Fascinating to see how much more technical vocabulary he uses when speaking in '97. I don't remember any recent keynotes where he used so much tech jargon onstage.
I guess this is because now, every word he says is analysed and reported by mainstream media. He has to communicate to the entire world because of Apple's popularity, and not just a room full of WWDC developers.
I actually remember when he was announcing FaceTime, he had a list of all the FaceTime protocols and technologies onscreen - H264, AAC, SIP, IMTC, STUN, TURN, ICE, etc.
I remember him pausing, then saying something along the lines of "... whatever the hell those are", or some quip like that.
Funny when he corrected himself after saying "Apple controls the marketing and distribution... I mean the marketing" - perhaps Apple stores were on his mind back then?
There's also one choice moment before this point where a developer is asking what Apple can do about getting beat up in the press and the stockmarket.
For emphasis, in December of 1997 AAPL hit an 11-year low of $3.53 (split adjusted). Today, mainstream media eats out of Steve Jobs' hand and their stock price is, as I type this, $332.
Bill Joy spoke of this at the Institute for Advanced Study, circa 1999. I don't know if anyone took a video of his talk, but he did it (and I was there.)
A coworker of mine worked with Eric Schmidt when he was at Novell. He was talking about the cloud back then. Now his vision is coming alive with Chrome OS.
What's especially interesting in this video is when he's insulted by someone during the Q&A. How differently he handled that than what stars, politicians, and many business people would do and do!
Amelio was also still in charge of Apple, yet it seems Jobs already had his plans worked out for what he would do with Apple if he was in charge.
At around 50:10, someone asks him sarcastically to use his cloud to make sure than when TV commercials are made, they're good ones. Steve Jobs smiles, nods and thanks him.
Oh that wasn't it. Some angry dude ranted about OpenDoc versus Java and said to Jobs: you don't know what you're talking about.
Steve was quiet for a bit, mentioned some of the time you can't please some people, then talked about how Apple needed to get back to starting from the product, the user experience, and the customers instead of how do we market this cool tech.
It seems like he didn't really quit either but was let go gracefully. As head of iPod division it seemed as though he was more protective of the iPod's role as Apple's superstar product then of the big picture Jobs wanted to push. Rumor was he wanted to use the iPod OS for the phone and then he gave an interview about how converged devices were lame and 3 weeks later they announced his "reduced role" as a consultant and shortly after that he was out.
Granted that's mostly based on rumors but it gives an interesting contrast to Microsoft's failure in tablets because of things like the Office division's execs refusing to make it touch friendly.
The experience he's talking about is the same experience domain based Microsoft networks have had available for a long time, and it was an awful experience as it relied on network connectivity for your files. It was nothing revolutionary.
What's happened in the last decade+ is the infrastructure to support all these devices, and their network connectivity, has increased so we can finally have a good user experience doing it.
Without the infrastructure to support it, the product would end up instilling a sense of hate in people who use it. And we all know Apple is about creating the most seamless and easy to use experience for the user.
Great find... If you continue listening to Steve ramble on about the what we now call "the Cloud", you can hear him mention hardware-thin/software-thick clients, eg. the iPhone and the iPad.
I wonder what held him back from achieving that vision is the first place. AFAICS, Apple is now playing catch-up to Google and Amazon in the cloud computing space.
1. They only had the Mac platform (and non-connected iPods). Can you change the world with a 5% market share?
2. They wanted to charge for it.
Now, they could have done this a couple of years ago after they conquered #1, but they were still hung up on point #2, and just tried to make a better pay service.
1. In 1997, technology held him back, not market share. The iPhone changed the world with no market share. The iPad changed the world with no market share. Etc.
2. Who gives their service away for free? Apple still
charges for it. It's included in the devices you buy, etc.
I disagree. They tried exactly that with .Mac and MobileMe and failed. The problem is that the proprietary approach that worked so well in case of hardware and software isn't compatible with the web.
I don't know much about iCloud, but I really hope they had learned the lesson and made it more open by providing APIs, allowing data migration, and supporting tools for other platforms. However, this might be just my wishful thinking.
Fundamentally, the idea is the same to the end user, but this is true about a lot of ideas that started on the desktop, then were recreated in the web, and are now being recreated in mobile.
Like anything, ideas are a dime a dozen and execution is everything. Building network storage for tethered devices on reliable connections and building network storage for untethered devices on unreliable connections are two different problems.
The way this post is titled gives him credit for the idea, which is a silly thing. If iCloud works as advertised, kudos for the execution.
But I have no doubt in my mind that the architecture under the hood would be very different if it were 1997 and Apple was building cloud storage in the pc era.
I guess this is because now, every word he says is analysed and reported by mainstream media. He has to communicate to the entire world because of Apple's popularity, and not just a room full of WWDC developers.