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

SUMMARY

In a rediscovered 1995 interview with journalist Robert X. Cringely, Steve Jobs recounts his early fascination with computers, founding Apple, key innovations like the Macintosh, corporate struggles, and visionary predictions about software, the web, and technology's role in human potential.

STATEMENTS

Steve Jobs first encountered a computer at age 10 or 11 through a time-sharing terminal at NASA Ames Research Center.
Early computers were mysterious, portrayed in movies as large boxes with tape drives or flashing lights.
Jobs was captivated by programming in BASIC or Fortran, experiencing the thrill of executing ideas and getting predicted results.
At age 12, Jobs cold-called Bill Hewlett of Hewlett-Packard for parts and ended up with a summer job there.
Hewlett-Packard treated employees exceptionally well, influencing Jobs' view of companies valuing their people.
Jobs attended Hewlett-Packard research labs, falling in love with the HP 9100, the first desktop computer.
Jobs met Steve Wozniak around age 14 or 15, bonding over electronics expertise.
Inspired by an Esquire article, Jobs and Wozniak built blue boxes for free phone calls using AT&T tones.
They discovered AT&T's technical journal at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, confirming the feasibility of blue boxing.
Blue boxing taught them that young people could build devices controlling vast infrastructure.
Jobs credits blue boxing as essential to the creation of Apple Computer.
Necessity drove the shift to personal computers; they built a terminal because they couldn't afford one.
The Apple I was an extension of their terminal project, built by hand for personal use.
To save time, they created printed circuit boards for the Apple I and sold them to friends.
Jobs sold his Volkswagen bus and Wozniak his calculator to fund the Apple I's PCB artwork.
Paul Terrell of the Byte Shop ordered 50 assembled Apple I boards, launching their business.
They secured parts on 30-day credit and paid suppliers just in time after selling to the Byte Shop.
Mike Markkula joined as an equal partner, providing investment and expertise for the Apple II.
The Apple II aimed for color graphics and to be a fully packaged personal computer for non-hobbyists.
At the West Coast Computer Faire, the Apple II stole the show with advanced graphics.
Jobs learned business by questioning "why" things were done, challenging folklore practices.
Programming teaches thinking like law school, and computer science should be a liberal art for everyone.
Jobs became a millionaire at 23, but money was secondary to company, people, and products.
At Xerox PARC, Jobs was inspired by the graphical user interface, seeing its inevitability for all computers.
Xerox failed because sales and marketing people, not product visionaries, ran the company.
IBM's entry scared Apple, but their partnerships helped IBM improve despite initial poor products.
Apple's early hires from HP resisted the GUI and mouse ideas, lacking vision.
Great products come from content understanding, not just processes; A-players drive success.
The Macintosh team reinvented Apple, including building the world's first automated computer factory.
Jobs' departure from Apple in 1985 was painful, blaming John Sculley's poor leadership.
Apple in 1995 was dying due to stagnation after Jobs left, with eroded differentiation.
Microsoft succeeded through opportunism and persistence, but lacks taste and original ideas.
NeXT focused on object-oriented software, enabling faster, better development.
The web will transform society as the ultimate direct-to-customer channel and equalizer for companies.

IDEAS

Encountering computers as a child felt like a privilege, demystifying powerful, hidden machines through direct interaction.
Cold-calling industry leaders at a young age can lead to unexpected opportunities like jobs and mentorship.
Building devices to hack infrastructure reveals the power of ingenuity over scale.
Personal necessity sparks innovation; creating tools you can't afford forces self-reliance.
Selling assembled products transforms a hobby project into a viable business almost accidentally.
Venture capital introductions often come from rejecting investors who still see potential.
Graphical interfaces were an obvious future after seeing prototypes, blinding viewers to other innovations.
Monopolies erode product focus, promoting sales over craftsmanship and leading to decline.
Questioning business "folklore" uncovers inefficiencies rooted in poor information systems.
Programming mirrors thought processes, making computer science essential for cognitive development.
Wealth from success feels secondary when driven by passion for creation over money.
Teams of top talent self-select and amplify each other, creating exceptional outcomes.
Great ideas require immense craftsmanship; 90% completion is a fallacy that dooms projects.
Friction in passionate teams polishes ideas like rocks in a tumbler, yielding beauty.
Dynamic range in software talent dwarfs other fields, rewarding pursuit of elites.
Direct feedback on work, without ego coddling, keeps high performers aligned.
Seizing external innovations early, like laser printing, can dominate markets.
Leadership vacuums in crises amplify survival instincts, scapegoating visionaries.
Stagnation after visionary departure erodes leads, allowing competitors to catch up.
Opportunism plus persistence turns temporary boosts into lasting dominance.
Object-oriented tech revolutionizes software creation, multiplying efficiency tenfold.
The web fulfills computers' communication destiny, not just computation.
Bicycles amplify human efficiency, paralleling computers as "bicycles for the mind."
Taste guides direction; stealing from great art infuses products with spirit.
Hippie ethos seeks deeper meaning beyond materialism, inspiring unconventional innovation.
Computers as mediums transmit human feelings, attracting liberal arts minds to tech.
Early adopters of ideas pay prices that later benefit end-users.
Revenue from partnerships funds reinvention, turning gambles into market control.
Installed bases provide revenue glides but shrink without innovation.
Small companies can lead niches like objects, outpacing giants in specifics.

INSIGHTS

Youthful curiosity and hands-on experimentation demystify technology, fostering lifelong innovation.
Corporate cultures valuing employees over processes build environments where ideas thrive.
Hacking systems teaches empowerment, showing small creations can command large infrastructures.
Business folklore often masks inadequate systems; persistent questioning drives true efficiency.
Liberal arts integration into tech elevates products beyond utility to cultural artifacts.
Monopolies stifle product genius by elevating sales over vision, rotting innovation.
Teams of elite talents create self-sustaining excellence through mutual challenge.
Great products emerge from relentless craftsmanship bridging ideas to reality.
Leadership failures in crises prioritize survival over vision, dooming companies.
Stagnation erodes technological leads, allowing persistent opportunists to dominate.
Software's potency as a competitive weapon reshapes industries through custom enablement.
The web democratizes commerce, equalizing small and large entities in reach.
Tools like computers amplify innate human abilities, ranking among history's greatest inventions.
Taste, drawn from diverse arts, steers technology toward enlightenment and subtlety.
Deeper life pursuits beyond materialism infuse products with resonant spirit.

QUOTES

"It was an incredibly thrilling experience."
"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."
"Nobody knows why they do what they do nobody thinks about things very deeply in business."
"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."
"The most important thing was the company the people the products we were making."
"It was obvious to me that all computers would work like this someday."
"Great products it's not process it's content."
"There's a just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product."
"It's through the team through that group of incredibly talented people bumping up against each other having arguments having fights sometimes making some noise and working together they polish each other and they polish the ideas."
"I've built a lot of my success off finding these truly gifted people and not settling for B and C players but really going for the A players."
"When you say someone's work is shit you really mean I don't quite understand it would you please explain it to me."
"He basically got on a rocket ship that was about to leave the pad and the rocket ship left the pad and it kind of went to his head got confused and thought that he built a rocket ship."
"Apple's dying a very painful death it's on a glide slope to die."
"The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste."
"Software is becoming an incredible force in this world to provide new goods and services to people."
"The web is going to be the defining technology the defining social moment for computer."
"The personal computer was the bicycle of the mind."

HABITS

Cold-call industry leaders for parts or advice to gain opportunities.
Attend research labs regularly to explore cutting-edge technology.
Build devices from scavenged parts to solve personal needs.
Question every business practice deeply to understand underlying reasons.
Learn programming early to develop structured thinking.
Surround yourself with A-players who challenge and elevate your work.
Provide direct, clear feedback on work without ego considerations.
Visit factories worldwide to learn manufacturing innovations.
Expose yourself to liberal arts and diverse fields for creative inspiration.
Steal great ideas shamelessly from other domains to enrich your projects.

FACTS

Hewlett-Packard in the 1970s provided daily coffee and donut breaks for employees.
The HP 9100 was the first self-contained desktop computer, about suitcase-sized.
AT&T's phone network used voice-band signaling, enabling blue box hacks.
Jobs and Wozniak built the world's best digital blue box with no adjustments.
The Byte Shop in Mountain View was the first computer store, later becoming an adult bookstore.
Apple II featured the most advanced personal computer graphics in 1977.
Xerox PARC demonstrated GUI, networking, and object-oriented programming in 1979.
Macintosh team built the first automated computer factory in California.
Apple became the world's largest printer company by revenue before Jobs left.
NeXT specialized in object-oriented software, serving 50-75 million in revenue with 300 employees in 1995.
The web in 1995 was poised to shift 15% of U.S. catalog sales online.
Humans on bicycles outperform condors in locomotion efficiency per kilocalorie.
Macintosh in 1995 was only 25% different from the 1985 version despite billions in R&D.

REFERENCES

Triumph of the Nerds television series.
Esquire magazine article on Captain Crunch.
AT&T technical journal from Stanford Linear Accelerator Center library.
HP 9100 desktop computer.
Apple I and Apple II computers.
West Coast Computer Faire.
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) demonstrations.
Lisa computer project.
Macintosh project and automated factory.
Canon laser printer engine.
Adobe software and 19.9% stake.
LaserWriter printer.
Macintosh Office announcement.
NeXT software and object-oriented technology.
World Wide Web and Internet.
Scientific American article on locomotion efficiency.
Picasso's saying: "Good artists copy, great artists steal."
MCI's Friends and Family billing software.

HOW TO APPLY

Start with personal necessity: Identify a tool you need but can't afford, then design and build it yourself.
Scavenge parts creatively: Source components from various places to prototype without high costs.
Create printed circuit boards: Simplify assembly to reduce build time from days to hours for scalability.
Sell to early adopters: Approach local stores or friends with assembled versions to test demand.
Secure credit wisely: Negotiate net-30 terms with suppliers to bootstrap production.
Recruit expert partners: Seek retired executives like Mike Markkula for investment and guidance.
Package for accessibility: Design products for non-experts, adding cases and peripherals.
Showcase at events: Demo innovations at fairs with visuals like projections to attract distributors.
Question processes: Ask "why" repeatedly to eliminate folklore and improve efficiency.
Build elite teams: Hire A-players who self-select and focus on content over process.
Integrate external tech: License innovations like laser printers to accelerate market entry.
Steal ideas boldly: Draw from arts and other fields to infuse products with deeper meaning.

ONE-SENTENCE TAKEAWAY

Steve Jobs' passion for blending art, technology, and elite teamwork revolutionized personal computing's potential for human amplification.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Learn programming as a liberal art to sharpen thinking across disciplines.
Build small devices to control larger systems, fostering empowerment.
Question business practices deeply to innovate beyond conventions.
Hire only A-players and let them self-manage for superior results.
Expose ideas to friction in passionate teams for polished outcomes.
Integrate GUI and networking early to lead inevitable tech shifts.
Focus on craftsmanship between ideas and products, avoiding 90% fallacies.
Steal from arts shamelessly to add taste and spirit to tech.
Prioritize product vision over sales in leadership to avoid monopolistic decay.
Leverage partnerships opportunistically to fund long-term dominance.
Develop object-oriented tools to multiply software efficiency tenfold.
Embrace the web for direct, equalizing commerce regardless of company size.
Amplify human abilities with tools like computers as mind bicycles.
Seek deeper life meanings to infuse products with resonant hippie spirit.
Nudge technology's vector early through subtle direction changes.
Cancel internal projects for superior external collaborations.
Provide direct feedback on work to align high performers.
Visit global factories to reinvent manufacturing processes.
Predict web's societal impact and build enabling software.
Balance vision with execution in crises to sustain innovation.

MEMO

In 1995, as the personal computing world teetered on the brink of explosive growth, Steve Jobs sat down with journalist Robert X. Cringely for what would become a legendary lost interview. Unearthed years later from a garage, the conversation reveals a young visionary—then 40, running NeXT after a bitter exit from Apple—reflecting on his improbable journey. Jobs traces his spark to age 10, when a teletype terminal at NASA's Ames Research Center introduced him to programming's magic: typing commands in BASIC, watching ideas execute, results unfolding like alchemy. This thrill, he says, demystified computers from sci-fi behemoths to accessible tools, igniting a lifelong obsession.

Jobs' teenage audacity defined his path. At 12, he cold-called Hewlett-Packard's Bill Hewlett for frequency counter parts, landing a summer job instead. HP's employee-centric culture—daily donut breaks, valuing people as true assets—shaped his ideal of companies. Nights at HP labs exposed him to the HP 9100, a suitcase-sized desktop marvel with a CRT display, programmable in BASIC. There, he met Steve Wozniak, five years his senior, a prankster electronics whiz. Together, they built "blue boxes" after an Esquire tale of Captain Crunch's free calls, hacking AT&T's network by mimicking control tones. Their digital device, etched with "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands," routed calls worldwide via satellites, teaching a profound lesson: two kids could command billions in infrastructure.

Necessity birthed Apple. Lacking terminals for free time-sharing access, Jobs and Wozniak crafted one, evolving it into the Apple I—a circuit board blending terminal and microprocessor, hand-built in garages over 40-80 hours. Friends clamored for replicas, prompting printed circuit boards to streamline assembly. Selling his VW bus and Wozniak's calculator funded prototypes; Paul Terrell's Byte Shop order for 50 assembled units sealed their fate. On 30-day credit, they assembled, sold, and repaid—just in time. Intel alum Mike Markkula joined as partner, bankrolling the Apple II: a color-graphics powerhouse in plastic packaging for everyday users, not hobbyists. Unveiled at the 1977 West Coast Computer Faire, its projections wowed crowds, launching Apple into orbit.

Yet success bred pitfalls. Jobs decried business "folklore"—unquestioned practices like standard costing masking poor controls. He advocated programming as a liberal art, teaching structured thought akin to law school. Wealth amassed—$1 million at 23, $100 million at 25—but paled against passion for products enabling human potential. Xerox PARC's 1979 demo of graphical interfaces blinded him to networking and objects, but screamed inevitability: all computers would follow. Xerox squandered it, toner-headed executives ousting product visionaries for sales drones, a monopoly's curse echoed in IBM's near-failures. Apple stumbled too, HP transplants resisting mice (built for $15 in 90 days) and fonts, prioritizing process over content.

The Macintosh saga epitomized Jobs' ethos. Ousted from Lisa's mismanaged $10,000 flop—ill-suited to Apple's ethos—he rallied a "mission from God" team. They reinvented everything: Japan's automated factories inspired California's first computer plant; the 68000 chip slashed costs; marketing targeted $1,000 accessibility. A-players, from artists to zoologists, clashed like rocks in a tumbler, friction polishing brilliance. Jobs likened it to bicycles outpacing condors in efficiency—computers as "bicycles for the mind," amplifying humanity's vector. But intensity burned; feedback was blunt, egos secondary to work's merit.

Clashes with CEO John Sculley—hired by Jobs but proving a "wrong guy"—culminated in 1985's painful exile. Sculley's recession panic scapegoated Jobs, board siding with survival instincts over vision. Apple, once 10 years ahead, stagnated; by 1995, Macintosh evolved just 25% despite billions in R&D, gliding toward death as Microsoft opportunistically cloned sans taste. NeXT, meanwhile, commercialized objects for 10x faster software, eyeing the web's dawn: not computation's tool, but communication's fulfillment, equalizing commerce and breathing life into computing.

Jobs' philosophy transcended tech: taste from Picasso's thefts, hippie quests for life's deeper inrush beyond materialism. Computers, he believed, transmitted such spirits—Mac users felt it, loving products with soul. In Silicon Valley's perfect storm, Jobs nudged history's arc, blending art and engineering to elevate species. Though Apple faltered, his interview endures as prophecy: the web's social quake, software's weapon, tools' amplification. A decade later, reality vindicated him, NeXT's heart powering Apple's revival.