Steve Jobs - The Lost Interview (11 May 2012) [VO] [ST-FR] [Ultra HD 4K]

SUMMARY

Robert X. Cringely interviews Steve Jobs in 1995 about his early fascination with computers, founding Apple, innovations like the Macintosh, corporate challenges, and a visionary outlook on technology's role in human communication and creativity.

STATEMENTS

Steve Jobs first encountered a computer at age 10 or 11 through a time-sharing terminal at NASA Ames Research Center, sparking his lifelong passion.
Jobs called Bill Hewlett at Hewlett-Packard at age 12, securing parts and a summer job that shaped his view of company culture.
At Hewlett-Packard, Jobs attended Tuesday night meetings at the Palo Alto Research Labs, where he first saw the HP 9100 desktop computer.
Jobs met Steve Wozniak around age 14 or 15, bonding over electronics and starting joint projects.
Inspired by an Esquire article, Jobs and Wozniak built blue boxes to make free phone calls by mimicking AT&T tones.
The blue box project taught Jobs and Wozniak they could control vast infrastructure with simple devices, influencing Apple's creation.
Jobs and Wozniak built their first terminal to access free time-sharing computers, leading to the Apple I as an extension.
They soldered Apple I boards by hand, taking 40 to 80 hours each, initially for personal use and friends.
To save time, they created printed circuit boards for the Apple I, funding it by selling personal items like a Volkswagen bus.
Paul Terrell of the Byte Shop ordered 50 assembled Apple I computers, forcing Jobs and Wozniak to learn parts sourcing and assembly.
They secured net 30 credit from distributors, assembled and sold the computers, realizing profits but facing liquidity issues.
Mike Markkula joined as an equal partner, providing funding and expertise to develop the fully packaged Apple II.
The Apple II debuted at the West Coast Computer Faire, featuring advanced color graphics that stole the show.
Jobs learned business by questioning "why" practices, rejecting folklore like standard costing for real-time cost tracking.
Programming teaches structured thinking, akin to a liberal art that everyone should learn, according to Jobs.
Jobs became a millionaire at 23, but money was secondary to building great products and company culture.
At Xerox PARC, Jobs saw the graphical user interface, recognizing its inevitability for all future computers.
Xerox failed by promoting sales over product innovation, rotting their creative core with "toner heads" in charge.
IBM's entry scared Apple, but their alliances helped improve products where Apple underestimated competition.
Apple struggled with HP-influenced engineers who resisted GUI ideas like mice, requiring Jobs to outsource prototyping.
Process obsession confuses companies, prioritizing management over content, leading to IBM's and Apple's pitfalls.
The Lisa project mismatched Apple's market, priced at $10,000, alienating customers and distribution channels.
After losing leadership to John Couch, Jobs formed a secret Macintosh team to save Apple with affordable innovation.
The Macintosh team reinvented manufacturing, adopting cheaper components and building the first automated factory.
Great products require craftsmanship beyond ideas, involving daily trade-offs and 5,000 concepts in balance.
Jobs likened team collaboration to a rock tumbler, where friction polishes ideas into beautiful results.
In technology, the gap between average and best performers is 50 to 100 times, demanding A-players only.
The Mac team worked intensely, with Jobs directly critiquing work to maintain high standards without ego.
Apple pioneered desktop publishing with the LaserWriter, acquiring Adobe tech and dominating printer revenue.
Jobs' 1985 announcement of the Macintosh Office diluted focus, missing desktop publishing's full potential.
Scully's survival instinct scapegoated Jobs during recession, leading to his painful ousting from Apple.
Apple's post-Jobs stagnation eroded its lead, with minimal innovation despite heavy R&D spending.
Microsoft succeeded via opportunism and persistence, but lacks taste, producing spiritually empty products.
NeXT focuses on object-oriented software, enabling 10x faster development and infiltrating business tools.
The web transforms computers into communication devices, enabling direct sales and equalizing small companies.
Humans amplify abilities with tools like bicycles; computers are the mind's bicycle, ranking as top invention.
Great design stems from taste, stealing from arts and liberal fields to infuse products with spirit.
Jobs identifies as a hippie, seeking life's deeper meaning beyond materialism, channeling it into products.

IDEAS

Encountering computers as mysterious, powerful entities in childhood ignited a profound sense of privilege and thrill.
Calling industry leaders directly as a kid reveals untapped access in pre-digital eras.
Company culture, like donut breaks, deeply influences young minds on employee value.
Self-contained desktop computers without trailing wires evoke pure enchantment and independence.
Friendships formed over superior electronics knowledge accelerate collaborative innovation.
Hacking phone systems uncovers hidden infrastructures, empowering individuals against giants.
Building devices that hijack billion-dollar networks teaches control through simplicity.
Free long-distance pranks, like calling the Pope as Kissinger, highlight youthful audacity's joy.
Necessity drives invention, like crafting terminals for free computing access.
Scavenging and hand-building tech fosters resourcefulness but demands skill-sharing.
Printed circuit boards transform labor-intensive assembly into scalable production.
Unexpected orders for assembled units pivot hobbyists into entrepreneurs overnight.
Securing credit without collateral exemplifies bold, naive business leaps.
Venture capitalists' initial rejections lead to pivotal partnerships like Markkula's.
Packaged computers democratize tech beyond hobbyists, targeting software enthusiasts.
Trade shows with projection tech amplify product allure in nascent markets.
Questioning business "folklore" uncovers inefficiencies masked as standards.
Programming mirrors thought processes, refining logical and creative faculties.
Wealth accumulation feels secondary when mission-driven, not monetary.
Blinded by GUI demos, overlooking networked systems shows innovation's hypnotic focus.
Monopolies prioritize sales over products, eroding creative genius internally.
Alliances rescue flawed entries, as with IBM's ecosystem building.
Outsourcing prototypes bypasses internal resistance, speeding breakthroughs.
Institutionalizing early success as process stifles content-driven progress.
Mismatched pricing alienates core markets, dooming visionary projects.
Secret teams on "missions from God" bypass bureaucracy for salvation.
Automated factories in Japan inspire global manufacturing revolutions.
Craftsmanship bridges ideas to products via endless, evolving trade-offs.
Team friction, like rock tumbling, polishes raw talents into gems.
Elite talent pools self-select, rejecting mediocrity for excellence.
Direct feedback on work sustains rigor without coddling egos.
Acquiring superior garage tech shifts strategies, canceling internals.
Broad announcements dilute killer apps, like desktop publishing's edge.
Survival instincts in leaders scapegoat innovators during crises.
Stagnation post-departure wastes R&D on minimal evolution.
Opportunism plus persistence turns boosts like IBM into dominance.
Tasteless products lack cultural depth, peddling McDonald's-like mediocrity.
Object tech revolutionizes software creation, amplifying business warfare.
Web fulfills communication dreams, unowned by giants for wild innovation.
Bicycles outpace nature's efficiency, symbolizing tool-amplified humanity.
Stealing from arts infuses tech with poetic, historical richness.
Hippie ethos seeks existential sparks, rejecting suburban drudgery.

INSIGHTS

Childhood access to technology demystifies power, fostering lifelong innovation without formal barriers.
Bold outreach to mentors unlocks opportunities, shaping views on collaborative enterprise.
Valuing employees through small gestures builds cultures that prioritize human potential over mechanics.
Tangible, wire-free computing sparks immediate love, bridging abstract mystery to personal agency.
Shared expertise in niches like electronics ignites partnerships that redefine industries.
Exposing systemic flaws, like phone networks, empowers creators to subvert and innovate.
Simple inventions controlling vast systems reveal leverage in asymmetry.
Audacious experiments, even failures, cultivate resilience and humor in pursuit of mastery.
Resource constraints birth ingenuity, turning personal needs into communal solutions.
Scaling handmade efforts via smart design reclaims time for broader impact.
Pivotal retail demands force rapid professionalization, blending hobby with commerce.
Naive financing risks yield credibility, bootstrapping empires from garages.
Rejecting surface-level advice uncovers true enablers, like hands-on expertise over cash.
Accessibility amplifies reach, evolving tech from elite tools to universal mediums.
Debuts in vibrant forums capture collective imagination, accelerating adoption.
Persistent inquiry dismantles outdated practices, enabling precise, real-time decisions.
Coding as mental discipline elevates it to essential liberal education for all.
Intrinsic motivations sustain through wealth, focusing on legacy over liquidity.
Revolutionary interfaces, despite flaws, signal inevitable paradigm shifts.
Market dominance breeds complacency, sidelining creators for profit guardians.
Ecosystem dependencies transform weaknesses into strengths via collective investment.
Internal skepticism demands external validation to prototype futures swiftly.
Over-process fixation in growth phases erodes innovative essence.
Elite, affordable visions clash with high-end missteps, demanding market alignment.
Autonomous groups harness urgency to preserve core identities.
Global inspirations refine local revolutions in production paradigms.
Product evolution demands holistic synthesis amid perpetual constraints.
Interpersonal dynamics refine collective output through constructive abrasion.
Assembling top talents creates virtuous cycles of excellence.
Candid critique aligns efforts without undermining intrinsic confidence.
Strategic acquisitions leapfrog developments, dominating unforeseen niches.
Vision dilution in announcements forfeits specialized triumphs.
Crisis opportunism in leadership fractures alliances, prioritizing self-preservation.
Innovation vacuums post-visionaries lead to commoditized irrelevance.
Relentless iteration exploits advantages, outpacing taste-deficient rivals.
Cultural voids in design diminish enlightenment, hindering societal uplift.
Modular paradigms accelerate creation, weaponizing software for competition.
Decentralized platforms equalize scales, birthing economic democracies.
Tools exponentially enhance innate capacities, redefining human peaks.
Cross-disciplinary theft enriches mediums with borrowed profundity.
Transcendent quests infuse artifacts with intangible vitality.

QUOTES

"Nobody had ever seen a computer to the extent that they'd seen them they'd seen them in movies and they were these big boxes with whirring for some reason they fixated on the tape drives as being the icon of what the computer was."
"It was an incredibly thrilling experience um so I became very um captivated by by a computer."
"We could build something ourselves that could control billions of dollars worth of infrastructure in the world that was what we learned."
"I don't think there would have ever been an Apple computer had there not been blue boxing."
"If we could if we only had one of those 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 um and everybody be happy."
"In business a lot of things are I I call it folklore they're done because they were done yesterday and the day before."
"I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer should learn a computer language because it teaches you how to think."
"It was obvious you could argue about how many years it would take you could argue about who the winners and losers might be but you couldn't argue about the inevitability of it."
"The people at Xerox Park used to call the people that ran Xerox toner heads uh and they just had these toner heads would come out to Xerox Park and they just had no clue about what they were seeing."
"It's not process it's content so we had a little bit of that problem at Apple."
"Designing a product is keeping 5,000 things in your brain these Concepts and fit fitting them all together."
"The same common stones that had gone in through rubbing against each other like this a little bit of friction creating a little bit of noise had come out these beautiful polished rocks."
"In software and it used to be the case in Hardware too the difference between average and the best is 50 to one maybe 100 to one easy."
"When you say someone's work is shit you really mean I don't quite understand it would you please explain it to me."
"Xerox could have owned the entire computer industry today um could have been you know a company 10 times its size."
"He basically got on a rocket ship that was about to leave the pad and the rocket ship left the pad and um it kind of went to his head got confused and thought that he built a rocket ship."
"Microsoft's just you know it's McDonald's."
"The personal computer was the bicycle of the mind."

HABITS

Routinely question established business practices by asking "why" to uncover inefficiencies.
Dedicate time to hands-on programming from a young age to refine thinking patterns.
Build personal tools and devices out of necessity, scavenging parts creatively.
Attend evening research lab meetings to immerse in cutting-edge technology.
Collaborate closely with skilled peers on joint projects to accelerate learning.
Prototype quickly by outsourcing to external designers when internals resist.
Maintain intense focus on product content over procedural management.
Critique team work directly and clearly to realign with high standards.
Expose oneself to diverse fields like arts and history for design inspiration.
Steal and adapt great ideas from unrelated domains shamelessly.
Prioritize A-players in hiring, fostering self-policing excellence.
Visit global factories to study and adapt manufacturing innovations.
Channel personal passions into team motivations through shared missions.
Reflect on failures to adjust trajectories early in development.
Seek deeper life's meanings beyond materialism to infuse work with spirit.

FACTS

Jobs first used a computer at age 10 via a teletype terminal at NASA Ames.
At 12, Jobs cold-called Bill Hewlett and got a job at Hewlett-Packard.
Jobs and Wozniak built the world's best digital blue box for free calls.
They funded Apple I PCBs by selling a VW bus and HP calculator.
Apple II debuted at the 1977 West Coast Computer Faire with color graphics.
Jobs was worth $100 million by age 25 after Apple's IPO.
Xerox PARC demo in 1979 showed GUI, which Jobs saw as inevitable.
Macintosh mouse prototyped in 90 days for $15, against predictions of 5 years and $300.
Apple became the world's largest printer company by revenue when Jobs left in 1985.
NeXT in 1995 had 300 employees and $50-75 million revenue from object software.
Web was poised to shift 15% of US catalog sales online by mid-1990s projections.
Human on bicycle efficiency surpasses condors, per Scientific American study.
Macintosh applications dominated before Windows, thanks to Mac gamble.

REFERENCES

NASA Ames Research Center time-sharing terminal.
Hewlett-Packard summer job and Palo Alto Research Labs meetings.
HP 9100 desktop computer.
Esquire magazine article on Captain Crunch.
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center technical library AT&T journal.
Blue box device with "He's Got The Whole World in His Hands" logo.
Byte Shop in Mountain View, first computer store.
West Coast Computer Faire 1977.
Don Valentine venture capitalist.
Mike Markkula from Intel.
Xerox PARC Alto computers, GUI, object-oriented programming, networked systems.
Lisa project and Macintosh development.
Automated factories in Japan.
68000 microprocessor.
Canon Laser Printer engine.
Adobe software and 19.9% stake.
LaserWriter printer.
Macintosh Office announcement 1985.
NeXT object-oriented technology.
World Wide Web and Internet.
Scientific American article on locomotion efficiency.
Bicycle as mind's amplifier ad.
Picasso's saying: "Good artists copy, great artists steal."
Triumph of the Nerds TV series.

HOW TO APPLY

Start with personal curiosity: Explore emerging tech like computers early, using available resources like terminals to experiment and program.
Build networks boldly: Cold-call experts for advice or parts, turning conversations into opportunities like jobs or mentorships.
Collaborate on hacks: Partner with skilled friends to dissect systems, like phone networks, building devices that reveal control mechanisms.
Prototype from need: Design and assemble custom tools, such as terminals, extending them into products like circuit boards for efficiency.
Fund creatively: Sell personal assets to cover initial costs, then scale by offering assembled units to early retailers.
Secure resources naively: Negotiate credit terms with suppliers, assembling and selling to meet deadlines and realize profits.
Seek pivotal partners: Approach retired executives for investment and involvement, equalizing stakes to drive packaging innovations.
Debut impactfully: Launch at trade shows with demos highlighting unique features like graphics to attract distributors.
Question deeply: Challenge business norms by probing "why" behind costs or processes, eliminating folklore for precise tracking.
Learn thinking tools: Master programming languages to structure thoughts, treating it as essential education like law school.
Visit inspirations: Tour research centers like PARC to absorb ideas, adapting overlooked gems like GUIs into core visions.
Assemble elites: Recruit top talents across disciplines, fostering friction that polishes ideas into exceptional outcomes.

ONE-SENTENCE TAKEAWAY

Embrace technology's humanistic potential through bold innovation, liberal arts infusion, and relentless questioning to amplify human capabilities.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Prioritize content mastery over process adherence to sustain innovation in growing companies.
Learn programming universally as a tool for clearer, more structured thinking.
Surround yourself with A-players to create self-reinforcing cycles of excellence.
Steal shamelessly from arts, history, and other fields to enrich technological designs.
Question every business practice deeply to dismantle outdated folklore.
Build teams with hippie-like curiosity, seeking life's deeper meanings in work.
Prototype rapidly by outsourcing when internal teams resist visionary ideas.
Focus announcements on killer applications rather than broad, diluting visions.
Nudge technology's trajectory early toward communication over mere computation.
Infuse products with spirit to evoke user love, transcending functional utility.
View computers as the mind's bicycle, amplifying innate human abilities exponentially.
Persist opportunistically, turning boosts like partnerships into long-term dominance.
Develop object-oriented tools to accelerate software creation tenfold.
Champion the web as a democratizing force for communication and commerce.
Critique work directly to align with team goals without ego involvement.

MEMO

In 1995, as the personal computing revolution reshaped the world, journalist Robert X. Cringely unearthed a long-lost interview with Steve Jobs, capturing the Apple co-founder's raw charisma and foresight. Conducted amid Jobs' exile from the company he built, the conversation traces his improbable path from a 10-year-old mesmerized by a teletype terminal at NASA Ames to hacking AT&T's phone network with blue boxes alongside Steve Wozniak. These youthful escapades, including free calls to the Pope disguised as Henry Kissinger, instilled a profound lesson: two kids could command billions in infrastructure with ingenuity alone. "We learned that we could build a little thing that could control a giant thing," Jobs reflected, a realization that birthed Apple from garage experiments into a cultural force.

Jobs' early forays at Hewlett-Packard, sparked by a cold call to Bill Hewlett at age 12, molded his ideals of employee-centric companies—think coffee-and-donut carts rolling through cubicles. This ethos fueled the Apple I, hand-soldered over 40 grueling hours, evolving into the packaged Apple II after Mike Markkula's investment professionalized their dreams. Debuting at the 1977 West Coast Computer Faire, its color graphics dazzled, proving accessibility could eclipse hobbyist tinkering. Yet success bred challenges; Jobs decried business "folklore," like arbitrary costing, advocating real-time precision learned from Macintosh's automated factory, inspired by Japanese efficiency.

A pivotal 1979 visit to Xerox PARC blinded Jobs to networked systems but ignited obsession with the graphical user interface. "Within 10 minutes it was obvious to me that all computers would work like this someday," he said, foreseeing inevitability despite Xerox's squandered monopoly—doomed by "toner heads" who prized sales over craftsmanship. Apple's internal resistance, rooted in Hewlett-Packard hires wedded to soft keys over mice, forced Jobs to prototype the latter in 90 days for $15. This clash underscored a core tension: processes ossify companies, prioritizing management over content, as seen in IBM's fall and Apple's Lisa misfire—a $10,000 behemoth mismatched to its affordable ethos.

Ousted in 1985 after clashing with CEO John Sculley during recession, Jobs likened the departure to a rocket veering off course under confused piloting. Sculley's survival instinct scapegoated the visionary, eroding Apple's decade-long lead as Microsoft opportunistically scaled via IBM's boost, though Jobs lamented their "third-rate products" lacking taste or spirit—"McDonald's," not enlightenment. By 1995, Apple languished on a "glide slope to die," its R&D yielding scant evolution, while NeXT championed object-oriented software for 10x faster development, infiltrating businesses as potent weapons.

Yet Jobs' gaze fixed on horizons: the web as computing's communicative metamorphosis, unowned by Microsoft, poised to shift catalog sales online and equalize tiny firms with titans. Drawing from a Scientific American insight—humans on bicycles outpacing condors—he cast computers as the "bicycle of the mind," humanity's pinnacle tool. Greatness, he insisted, demands taste: stealing from Picasso, poets, and zoologists to infuse tech with hippie spark, that inrush beyond suburban drudgery. Users sense this in Macintosh love, a rare affection for artifacts pulsing with shared feeling. As history unfolds, Jobs urged nudging this vector toward amplification, blending art and engineering for collective flourishing.