Steve Jobs - Macworld 1998 - New York (Full keynote)
Transcript
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Thank you.
Well, good morning. I'm Colin Crawford. I'm the President and CEO of Mac Publishing,
publishers of Macworld Magazine. And on behalf of all the sponsors, I'd like to welcome you to
New York and Macworld Expo.
You know, it's tremendously exciting to be able to bring such a major event
for the Apple industry to the Big Apple.
After all, it's one of the largest concentrations of Macintosh users in the country.
You know, exciting.
That's a word that has once again come to be associated with our industry,
and that's a real pleasant change.
APPLAUSE
You know, a year ago, friends and colleagues would be commiserating with me for having
the misfortune of working in the Apple industry.
Now, 12 months later, they accost me, demanding details of Apple's cool new products and information
about the company's future plans.
Even Apple's harshest media critics of the past are now praising the achievements of
the last year.
I think some of them appear to have had mind-altering experiences.
They've emerged as born-again Apple supporters.
Even a former CEO of Apple has been praising the recent marketing achievements.
Although the achievements at Apple have been the result of the dedication and efforts of
a huge number of people, I'm convinced that without the leadership and direction of Steve
jobs the results would not have been so dramatic. I think it deserves a round of applause.
With Pentium smoking performance of the G3 desktops and sleek state-of-the-art powerbooks
now the introduction of the head-turning iMac consumer computer for the whole industry.
Apple has products for us all.
And Apple's announced a long-term operating system strategy
that really makes sense for developers and users.
And in just a couple of minutes we're going to hear an awful lot more about Apple's future plans.
At Macworld Expo this week you're going to see exciting new products
from over 230 vendors covering design and publishing,
the education segment, and the consumer market.
The editors of Macworld will be on hand
to pick the best products, and they're
going to be announcing the best of show winners this afternoon.
Macintosh games are going to be a key focus for the Expo
this year.
And not only will you hear about exciting new titles
coming to the Mac, you're going to have a chance to show your gaming prowess at the
first national Macintosh gaming championship and it's going to be a way to win some fantastic
prizes. Also check out the conference tracks, we've got Macworld Pro and the Macworld users
conference and they're designed for you to get the most out of your investment in the
the Macintosh platform.
And throughout the week, Macworld Live will be covering the-
the expo would be broadcasting through macworld.com and macweek.com so be sure to stop by the the macworld
booth you'll see key apple and other industry executives being interviewed by the macworld
editors but personally i think that macworld new york will be remembered most for the imac and the
significant support shown for this product by a wide variety of vendors.
So now, it's my privilege to turn over this opening session to Apple Computer and to a
very special guest, Apple's interim CEO, Steve Jobs.
Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
about the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough
to think they can change the world
are the ones who do.
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Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
This is good. I just got off a red eye to get here.
I didn't think I could be here today, and I managed to make it, so this is good.
We've got some great stuff to talk about today, so let's get into it.
An American named Abraham Maslow came up with a theory that he called the Human Hierarchy of Needs.
And this theory was a very simple one in concept, somewhat profound in its implications,
that humans have needs that must be met, and these needs can be stratified into certain levels.
And they need the bottom needs to be met first, and then they progress to the next level,
and when those are met, they progress to the next level.
So you start off with the physiological needs, food, clothing, and shelter, let's say.
If those are met, or once those are met, you then start to be concerned more with the safety of your environment,
eventually with love, with esteem, with self-actualization.
I don't know if this is true or not, but this is what Abraham believed.
And I thought this was a good model, so I borrowed it today
to construct Steve Jobs' version of this,
which I call the Apple hierarchy of skepticism.
And let me explain this to you.
When I came to Apple a year ago,
all I heard was, you know, that Apple is dying, Apple can't survive.
And it turns out that every time we convince people that we've accomplished something at one level,
they come up with something new.
And I used to think this was a bad thing.
I know, Jesus, when are they ever going to believe that we're going to be able to turn this thing around?
But actually now I think it's great.
because what it means is we've now convinced them
that we've taken care of last month's question.
And they're on to the next one.
So I thought, well, let's get ahead of the game.
Let's try to figure out what all the questions are going to be
and map out where we are.
So that's what the Apple hierarchy of skepticism is,
and it borrows from Dr. Maslow.
So the first level, what we encountered a year ago, was survival.
And a lot of people thought Apple was in this some sort of death spiral, which I think there was some truth to.
What did we do? We did many, many things, but the three things that stood out in people's minds were...
We brought in a new management team to run the company, a new board of directors,
it's got some phenomenally experienced people on it, and we did a deal with Microsoft.
The largest software company in the world wanted to help Apple was a fact that didn't escape very many people.
And it added a lot of credibility to what we were doing.
And the combination of these three things and a lot of other medium-sized things,
I think convinced people fairly rapidly that survival, at least in the short term, was not an issue.
And it gave us some time to demonstrate that we could accomplish some other things.
So immediately, once we did these things, then everybody moved up a level.
And, you know, I can't see when you do that.
Thanks.
So maybe later, could we do some more?
That really helped me.
Thanks.
So they moved up a level.