Steve Jobs and Apple Computer

1980-0822:54English

Transcript

Machine transcript in the original language. It may contain errors. Select a timestamp to play that moment.

Hi, I must apologize to you all for being late. I was driving here 90 miles an hour.
I couldn't find a parking place.
I had all the experiences you've been through this morning, Alyssa.
I had a photographer from Scientific American who wanted to take some pictures in the last few days.
So we went over to a school.
a school. We thought they decided they wanted to take some pictures of someone from Apple
in an educational setting and using some computers, and we wandered over. It turns out there's
a little booklet that is put out in Cupertino, and there's about 20 different schools with
apples, and we picked one out that had six Apple computers and wandered over there one
afternoon. And this happened to be the afternoon that the fourth and fifth graders were going
to be there once a week, fourth and fifth graders from this one school in sort of an advanced
learning program come over and use the Apple computers. And I had the most delightful conversation
with some four and five year olds in it.
They probably know as much about the computer as I do.
Maybe more.
And they're totally fluent in it.
And they're very much at home in it.
And they beat me in most of the games in it.
And it was really quite an experience
because we always talk about all these things happening
sort of at the intellectual, verbal level.
But I actually got a chance to see 20 students
interacting with these computers on a one-on-one basis.
And I couldn't help remembering my own school days
when none of these things existed
and we'd just get into trouble all the time.
11.30 at night, last night,
a friend of mine, Bob Metcalf, calls me up.
And he's got three German friends visiting from Germany
and they want to buy 20 to 30 apples a month
for some god-awful, who knows what reason.
And they want them in Germany
and they want to talk about buying them at 11.30 at night.
And, you know, a guy in Nebraska is using an Apple computer to calculate soil samples
to know what kind of fertilizer it would be in the ground.
It's an endless array of things that people are doing with this.
Watch your mic.
Oh, excuse me.
The other one.
The other one.
[Automatic transcript unavailable for this passage]
We had absolutely no idea what people were going to do with these things when we started out.
Matter of fact, the two people it was designed for was Woz and myself,
because we couldn't afford to buy a computer kit on the market.
So we liberated some parts from Hewlett Packard and Atari,
and worked on a design for about six months,
and decided that we would build our own computer.
So we built them.
and was up until 4 in the morning for many moons,
and we got it working.
We showed some of our friends.
Immediately, everybody wanted one.
And it turned out that it took about 40 hours
to build one of these things,
and about another 20, 30, 40 to debug it.
And we had a lot of friends that worked
at similar companies who could liberate the parts also.
And we found ourselves spending every spare moment of our time
helping our friends to build computers.
and it was just getting to be a tremendous drain on our lives.
So we got the idea one day that we could make a printed circuit board
without the parts in it,
sell these blank printed circuit boards to our friends
and probably cut the assembly and debug time down to, you know, 5, 10 hours.
So Waz sold his HP6 calculator and I sold my van
and we got $1,300 together
and we paid our friend of ours, who was this PC board layout person,
$1,300 to do us a layout
and decided we'd sell printed circuit boards
at twice what it costs to build them and hopefully recoup our calculator and transportation
at some later date.
So that's what we did.
And I was out trying to peddle PC boards one day and walked into a bite shop, the first
bite shop in Mountain View.
And Paul Terrell, the then owner of the bite shop, said he would like to take 50 of these
computers.
And I saw dollar signs in front of my eyes.
But he had one catch, which was that he wanted them fully assembled and tested, ready to
which is a new twist. So we spent the next five days on the phone to distributors and convinced
the electronics parts distributors around here to give us about $10,000 worth of parts on thin air,
just on enthusiasm. So we got the parts and we built 100 computers and we sold 50 of them for
cash and 29 days paid off the distributors. And that's how we got started. So we had 50 computers
left over. Well, that meant we had to sell them. So then we started worrying about marketing,
worrying about distribution, got on the phone to the other computer stores around the country,
and gradually the whole thing began to build momentum
and at that point in time
we had some feeling
that we were on to something
but the feeling
is so different
than the experience of actually seeing it
happen right now
it's entirely different
and sometimes a lot of people ask
well did you know it was going to mushroom into this
phenomenon
on. And you can say, yeah, you know, we planned it out. We had lead on a piece of paper. But it's
different than the experience of seeing 500 people working at Apple Computer. It's very different than
the experience of seeing a five-year-old kid who really understands what he's, the tool that he's
got in front of him. And the best analogy I've ever heard is Scientific American, I think it was,
did a study in the early 70s on the efficiency of locomotion. And what they did was
for all different species of things on the planet,
birds and cats and dogs and fish and man and goats and stuff.
They measured how much energy does it take for a goat to get from here to there, right?
Kilocalories per kilometer or something.
I don't know what they measured it.
And they ranked them.
They published the list.
And the condor won.
The condor took the least amount of energy to get from here to there.
And man didn't do so well.
Came in with a rather unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list.
but fortunately
someone as Scientific American
was insightful enough
to test man with a bicycle
and man with a bicycle
won twice as good
as the Condor
all the way off the list

Transcript

Machine transcript in the original language. It may contain errors. Select a timestamp to play that moment.

Hi, I must apologize to you all for being late. I was driving here 90 miles an hour.

I couldn't find a parking place.

I had all the experiences you've been through this morning, Alyssa.

I had a photographer from Scientific American who wanted to take some pictures in the last few days.

So we went over to a school.

a school. We thought they decided they wanted to take some pictures of someone from Apple

in an educational setting and using some computers, and we wandered over. It turns out there's

a little booklet that is put out in Cupertino, and there's about 20 different schools with

apples, and we picked one out that had six Apple computers and wandered over there one

afternoon. And this happened to be the afternoon that the fourth and fifth graders were going

to be there once a week, fourth and fifth graders from this one school in sort of an advanced

learning program come over and use the Apple computers. And I had the most delightful conversation

with some four and five year olds in it.

They probably know as much about the computer as I do.

Maybe more.

And they're totally fluent in it.

And they're very much at home in it.

And they beat me in most of the games in it.

And it was really quite an experience

because we always talk about all these things happening

sort of at the intellectual, verbal level.

But I actually got a chance to see 20 students

interacting with these computers on a one-on-one basis.

And I couldn't help remembering my own school days

when none of these things existed

and we'd just get into trouble all the time.

11.30 at night, last night,

a friend of mine, Bob Metcalf, calls me up.

And he's got three German friends visiting from Germany

and they want to buy 20 to 30 apples a month

for some god-awful, who knows what reason.

And they want them in Germany

and they want to talk about buying them at 11.30 at night.

And, you know, a guy in Nebraska is using an Apple computer to calculate soil samples

to know what kind of fertilizer it would be in the ground.

It's an endless array of things that people are doing with this.

Watch your mic.

Oh, excuse me.

The other one.

[Automatic transcript unavailable for this passage]

We had absolutely no idea what people were going to do with these things when we started out.

Matter of fact, the two people it was designed for was Woz and myself,

because we couldn't afford to buy a computer kit on the market.

So we liberated some parts from Hewlett Packard and Atari,

and worked on a design for about six months,

and decided that we would build our own computer.

So we built them.

and was up until 4 in the morning for many moons,

and we got it working.

We showed some of our friends.

Immediately, everybody wanted one.

And it turned out that it took about 40 hours

to build one of these things,

and about another 20, 30, 40 to debug it.

And we had a lot of friends that worked

at similar companies who could liberate the parts also.

And we found ourselves spending every spare moment of our time

helping our friends to build computers.

and it was just getting to be a tremendous drain on our lives.

So we got the idea one day that we could make a printed circuit board

without the parts in it,

sell these blank printed circuit boards to our friends

and probably cut the assembly and debug time down to, you know, 5, 10 hours.

So Waz sold his HP6 calculator and I sold my van

and we got $1,300 together

and we paid our friend of ours, who was this PC board layout person,

$1,300 to do us a layout

and decided we'd sell printed circuit boards

at twice what it costs to build them and hopefully recoup our calculator and transportation

at some later date.

So that's what we did.

And I was out trying to peddle PC boards one day and walked into a bite shop, the first

bite shop in Mountain View.

And Paul Terrell, the then owner of the bite shop, said he would like to take 50 of these

computers.

And I saw dollar signs in front of my eyes.

But he had one catch, which was that he wanted them fully assembled and tested, ready to

which is a new twist. So we spent the next five days on the phone to distributors and convinced

the electronics parts distributors around here to give us about $10,000 worth of parts on thin air,

just on enthusiasm. So we got the parts and we built 100 computers and we sold 50 of them for

cash and 29 days paid off the distributors. And that's how we got started. So we had 50 computers

left over. Well, that meant we had to sell them. So then we started worrying about marketing,

worrying about distribution, got on the phone to the other computer stores around the country,

and gradually the whole thing began to build momentum

and at that point in time

we had some feeling

that we were on to something

but the feeling

is so different

than the experience of actually seeing it

happen right now

it's entirely different

and sometimes a lot of people ask

well did you know it was going to mushroom into this

phenomenon

on. And you can say, yeah, you know, we planned it out. We had lead on a piece of paper. But it's

different than the experience of seeing 500 people working at Apple Computer. It's very different than

the experience of seeing a five-year-old kid who really understands what he's, the tool that he's

got in front of him. And the best analogy I've ever heard is Scientific American, I think it was,

did a study in the early 70s on the efficiency of locomotion. And what they did was

for all different species of things on the planet,

birds and cats and dogs and fish and man and goats and stuff.

They measured how much energy does it take for a goat to get from here to there, right?

Kilocalories per kilometer or something.

I don't know what they measured it.

And they ranked them.

They published the list.

And the condor won.

The condor took the least amount of energy to get from here to there.

And man didn't do so well.

Came in with a rather unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list.

but fortunately

someone as Scientific American

was insightful enough

to test man with a bicycle

and man with a bicycle

won twice as good

as the Condor

all the way off the list