This is the YouTube algorithm at work (once I rewatched his Stanford commencement video, all of these other old videos of him began filling my feed). So I began watching some of them. This one is amazing in hindsight.
This was a few years before Apple decided to acquire NeXT (which eventually brought Jobs back to the company). The amazing part is that most everything that NeXT did software wise, became the basis for what Apple now uses to power all of their products: Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, etc. NeXTSTEP became OPENSTEP (OPENSTEP was one of the main reasons Apple acquired NeXT), OPENSTEP became Apple’s Rhapsody as well as became the basis for the original Mac OS X 10.0, and that underlying core Unix-based operating system is what was used across Apple’s product line.
Watching/hearing this old talk, once again drew me back to that time when I became involved with Apple (when the company was on the virtual brink of disappearing while becoming involved with Rhapsody and later, Mac OS X Server 10.0/Apple Enterprise). Jobs infamous mercurial temper (and how some people were at the receiving end of it) was something I didn’t admire, BUT what I did admire was this ability to distill in real-time (as shown in this and many other un-practiced videos), the thought processes that drove the actual decision-making process.
I still wonder what new ideas would have been cultivated had he still been with us today (one can only imagine since when you watch these old videos before Apple completed this turnaround to what they are today, it is easy to see in hindsight that there were many ideas that he was at least a decade ahead of). I wrote this on the 10th anniversary of his passing (where it was becoming clear that ideas wise, much of what Apple had been working on was on the momentum of those planted seeds since as I mentioned, lot of his thoughts were at least a decade forward looking). The legacy and amounts of “dents he made in the universe” still leaves me marveled at how fortunate I feel to have been able to experience the lowest of lows and some of the initial highs with my personal involvement at the company (I am thankful in that regards).
