Steve Jobs Interview - 2/18/1981

We have to assume that every time we do a story, the majority of the audience hasn't done it. Whenever you present any topic or any important word, you really have to familiarize the audience that you were talking about. 60 minutes, uh, them. They do the same thing that Harry Reisner did in an article about a guy who was a card counter playing blackjack a couple of weeks ago and they spent about three minutes in the context of the story establishing how to play blackjack properly, just the fact that you have Sure pick 20, yeah, 21. So yeah, that's what we make of this interesting television.

It always seems to aim for the lowest common denominator. Stephen, to get two takes we need. It sounds a little peculiar, but. you can't and it will be painless and over quickly. Great thanks. I could hug him if you want. No, the reason they take these two shots is because they do all this market research on television and you know they walk into a mall and grab 50 viewers and put them in a trailer and show them tapes and try to figure out what they like. and what doesn't, what bothers them and what doesn't. One of the things they found that bothered viewers was on the typical night, I just like to see the environment that you're talking in and so the wide shot yeah, that's over, yeah, Steve, when you started to develop This was five years ago, what kind of need did you see existing then?

I felt like these computers were going to fill well basically the quest, are we really doing this now? Oh great, the question is really what is a personal computer and why is it different from all the other computers that have existed throughout history? Probably the best way to explain it. That is, through an analogy, when we look at the invention of the first electric motor in the late 19th century, it was only possible to build a very large one and it was very, very expensive and therefore its cost could only be justified for the most expensive or largest. applications and the electric motor really took its next step in proliferation when someone hooked a long shaft to it and ran it through the center of a factory through a series of belts and pulleys, reducing that power to perhaps 15 or 20 workstations. individual, thus justifying the cost of sharing. those horsepower among some medium-sized applications, but the electric motor really achieved true proliferation in society with the invention of the fractional horsepower electric motor and at that time horsepower could be taken directly to where it was needed on a personal scale. , with a justified cost. for a small number of things and we see the same thing, the same evolution if we look at the history of computing, the first eniac computer in 1946 was designed mainly for meteorological and ballistic calculations, very large tasks and the next revolution in computing was in the 1960s with the invention of what is called time-sharing, essentially sharing one of these very large computers with perhaps 40 or 50 terminals spread across a company and therefore justifying the cost for medium-sized applications.

What we think the personal computer industry is about is the invention of the fractional power computer - something whose cost can be justified on a personal level - something that weighs 12 pounds that you can throw out the window if you don't like it and it's really changing the The way people interact with computers there is a one-to-one relationship that develops between a person and a computer Now, when you use the term personal computer, you are avoiding the term home computer for a deliberate reason. Well, we see that we segment our market, really into four main segments, education, professional, small business, home. consumer and industrial scientist now the home market hasn't really taken off it's probably the smallest of the four I've listed, we now see the home not really as a market but as a place where personal computers are used for a variety of functions sometimes in other words you can use a personal computer to manage the portfolio of some stocks, you can use a personal computer to do something educational, can I answer that question?

Okay, yes, you can take it back. Oh, okay, cool, Sam, you were when you grew up, you're saying, are we still waiting? uh yeah, ask and we'll answer it okay, okay, John, and when you use the term home computer, you're deliberately avoiding the use of the term home computer, no. You're right, we, um, see the home not really as a market, but more as a place where we sell a lot of personal computers that are used for financial analysis for education in schools, for conducting laboratory experiments in universities and in science. . applications and many of these personal computers are used at home as a location sometimes, but there are still not enough specific applications to justify the cost of spending one thousand to three thousand dollars on a personal computer for use at home, so it is not I don't think the house is ready yet, either culturally or economically, what kind of person would need a personal computer of the type you offer today?

Well, back to the question of what a personal computer is again, another analogy, there was an article in Scientific American in the early '70s that compared the efficiency of locomotion of various species of things on the planet; In other words, they measured how much energy a bird needed to get from point A to point B compared to the energy it took for a fish to travel the same distance and a goat and a person and all kinds of other things and they classified them and it turns out. that the condor won. The condor was the most efficient and Mann came in with a rather unimpressive performance about a third of the way through.

The list is somewhat disappointing, but someone had the idea to test the efficiency of the man riding a bicycle and the man riding a bicycle was twice as good as the condor until the end of the list and what really illustrated was the ability of the man as tool. creator to create a tool that can amplify an inherent intellectual ability that man has and that is exactly what we believe we are doing, we believe that we are basically designing a 21st century bicycle that can amplify an inherent intellectual ability that man has and really take care of a a lot of heavy lifting to free up people so they can do a lot more creative work, does this mean?

Do you think personal computers in the 21st century will be as important a part of a home as, say, a refrigerator? uh we can always we can see what's happening Right now, as an example, in the state of Minnesota, which is probably the leading state in the country, over 97 percent of kids graduating from high school have hands-on experience. with an apple before graduating. These children are growing up learning how to use it. This new tool in many phases of their lives are reaching university, the same is happening and very quickly the process of integration of personal computers into society will be achieved.

Let me illustrate two other processes that have happened in our lives. very similar to this, you probably haven't used a piece of carbon paper or seen a mimeograph machine in a while, and yet the first photocopy machine was introduced less than 20 years ago, next month it will be 20 years old, and in 20 years will be radically altered the way we work another process the first handheld scientific calculator hp 35 was introduced by hewlett packard in 1972 but we all know where it has gone in just nine years but another interesting fact is that in 1978 the largest manufacturer of slide rules of the world I stopped making them completely because the market had disappeared six years, so we see that it is possible in our lifetimes for a process like this to radically influence the way we work and even start to look at life when you say start looking at life.

Where? Where will the impact on the intellectual process be felt most in the daily life process that manages the home in terms of the way you spend your free time? Is there a way to identify one of those areas? As is most likely what we have seen in almost every personal computer application that has happened to date, the industry is only five years old, but we have seen that we have shipped over 150,000 personal computers. We've seen a dramatic increase in people's creativity in tackling a problem rather than doing the heavy lifting instead of using traditional tools.

People have the freedom to think about the conceptual issues involved and the creative issues involved and use the computer to solve the problem. monotony, this is an education where students can learn at their own pace, where they can interact with a computer instead of just having one-way communication through television or books they can actually interact with the medium in which we are watching this . the professional sphere where we no longer have Apple as an example, we no longer have secretaries at Apple, we have what we call area administrators, they use computers for all their word processing, they make all the departmental budgets, we make all our forecasts. using our own tools and we're actually changing job descriptions to allow people to do more creative work instead of more work.

You mentioned that calculators eliminated in at least one case, in fact, for the slide rules that your secretarial job. the descriptions are changing yes, are there any other major areas where personal computers are going to change in that direction that most people would be familiar with or make them obsolete? Well, I don't think personal computers are doing anything obsolete in the sense of what people do. I think they are enriching what people do. There is a common conception that people have of computers, which is more like 1984, very large computers, very centralized and I know that the topic of privacy is very hot in the media today, but what Our finding is that when people really see what a personal computer is, they see something that looks roughly, they can hold it in their hands, it weighs 12 pounds again, they can throw it out the window if they don't like it and it's very decentralized, it's very democratic and It's something that's completely, uh, almost the opposite of the conception that we have of 1984 and what we're finding is that it's enriching people's lives, it's freeing people up to do things that we think people do best.

Is there some basis to compare you, say Mattel and Atari, or is it like comparing apples and oranges. We describe our business as really making tools and not toys and, I think, we're really interested in providing that type of bicycle tool to the market. uh, some other people are more interested in providing entertainment value that is valuable, of course, too, but that's none of our business, is there a difference in their technology as well? Actually, something is happening in the entire personal computer industry with all the serious competitors. Again, this process of integrating personal computers into society will take perhaps 10 years to conclude and of course we want to continue selling more and more computers, the key to that will be to make computers easier and easier. use and the way that that will happen is that we are going to spend more and more computer power in the box to adapt the computer more to the way that people are familiar with doing things, so that people have to adapt less to the way computers do things and therefore will require a more sophisticated computer, which is the paradox in our industry right now, making a computer simpler to use requires a more sophisticated computer, that It's part of the reason why the domestic market doesn't exist yet, because if you think about it, the home user needs the easiest computer to use, therefore the most sophisticated, and therefore one of the most expensive, so which we hope the prices won't go down in the next few years, but in reality, if you stay at the main level, you will get more computer power for the same dollar, you might even see the prices increase a little, but the Computers are going to become much easier to use, so you and your partner grew up in this valley, Silicon Valley, what kind of culture existed here that led to all the building that has been built in all the companies that have been created, this Santa Clara Valley which we all affectionately refer to Silicon Valley is probably one of the best examples of what I call a kind of entrepreneurial venture culture anywhere in the world and both my partner Steve Wozniak and I grew up here and really some of the people who founded companies in the hewlett area and bill hewlett and dave packard and others were really our role models, our heroes and we like to think that we continue that tradition.

Is there anything left for you to do now that you're 25? uh, your company went public. Yes, it is worth hundreds of millions ofDollars. Well, we don't really feel like we've accomplished what we set out to do, but we have set out to do it. I really helped lead this process of introducing personal computers into society and I think you asked me for it in five years. Great, thank you very much, okay, yes, the only thought I had even though you and video game manufacturers really exist in two different worlds, yes. Do you think that the fact that children and people in general are becoming so familiar with using these video games and the simple computers that come with them will make people more aware of personal computers and better able to handle them?

With them, in fact, it is not even happening only in the area of ​​​​video games, it is happening as an example with a bank ATM, people interact more and more with smart devices, whether it is a smart game or a smart bank ATM. or whatever, and we You are already seeing it in society. Now people are becoming more familiar with interacting with smart electronic devices and that is changing things culturally. It's a step along the way, thank you, okay, thank you very much, did you get what you wanted? Yes, that was good. I think it doesn't tie you to them and yet professionally, but I think it does to the idea that that.

Los Angeles just because there's a lot of work on that coast and then the other six, five or six months, you know, in between, do you need Steve to talk? Do you want me to ask him again? Okay, you don't even need to respond again. What they're going to do is take this and put it together, you know how it works, so I don't need to talk anything nice, just uh, no or something, when they do the editing, it's going to look like you're doing something. physical emotions, but yeah, okay, I'm going to start with the reasons.

Okay, so when you started out, when you started building this business five years ago, what kind of need for personal computers did you improve, Steve, when you started building the business? Five years ago, what are the needs for personal computers? Did you notice that when you use the word personal computer you intentionally avoid the word home computers? Now, when you use the term personal computer, you deliberately avoid using the term home computer. What kind of person? Do you have a personal computer today? What type of individual would a person have? What type of individual would buy a personal computer today?

That's right, we always get a lot of good answers. This was just a statement. Does this mean that personal computers in the 21st century would be? as common as, say, a refrigerator, okay, does this mean that personal computers in the 21st century would be as common a part of a home as, say, a refrigerator, a vacuum cleaner? I can't make this guy laugh, oh yes you can, he used to be. the easiest type uh uh that's another story I'm not going to tell it where they'll record it and someone will pull it out of nowhere I'm really not going to like it yeah, sure, okay, next question, okay, where?

Will the impact of personal computers be felt better? Where will the impact of personal computers be felt most in the future? And then there was a long question that had to do with calculators, secretarial

jobs

and any other changes he could foresee in the future, okay, if calculators are making slide rules obsolete and your computer allows you to redefine your secretarial

jobs

in other categories, more creative categories, what other types of things are going to change as a result of personal computers or become obsolete. do it even though you and Apple video makers and video game makers exist in different worlds.

Is there some awareness about computing? Even though Apple and video game makers really exist in two different worlds, do these video games in some sense attract people? more used to the idea of ​​personal computers, okay that's the end, great, now I'll listen to Steve, sure, and you can say anything, this is the fun farm, yeah, where do you go on vacation to this area or Are you going, uh, yeah, yeah? No, no, I haven't taken a vacation in a long time, that's how I measure if I'm successful, is if I can take a vacation for three months so far, I'm not successful, yeah, well, someday, oh yeah, how do you do it? ?

How do you build an executive core around a company like this? Obviously, you and your partner had to take on a lot of responsibility. Well, one of the things we always did was try to hire someone who was better than us at a particular issue. That's still my biggest joy here: when we hire someone who is better than me at a particular thing, then you try to hire really outstanding people who are too superior for the current jobs you have. you have, but you know you're planning to grow so fast that in six months the job is perfect for them and in a year they're struggling to keep up, so we've grown it, you know, several hundred percent a year and uh.

It's a very different type of environment than what most people are used to. We have a whole generation of managers here, they are trained to grow at 400 percent a year and they would be bored to death if they grew at 30 percent a year.