Complete Apple WWDC | Steve Jobs talk and answer developers questions | 1997

What Hacker News said

Strong rec mistersquid · 2019-12 · on “Inside Macintosh (1985) [pdf]”

Thanks for linking to the 1997 WDC (only 1 "w"!) Q&A with Jobs. For those hoping to cut to the chase, the timecode for Jobs' prompt and the hapless attendee who asks "What about OpenDoc" is 4:26 [0] The four and a half minutes prior are interesting (thoughtful introduction, Jobs' framing of the session and his brief thoughts about Apple's current position), but what he says in response to the questions following the OpenDoc question is deeply thought-provoking. Many of the ideas Jobs shares show the general shape of recent and current Apple business decisions macOS and iCloud, for example. Especially interesting are his discussions of NIH syndrome, networking, and more. Thanks, twoodfin, for

Strong rec sjwright · 2020-04 · on “Tesla Q1 2020 Update”

I personally feel there's a big overlap between Jobs and Musk—but none more so than the fact that they had the key combination of sufficient intelligence, clear vision, high self-confidence and (most importantly) strong influence over corporate direction. One of my favourite Steve Jobs quotes is just after he returned to Apple and began dismantling the massive pile of legacy cruft. When asked about a particular (terrible) technology that Apple scrapped, Steve went on a particularly insightful rant that holds numerous insights into what he believes to be key to a successful company. And history proved those insights to be exactly right. The quote— "Some mistakes will be made along the way. Th

Strong rec fidotron · 2024-01 · on “Mourning Google”

For those that haven't seen it the whole thing is worth it: [this video] This Q&A is the evidence for why I think many tech people underestimated him, and as you observe such unfiltered Q&As do not occur with other tech CEOs, though he was not CEO at the time. He's not 100% right about how things would go, but he was a lot more right than anyone else proved to be. Some of his answers to the really tough questions are not stellar, but Apple was in a truly terrible state at the time, and there were not nice answers to give. The fact that he stood there ready to take the hits spoke volumes though.

Recommends pfranz · 2018-05 · on “Jim Black's Steve Jobs Story”

I've heard both of those stories from multiple places. I don't know exactly how you'd define "technical," he clearly wasn't a strong engineer, but I have heard multiple examples of him managing technical things. I remember around the same time he was known for memorizing chips and vendors very very well that he could source them very cheaply. I think a good firsthand example is a one hour q&a with developers he did in 1997 soon after returning to Apple: [this video] He doesn't necessarily show off deep technical knowledge, but he is able to discuss strategy about technology directly with developers. Managing technology is his competitive advantage.

Cites twoodfin · 2019-12 · on “Inside Macintosh (1985) [pdf]”

Somewhat famously, the first question Steve Jobs took at his developer Q&A at WWDC ‘97 was about OpenDoc & the bullet he put in its head. [this video] Honestly, the “component software model” had at least hundreds of millions of dollars in development thrown at it by all the major players and went essentially nowhere at the application level. It had some nice architectural properties for developers, and COM at least has had a long and prosperous history as a building block. But it’s hard to imagine any possible world where business or consumers spent a significant fraction of their software dollars on components rather than full applications. So Steve was probably right.

Cites npunt · 2020-04 · on “Why Amazon got out of the Apple App Store tax and other developers won’t”

If we're going to mine ancient history, lets put up a disclaimer that any company that exists for a 40+ years and is trying to invent new things is going to change their mind about stuff. If they didn't, they probably wouldn't be very good at inventing things. There's context to consider with Apple in the 90s, which was weeks from bankruptcy. Here's SJ's rather famous response at WWDC 97 to why OpenDoc was killed, and a little later on he describes his opinion of Newton [1]. Hard to disagree with the sentiments. Killing OpenDoc and Newton was a way to keep the company alive and prepare for the next big thing. 4 years later, out pops the iPod. 10 years later, the iPhone. [1] [this video]

Cites danso · 2025-04 · on “How a $2k 'Made in the USA' Phone Is Manufactured”

> * Steve Jobs was one of these people. A clever marketing guy who relied on others for technical heavy lifting. I suggest going back and re-watching some of his presentations, like the unveiling of the iPhone. Every word he said was meticulously planned and very rehearsed.* Before Apple entered its iPod era, Jobs could do a reasonable job of taking questions from a technical audience [this video]