Steve Jobs Ponders His Legacy In Never-Before-Seen 1994 Video

IJ Reilly · Jun 19, 2013

pacalis said:
I'm sorry to say but Steve misunderstands the renaissance. The artifacts of that era that are remembered are not the products, but outcomes of the patronage of wealthy families.

For example, the Medici's were bankers and textile traders, but we remember them not because their products stood the test of time, but because they used their wealth to expand social pursuits in art, music, science, religion and medicine. They also built some nice palaces.

Now take what Bill Gates is doing with his foundation in education, disease eradication and development and we may indeed be experiencing a new type of renaissance.

Wealthy families, governments, and the church -- which were essentially one and the same thing. Much great art and architecture was destroyed for the same reason it was created, because it ran afoul of changes in power or taste. What survives might be thought of as timeless to us today, but that's mostly an accident of history.

Bill Gates as the new Medici? Yikes, I wish I'd thought of that.

cgk.emu · Jun 19, 2013

...won't be able to fire it up and see what it was like?? I fired up my Apple IIGS the other day. Works fine.

----------

TMar said:
So most people remember the original mac? Again most people not just tech junkies. Plus we are not talking about people in tech being remember but the tech itself.

I agree. Go ask a teen using an iPad to give even a brief overview of Apple's original machines/tech and they'd have the same stare my dog would give me if I asked him a question expecting a response in English...

I think what a lot of folks around these forums forget is that their experience is not the collective user experience. We tend to know and care way more about Apple stuff than the average consumer. Just because we know doesn't mean the market as a whole knows...or cares.

cheesyappleuser · Jun 19, 2013

TMar said:
And who was the second largest before them? And before them?

Easy. Who is the fastest man running 100m? Who is the second fastest? And the third fastest?

I agree it is harsh for those, because they spend most of their life training for it, but people (besides the ones who actually like that sort of thing, like we do at MacRumors) don't remember them. That's how things are supposed to work, unfortunately.

Tikatika · Jun 19, 2013

I miss him.

pacalis · Jun 20, 2013

IJ Reilly said:
Wealthy families, governments, and the church -- which were essentially one and the same thing. Much great art and architecture was destroyed for the same reason it was created, because it ran afoul of changes in power or taste. What survives might be thought of as timeless to us today, but that's mostly an accident of history.

Bill Gates as the new Medici? Yikes, I wish I'd thought of that.

I agree generally, but this "accident of history" is overused. There are a lot of things that survive today because they are exceptional, either in their quality or utility. Most of renaissance art that is preserved today was highly valued in it's own time. But that's tangential to my point: the things that we remember about the renaissance are not the commercial products but arise from the way the wealthy deployed their resources.

As far as the next, you did think of that. The comparison is odd given that the Medici refers to a multi-generational family. But, and time will tell, Gates is fairly unusual in that he is deploying his money in a way that might have a transformative impact on global health and education. There hasn't been something quite like this before, though you might make some comparison with the Rockefeller, Hughes or Carnegie.

Last, the comment about layers I did think was pretty interesting. While the products obsolesce, the technology doesn't - it becomes ubiquitous and helps build the next layer.

IJ Reilly · Jun 20, 2013

pacalis said:
I agree generally, but this "accident of history" is overused. There are a lot of things that survive today because they are exceptional, either in their quality or utility. Most of renaissance art that is preserved today was highly valued in it's own time. But that's tangential to my point: the things that we remember about the renaissance are not the commercial products but arise from the way the wealthy deployed their resources.

As far as the next, you did think of that. The comparison is odd given that the Medici refers to a multi-generational family. But, and time will tell, Gates is fairly unusual in that he is deploying his money in a way that might have a transformative impact on global health and education. There hasn't been something quite like this before, though you might make some comparison with the Rockefeller, Hughes or Carnegie.

Last, the comment about layers I did think was pretty interesting. While the products obsolesce, the technology doesn't - it becomes ubiquitous and helps build the next layer.

I think most people don't realize that few ancient buildings that survive to the present day did so in anything close to their original form, or that many buildings fell for reasons that had nothing do with their architectural qualities. All architecture goes through periods where it viewed as obsolete, or it is simply in the way of something else. The result is more often than not alteration or demolition. Describing survival as an accident of history is appropriate, particularly when we are referring to ancient buildings. The concept of deliberate preservation is a modern one. It didn't occur to anyone until the middle of the 19th century.

Art is a somewhat different matter, but what I was saying about art is that its frame of reference changes. Most art was not created to be displayed in museums. It was created for other purposes (ecclesiastical, mainly), to be seen in a different context.

The Medici family... money makes power, and power makes right. A pretty close approximation to the way Gates is regarded today. I am not a huge fan of the Gates Foundation. If you've ever heard Melissa Gates talk about the foundation's efforts you will recognize that she's a lightweight who gets to espouse her limited wisdom in front of an audience only because of the money Bill made. Yet they get to bend health and education policies to their agenda. A good thing? Not in my book.

I don't think Steve was necessarily wrong with the layers analogy, I note only that he was leaving something out. He was being somewhat self-serving in dismissing everything he'd done previously, primarily (as I see it) because at that time he wasn't doing it anymore. In particular, he described the Mac as "nearly obsolete." This was three years before he returned to Apple, where (lo and behold) he did not treat the Mac as obsolete. And here were are, nearly 20 years later, and the Mac is stronger than ever.

That was Steve was doing his reality-bending trick. A master magician at work. Buckets of respect for him. It was a great talent, but it's still a trick.

pacalis · Jun 20, 2013

IJ Reilly said:
I think most people don't realize that few ancient buildings that survive to the present day did so in anything close to their original form, or that many buildings fell for reasons that had nothing do with their architectural qualities. All architecture goes through periods where it viewed as obsolete, or it is simply in the way of something else. The result is more often than not alteration or demolition. Describing survival as an accident of history is appropriate, particularly when we are referring to ancient buildings. The concept of deliberate preservation is a modern one. It didn't occur to anyone until the middle of the 19th century.

Art is a somewhat different matter, but what I was saying about art is that its frame of reference changes. Most art was not created to be displayed in museums. It was created for other purposes (ecclesiastical, mainly), to be seen in a different context.

The Medici family... money makes power, and power makes right. A pretty close approximation to the way Gates is regarded today. I am not a huge fan of the Gates Foundation. If you've ever heard Melissa Gates talk about the foundation's efforts you will recognize that she's a lightweight who gets to espouse her limited wisdom in front of an audience only because of the money Bill made. Yet they get to bend health and education policies to their agenda. A good thing? Not in my book.

I don't think Steve was necessarily wrong with the layers analogy, I note only that he was leaving something out. He was being somewhat self-serving in dismissing everything he'd done previously, primarily (as I see it) because at that time he wasn't doing it anymore. In particular, he described the Mac as "nearly obsolete." This was three years before he returned to Apple, where (lo and behold) he did not treat the Mac as obsolete. And here were are, nearly 20 years later, and the Mac is stronger than ever.

That was Steve was doing his reality-bending trick. A master magician at work. Buckets of respect for him. It was a great talent, but it's still a trick.

A nice way to summarize Gates and I agree with you. The point I was trying to make is many years from now, if Malaria is cured and education policy takes a turn in a way that seems similar to the mission of his foundation, we may see Gates (for good or for bad) being referred to as a transformative figure of his time (though so much else is going on).

On architecture, you have to cut some slack. Pyramids, the places that define the center of Florence, Morgan's house in NYC, the mansions on the bluffs in Rhode Island, Versailles - some things get preserved because they are exceptional. I'm not disagreeing with you that architecture gets torn down, ripped apart and re-purposed (i.e. all the ancient 7 wonders), but survival odds are definitely changed by the qualities of the artifact, meaning that it isn't all random (i.e accidental).

I get your point about Steve. My main point is that his framing of this time, and this industry, as not a renaissance is comparing apples (commercial products) and oranges (novel pursuits funded by the sale of the products). Perhaps you're making the argument that those were so intertwined 500 years ago that the distinction I'm making isn't important, but I wouldn't buy that the Medici as a whole are known for advancing humanist thought which values divergent, rather than purely commercial interests.

Arfdog · Jun 20, 2013

IJ Reilly said:
Steve had a great talent for communicating his own point of view in a seductive and persuasive manner. Much of his success can be attributed to that talent. Whether he is communicating true insights while he has you mesmerized is not necessarily the same thing. It's worth keeping in mind that a card trick is still a card trick, even if it looks like real magic.

What is "true" insight? We are talking user interfaces, not the discovery of gravity; there is no singularly true insight to consumer products. Thus "true" insight is how Steve and other inspiring leaders can envision how millions of people really want a PC to work.

And if you are trying to say the Mac, Ipod, Iphone, and Ipad are card tricks..... well you might need to rethink your argument.

Arfdog · Jun 20, 2013

IJ Reilly said:
That was Steve was doing his reality-bending trick. A master magician at work. Buckets of respect for him. It was a great talent, but it's still a trick.

This refrain keeps showing up. You're really comparing Steve to a snake oil salesman. How much do you think a great snake oil salesman actually earns in sales? When was the last time you heard of a billionaire snake oil salesman? You know why you haven't? It's probably because he's selling.... snake oil.

If Steve could make his billions selling dirt, I think he would have gone that route since dirt needs much less capital investment and R&D.

DeepIn2U · Jun 20, 2013

cualexander said:
Interesting how he was incorrect though. In another 4 years, the original iPhone will be 10 years old, and while he was correct that it is not usable anymore, it will still go down in history as the phone that started the smartphone revolution. The same way the iPad revitalized the tablet market and the iPod revolutionized the portable music market.

Wow ... delusional!

The iPhone was LATE in the smartphone revolution.
Symbian S60/UIQ/EPOC ... Windows Mobile Smartphone Edition, BlackBerry all created the revolution, song its praises very well long before Apple entered the foray ... in fact THEY'RE the REASON Apple entered into the market! Ever wonder WHY the iPad was developed first yet announced and shipped several years LATER?! Hmm.

Took iPhone 3 yrs to get basic PIM right ... going by your statement I've quoted above I highly doubt you know the P.I.M. acronym.

The iPhone brought on the evolution of the smartphone revolution ...
unifying: proper media consumption, good pictures (though SonyEricsson matched this for years! before and after; Nokia included and STILL reigns in this field), and mobile music and unified application delivery, along with showing manufacturers the falsehood of carrier branding!!

The iphone did NOT bring REAL web browsing like Jobs stated in the original iPhone announcment. Notice why he chose that particular and unpopular business Nokia S60 "E61" device? It's because it featured WebKit browsing ... created by Apple and a Google employee to create KTHML WebKit. Actually the Nokia N80 S60 2nd Edition device was the VERY first smartphone/phone to have a webkit based browser ... Nokia called it "nokia browser".

----------

IJ Reilly said:
I think most people don't realize that few ancient buildings that survive to the present day did so in anything close to their original form, or that many buildings fell for reasons that had nothing do with their architectural qualities. All architecture goes through periods where it viewed as obsolete, or it is simply in the way of something else. The result is more often than not alteration or demolition. Describing survival as an accident of history is appropriate, particularly when we are referring to ancient buildings. The concept of deliberate preservation is a modern one. It didn't occur to anyone until the middle of the 19th century.

Art is a somewhat different matter, but what I was saying about art is that its frame of reference changes. Most art was not created to be displayed in museums. It was created for other purposes (ecclesiastical, mainly), to be seen in a different context.

The Medici family... money makes power, and power makes right. A pretty close approximation to the way Gates is regarded today. I am not a huge fan of the Gates Foundation. If you've ever heard Melissa Gates talk about the foundation's efforts you will recognize that she's a lightweight who gets to espouse her limited wisdom in front of an audience only because of the money Bill made. Yet they get to bend health and education policies to their agenda. A good thing? Not in my book.

I don't think Steve was necessarily wrong with the layers analogy, I note only that he was leaving something out. He was being somewhat self-serving in dismissing everything he'd done previously, primarily (as I see it) because at that time he wasn't doing it anymore. In particular, he described the Mac as "nearly obsolete." This was three years before he returned to Apple, where (lo and behold) he did not treat the Mac as obsolete. And here were are, nearly 20 years later, and the Mac is stronger than ever.

That was Steve was doing his reality-bending trick. A master magician at work. Buckets of respect for him. It was a great talent, but it's still a trick.

He stated the "Macintosh" was obsolete .. not the Mac.

semantics of course but maybe he was honest and serious because he saw Desktop Publishing as a thing to common, and that Workstations - the purpose for being that is NeXT to replace that when he returned to Apple:
24 PowerMac G3's sourcing video content in real time shown off.
XServes announced and shown off in similar fashion,
Power Mac G5 debuted with applomb in a BOMB and now the NEW MAC PRO.

on "Macintosh" exists ... just Mac ... since he's now cool grown up and taking charge.

cualexander · Jun 21, 2013

Supa_Fly said:
Wow ... delusional!

The iPhone was LATE in the smartphone revolution.
Symbian S60/UIQ/EPOC ... Windows Mobile Smartphone Edition, BlackBerry all created the revolution, song its praises very well long before Apple entered the foray ... in fact THEY'RE the REASON Apple entered into the market! Ever wonder WHY the iPad was developed first yet announced and shipped several years LATER?! Hmm.

Took iPhone 3 yrs to get basic PIM right ... going by your statement I've quoted above I highly doubt you know the P.I.M. acronym.

The iPhone brought on the evolution of the smartphone revolution ...
unifying: proper media consumption, good pictures (though SonyEricsson matched this for years! before and after; Nokia included and STILL reigns in this field), and mobile music and unified application delivery, along with showing manufacturers the falsehood of carrier branding!!

The iphone did NOT bring REAL web browsing like Jobs stated in the original iPhone announcment. Notice why he chose that particular and unpopular business Nokia S60 "E61" device? It's because it featured WebKit browsing ... created by Apple and a Google employee to create KTHML WebKit. Actually the Nokia N80 S60 2nd Edition device was the VERY first smartphone/phone to have a webkit based browser ... Nokia called it "nokia browser".

You are delusional, not me. Those were niche devices. Windows mobile was crap. So was Symbian. Capacitive multi-touch changed the game. Before that, everything was resistive touch, which was junk. iPhone changed the game. Show me the TIME Magazine article about the S60 being the best device ever, oh yeah, it doesn't exist.

IJ Reilly · Jun 21, 2013

pacalis said:
A nice way to summarize Gates and I agree with you. The point I was trying to make is many years from now, if Malaria is cured and education policy takes a turn in a way that seems similar to the mission of his foundation, we may see Gates (for good or for bad) being referred to as a transformative figure of his time (though so much else is going on).

On architecture, you have to cut some slack. Pyramids, the places that define the center of Florence, Morgan's house in NYC, the mansions on the bluffs in Rhode Island, Versailles - some things get preserved because they are exceptional. I'm not disagreeing with you that architecture gets torn down, ripped apart and re-purposed (i.e. all the ancient 7 wonders), but survival odds are definitely changed by the qualities of the artifact, meaning that it isn't all random (i.e accidental).

I get your point about Steve. My main point is that his framing of this time, and this industry, as not a renaissance is comparing apples (commercial products) and oranges (novel pursuits funded by the sale of the products). Perhaps you're making the argument that those were so intertwined 500 years ago that the distinction I'm making isn't important, but I wouldn't buy that the Medici as a whole are known for advancing humanist thought which values divergent, rather than purely commercial interests.

On Gates and his foundation: his health initiative was not really his health initiative. He has funded a polio eradication effort started and funded for more than a decade by others. Not that the additional money wasn't appreciated, but to paint him as the brainchild of this concept is to give him too much credit. Maybe the future will forget this, as the present seems to have overlooked it. In education, Gates had the brilliant idea that what every student needed was smaller schools, so he funded a whole lot of smaller schools. Turns out, smaller schools do not improve academic performance. And so on. Cart, meet horse.

Some great, ancient buildings proved difficult to destroy, not that people didn't try. The Sphinx had its face blown off by French troops who used it for target practice. The Parthenon is ruinous today because the Turks occupying Athens in the 17th century thought it was a good place to store gun powder. It is really remarkable how little anyone cared for ancient buildings, even some that seem so obviously great to us today, until very recently.

As for the Renaissance, I think it's worth keeping in mind that it was in general a period when art, education, and science became widely appreciated. I don't know that it can be attributed to any one family.

----------

Arfdog said:
What is "true" insight? We are talking user interfaces, not the discovery of gravity; there is no singularly true insight to consumer products. Thus "true" insight is how Steve and other inspiring leaders can envision how millions of people really want a PC to work.

And if you are trying to say the Mac, Ipod, Iphone, and Ipad are card tricks..... well you might need to rethink your argument.

No, I am not saying that. Clearly.

Arfdog said:
This refrain keeps showing up. You're really comparing Steve to a snake oil salesman. How much do you think a great snake oil salesman actually earns in sales? When was the last time you heard of a billionaire snake oil salesman? You know why you haven't? It's probably because he's selling.... snake oil.

If Steve could make his billions selling dirt, I think he would have gone that route since dirt needs much less capital investment and R&D.

No, I am not saying that. Clearly.

pacalis · Jun 22, 2013

Supa_Fly said:
Wow ... delusional!

The iPhone was LATE in the smartphone revolution.
Symbian S60/UIQ/EPOC ... Windows Mobile Smartphone Edition, BlackBerry all created the revolution, song its praises very well long before Apple entered the foray ... in fact THEY'RE the REASON Apple entered into the market! Ever wonder WHY the iPad was developed first yet announced and shipped several years LATER?! Hmm.

iPhone wasn't late or early, it was just right.

There are a lot of metaphors for for this, crossing the chasm, dominant design, but it was the first phone to bring together the right mix of features and production volume. That's why phones since have been so similar, I don't see it so much as they copying the iphone (i.e all the features existed elsewhere in some feature phone or another) as much as industry and consumer began to understand the requisite mix of features a smartphone needed to have to sell in large volume.

pacalis · Jun 22, 2013

IJ Reilly said:
On Gates and his foundation: his health initiative was not really his health initiative. He has funded a polio eradication effort started and funded for more than a decade by others. Not that the additional money wasn't appreciated, but to paint him as the brainchild of this concept is to give him too much credit. Maybe the future will forget this, as the present seems to have overlooked it. In education, Gates had the brilliant idea that what every student needed was smaller schools, so he funded a whole lot of smaller schools. Turns out, smaller schools do not improve academic performance. And so on. Cart, meet horse.

I think we're agreeing on Gates. I didn't mean to paint Gates as a brainchild, all I was saying is that he's applying his fortune in a way that has the potential/purpose for non-commercial/social outcomes. This is very similar to what is generally understood to have happened during the renaissance, whatever the unique motivations of those families.

But separately, this is also something that I see as a great failing of Jobs - his legacy has been primarily developed through his commercial interests (and in that way, individually his experience is indeed unlike the renaissance). And I feel the same way about many other successful men - Larry Ellison, Warren Buffet etc... I don't get how they can be so successful on the one hand, and not have social ambitions on the other. So separately, while I may not always agree with the social interests and investments of those Soros' or the Bloomberg's of this world, I can better identify with them (instead of Jobs, Buffet, Ellison etc..) in that they are using their resources to shape society in a way that they think is better.

Also, I get that you take interest in the preservation of buildings, but that seems to be getting a bit to narrow and specific given the context of this thread.

IJ Reilly · Jun 22, 2013

pacalis said:
I think we're agreeing on Gates. I didn't mean to paint Gates as a brainchild, all I was saying is that he's applying his fortune in a way that has the potential/purpose for non-commercial/social outcomes. This is very similar to what is generally understood to have happened during the renaissance, whatever the unique motivations of those families.

But separately, this is also something that I see as a great failing of Jobs - his legacy has been primarily developed through his commercial interests (and in that way, individually his experience is indeed unlike the renaissance). And I feel the same way about many other successful men - Larry Ellison, Warren Buffet etc... I don't get how they can be so successful on the one hand, and not have social ambitions on the other. So separately, while I may not always agree with the social interests and investments of those Soros' or the Bloomberg's of this world, I can better identify with them (instead of Jobs, Buffet, Ellison etc..) in that they are using their resources to shape society in a way that they think is better.

Also, I get that you take interest in the preservation of buildings, but that seems to be getting a bit to narrow and specific given the context of this thread.

Point taken. It's interesting, the contrast between the two. Gates during his working career seemed far more interested in selling stuff than in making the stuff special. Driving competitors out of the way of him selling more stuff, by underhanded and even illegal means if necessary, was a perfectly acceptable method of doing business to him. Jobs wanted to change the world, to bend the arc of history, one product at a time. Money was a tool for that sort of change. Gates then turned much of his amassed fortune to charity, when Jobs, as far as we know, donated relatively little. Maybe Gates is doing a kind of penance, in the way Carnegie did for his ruthless business practices? And Jobs felt he'd already made the impact he'd envisioned? A working theory.

Didn't Buffet start that program of asking super-wealthy people like himself to leave half of their fortunes to charity when they died?

We got onto old buildings as a way of addressing the question of how present-day things get valued by the future, since Jobs made this analogy in the video clip. What one generation cares about may or may not translate into the next one. Jobs made it sound like a cinch to know what kinds of things stand the test of time and what does not. His analogy doesn't hold up to real-world testing, is my point.

otismotive77 · Jun 23, 2013

he looks awesome in that beard, it's really sad we couldn't save him, miss you steve.

macreviewz · Jun 23, 2013

yet...

I hear what you just said friend. Yet, your passion, your vision, your efforts, your ways - will be regarded timeless.

Patience, friend - we will speak about you in hundreds and hundreds of years to come!

Enjoy Nextel. Your next job will be legendary! :apple:

Search

Search

Steve Jobs Ponders His Legacy In Never-Before-Seen 1994 Video

IJ Reilly

macrumors P6

cgk.emu

macrumors 6502

cheesyappleuser

macrumors 6502a

Tikatika

macrumors 6502a

pacalis

macrumors 65816

IJ Reilly

macrumors P6

pacalis

macrumors 65816

Arfdog

macrumors 6502

Arfdog

macrumors 6502

DeepIn2U

macrumors G5

cualexander

macrumors 6502a

IJ Reilly

macrumors P6

pacalis

macrumors 65816

pacalis

macrumors 65816

IJ Reilly

macrumors P6

otismotive77

macrumors 6502

macreviewz

macrumors newbie

Our Staff