Apple's World Wide Developers Conference 1997 with Steve Jobs

This man in 97 is addressing and speaking for developers like he has the knowledge of 2024... he left this world too early. He was a visionary in every aspect

‎"I'm sure a lot of you have had this expirience where you're changing, you're growing as a person, and people tend to treat you like you where 18 months ago. And its really frustrating sometimes, when you're growing up and becoming more capable, and you've solved some personality quirks, people treat you like you where a year to 18 months ago, it can be very frustrating." - I can totally relate to this.

"Go out and buy some shares" -Best advice ever

I just realized, the best thing I like about him - he doesn't treat ANY of his questioners with the attitude - "I know more than you, so STFU" - which most senior management do. As said - "Do the world a favour and start each conversation with the presumption that the other person is just as smart as you…"

I absolutely love watching Steve talk. More soothing than bedtime stories.

and here we are, after 11 years, and still interested in him and what he said, respect & RIP

What I miss, is that Jobs put himself as the face of his companies. He brought a personal connection to his partners, customers and developers. He had the attitude ( whether really the case or not ) made people feel like he was their friend. Blunt, honest but respectful and friendly. He had a way of talking to someone as a person. Not just as a potential customer. I feel that Apple just does not have that kind of charasmatic personality in anyone else.

Man...... A person like this is so rare. He had all his priorities straight, didn't only talk about his goals but acted on it and he left the world a better place. Extremely inspiring.

His acumen is unreal. At 19:30 you can see that he was not merely some idealistic visionary, but a master businessman. His time away from Apple, with NextStep and Pixar, sharpened him considerably.

This is a tech conference - but he touches on personal growth (one foot in front of the other), focus (saying no to opendoc) honesty (apple's had it's head in the sand), the big picture (do great stuff, and the share price will look after itself). LEGEND, VISIONARY, RIP Steve.

One thing I appreciate about Steve Jobs in this video, is his response to the questions he is asked. I'm not talking specifically about each answer to the question, rather what he does immediately after the question is asked. Most people are formulating their answer before the other person is done speaking, therefore not really listening. Steve Jobs, after being asked a question, often took a very long moment of silence, to actually think about the real answer to the question at hand.

this is crazy inspiring - to see someone layout a vison, believe in it and then execute

R.I.P, it wasn't till he's gone that I truly realise how much his presence meant

In 1997 talking about what became “the cloud” and solid-state computers with no moving parts in them! 😃 Described how he has a computer at Pixar, Apple and at home and how cool it was to have access to his stuff no matter where he was. 🙂 Near the end he’s talking about iPhones or iPads... how “the thing” should have a keyboard and be on the network.

Wow he said it, and now almost 14 years later we have the icloud. Even the small little things with keyboards connected to internet, we now have the smartphones. A legend he is.

The mark of truly passionate and great mind is a person who will not pause their speech for applause.

1:03:00 amazing how he was basically describing modern day smartphones... a man with a vision truely ahead of his time.

14 years later, I'm watching this as it streams over the internet, on my MacBook Air. Steve, I will see what you dreamed of today, in a few years. And then the rest of the world will see it in 10 years. Hopefully, that is enough lead time to get everyone else in gear to do some innovative thinking.

Holy shit- I've seen this presentation several times over a decade, and I just now noticed this! Steve had iCloud's future back in 94-95 at NeXT? OMFG. Everything said after that was literally predicting the future.

Crazy to rewatch in 2024. He was thinking about cloud computing in 97 and all what he predicted came true.

I never really considered myself a Jobs fan but he really shines in this atmosphere.

This brings me right back to the excitement. The last few minutes, where he's talking about the Newton is so instructive in hindsight. God, I love this Man. What a great ride its been.

I am fascinated at watching Steve. His vision and his ideas are so clear. People creating technology today can learn from Steve and his ideas.

"The Federal Government is a monopoly" - I'm really starting to like Steve Jobs.

Cant get enough of this!

Apples run from 2000-2010 is insane. Total domination of several markets. imac, ipod, macbook air, iphone, etc. they crushed the competition to pieces and actually caused the demise of several corporations

This event took place May 12th through May 17th, 1997

This guy must have been the smartest and most articulate CEO ever. When seeing this, I start imagining that Jobs could actually persuade all those music companies, telecom network providers, content provides etc. by just...you know...having a chat with them! :P

This is worth remembering when you go through hard times and to try to see how you can come out well at the end. Just keep going, one foot in front of the other and at some point you will be able to look back and see where there was something that happened that was good. As Steve said, you can only connect the dots in hindsight.

So entertaining when after a question he is like pausing and really compiling his answer to be somehow as quotable as possible : )

Steve Jobs talks cloud computing in 1997... Always 10 steps ahead of the future.

15:19 "The server had so much ram" "How much?" "1 kb"

2:29 Steve starts 3:48 Our strategy revolves around one fundamental concept: making really great products 4:03 There are some giant holes we can fill 4:17 Really good and unique products 4:52 Some of you (software engineers) spend a lot of time working on stuff we put a bullet in the head of 5:15 There were people going off in 18 different directions (not a good thing) 5:24 There were good engineers with lousy management (being managed poorly) 5:32 Everybody going in different directions doesn't add up -- the total is less than the sum of the parts 5:41 We had to decide what fundamental directions we're going in, and what makes sense and what doesn't 6:02 Focusing is about saying "no" 6:07 You've got to say no, but when you say no, you make people mad 6:26 Sometimes you take the lumps (even though unfair) 7:00 The result of focus is really great products with the total being greater than the sum of the parts 7:59 Sometimes you're changing and growing as a person but people still treat you like the old you 8:32 Embrace the naysayers and do the best we can to educate them about our strategy 8:36 Keep your eye on the prize which is turning out great products 8:46 Get people in the loop so they know everything (customers and workers) 8:52 Keep marching forward, one foot in front of the other 9:05 I'm an old man in this industry and I've seen the ups and downs 9:08 When you see enough of them, you know that's gonna happen 9:53 Apple's had its head in the sand for the last many years 10:53 The attitude of arrogance (saying we can invent our own this) has made the world pass it by 11:31 The wisdom is to know what 10% to 30% of things we have to invent, and the rest we use 12:15 There are a lot of smart people that DON'T work at Apple 12:27 I don't think it's important to be perceived as "different" -- it's important to be perceived as MUCH BETTER 12:36 If we can be much better without being different, that's fine with me 12:39 I want to be much better. I don't care about being different 17:05 I don't care how it's done. I don't care what box is at the other end 18:31 Carrying around computers with data (using hard drives) is Byzantine compared to cloud 18:46 Your greatest strength can be your greatest weakness...or your greatest weakness your greatest strength 19:26 It's a potential weakness if not managed right...greatest strength if managed right 20:44 They have their advantages too (the other competitors/players in the Intel industry) 21:28 What are you waiting for? (to Microsoft for not porting their apps to Rhapsody) 21:51 What chu waiting for? (Adobe to port photoshop to Rhapsody) 21:56 This is an opportunity to do something for the next generation of apps 22:20 Each app was best of breed 22:44 Phenomenally powerful 23:02 Apple is going to give you a system where you can build apps 5 to 10x faster 23:14 You can make existing complexity apps 5 to 10x faster 23:23 You'll start with a concept and get to market just 6 to 9 months later 24:00 Give me a break (audience laugh) 24:17 There's still tremendous loyalty towards Apple 24:48 Do you know how much Apple spends on marketing? They should spend some on apps 24:56 If you come up with something really great, I think it's gonna get out there 25:12 You'll also be able to build an app you couldn't build on other platforms 25:21 It's all about managing complexity 25:40 Building software is about managing how much scaffolding before it collapses 25:44 It doesn't matter how many people are working on it (it'll still collapse) 25:51 Mythical Man Month: once you get to a certain size, if you add one more person, the energy it takes to communicate to him/her is greater than their net contribution, so the whole project slows down 26:11 It's about managing complexity 26:13 These tools allow you to not have to worry about 90% of the stuff you used to worry about 26:24 Then you'll start on story 23 instead of 6, and you can get a lot higher 27:54 I wouldn't worry about that (what Larry Ellison is gonna do) 27:55 I think what we need to worry about is making great products, getting great apps on them, and telling our customers about them 29:02 When we started Apple, IBM was more powerful than Microsoft and Intel are today 29:15 IBM controlled the technologies and the customers 29:38 We were too stupid to know we didn't have a chance --- and that (stupidity) served us well 30:00 Every good product is because a group of people cared deeply about making something wonderful that they and their friends wanted 30:33 Don't be trembling in the corner worrying about a big company stomping on you 30:54 We weren't trying to start a company, we were just trying to build a computer 31:00 I get about 200 emails a day (not counting spam) 31:46 We could improve productivity 30% if we used a good email system 32:47 It would be stupid to get in a position where for Apple to win Microsoft has to lose 32:58 I don't expect the government to break up Microsoft -- they're buddies 33:29 Apple can win without having to have Microsoft lose 34:11 There are so many opportunities where Apple can have an advantage and not have to battle Microsoft 34:41 I believe Apple should license everything (with a few exceptions) and get a fair price 35:06 Let the clone makers use whatever hardware they want 35:23 Apple should get a fair price on its software based on volume 35:43 To off-set low margin products you need high margin products 35:47 Clone makers can give Apple $10 for their software and then go get their $5,000 Mac market 35:56 The clone makers are, thus, leeches 36:11 Make people pay more money if they're in lower volume 36:36 Raise the price/royalty of the software and make it a scale based on volume 37:08 Customers will decide (which products are best / they want) 39:39 There are at least 20 more apps that I'd love to be using, that haven't been written yet 39:48 If we can make those apps easy to write, we can get a chance to use those apps

Indeed! Steve had just returned to Apple after being fired by the board of his own company + Apple was 90 days from bankruptcy... so he didn't really have a choice then to be uncharacteristically this open. A lot of people thought they were "owed" answers after years of really poor relationships with the developer community.

I like how Steve seems like some troublemaker who slipped into the auditorium. There is nothing "corporate" about the way he speaks or communicates. He is unique.

This man brought an almost bankrupt company to the most valuable company in the world, all that started from here!

Lectures studied. Thanks for posting.

I wish I had a CEO like this 😢 The person is alive, he speaks like a human being, not an automaton. So rare nowadays.

Steve understood the power of high speed networking and the concept of CLOUD back in 1997. Talking about Gigabit Ethernet necessity which is something that is still being created and rolled out today into cities. Envisioned 15 years ago as a plug and play solution.

The second guy that asked the question completely gave Apple the whole idea for their wildly popular “Think different” campaign and Steve actually said he did not agree that Apple should be thought of as different.

Thanks so much for this up :D R.I.P. Steve

this is the most inspirational thing ive ever seen i totally understand where jobs is coming from!

9:05 "When you get up in the morning and the press is selling Apple short, go out and buy some shares. That's what I would do." Don't we all wish we had the means to and did so back then!

The world will Remember always Steve Jobs💐🕯💐🌏

"If somebody would just make a little thing where you're connected to the net at all times and you got a little keyboard like an eMate with a modem in it...God I'd love to buy one!"

Man, he revealed or envisioned iCloud back in 97'. RIP Jobsy, you will be missed!

love the way he describes and predicts cloud computing at around 15 minutes in. We all log into our data this way now. He talked about it in 97

This is a moment in history when Steve Jobs had come back to Apple as an advisor to Gil Amelio and before the boardroom coup where Jobs took over. With the wisdom of hindsight we can all now understand the impact of the man and his vision for where things should go, but it's all here in 1997 where he essentially describes the iPhone, iPad, iCloud and many other things that are now reality.

RIP steve jobs.. we miss you so much ..

Steve Jobs and Winston Churchill followed many parallel paths in life and shared many traits. Both spent an extended time when they were thrown out and had time to reflect on their mistakes, to see things from the outside and to think about how they would do things differently when they had the chance again. In both cases the early failure was an essential part of the eventual success both men achieved.

this video was made closer to the release of the first iphone than todays date.

Dave Krathwohl...I remember you...Nibble Magazine...mid 80s...Concord, MA.

The tangent at 15:00 pretty much foreshadows iCloud, and cloud computing in general.

Steve actually brings it up earlier around 13:30 too when he talks about living in his world :)

I like how back then he is basically talking about iCloud when he’s talking about making servers plug and play, and never losing data, and being able to login and your stuff is just there. Also removing all moving parts expect keyboard and mouse and with the new force touch trackpads that leave only the keyboard

He began talking about the concept of the cloud here I'm 97. Incredible he said each one of his computers finds all of his info from the server he wanted icloud back then

The days of the AAUI to get a Mac on the network. They were excellent at detecting network storms though.

Don't know how the hell you got this but nice job. It's very inspirational. Look at how far they've come because of one guy.

still watching this in 2013

Anybody know a place with these videos in their original format? Like this video but would enjoy it at a better refresh rate

20:09, Probably not many people would buy what he said about vertical integration in 1997, but looking at it now, that's what we called "Visionary". He is a visionary, and also a DOer.

Wow, compare this to the carefully scripted modern WWDC's of today. This was so much better, so much more genuine, and so much more fun. Miss these days.

Thanks Steve!

This material deserves proper video encoding. If you don't know how, ask any ten year old.

He was so damn good.

On June 11, 1997 Steve opened his first Annual Meeting of

wish this was in higher quality

I’m not a tech guy but after buying an iPad I consider this guy an artist of electronics

love those jeans

'You've gotta start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology' 52.00 . UX hero

@runningbeagle1 I know I still can't get over how he talked about all of this in 97 and we have most of it now!

yeah, it's not the same anymore, although I especially liked the ones in 2001, 2007 and 2010, when Jobs introduced breakthrough products (iPod, iPhone, iPad)

The best there is. RIP Steve. You will be missed.

I love this Steve jobs :D

Wow, Apple was already talking about cloud computing in the 90s. I didn't even know it existed until 2009

If anyone in that crowd followed Jobs' advice and bought shares of Apple in 1997 . . . wow, did they make bank!

iCloud talk in 1997 :) only Steve ... only took him a little over 10 years to actually accomplish his goal ..

Holy shit, he sure called it. His bit about "starting with the customer experience and working backward". Then you look at exactly where things are today, and that principle is really what's responsible. Well, I shouldn't say "today", I should say more like...last year.

I'm in Love with Steve Jobs :)

He's inspirational

1 year of Diablo... unimaginable what progress the computer industrie has made since, sadly not the gaming industry 8)

In 1984 (coincidence?), John Gage, from Sun Microsystems, coined the phrase "The Network is the Computer" to describe the emerging world of distributed computing.

Apple ended doing a good job with iCloud re: porting data over, as he's describing his home directory on a server w/ a dumb terminal.

gawd i miss the 90s

Wow. At about 16 minutes in he is talking about his vision of what iCloud would be come. He has been working toward this all along.

While watching, Feeling I was there in 97...

@earlbee31 Yes it was very fun to watch! I know one thing Steve Jobs knows what he's talking about!

It was only at the comments about clones and licensing that I realized Jobs was not yet CEO. I looked it up and this was 2 months before Gil Amelio was fired. I wasn’t following all this very closely in ‘97 but hard to imagine anyone seeing Jobs here speak with such authority and vision and being content that some other guy is still the one in charge.

He was talking about "the cloud" because everyone else was doing networked computing and Apple wasn't. He was making the point that Apple was years behind everyone else.

im still amazed that he visualized this so long ago. It took Apple years of planning and implementing to get their server farm up and running. They now have iCloud, which is crippled in many ways, and Google is trying to take it to the next level. Cloud computing could be the next huge tech boom.

I started with an apple 2 and the macintosh was unbelieveable, all these years later I have a macbook. It`s the best!!!!! Steve Jobs was smart to make Apple more compatible with other platforms or Apple would have died.

When he talks about his experience with the servers and home disks... iCloud?

17:08 What did he say they happened to use at NeXT?

His comment on the Newton in 1997 presages his later vision for the iPhone…

Okay, here is the thing Steve Always Stay Cool in his Jeans & Black Shirt :) I Love it, Simply Simple and Great

Now that I watch this..... Truly Rest In Peace, no jokes Steve :( October 5th, 2011

Sounds like iCloud. Regardless of what device, my docs are available. Got a new Mac, it automatically made all my work available.

Apple History: December 12, 1980: Apple goes public May 31, 1985: Steve Jobs fired/resigns December 21, 1996: Apple purchases NeXT 1997: Steve Jobs returns to Apple after 11.5 years away 0:52 I saw the Apple II (8-bit home computer, released June 1977) 4:35 OpenDoc "is a defunct multi-platform software componentry framework standard created by Apple in the 1990s for compound documents, intended as an alternative to Microsoft's Object Linking and Embedding."

1:03:00 Man... he is basically inspiring the Blackberry that is released two years after this talk that became a huge success and change mobile devices forever.

If I would have heard what he said at 09:15 i would have shored up a shit ton of shares. He was a visionary and a self fulfilling prophecy. Thanks for everything, steve.