Steve Jobs Interview - 2/18/1981

we have to presume any time we do a story that that most of the audience hasn't that any time you introduce any subject or any topic or any any big word really that you have to familiarize the audience you were talking about 60 minutes uh they they do the same thing harry reisner did a piece on some 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 right just uh the fact that you have to uh

sure go for 20 yeah for 21. so yeah that's we make this an interesting thing about television is it always she seems to shoot for the lowest common denominator uh stephen to get a two-shot that we need it sounds a little peculiar but you can't and it'll be painless and over quickly great thank you i could embrace him if you wish no the reason they take these two shots is because they they do all this market research on on television and they you know they go into a shopping center and grab 50 viewers and put

them in a trailer and show them tapes and to try to find out what they like and what they don't what bothers them and what doesn't one of the things that they found bothered viewers was in the typical nightly just like to see um the environment that you're talking and so hence the the wide shot yes is it over yeah steve when you began to develop this five years ago what sort of need did you see that existed then that you felt these computers was going to fill well basically the quest are we actually doing

this now oh great the question is is really what is a personal computer and why is it different than all the other computers that have existed throughout history probably the best way to explain that is through an analogy when you look at the invention of the first electric motor in the late 1800s it was only possible to build a very large one and it was very very expensive and therefore it could only be cost justified for the most expensive or large applications and the electric motor really took its next step in proliferation when somebody hooked

a long shaft to it and ran it down the center of a factory through series of belts and pulleys brought that power down to maybe 15 or 20 individual workstations thereby cost justifying sharing that horsepower among some medium-sized applications but the electric motor really achieved a true proliferation in the society with the invention of the fractional horsepower electric motor and at that point the horsepower could be brought directly to where it was needed on a personal scale cost justified for a small number of things and we see the same thing the same evolution if we

examine the history of computing the first computer eniac in 1946 was designed primarily for weather and ballistic calculations very large tasks and the next revolution in computing was in the 1960s with the invention of what's called time sharing in essence sharing one of these very large computers with maybe 40 or 50 terminals scattered through a company and thereby cost justifying it for medium-sized applications what we think the personal computer industry is about is the invention of the fractional horsepower computer something that can be cost justified on the personal level something that weighs 12 pounds that

you can throw out the window if you don't like and it's really changing the way that people interact with computers there's a one-on-one relationship that develops between one person and one computer now when you use the term a personal computer you're avoiding the term a home computer for a deliberate reason right right we view we segment our market uh really into four major segments uh education professional small business home consumer and scientific industrial now the home market hasn't really taken off it's the probably the smallest of those four i've listed we view the home now

not as a market really but as a location in which personal computers are used for a variety of functions sometimes in other words you can use a personal computer to do some portfolio management on some stocks you can use a personal computer to do some educational uh can i answer that question okay yeah you can just pick it up oh okay great sam you were when you grew up you're saying are we still waiting for uh yeah question and we'll pick it up right okay john and when you use the term a personal computer you're

deliberately avoiding the the use of the term home computer aren't you right we um we view the home not really as a market yet we view it more as a location we sell a lot of personal computers that are used for financial analysis for education in schools for running laboratory experiments in you know universities and in in scientific applications and a lot of these personal computers are used in the home as a location some of the time but there's not enough specific applications to cost justify spending a thousand to three thousand dollars for a personal

computer to be used in the home yet so we don't think the home is quite yet ready uh either culturally or economically what type of person would need a personal computer today of the type you offer well it gets back to the question of what is a personal computer again uh again another analogy there was an article in scientific american in the early 70s which compared the efficiency of locomotion for various species of things on the planet in other words they measured how much energy it took for a bird to get from point a to

point b compared with the energy it took a fish to get the same distance and a goat and a person and all sorts of other things and they ranked them and turns out the condor won condor was the most efficient and mann came in with a rather unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list somewhat disappointing but someone there had the insight to test the efficiency of man riding a bicycle and man riding a bicycle was twice as good as the condor all the way off the end of the list and what

it really illustrated was man's ability as a tool maker to fashion a tool that can amplify an inherent ability that he has and that's exactly what we think we're doing we think we're basically fashioning a 21st century bicycle here which can amplify an inherent intellectual ability that man has and really take care of a lot of drudgery to free people to do much more creative work does this mean do you think that personal computers in the 21st century will be as much a part of a home as say a refrigerator uh we can always we

can look at 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 the kids that graduate from high school have hands-on experience with an apple before they graduate these kids are growing up learning how to use this new tool in many many phases of their life they're hitting college the same thing's happening and so very rapidly uh the process of the integration of personal computers into the society will be accomplished let me illustrate two other processes which have happened in our

lifetime 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 xerox machine was introduced less than 20 years ago it'll be 20 years ago next month and in 20 years it's radically altered the way that we work another process the hp 35 first scientific handheld calculator was introduced by hewlett packard in 1972 but we all know where that's gone in just nine years but another interesting sidelight is in 1978 the largest manufacturer of slide rules in the world stopped making them

entirely because the market had gone away six years so we see that it is possible in our lifetimes for a process like this to radically influence the way that we work and even start to look at life when you say start to look at life how where where is the impact going to be felt most in the intellectual process in the day-to-day living process that is running the household in terms of the way you spend your leisure time is there any way to to pinpoint one of those areas as being the most likely to what

we have seen in almost all applications of personal computers that have happened to date the industry is only five years old but we've seen we've shipped you know in excess of 150 000 personal computers ourselves we've seen a dramatic increase in the creativity of people in dealing with a problem rather than doing the drudgery rather than using traditional tools people are freed to think about the conceptual issues involved and the creative issues involved and use the computer actually to to plow through the drudgery this is an education where students can actually learn at their own

pace where they can interact with a computer rather than just having a one-way communication through the medium of television or books that can actually interact with the medium we're seeing this in the professional sphere where we no longer have as an example at apple we no longer have secretaries at apple we have what we call area administrators they're using the computers for all their word processing they do all departmental budgeting on it we do our entire forecasting using our own tools and we're actually changing job descriptions based on allowing people to do more creative work

rather than more more work work you mentioned that the uh that the the calculators eliminated in at least one case indeed for slide rules that your secretarial job descriptions are changing yes are there any other major areas that personal computers are going to change in that direction that most people would be familiar with or make obsolete well i don't think personal computers are making anything obsolete in the sense of what people do i think they're enriching what people do again there is a a common conception that people have of computers which is more along the

lines of 1984 very large very centralized computers and i know the privacy issue is very very hot in the media these days but what we're finding is that when people actually see what a personal computer is they see something that looks you know approximately 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 is very decentralized it's very democratic and it's something that completely is uh almost the opposite of the 1984 conception we have and what we're finding is it

is it is enriching people's lives it is freeing people to do things like we think people do best is there any basis for comparing you to say mattel and atari or is that like comparing apples and oranges oranges we describe our business as really making tools and not toys and uh we're really interested in providing that bicycle type of tool to the marketplace i think uh some other people are more interested in providing an entertainment value which is which is valuable of course too but that's not our business is there a difference in your technology

as well um there's something happening actually in the whole personal computer industry with all the serious competitors the again this process of integrating personal computers into the society is going to take maybe 10 years to conclude and we of course want to continue to sell more and more and more computers the key to that will be to make the computers easier and easier and easier to use and the way that that's going to happen is we're going to be spending more and more of the computer power in the box to adapt the computer more to

the way people are familiar with doing things so that people have to adapt less to the way computers do things and therefore it will require a more sophisticated computer that's the paradox in our industry right now to make a computer simpler to use requires a more sophisticated computer that's part of the reason the home market doesn't exist yet because if you think about it the home user needs the easiest to use computer therefore the most sophisticated therefore one of the most expensive so we expect prices not to come tumbling down in the next few years

but actually to stay to main you'll get more computer power for the same dollar you might even see prices increase a little but the computers are going to get dramatically easier to use so you and your partner grew up in this valley silicon valley what kind of uh culture uh existed here that that's led to all of the the building that's gone on all the companies that have been created this uh santa clara valley which we all refer to affectionately silicon valley is probably one of the finest examples of of what i call sort of

an entrepreneurial risk culture anywhere in the world and both my partner steve wozniak and i both grew up here and really some of the people that founded companies around the area hewlett and bill hewlett and dave packard and others were really our role models our heroes and we like to think that we're carrying on that tradition what is there left for you to do now that you're 25 uh your company's gone public yeah it's worth hundreds of millions of dollars well we don't really feel we've accomplished what we set out to do yet we've set

out to really help lead this process of getting personal computers into the society and i think uh asked me in five years great thank you very much okay all right yeah the only thought i had even though you and the video game manufacturers really exist in two different worlds yes is the fact that children and people in general are becoming so familiar with the use of these video games and the simple computers that go along with them are going to make people more aware of personal computers in the future do you think and better able

to deal with them sure matter of fact it's not even only occurring in the video game area it's occurring as an example with an automated bank teller people are interacting more and more with intelligent devices whether it be an intelligent game or an intelligent bank teller or whatever and we you're already seeing it in society now people are becoming more and more familiar with interacting with intelligent electronic devices and that's changing things culturally it's a step along the way thank you okay thank you very much did you get what you want is that yeah that

was good i think i think it doesn't tie you to uh to them and yet professionally but i think it does to the idea that that los angeles just because there's so much work on that coast and then the other six five or six months you know in between what uh do you need steve talking do you want me to re ask her okay you don't even need to re-answer what they'll do is take this and splice it in right you know how it works so i don't need to talk no great just uh not

or something so when they make the edit it'll look as if you're making some physical emotions but yeah all right i'm going to begin with the reasons okay when you began to begin when you began to develop this business five years ago what sort of need for personal computers did you improve steve when you began to develop the business about five years ago what needs for personal computers did you observe 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 avoided

the use of the term home computer right what type of person would have a personal computer today what type of individual would have a person 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 ordinary as say a refrigerator okay does this mean that uh personal computers in the 21st century would be as ordinary a part of a household as say a refrigerator a vacuum cleaner i can't crack

this guy up oh yes you can i used to be the easiest guy uh uh that's another story i'm not going to tell it where they'll have it on tape and somebody will pull it out of the blue for real i'm not going to like it yeah sure okay next question okay where is the impact of personal computers going to be felt the most okay where's the impact of personal computers going to be felt most in the future uh and then there was a lengthy question that had to do with calculators uh and secretarial jobs

and any other changes he might foresee in the future okay if calculators are making slide rules obsolete and your computer is allowing you to redefine your secretarial jobs into other categories more creative categories what other types of things are going to change as a result of personal computers or be made obsolete that do it even though you and the video manufacturers of apple and the video game manufacturers exist in different worlds is there some awareness of computing even though apple and the video game manufacturers really exist in in two different worlds are these video games

in a sense getting people more accustomed to the idea of personal computers okay that's the end great now i will listen to steve right and you can say anything this is this is the fun farm yeah where do you do do you vacation in this area or do you go uh yeah yeah no uh i don't i haven't taken a vacation in a long time that's how i measure whether i'm successful is whether i could take off for three months so far i'm not successful yeah well someday oh yeah how do you how do you

build an executive core around a company like this obviously you and your partner had to take an awful lot of responsibility for well one of the things that we always did was we tried to hire somebody who was better than us in a particular thing that's still my greatest joy around here is when we hire somebody that's better than i'll ever be at one particular thing so you try to hire just really outstanding people that are much too they're actually much too senior for the current jobs that you have but you know you're planning to

grow so fast that in six months the job's just right for them and in a year they're scrambling to keep up with it so we've grown it you know several hundred percent a year and uh it's a very very different type of environment than most people are used to we've got a whole generation of managers here they're trained to grow at 400 a year and they'd be bored stiff growing at 30 percent a year