This is the third (final) part of the interview, included in the anthology of The Playboy Interview: Moguls, which also has conversations with Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, David Geffen and many others.
The first part .
The second part .
Playboy : What did you do on your return?
Jobs : The cultural shock of the return was stronger than the shock of the trip. Atari wanted me to go back to work. I was not eager to return, but over time I was persuaded to become a consultant. In his free time he had fun with Wozniak. He drove me to meetings at the Homebrew Computer Club, where computer enthusiasts gathered and shared finds. Some of them were entertaining, but overall I was not very interested there. Wozniak attended a club with religious zeal.
Playboy : What did they say about computers then? Why are you interested?
Jobs : The discussion centered on a microcomputer called Altair. At that time, we could hardly believe that someone had learned to create computers that could be acquired in personal ownership. This was previously impossible. When we were in high school, none of us had access to mainframes. We had to go somewhere and beg a big company to let us use a computer. Now, for the first time in history, a computer could be bought. Altair came out around 1975 and cost less than $ 400.
Although it was relatively inexpensive, not all of us could afford it. So computer clubs were born.
Playboy : And what did you do with those primitive computers?
Jobs : There were no graphical interfaces, only alphanumeric indicators. I became interested in programming, basic programming. Then it was impossible even to print on early versions of computers - character input was carried out using switches.
Playboy : Altair then introduced the concept of a home, personal computer.
Jobs : It was just a computer that you could buy. They really did not know what to do with it. The first thing they did was add computer languages there so that they could write programs. Buyers began to use them for practical purposes only after a year or two, and for the simplest tasks like accounting.
Playboy : And you decided that you could do something better.
Jobs : It just happened. In Atari, I worked a lot at night, and Woz often came to see me. Atari released a game called Gran Track, the first driving simulator with a steering wheel. Woz immediately hooked on her. He lowered tons of quarters for this game, so I let him into the office, and he played for free all night long.
When I had difficulties in working on the project, I asked Woz to distract from road adventures for at least ten minutes and help me. Sometimes he also worked on something. Once he assembled a computer terminal with video memory. A little later, he bought a microprocessor, hooked it to the terminal and created the prototype of Apple I. Woz and I assembled a printed circuit board ourselves. That's all.
Playboy : So you did it just out of interest?
Jobs : Of course. Well, so that there was something to show friends.
Playboy : How did you get to the next step - industrial production and sales?
Jobs : Woz and I raised $ 1,300 by selling my Volkswagen van and its Hewlett-Packard calculator. A guy who worked at one of the first computer stores told us that he could sell our creations. We ourselves did not think of this.
Playboy : How did you and Wozniak organize work?
Jobs : He designed the computer almost completely. I helped with memory and turning a computer into a product. Woz is not good at sales, but he is a brilliant engineer.
Playboy : Apple I was for enthusiasts?
Jobs : Absolutely. We sold just 150 pieces or so. God knows what, but we earned about 95 thousand dollars, and I began to see business in our hobby. Apple I was just a printed circuit board - there was neither a case, nor a power supply, in fact, there was no product. Customers had to buy transformers and even a keyboard themselves [ laughs ].
Playboy : Did you and Wozniak quickly realize that you were up to something promising? Have you thought about how much you can achieve and how much computers will change the world?
Jobs : No, not really. We had no idea where this would lead us. Motivation Woz - the search for clues and solutions. He focused on engineering and soon created one of his greatest inventions - the drive, a key part of the future Apple II. I tried to organize a company, but to begin to figure out what the company is. I do not think that individually, any of us could achieve what we have achieved together.
Playboy : How has your partnership changed over time?
Jobs : Woz was never particularly interested in Apple. He wanted to assemble an Apple II on a printed circuit board in order to get one of the computers himself and drag him to the club, not being afraid that something would break along the way. He achieved his goal and took up other things. He had other ideas.
Playboy : For example, a rock festival combined with a computer show in which he lost about ten million.
Jobs : This project immediately seemed a little crazy to me, but Woz really believed in it.
Playboy : What is your relationship today?
Jobs : When you work so closely with someone and go through fire and water together, an unbreakable bond is formed between you. Despite all the squabbles, this connection remains forever. And although over time you cease to be best friends, something even stronger than friendship remains between you. Woz has a life of his own - he moved away from Apple five years ago. But what he created will remain for centuries. Now he speaks at various computer events. That he loves.
Playboy : The computer revolution started with the two Apple II you created. How did it all go?
Jobs : We did not work together, other people helped us. Wozniak developed system logic, an important part of Apple II, but there were other key details. The power supply is a key element. The housing is a key element. The main breakthrough of Apple II is that it was a finished product. It was the first computer that was not a designer. He was fully equipped, had his own case and keyboard - you sit down and work. That's what Apple II stood out for - it looked like a real product.
Playboy : Your first consumers were enthusiasts?
Jobs : The main difference was that in order to use the Apple II, you didn’t need to have a fan of the hardware. It was possible to fan on the programs. This is one of the breakthrough features of Apple II - it showed that many more people wanted to have fun with a computer, like Woz and I did, and not build our own cars. That was the point of the Apple II. But despite this, in the first year we sold only three or four thousand copies.
Playboy : Even this number seems pretty solid - because its creators did not really know what they were doing.
Jobs : It was gigantic! In 1976, while we were still in the garage, we earned about two hundred thousand. In 1977, it was already seven million. This is fantastic, we thought. In 1978, we earned 17 million. In 1979, $ 47 million. That's when we all truly realized what was going on. 1980 - 117 million. 1981 - 335 million. 1982 - 583 million. 1983 - 985 million ... it seems. This year we are counting on one and a half billion.
Playboy : You keep all these numbers in mind.
Jobs : All in all, these are just marks on the line. The cool thing is that already in 1979, I sometimes went to school classes with 15 Apple computers and watched how the children work. These are the things that I consider to be important milestones.
Playboy : So we are back to your last milestones - the release of the Mac and your struggle with IBM. In this interview, you have repeatedly made it clear that you do not see other players in this area. But even though you share about 60 percent of the market for two, is it possible to write off the remaining forty - Radio Shack, DEC, Epson, etc.? Are they insignificant for you? And most importantly, is it possible to ignore a potential competitor in the person of AT&T?
Jobs : AT&T will certainly work in this field. The company is undergoing a major transformation. AT&T ceases to be a subsidized, top-regulated service company and becomes a competitive technology company, a player in the free market. AT&T products themselves have never been of the highest quality - take a look at their phones, they are just ridiculous. But brilliant technologies are stored in their scientific laboratories. The main task of the company is to put them on a commercial footing. In addition, they have to learn consumer marketing. I think that both tasks are within their reach, but their solution will take years.
Playboy : Don't you think AT&T is a threat?
Jobs : I don't think they should be considered in the next two years - but over time they will get better.
Playboy : How about Radio Shack?
Jobs : Radio Shack will definitely be out of work. Radio Shack tried to squeeze the computer into its retail model, which, in my opinion, boils down to selling second-rate or low-level products in stores resembling a Voentorg. The company never realized that sophisticated customers are interested in computers. Its market share fell below the plinth. I do not think that they will recover and will again become the leading player.
Playboy : What about Xerox? Texas Instruments? Dec? Wang?
Jobs : You can forget about Xerox. TI's affairs are not as good as they seem. Other large companies like DEC or Wang may sell personal computers to existing customers as part of advanced terminals, but this market will soon be closed.
Playboy : What about budget computers from Commodore and Atari?
Jobs : I take them as an additional reason to buy an Apple II or Macintosh. I think that consumers have already realized that computers cheaper than five hundred dollars are not particularly effective. They either stir up interest in the user for more, or scare them away forever.
Playboy : How do you feel about small laptops?
Jobs : They are suitable, for example, to journalists who want to record thoughts on the run. But an ordinary person has no sense in them - very few programs are written for them. As soon as you get the desired software, a new model with a slightly larger display will be released, and your programs will be outdated a long time ago. Therefore, no one writes them. Wait for our models - the power of the Macintosh in the pocket version!
Playboy : And Epson? What about other Japanese manufacturers?
Jobs : I already said: Japanese computers carried to our shores, like dead fish. They are just dead fish. Epson has failed in this market.
Playboy : Car manufacturing is another American industry in which, some argue, we are inferior to the Japanese. Now the same thing is said about our semiconductor manufacturers. How do you plan to maintain leadership?
Jobs : Japan is a very interesting country. Someone says that the Japanese only know how to copy someone else’s, but I don’t think so. I think they are rethinking it. They take someone’s inventions and study them until they fully understand. Sometimes they manage to understand them better than the inventor himself understands. So they create a second, improved generation of products. A similar strategy works when a product does not change much over the years - for example, audio systems or cars. But if the goal moves very quickly, then it is not easy for them to keep up with it - the cycle of such an update takes years.
If the essence of the personal computer continues to change at the same speed as today, the Japanese will have a hard time. As soon as the process slows down, the Japanese will hit the market with all their strength, because they want to take a leading position in the computer business. There can be no doubt - this is their national priority.
It seems to us that after 4-5 years, the Japanese will finally learn how to assemble decent computers. And if we are going to maintain America's leadership in this direction, Apple has four years to become a world-class manufacturer. Our manufacturing technologies must be on par with Japanese or superior.
Playboy : How do you plan to achieve this?
Jobs : When we developed the Macintosh, we also developed a machine for making machines. We spent $ 20 million to create the most automated computer factory. But this is not enough. Instead of writing it off after seven years, as most companies would do, we use it for two years. We will abandon it by the end of 1985 and build a new one, we will use it for two years and also replace it with a new one. So in three years we will have the third automated plant. Only in this way can we learn fast enough.
Playboy : The Japanese are not only competitors for you - for example, you buy your drives from Sony.
Jobs : We buy many components in Japan. We are the world's largest consumer of microprocessors, high-tech RAM chips, drives and keyboards. We do not have to spend a lot of effort on the design and production of diskettes or microprocessors, and we spend them on software.
Playboy : Let's talk about software. What revolutionary changes in its development have you seen in recent years?
Jobs : Of course, the early stage was a real breakthrough - writing a programming language onto a microprocessor chip. Another breakthrough is VisiCalc, which for the first time allowed the use of a computer for doing business and showed tangible advantages of this application. Before that, you had to program your own applications, and the percentage of people who want to program is no more than a percent. The ability to display information graphically is very important, so Lotus was also an important breakthrough.
Playboy : You are talking about things that our readers may not be familiar with. Please tell us more.
Jobs : Lotus combined a good spreadsheet editor with a graphics program. In terms of word processing and database, Lotus is not the best program on the market. The main plus of Lotus in combining the editor of tables and graphics and the ability to quickly switch between them.
Another breakthrough is happening right now thanks to the Macintosh, which provides Lisa technology at an affordable price. Revolutionary software has been written and will be written for him. But talking about a breakthrough is truly possible only a few years after it occurred.
Playboy : What about word processing? You did not mention her in the list of breakthroughs.
Jobs : You're right. She should have gone right after VisiCalc. Word processing is the most common task and one of the simplest to understand. Perhaps this is the first thing that most people need a computer for. Text editors existed before personal computers, but a text editor for a personal computer was, rather, an economic breakthrough, but there were no VisiCalc analogues before the PC.
Playboy : Have there been breakthroughs in the field of educational software.
Jobs : A lot of pretty good programs were created, but there was no breakthrough at the VisiCalc level. I think that he will come, but hardly in the next two years.
Playboy : You emphasized that education is a priority for you. How do computers influence its development?
Jobs : The computers themselves and the not yet developed software designation will bring a revolution in the learning process. We have created an educational fund and will allocate equipment and several million dollars to educational software developers and schools that cannot afford computers. We also wanted to make the Macintosh the base computer in college - just like the Apple II became the base computer for schools. We decided to find six universities that would like to make a large purchase - by large I mean more than a thousand computers. Instead of six, twenty-four responded. We asked colleges to invest two million dollars to join the Macintosh program. All twenty-four, including all representatives of the Ivy League, agreed. So the Macintosh became standard college equipment in less than a year. Every Macintosh we made this year could go to one of these colleges. Of course, this is impossible, but there is such a demand.
Playboy : But are there any programs?
Jobs : Some. Those that are not yet written by specialists in the colleges themselves. IBM was trying to stop us - I heard that for this a task force of 400 people was formed. The company was going to give them an IBM PC. But college leaders were far-sighted. They realized that the software they would get was more important, and they didn’t want to spend money on old IBM technologies. So in some cases, they turned down IBM’s offer and purchased a Macintosh. Someone even used the grants received from IBM for this.
Playboy : What are these colleges?
Jobs : I can’t. I do not want to bring trouble on them.
Playboy : When you yourself were in college in the pre-computer era, what did you and your classmates see as the main prospect? In politics?
Jobs : None of my gifted college friends went into politics. They all felt that in the late sixties and seventies, politics was not an appropriate field for changing the world. Today they are all doing business, and this is funny, because at one time the same people traveled on foot in India or searched for the meaning of life in their own way.
Playboy : Was business and the pursuit of profit the easiest of solutions?
Jobs : No, none of these people care about money. That is, many of them have earned a lot of money, but they really do not care. Their lifestyle has not changed much. Business has become an opportunity for them to try to achieve something, to experience failure, to succeed, grow as a person. For those who wanted to prove themselves in the last ten years, a political career was not suitable. , , : , , , .
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