All Things Digital 2005 - Steve Jobs
Transcript
Machine transcript in the original language. It may contain errors. Select a timestamp to play that moment.
So without further ado, Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs.
Welcome.
Thanks.
So it's been a great year for you.
Amazing iPods continued, amazing success.
But what have you done for us lately, I think?
Everyone wants to know.
What's the next thing from you?
Where do you think iPod's going?
Well, you know, we're working on a bunch of great stuff,
but I can't talk about it.
Okay.
That's the problem.
And I know it's hard, but there used to be a saying at Apple,
isn't it funny a ship that leaks from the top?
So, uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
Okay, then.
I don't get it.
Well, let's talk about a few things about the iPod.
You now have iPods that start at $99 and go to like $450 or something like that?
And for most of it, it's like in $50 increments.
And you've maintained a very strong market share, I think quite a long distance from
the introduction of the thing, which is unusual in consumer electronics, but people have got
to catch up to you sometime, right? I mean, it's pretty unnatural for a market to be dominated
to this extent by one company, and there's like zillions of other companies, and the
stuff is getting better and better that they're putting out there, so is this the year it
all collapses?
Well, it could be-
But congratulations.
You know, I mean, there are companies that have managed to hold on to pretty good market
shares. A colleague of mine in this room runs one of them. So I don't know that it's inconceivable
that we can't, but we're focused on putting out the best products. And the market share for iPods
has actually risen over the last year. It's gone up. And we've had unbelievable competitors.
So what can I say? We're focused on putting out the best iPods we can. Our competitors are trying
to copy us and some of them are getting a little bit closer, but we've got some pretty
great things in the lab. So I think when people see what we're doing, they might be pretty
pleased with it.
Well, can you give us an idea in areas of video, for example? Something you talked about
on stage last year.
Yeah, well, let's talk about it. You've said on the stage that you didn't think video
and a small device like that made sense.
You're always fighting things that are opposed to each other. So as an example, let's take
the PlayStation Portable, right? Great game machine. But it's not such a great music player.
And, you know, there's many reasons for that. But the biggest reason is it doesn't fit in your
pocket. Right? So you've got, you know, games want nice big screens. Music players want to fit in
your pocket. And you have to pick one and optimize for it. And the second thing you do will certainly
be suboptimal. Maybe you can do it, but it's suboptimal. And so you can do video on these
devices if you want to. But the things that are suboptimal about it are the screen size,
so it fits in your pocket and the battery life and things like that.
And, you know, the fundamental problem here
is that headphones are a miraculous thing.
You put on a pair of headphones,
and you get the same experience you get with a great pair of speakers, right?
There's no such thing as headphones for video, right?
There's not something I can carry with me that I can put on,
and it gives me the same experience I get
when I'm watching my, you know, 50-inch plasma display at home.
And, you know, until somebody invents that,
you're going to have these opposing constraints.
Well, they have those huge goggles you can wear.
But they're lousy.
But you never get a date if you ever wear them, right?
So let me ask you about another kind of iteration on iPod,
which is wirelessness.
You, I think four or five years ago now,
you probably remember exactly,
came up with this phrase digital hub, the Macintosh,
or we could expand it.
You didn't, but I might expand it to say the PC in general,
the personal computer in general.
is the hub, everything kind of goes through it,
everything plugs into it.
Why?
Why, with the Internet out there and available wirelessly,
shouldn't I be able to have an iPod-type device
that avoids the need to go through a PC or a Mac?
Well, those are two questions.
Number one is, should we integrate wireless networking
into an iPod someday?
And, yeah, maybe that makes sense.
Again, you've got constraints.
Wireless networking, like 802.11,
takes a lot of battery life, or takes a lot of power.
So you have battery life.
you want your player to last as long as possible,
and you've got wireless networking,
which takes a lot of power.
But that's not the heart of the issue.
The heart of the issue is that when you're in a music store
and you want to browse music and stuff,
it's really nice to have a screen that's bigger than that
so you can see a bunch of things at once, right?
It's the same issue you're talking about with the video.
Yeah, same issue.
You want a nice big screen.
You can see lots of music.
You can pick out what you want versus a tiny little screen.
And again, you want the screen as small as you can,
so you can put it in your pocket.
So actually discovering and buying music on a computer
and downloading it to the iPod, in our opinion,
is one of the geniuses of the iPod.
And you can look at changing that,
and maybe that will happen over time.
But I think the experience you'll get on a device with a small screen
optimized for putting in your pocket
is going to be far less satisfactory than on a personal computer.
You may still want to do that occasionally, but I don't think it's going to ever mean you can not have some other device that is your primary device for buying and cataloging the music.
What would solve that?
Or is it not to be solved?
Rollable screens, foldable screens, you know, goggles you could put on.
I don't know.
But it's not on the horizon.
If that's true, what is it you're doing with Motorola to put the iTunes store on a phone, which is, after all, a small device with a small screen?
and is that a suboptimal thing?
What we're doing with Motorola
is basically putting an iTunes player
on some of their phones.