NeXT demonstration to Canon in Singapore

Around this recording

The recordings either side of it, in order.

All 202 recordings of Steve Jobs →

1. 1989

   NeXT Computer System presentation in Japan

   Jobs presents the NeXT Computer System and NeXTSTEP to a Japanese audience in a nearly hour-long keynote, part of NeXT’s push into Asia with Canon as distributor and investor. Japanese-subtitled excerpts circulated on YouTube from 2011.

2. 1990

   WGBH raw interview for ‘The Machine That Changed the World’

   The full raw interview WGBH shot with Jobs for the 1992 series ‘The Machine That Changed the World’, only minutes of which were broadcast. Jobs tells the ‘bicycle for the mind’ story, recounts the Apple II and Macintosh years, Xerox PARC, and lays out NeXT’s ‘interpersonal computing’ vision.

3. 1990

   Japanese television feature on Jobs and NeXT

   A three-and-a-half-minute Japanese television segment featuring an interview with Jobs during NeXT’s push into Japan, where Canon had become its distributor and investor in 1989. Programme and exact date unknown.

4. 1990

   Jobs on Joseph Juran and quality

   A 35-year-old Jobs explains what NeXT learned from quality pioneer Joseph Juran, who visited the company: treat everything as a repetitive process, measure it, and give the people doing the work authority to fix it. A rare window into Jobs’s thinking on manufacturing and management.

5. 1990

   Library of Congress film: Jobs and Stewart Brand on the future of libraries

   For a 1990 Library of Congress promotional documentary (cast also includes Francis Ford Coppola, Julia Child, Penn & Teller and Gore Vidal), Jobs sits with Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand to talk about networked libraries, simulation as education, and humans as tool builders.

6. 1990

   NeXT ‘Interpersonal Computing’ sales demo video

   A 35-minute NeXT-produced tape in which Jobs demonstrates interpersonal computing – mail with voice annotations, multitasking, network file sharing, inter-application Services, faxing and color graphics – for sales teams to show business clients.

7. 1990

   NeXT demonstration to Canon in Singapore

   Jobs demonstrates the NeXT system to Canon executives in Singapore in August 1990; Canon became NeXT’s exclusive APAC reseller and a key investor.

8. 1990

   NeXTstation and NeXTcube introduction

   Jobs introduces NeXT’s second-generation line — the ‘pizza box’ NeXTstation, the NeXTstation Color, the upgraded NeXTcube and the NeXTdimension color board — alongside NeXTSTEP 2.0, and coins ‘interpersonal computing’ as the application area of the 1990s.

9. 1991

   Internal NeXT marketing strategy ‘chalk talk’

   In a leaked internal video Jobs maps the workstation market, splits it into ‘science and engineering’ and an emerging ‘professional’ half, claims NeXT has won 15 of 15 recent head-to-heads with Sun, and lays out three buying reasons and the channels to reach them.

10. 1991

    Interview on ten years of the personal computer

    Asked to reflect on ‘ten years of the PC’, Jobs objects that the Apple II predates the IBM PC by four years, predicts the industry will ‘bifurcate’ into portables and networked color desktops, and argues that Apple and IBM will deliver only evolution while NeXT drives the next revolution.

11. 1991

    Reed College Howard Vollum Award acceptance speech

    Accepting the Vollum Award at Reed’s 1991 convocation, Jobs thanks the college ‘for teaching me how to be hungry’, recalls living on Roman Meal cereal and Hare Krishna Sunday meals, and credits dean Jack Dudman’s quiet $20 gift as a lesson in generosity: ‘Character is built not in good times, but in bad times.’

12. 1992

    NeXTWORLD Expo 1992 keynote

    At the second NeXTWORLD Expo Jobs previews NeXTSTEP Release 3 and the new Turbo NeXTstation line, and — most consequentially — demonstrates NeXTSTEP running on an Intel 486 PC, the first public sign that NeXT’s future lay in software. Nearly two hours of the keynote survive.

13. 1992

    MIT Sloan Distinguished Speaker Series talk

    The only known recording of Jobs’ university class visits: he explains NeXTSTEP’s ‘write less code’ philosophy, attacks consultants for never developing ‘scar tissue’, discusses competitors Sun, Microsoft NT and Taligent, plans to port NeXTSTEP to Intel 486, and reflects on his ouster from Apple.