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Steve Jobs Talks Pixar in 'Never-Before-Seen' Interview as 'Toy Story' Turns 30
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Agreed. I get a bit tired of all the ‘Steve Jobs would never have done this’ comments, forgetting that Apple made plenty of mistakes under his leadership too—but I do agree that he never would have sacrificed his love of the arts. I imagine the ‘Crush!’ ad would have upset him just as much as it did many of us.
I found it fascinating when Jobs talked about the culture at Pixar saying that everyone there is working towards the same goal: Creating Shareholder Value. Sounds like Tim Cook to me. It’s no wonder why Jobs picked him as his successor & the incredible job Cook has done in creating shareholder value. 👍🏻
It’s interesting to see that the western film industry is adopting this relatively binary approach to animation creation actually.
In comparison, anime from Japan for example, has been trying to integrate both into their story telling, with fight scenes or action sequences presented in 3D whilst maintaining their dialogue driven storytelling in 2D. Whilst it was rather awkward at the beginning, the 2D to 3D transition had grown significantly smoother over the past 10 years in general and without significant/visible frame drops.
I can’t help but wonder if the style / production process in the west have something to do with this 3D replacement though?
Just my two cents.
I got to visit Pixar in 1988 or 1989 to talk to some of their engineers how we were using their image processing library for the hardware they were selling at the time. The lead SW dev met us outside their building after coming back from getting more coffee. He said he had been up all night working on something and needed some caffeine (my coworker and I thought he was a homeless guy at first 😆). All the offices in their area had beaded curtains instead of doors and the entry way had a big prints from Luxo Jr on the walls. Cool place.
Typical Silicon Valley revisionist history ( e.g., Musk a founder of Tesla; not). George Lucas had effectively spun out Pixar from Lucasfiilm before Jobs bought it. The 'Pixar' name already existed. It was being 'shopped' to a variety of VC and buyers. Jobs was the only one that followed through with the money. Pixar was born , it just would have died without food (money). Feeding a baby after it is born is not the birthing process. Extremely necessary, but it is not birth.
When a Venture Capital firm puts a ton of money into a start up it isn't a 'founder'. Funder is a different role.
It was likely a better outcome that if General Motors had bought it.
GM and Philips nearly bought Pixar, but deal's collapse allowed Steve Jobs to invest - General Discussion Discussions on AppleInsider Forums
Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull reveals in a new book that the now-legendary animation company was nearly sold to General Motors and Philips for its technology, but the deal fell through just before it could be signed.
forums.appleinsider.com
Jobs didn't rush in and outbid everyone. He was basically the only one that put the money ( lower than what Lucas was looking for, but needed money short term. ).
It also 'happened to work' in part because Jobs had another company to run, NeXT , and Pixar was a long term pay off thing. Jobs had enough money to bankroll for a long term payoff. The actual founders were making Pixar work in the interim.
Will watch the video soon. Can't believe that the first Toy Story film was released 30 years ago. Love some of the films made by Pixar. Looking forward to seeing the sequel!
Typical Silicon Valley revisionist history ( e.g., Musk a founder of Tesla; not). George Lucas had effectively spun out Pixar from Lucasfiilm before Jobs bought it. The 'Pixar' name already existed. It was being 'shopped' to a variety of VC and buyers. Jobs was the only one that followed through with the money. Pixar was born , it just would have died without food (money). Feeding a baby after it is born is not the birthing process. Extremely necessary, but it is not birth.
When a Venture Capital firm puts a ton of money into a start up it isn't a 'founder'. Funder is a different role.
It was likely a better outcome that if General Motors had bought it.
GM and Philips nearly bought Pixar, but deal's collapse allowed Steve Jobs to invest - General Discussion Discussions on AppleInsider Forums
Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull reveals in a new book that the now-legendary animation company was nearly sold to General Motors and Philips for its technology, but the deal fell through just before it could be signed.forums.appleinsider.com
Jobs didn't rush in and outbid everyone. He was basically the only one that put the money ( lower than what Lucas was looking for, but needed money short term. ).
It also 'happened to work' in part because Jobs had another company to run, NeXT , and Pixar was a long term pay off thing. Jobs had enough money to bankroll for a long term payoff. The actual founders were making Pixar work in the interim.
From the article you linked to:
“Catmull explained that Phillips wanted the Pixar Image Computer's ability to render data from CT scans or MRIs,”
IIRC, the Image Computers were originally created for compositing of images so its frame buffer had 4 12-bit values per pixel - RGB plus an alpha channel - to make it easy to paste one image on top of another and the alpha channel could be used to control how much of the others would be included in the result. Medical applications were mostly monochrome, so a special “accordion mode” was created so that images could be 4x as wide as the normal full color ones.
I miss playing around with those machines.
That's a great interview. When he was good he was so, so good. He was always brilliant and insightful but post-Apple he matured tremendously.
This was a good interview.
The internet algorithms have been recommending a lot of Jobs interviews, Apple keynotes and other things from the past.
I think it's fair to say we've lost something great with the passing of Jobs. Apple will continue to just fine, but it's products don't have the same charm or joy factor anymore. Looking back at past hardware releases, software releases all seem to show this.
Steve and Johnny always talked about the human obligation to put care into the products you were making. Knowing that actual people would be using them, experiencing them. And with that either experiencing joy or frustration. We can see a lot of the design choices that were made with that in mind.
And to a degree it seems that that is diminished at Apple. Or maybe it's just the times. What would Steve do in today's world post smart phone revolution? How would he handle the AI boom? It's been said 1000 times, but man you wish he was smarter about his cancer treatments.
The internet algorithms have been recommending a lot of Jobs interviews, Apple keynotes and other things from the past.
I think it's fair to say we've lost something great with the passing of Jobs. Apple will continue to just fine, but it's products don't have the same charm or joy factor anymore. Looking back at past hardware releases, software releases all seem to show this.
Steve and Johnny always talked about the human obligation to put care into the products you were making. Knowing that actual people would be using them, experiencing them. And with that either experiencing joy or frustration. We can see a lot of the design choices that were made with that in mind.
And to a degree it seems that that is diminished at Apple. Or maybe it's just the times. What would Steve do in today's world post smart phone revolution? How would he handle the AI boom? It's been said 1000 times, but man you wish he was smarter about his cancer treatments.
There's an excerpt in the link you provided:Typical Silicon Valley revisionist history ( e.g., Musk a founder of Tesla; not). George Lucas had effectively spun out Pixar from Lucasfiilm before Jobs bought it. The 'Pixar' name already existed. It was being 'shopped' to a variety of VC and buyers. Jobs was the only one that followed through with the money. Pixar was born , it just would have died without food (money). Feeding a baby after it is born is not the birthing process. Extremely necessary, but it is not birth.
When a Venture Capital firm puts a ton of money into a start up it isn't a 'founder'. Funder is a different role.
It was likely a better outcome that if General Motors had bought it.
GM and Philips nearly bought Pixar, but deal's collapse allowed Steve Jobs to invest - General Discussion Discussions on AppleInsider Forums
Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull reveals in a new book that the now-legendary animation company was nearly sold to General Motors and Philips for its technology, but the deal fell through just before it could be signed.forums.appleinsider.com
Jobs didn't rush in and outbid everyone. He was basically the only one that put the money ( lower than what Lucas was looking for, but needed money short term. ).
It also 'happened to work' in part because Jobs had another company to run, NeXT , and Pixar was a long term pay off thing. Jobs had enough money to bankroll for a long term payoff. The actual founders were making Pixar work in the interim.
"In another excerpt from his book released earlier this year, Catmull explained how the experience of running Pixar helped to change Jobs himself for the better. Catmull worked with Jobs for more than 25 years, and believes Pixar made him "more sensitive not only to other people's feelings, but also to
their value as contributors to the creative process.""
I've noticed this just listening to/watching interviews. Post Pixar Steve changed. While he still was ruthless it seemed he softened quite a bit. I thought it was maybe just my nostalgic feelings kicking in, so it's nice to see this thought echoed years ago.
I mean, I don't think it's that simple.
Yeah, Jobs didn't create Toy Story. But if the story told is true he's the reason that the creators behind it got the go ahead. He gave them creative freedom. I hate everyone saying Steve "invented" anything - because we all know he didn't - but his hand in pushing employees and creators is undeniable. He was a one of a kind leader that would be hard to reproduce.
What a genius!!
Just ahead of the 30th anniversary of Toy Story, The Steve Jobs Archive has shared a "never-before-seen" video of Steve Jobs discussing Pixar.
The interview is from November 22, 1996 — exactly one year after Toy Story debuted in theaters, as the world's first entirely computer-animated feature-length film. In the video, Jobs reflects on Pixar's early success, business model, and more.
For those unaware, Pixar was born after Jobs purchased the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm, and spun it into an independent company. He remained Pixar's majority shareholder until the company was sold to Disney in 2006.
Fun fact: Jobs appears in Toy Story's opening credits.
The Steve Jobs Archive was launched by Steve Jobs' friends and family in 2022. The website features a collection of quotes, photos, videos, and emails from Jobs, and offers fellowships to young creators looking to follow in his footsteps.
Article Link: Steve Jobs Talks Pixar in 'Never-Before-Seen' Interview as 'Toy Story' Turns 30
