Steve Jobs Webmania Keynote

1996-01-3032:37English

Transcript

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

[Automatic transcript unavailable for this passage]
Thanks for coming in the rain.
We really appreciate it.
We've changed our name to Next Software
After two years of being a software company,
we finally got around to it.
And my name is Steve Jobs.
I'm the chairman and CEO of Next.
And today, we're going to announce, or we did today,
and we're going to re-enounce it today, our web objects
products.
We've been working on this stuff in a way for 10 years
because a lot of the technology in web objects
is our fundamental technology that we've
been able to bring to the web and has tremendous application
on the web.
About a third of it's new, specifically to address some of the web-specific issues.
And so this stuff that we're going to be announcing today, most of it's very bulletproof.
Most of it's been in production for years.
And we think it's going to provide some incredible products on the web.
We're extraordinarily excited about it.
Let's see what you think.
As we look at the web, everything that's been done to date, sort of from the beginning up until now,
we sort of look at Act 1 of the web.
And Act 1 has clearly focused on the browser.
We have pages that get served over the web.
And we can look at them miraculously from anywhere
on the internet with a web browser.
And what people have been doing with this
is what we call static publishing.
They have been looking at pages and navigating to other pages.
But the quantum unit is a page.
And these pages need to have been made up by somebody,
a person or several persons using one of many tools you can do to construct these pages.
But once they're made, they're as they are until some human being changes them.
So when you're looking at a page, there's probably 300,000 other people who could be
looking at that same page.
It's not different for each person.
It doesn't change as the world changes until a human being gets in there and changes it.
And this very simple model has brought us a long way.
Here's an example of a static web page that some of you might have learned about Webmania
This was our homepage until yesterday.
Here's another one.
A guy named Rick Smolin, who did the Day in the Life books,
is doing a day in the life of cyberspace on the web,
and he's published a website.
Here's Intel's homepage if you want to read about Pentiums.
You can go there and learn all about that stuff.
Here's another example, an educational one at college.
Here's one of my favorites.
And so you can go to just, you know, now hundreds of thousands of pages, probably millions by now,
and see them just as everyone else can see them.
And this is very, very powerful.
And it's all focused on the browser.
Now, when you're consuming this information on the browser, what you find is you want more.
And especially if you have a PC and you use the PC for other things,
for other things, you find that the PC can do things that the web can't.
And that has to do with the user interface.
So let's say you're using Windows and you like animation in Windows.
Well, you can't do that on the web today, as an example.
Now, when you look at user interfaces, they all have capabilities.
They all have capabilities with limitations.
In the case of Windows, let's say that this square represents its user interface capabilities.
If that was the case, then proportionally,
this is what a web browser can do user interface-wise.
A small fraction of what you can do on Windows today.
And naturally, people want to enhance
the user interface of the web browser
so it can be more like their PC.
And that's been what's happening.
Most of what you read about in the news today concerning the web
has to do with enhancing the user interface of the browser.
So as an example, we have plug-ins.
The Netscape browser has plug-ins,
and the most popular one is probably the Macromedia Shockwave,
where you can download it and see some animation in your browser.
Play your director files in your browser just like you, of course, can on the PC.
Another big one we've heard about is Java.
Again, Java's an interpreted language that runs on the browser,
that is pretty close to being real out there,
and it will let you do some things like...
animations and run little applets to do things on the browser,
primarily to enhance its user interface,
to try to make the surface area of that red square
as close as possible to the surface area of the blue square.
And that's where most of the action has been in Act 1 of the web.
It has been to enhance the user interface.
Now, all that's well and good, but we're
starting to move into Act 2 of the web.
Because what people are finding is that being limited,
these static pages that people build by hand,
they can't do some incredibly important stuff
that they want to do on the web, especially if they're
businesses.
And people want to now focus on the server, which is becoming
the limitation of what can be done,
and focus on how to provide what we call dynamic services
instead of just static publishing on the web.
So again, the focus of Act 2 is going to be on the server.
And what are the essential issues on the server?
Let's take a look.
Let's go back to static publishing
and kind of recreate that symbolically.
When you're going to do static publishing,
you can think of it as taking a book or a brochure,
in this case a brochure about Dodge cars,
and tearing out or cutting out the pages very carefully
and putting them on an HTTP server.
Now, you'd probably recreate them another way.
But metaphorically, this is what you'd do.
and you could look at them all.
And this works great for some things,
but what happens if the page that the customer wants
doesn't exist?
What do you do then?
Now, how could that be?
How could it not exist?
Well, let me give you examples.
You can go to the Federal Express.
Matter of fact, how many people have used the Federal Express

Transcript

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

[Automatic transcript unavailable for this passage]

Thanks for coming in the rain.

We really appreciate it.

We've changed our name to Next Software

After two years of being a software company,

we finally got around to it.

And my name is Steve Jobs.

I'm the chairman and CEO of Next.

And today, we're going to announce, or we did today,

and we're going to re-enounce it today, our web objects

products.

We've been working on this stuff in a way for 10 years

because a lot of the technology in web objects

is our fundamental technology that we've

been able to bring to the web and has tremendous application

on the web.

About a third of it's new, specifically to address some of the web-specific issues.

And so this stuff that we're going to be announcing today, most of it's very bulletproof.

Most of it's been in production for years.

And we think it's going to provide some incredible products on the web.

We're extraordinarily excited about it.

Let's see what you think.

As we look at the web, everything that's been done to date, sort of from the beginning up until now,

we sort of look at Act 1 of the web.

And Act 1 has clearly focused on the browser.

We have pages that get served over the web.

And we can look at them miraculously from anywhere

on the internet with a web browser.

And what people have been doing with this

is what we call static publishing.

They have been looking at pages and navigating to other pages.

But the quantum unit is a page.

And these pages need to have been made up by somebody,

a person or several persons using one of many tools you can do to construct these pages.

But once they're made, they're as they are until some human being changes them.

So when you're looking at a page, there's probably 300,000 other people who could be

looking at that same page.

It's not different for each person.

It doesn't change as the world changes until a human being gets in there and changes it.

And this very simple model has brought us a long way.

Here's an example of a static web page that some of you might have learned about Webmania

This was our homepage until yesterday.

Here's another one.

A guy named Rick Smolin, who did the Day in the Life books,

is doing a day in the life of cyberspace on the web,

and he's published a website.

Here's Intel's homepage if you want to read about Pentiums.

You can go there and learn all about that stuff.

Here's another example, an educational one at college.

Here's one of my favorites.

And so you can go to just, you know, now hundreds of thousands of pages, probably millions by now,

and see them just as everyone else can see them.

And this is very, very powerful.

And it's all focused on the browser.

Now, when you're consuming this information on the browser, what you find is you want more.

And especially if you have a PC and you use the PC for other things,

for other things, you find that the PC can do things that the web can't.

And that has to do with the user interface.

So let's say you're using Windows and you like animation in Windows.

Well, you can't do that on the web today, as an example.

Now, when you look at user interfaces, they all have capabilities.

They all have capabilities with limitations.

In the case of Windows, let's say that this square represents its user interface capabilities.

If that was the case, then proportionally,

this is what a web browser can do user interface-wise.

A small fraction of what you can do on Windows today.

And naturally, people want to enhance

the user interface of the web browser

so it can be more like their PC.

And that's been what's happening.

Most of what you read about in the news today concerning the web

has to do with enhancing the user interface of the browser.

So as an example, we have plug-ins.

The Netscape browser has plug-ins,

and the most popular one is probably the Macromedia Shockwave,

where you can download it and see some animation in your browser.

Play your director files in your browser just like you, of course, can on the PC.

Another big one we've heard about is Java.

Again, Java's an interpreted language that runs on the browser,

that is pretty close to being real out there,

and it will let you do some things like...

animations and run little applets to do things on the browser,

primarily to enhance its user interface,

to try to make the surface area of that red square

as close as possible to the surface area of the blue square.

And that's where most of the action has been in Act 1 of the web.

It has been to enhance the user interface.

Now, all that's well and good, but we're

starting to move into Act 2 of the web.

Because what people are finding is that being limited,

these static pages that people build by hand,

they can't do some incredibly important stuff

that they want to do on the web, especially if they're

businesses.

And people want to now focus on the server, which is becoming

the limitation of what can be done,

and focus on how to provide what we call dynamic services

instead of just static publishing on the web.

So again, the focus of Act 2 is going to be on the server.

And what are the essential issues on the server?

Let's take a look.

Let's go back to static publishing

and kind of recreate that symbolically.

When you're going to do static publishing,

you can think of it as taking a book or a brochure,

in this case a brochure about Dodge cars,

and tearing out or cutting out the pages very carefully

and putting them on an HTTP server.

Now, you'd probably recreate them another way.

But metaphorically, this is what you'd do.

and you could look at them all.

And this works great for some things,

but what happens if the page that the customer wants

doesn't exist?

What do you do then?

Now, how could that be?

How could it not exist?

Well, let me give you examples.

You can go to the Federal Express.

Matter of fact, how many people have used the Federal Express