding toward obsolescence as Microsoft, opportunistic sans taste, feasted on inertia.

NeXT, Jobs' 300-person haven, commercialized overlooked PARC objects for 10x software speed, arming businesses against digital infiltration. Yet eyes turn futureward: the web, unowned by Microsoft, fulfills computing's communication destiny, shifting catalogs to billions in direct sales where minnows rival whales. Jobs invokes a Scientific American insight—bicycles trumping condors in efficiency—as metaphor for tools amplifying humanity. Computers, the mind's bicycle, demand tasteful nudges from arts, poets, zoologists blending into code. Hippie sparks, seeking life's unseen depths, infuse products with loveable spirit, transmitting unspoken feelings.

This lost dialogue, raw and charismatic, underscores Jobs' blend of nerd precision and existential quest. Apple's near-death in 1995, pre-NeXT acquisition, highlights innovation's fragility: leads squandered by paralysis, monopolies rotted by process. Yet optimism gleams in web prophecies and tool-builder ethos, urging nudges at vector's dawn for enlightened progress. Jobs, unbowed, embodies the thief of great ideas—Picasso-style—crafting not machines, but extensions of human soul.