The Steve Jobs 95 Interview unabridged

SUMMARY

In a 1995 Smithsonian interview, Steve Jobs reflects on his childhood, education, Apple's innovations, NeXT's object-oriented software, Pixar's animation revolution, and his views on technology's role in society and business.

STATEMENTS

Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California.
Growing up in the late 1950s and early 1960s, America was at the peak of post-World War II prosperity, with a straight-and-narrow culture beginning to broaden.
Jobs vividly remembers the assassination of President John F. Kennedy at age seven or eight, learning of it while walking home from school.
The Cuban Missile Crisis terrified young Jobs, who feared nuclear war and barely slept for several nights.
Jobs's father, Paul, a machinist who never graduated high school, taught him to build and repair things from a young age, including basic electronics.
The family moved to Mountain View in Silicon Valley when Jobs was five, surrounded by orchards and engineers.
A neighbor, Larry Lang, an HP engineer and ham radio operator, introduced Jobs to advanced electronics through Heathkits and a driveway amplifier demo.
Heathkits provided detailed manuals and parts, demystifying technology and building confidence in creating complex devices.
School was challenging for Jobs; his mother taught him to read early, leading to boredom and mischief with friend Rick Fantino.
In fourth grade, teacher Imogene Hill motivated Jobs with incentives like money and candy, reigniting his love for learning and providing kits for projects like building a camera.
Jobs skipped a grade but faced social troubles, and his parents refused to let him advance to high school early.
Jobs believes in equal opportunity through great education, crediting mentors like Hill for steering him away from jail.
Public education fails due to low teacher pay, unions creating bureaucracy, and lack of meritocracy.
Computers in schools are secondary to human teachers who incite curiosity; current tech is reactive, not proactive.
Jobs advocates a full voucher system, giving parents $4,400 per pupil to choose accredited schools, fostering competition.
Without parental involvement, schools became monopolies with declining service, like pre-breakup AT&T.
Public schools spend twice as much per pupil as average car costs annually, yet lack competition and warranties.
Vouchers would spur marketing, new schools, and quality improvements, even in low-end markets.
Technology alone can't fix education; issues are human, organizational, and political.
Jobs hasn't read most biographies about him, dismissing one for factual errors and bias from fired employees.
At Apple, Jobs prioritized hiring top talent, noting a 25-50 to 1 productivity difference in software engineering.
Firing underperformers is painful but necessary for high standards.
Apple's core was creating world-changing products with technical excellence and humanistic innovation.
The Macintosh amplified a small team's work to millions of users, embodying collective artistry.
Jobs sees no distinction between artists and top scientists/engineers; both express truths elegantly.
Many early computer pioneers were musicians, poets, or inward people channeling passion into tech.
The industry faces a dark period due to Microsoft's monopoly stifling innovation.
Apple's decline stemmed from corrupt values under John Sculley, prioritizing profits over market share.
Macintosh could have dominated with 33% share if focused on appliance-like accessibility.
Apple donated 10,000 computers to California schools after a failed national bill, training teachers for free.
NeXT aimed to innovate like Apple but erred by building hardware; its software, NeXTSTEP, pioneered object-oriented systems.
NeXT machines featured plug-and-play, soft power, and built-in high-quality sound, ahead of their time.
Inspired by Xerox PARC's 1979 demos, NeXTSTEP integrated GUIs, objects, and networking commercially.
Object-oriented software is inevitable, like GUIs, promising mainstream adoption.
The internet and web will turn computers into communication devices, destroying middlemen and leveling markets.
The web enables small companies to compete with giants via direct distribution.
Government should fund the internet as a public trust to prevent privatization and monopoly.
Pixar revolutionized computer graphics, powering films like Terminator and Jurassic Park.
Pixar produced Toy Story, the first fully computer-animated feature film, distributed by Disney in 1995.
Startups succeed by exploiting large companies' fixed worldviews and poor internal communication.
Death is life's greatest invention, making room for fresh perspectives and progress.
Entrepreneurship requires passion and perseverance; without an idea you're passionate about, most quit.
Successful leaders focus on integrity and great work, not special responsibilities beyond personal standards.
The Bay Area's innovations, from microprocessors to GUIs, stem from its counterculture history, universities, and open-minded talent pool.

IDEAS

Childhood exposure to hands-on building demystifies technology, fostering self-confidence in innovation.
Early historical events like the Kennedy assassination imprint lasting fears and awareness on young minds.
Mentors who bribe curiosity with incentives can redirect youthful energy from mischief to achievement.
Equal opportunity means access to inspiring educators, not uniform outcomes, to prevent societal waste.
Bureaucratic monopolies in education mirror corporate failures, degrading service without customer oversight.
Vouchers could transform education into a competitive market, spawning innovative schools run by young idealists.
Technology's allure lies in humanistic integration, not isolated gadgets, blending art with engineering.
Firing for quality control is essential in high-dynamic-range fields like software, where talent gaps are vast.
Products as collective art amplify individual values million-fold, reshaping cultural vectors from their origin.
Early computer innovators were often artists in disguise, infusing tech with poetic passion now fading.
Corporate corruption erodes founding visions, trading long-term dominance for short-term greed.
Guerrilla adoption by merit-driven users bypasses corporate inertia, proving product superiority.
Object-oriented programming mirrors inevitable tech shifts, blinding observers to broader paradigms like networking.
The web democratizes commerce, erasing size and distance barriers for global direct transactions.
Public funding preserves innovation hotspots like the internet, countering monopolistic control.
Digital animation fuses art and tech to create noise-free storytelling, revolutionizing film production.
Human nature's resistance to change ensures startups' edge over entrenched organizations.
Perseverance separates entrepreneurs, demanding total life commitment to passion-driven ideas.
Bay Area's cultural ferment—beatniks, hippies, rock—nurtured a fertile ground for tech breakthroughs.
Universities like Stanford and Berkeley act as talent magnets, sustaining innovation ecosystems.
Life's brevity urges focus on work, family, and friends over imposed responsibilities.
Innovation clusters in places blending intellect, openness, and fun, attracting and retaining brilliance.
Failed legislation can pivot to local wins, like California's school donations amplifying national intent.
Soft power features in hardware prevent data loss, highlighting thoughtful design's subtle impacts.
Graphical interfaces' obviousness sparks apocalyptic realizations of computing's future directions.

INSIGHTS

Hands-on mentorship in youth builds not just skills but a worldview where mysteries yield to human ingenuity.
Societal prosperity's naivety masks underlying terrors, shaping resilient yet cautious innovators.
Incentives from empathetic teachers can salvage potential, turning rebels into lifelong learners.
Monopolies thrive on absent customers, underscoring competition's role in elevating service quality.
Education reform demands treating parents as empowered consumers to dismantle bureaucratic inertia.
Artistic passion in engineering elevates tech from tools to expressions of universal truths.
Talent disparities in creative fields justify ruthless curation for organizational excellence.
Early vector shifts in nascent industries yield exponential cultural transformations.
Monopolies drain innovation by commoditizing creativity, driving visionaries to exodus.
Greed's short-term gains forfeit futures, as seen in eroded market leadership.
Organic adoption reveals true value, circumventing sales barriers through user evangelism.
Paradigm blindness to interconnected tech evolutions delays holistic revolutions.
Digital platforms level economic fields, empowering the nimble over the massive.
Preserving public infrastructure fosters rapid, unbiased advancement in key technologies.
Art-tech convergence births new media, demanding interdisciplinary mastery.
Cognitive entrenchment in incumbents creates perpetual niches for agile disruptors.
Passion-fueled endurance defines entrepreneurial triumph amid inevitable hardships.
Cultural openness and intellectual influxes catalyze disproportionate innovation hubs.
Mortality reframes success as legacy through meaningful contributions, not obligations.
Perseverance in startups exploits human inertia, ensuring renewal in stagnant systems.

QUOTES

"I was very lucky I had a father named Paul who was uh a pretty remarkable man."
"Heath kits were really great um they these uh Heath kits were these products that you would buy in kit form you'd actually pay more money for them than you would if you just went and bought the finished product."
"It gave one the sense that one could build the things that one saw around on self in the universe."
"I'm a very big believer in equal opportunity as opposed to equal outcome."
"The unions are the worst thing that ever happened to education um because it's not a meritocracy."
"Machines cannot do that in the same way people can um the the the elements of of Discovery are around you you don't need a computer."
"If the the country gave each parent a voucher a check for $4,400 that they could only spend at any accredited school that several things would happen."
"It's so much more hopeful to think that technology can solve the problems that are really more human and more organizational and more political in nature and and it ain't so."
"The difference between a good software person and a great software person is probably 50 to1 25 to 50 to1 huge dynamic range."
"We were for some incredibly lucky reason fortunate enough to be at the right place at the right time to do this."
"I believe that the distinction between a uh we generally use the word artist to mean visual artist of some sort but I actually think there's really very little distinction between an artist of that type and a scientist or engineer of the highest caliber."
"The computer business is becoming a monopoly with Microsoft and uh without getting into whether Microsoft gained this position legally or not uh who cares uh the end product of the position is that the ability to innovate in the industry is being sucked out dry."
"What runed Apple was values the John Scully runed Apple uh and he ruined it by bringing a set of values to the top of Apple which were corrupt."
"Macintosh was basically this uh this relatively small company you know in copertino California taking on the Goliath IBM."
"The kids can't wait for this basically and we wanted to donate a computer to every school in America."
"Next step was was the completion of turning some of that Vision into a reality incorporating the world's first truly commercial object-oriented system."
"The minute you understand objects it's exactly the same feeling all software will be written using object or any technology someday."
"The web is the missing piece of the puzzle uh which really is going to power that Vision much further forward."
"It is going to radically change the way goods and services are discovered sold and delivered not only in this country but eventually in the world."
"I've always felt that death is the greatest invention of life."
"I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the nonsuccessful ones is pure perseverance."
"We're all going to be dead soon that's my point of view."
"This is a remarkable time in history is incredibly and especially this area believe it or not."
"This place is a remarkable Place actually I mean you have to go back a little bit in history I mean this is where the beatnik era happened."

HABITS

Building and tinkering from a young age, using tools like hammers, saws, and electronics kits.
Reading books voraciously as a child, preferring self-directed learning over structured classes.
Creating mischief with friends to cope with boredom, like swapping bike locks or setting off desk explosives.
Pursuing incentives for learning, such as completing workbooks for rewards to reignite curiosity.
Hiring and maintaining only top-tier talent, ruthlessly firing underperformers to uphold quality.
Working maniacally long hours, often 18-hour days, seven days a week during early company stages.
Walking congressional halls personally to lobby for bills, avoiding hired intermediaries.
Focusing daily life on passion projects, treating each day as potentially the last to prioritize meaningful work.
Infusing personal expression, like music or poetry, into professional innovations.
Drafting legislation collaboratively with representatives to achieve educational goals.
Monitoring donated programs post-implementation, including free teacher training.
Blending art and technology in creative processes, such as animation production.
Seeking out inspiring visits, like Xerox PARC, to absorb groundbreaking ideas.

FACTS

America peaked in post-WWII prosperity in the late 1950s, with Silicon Valley still mostly orchards.
Kennedy assassination occurred when Jobs was seven or eight; he learned of it on his schoolyard.
Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 kept Jobs, then six or seven, awake in fear for nights.
California public schools spent about $4,400 per pupil annually in 1995, double the yearly car cost.
Apple grew from startup to a $2 billion company by 1985, ranking in Fortune 300.
Macintosh project involved under 100 core people but shipped over 10 million units.
Xerox PARC demonstrated GUI, object-oriented Smalltalk, and Ethernet networking in 1979.
NeXT recorded its first profit in 1994 after nine years, selling $50 million in software.
Internet cost the U.S. government $50-75 million yearly in 1995, with potential to rise to $500 million.
Over one-third of global internet traffic originated or destined in California in 1995.
Pixar software powered effects in Terminator and all dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.
Toy Story, Pixar's first feature, released November 1995 with voices by Tom Hanks and Tim Allen.
U.S. has about 100,000 schools, with 90,000 K-8; Apple donated 10,000 to California ones.
Bay Area inventions include integrated circuit, microprocessor, GUI, and genetic engineering.
Stanford and UC Berkeley drew global talent, fueling 1960s rock and counterculture scenes.

REFERENCES

Paul Jobs (father, machinist and mentor).
Larry Lang (HP engineer neighbor, electronics teacher).
Heathkits (build-your-own electronics kits with manuals).
Rick Fantino (childhood mischief partner).
Imogene Hill (fourth-grade teacher who motivated with incentives).
John F. Kennedy (assassination memory).
Cuban Missile Crisis (nuclear fear event).
Xerox PARC Alto computer (1979 GUI, Smalltalk, Ethernet demo).
Apple II (early personal computer, school donations).
Macintosh (1984 revolutionary product, anti-IBM ad).
Lisa (Apple product with humanistic innovations, market failure).
John Sculley (Apple CEO who corrupted values).
NeXTSTEP (object-oriented software inspired by Xerox).
Toy Story (Pixar's 1995 animated film, Disney distributed).
George Lucas (Star Wars producer, sold Pixar group).
Terminator (film using Pixar graphics software).
Jurassic Park (dinosaurs rendered with Pixar tools).
Industrial Light and Magic (uses Pixar software for effects).
Hewlett-Packard 9100A (first desktop computer Jobs saw).
NASA terminal (first computer interface Jobs encountered at age 11-12).
Pete Stark (congressman who introduced Kids Can't Wait bill).
Senator Danforth (Senate sponsor of donation bill).
Bob Dole (blocked federal bill in 1980 lame-duck session).
Randy Newman (Toy Story music composer).
Tim Allen and Tom Hanks (Toy Story voice actors).
Stanford Business School (potential school admin track inspiration).
UC Berkeley and Stanford (innovation universities).
Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin (Bay Area rock bands).

HOW TO APPLY

Start hands-on learning early: Set up a workbench with basic tools for children to build and disassemble items.
Seek mentors who ignite curiosity: Identify teachers or figures offering incentives to redirect energy positively.
Advocate for equal opportunity: Push for policies ensuring access to inspiring educators over equal outcomes.
Implement voucher systems: Lobby for parental choice in schools, allocating per-pupil funds to accredited options.
Prioritize top talent: Hire rigorously and remove underperformers to maintain high productivity standards.
Infuse art into engineering: Blend humanistic values with technical excellence in product design.
Focus on market share over short-term profits: Scale innovations as appliances for widespread adoption.
Donate strategically to education: Use tax laws to provide computers and training to underserved schools.
Pioneer object-oriented software: Integrate GUIs, networking, and objects for scalable, future-proof systems.
Leverage the web for direct commerce: Build online presence to bypass middlemen and compete globally.
Fund public tech infrastructure: Support government backing for open networks to spur innovation.
Fuse art and tech in media: Develop proprietary tools for noise-free digital animation and storytelling.
Exploit incumbents' inertia: Launch startups targeting unmet needs from large firms' fixed viewpoints.
Cultivate perseverance: Pursue passion-driven ideas with 18-hour workweeks, enduring rough periods.
Build innovation ecosystems: Attract talent to open-minded locales with universities and cultural vibrancy.

ONE-SENTENCE TAKEAWAY

Embrace passion, perseverance, and humanistic innovation to drive meaningful technological and educational progress.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Parents: Actively engage in schools like vigilant customers to demand better service and accountability.
Educators: Use personalized incentives to reignite student curiosity, avoiding institutional rigidity.
Policymakers: Adopt full voucher systems to inject competition into public education, raising overall quality.
Entrepreneurs: Hire only elite talent and enforce high standards, accepting the pain of necessary firings.
Innovators: Integrate art and engineering for elegant, user-centric products that amplify human values.
Companies: Prioritize market share and long-term vision over greedy short-term profits to sustain growth.
Tech firms: Develop proactive, guiding tools beyond reactive machines for true educational impact.
Startups: Focus on software over hardware in scaling industries to adapt to market evolutions.
Developers: Embrace object-oriented paradigms early to lead inevitable shifts in software architecture.
Businesses: Use the web for direct-to-consumer models, eliminating costly intermediaries.
Governments: Maintain public funding for the internet to prevent monopolistic control and foster innovation.
Creatives: Converge art and technology in new media like animation for groundbreaking storytelling.
Leaders: View death's role in renewal to stay adaptable, avoiding entrenched worldviews.
Young people: Pursue passionate problems with unwavering perseverance for entrepreneurial success.
Communities: Build talent hubs with universities and open cultures to catalyze regional innovations.
Individuals: Live each day as your last, focusing on work, family, and meaningful contributions.

MEMO

Steve Jobs, the visionary behind Apple, sat for a rare 1995 Smithsonian interview, offering unfiltered reflections on his life and the tech world's trajectory. Born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955, Jobs evoked a childhood steeped in post-World War II optimism, shadowed by pivotal events like Kennedy's assassination and the Cuban Missile Crisis. These moments, he recalled, instilled a profound awareness of fragility amid prosperity. Raised in Silicon Valley's orchards, Jobs credited his father Paul—a self-taught machinist—for igniting his inventive spark through garage workbench lessons in tools and electronics. A neighbor's Heathkit experiments further demystified technology, teaching young Jobs that complex devices were human creations, not enigmas.

Formal education proved turbulent; precociously reading by kindergarten, Jobs chafed against rigid authority, turning to pranks with friend Rick Fantino. Salvation came in fourth grade via teacher Imogene Hill, who bribed his curiosity with cash and candy for math mastery, even supplying kits to grind lenses for cameras. This year, Jobs said, taught him more than any other, underscoring his belief in equal opportunity through inspiring mentors. Without such guides, he candidly admitted, he'd likely have ended up in jail. Critiquing America's education system, Jobs lambasted low teacher pay, union-driven bureaucracy, and monopolistic inertia, advocating vouchers—$4,400 per pupil for parental choice—to spark competition and innovation, much like car markets.

Jobs dismissed most biographies as inaccurate or vengeful, penned by the disgruntled. At Apple, he took pride in fostering "A-players," where software talent gaps could span 50-to-1 productivity. The Macintosh exemplified Apple's ethos: a small team's artistry revolutionizing publishing through humanistic design, shipping millions and amplifying values exponentially. Blurring lines between artists and engineers, Jobs noted early pioneers—often musicians or poets—infused tech with passion, a spirit now waning under Microsoft's monopolistic shadow. Apple's downfall, he argued, wasn't growth but corrupted values under CEO John Sculley, who chased profits over market share, dooming the Mac to single-digit dominance.

Beyond Apple, Jobs's NeXT venture sought to sustain innovation but stumbled on hardware; its NeXTSTEP software, however, realized Xerox PARC's 1979 visions of GUIs, objects, and networking, becoming the world's top object-oriented system by 1995. The internet, he predicted, would transform computers into communication hubs, demolishing middlemen and empowering small firms via the web's direct channels—provided government funding kept it a public trust, free from privatization. At Pixar, acquired from George Lucas, Jobs revolutionized graphics, powering films like Jurassic Park and birthing Toy Story, the first fully computer-animated feature, blending top animators with tech wizards for a decade-ahead edge.

Looking to startups, Jobs emphasized exploiting large firms' rigidity—human minds settle into outdated views, much like death clears space for fresh ideas. Entrepreneurship demands passion and grueling perseverance; without it, most falter. Responsibilities? The work itself suffices, he mused, urging focus on integrity amid life's brevity. The Bay Area's magic, Jobs concluded, stems from countercultural roots—beatniks, hippies, rock icons—fueled by Stanford and Berkeley's talent influx, birthing microprocessors, GUIs, and genetic engineering in this sunny, open haven. In this pivotal era, he reflected, such innovation hubs promise enduring progress.