Existence
05-07-2003, 05:48 PM
I came upon some interesting interviews of Steve Jobs (http://next.z80.org/articles/interviews/computer_world_smithsonian_awards_program_steve_jo bs_interview_1995_04_20/sj.txt) from the mid-nineties and here are some interesting highlights.
From the above link:
Steve Jobs: [Sculley et al] didn't care about that anymore. They didn't have a clue about how to do it and they didn't take any time to find out because that's not what they cared about. They cared about making a lot of money so they had this wonderful thing that a lot of brilliant people made called the Macintosh and they got very greedy and instead of following the original trajectory of the original vision--which was to make this thing an appliance, to get this out there to as many people as possible--they went for profits and they made outlandish profits for about four years. Apple was one of the most profitable companies in America for about four years.
What that cost them was the future. What they should have been doing was making reasonable profits and going for market share, which was what we always tried to do. Macintosh would have had a thirty- three percent market share right now, maybe even higher, maybe it would have even been Microsoft but we'll never know. Now its got a single digit market share and falling. There's no way to ever get that moment in time back. The Macintosh will die in another few years and its really sad.
And when the question on Apple's new PPC systems came up in the interview cache linked below, Steve Jobs said:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:4IPrRZxW7bsC:www.jeffgoodell.com/articles/jobs.html+rolling+stone+steve+jobs&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
It works fine. It's a Pentium. The PowerPC and the Pentium are equivalent, plus or minus 10 or 20 percent, depending on which day you measure them. They're the same thing. So Apple has a Pentium. That's good. Is it three or four or five times better? No. Will it ever be? No. But it beats being behind. Which was where the Motorola 68000 architecture was unfortunately being relegated. It keeps them at least equal, but it's not a compelling advantage.
Replace 68000 with G4 and PowerPC with PPC970. :lol:
From the above link:
Steve Jobs: [Sculley et al] didn't care about that anymore. They didn't have a clue about how to do it and they didn't take any time to find out because that's not what they cared about. They cared about making a lot of money so they had this wonderful thing that a lot of brilliant people made called the Macintosh and they got very greedy and instead of following the original trajectory of the original vision--which was to make this thing an appliance, to get this out there to as many people as possible--they went for profits and they made outlandish profits for about four years. Apple was one of the most profitable companies in America for about four years.
What that cost them was the future. What they should have been doing was making reasonable profits and going for market share, which was what we always tried to do. Macintosh would have had a thirty- three percent market share right now, maybe even higher, maybe it would have even been Microsoft but we'll never know. Now its got a single digit market share and falling. There's no way to ever get that moment in time back. The Macintosh will die in another few years and its really sad.
And when the question on Apple's new PPC systems came up in the interview cache linked below, Steve Jobs said:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:4IPrRZxW7bsC:www.jeffgoodell.com/articles/jobs.html+rolling+stone+steve+jobs&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
It works fine. It's a Pentium. The PowerPC and the Pentium are equivalent, plus or minus 10 or 20 percent, depending on which day you measure them. They're the same thing. So Apple has a Pentium. That's good. Is it three or four or five times better? No. Will it ever be? No. But it beats being behind. Which was where the Motorola 68000 architecture was unfortunately being relegated. It keeps them at least equal, but it's not a compelling advantage.
Replace 68000 with G4 and PowerPC with PPC970. :lol: