WebObjects demo at The Sharper Image store opening

Around this recording

The recordings either side of it, in order.

All 202 recordings of Steve Jobs →

1. 1996

   WEBMANIA keynote: ‘The Web — Act II’

   Jobs introduces the WebObjects product family for building dynamic web sites, arguing the web is entering its ‘second act’ of transactional, database-driven applications. Notable for Jobs demonstrating on a PC and wearing a denim jacket on stage.

2. 1996

   NPR Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross

   Jobs tells Terry Gross that Apple’s major contribution was ‘bringing a liberal arts point of view to the use of computers’, recalls winning the GUI fight because ‘I was the largest stockholder and the chairman’, and discusses WebObjects and Toy Story.

3. 1996

   Microsoft Professional Developers Conference keynote appearance

   In a rare appearance on a Microsoft stage, Jobs demonstrates WebObjects running against Windows NT as NeXT courts the Windows developer base. The 33-minute segment was preserved by Microsoft and later posted online.

4. 1996

   Internet World Spring 1996 keynote

   Jobs shows how WebObjects builds pages on the fly from live data using the Dodge, Reebok and Sharper Image web sites, and announces that a future version will support Sun’s Java. InfoWorld reported 20,000 free downloads of the March 1996 1.0 release.

5. 1996

   Swiss TV (La Télé) interview on Pixar

   A short interview for a Swiss TV newscast around the European release of Toy Story in which Jobs talks about Pixar. A second 1996 TV feature on Jobs’ Apple/NeXT/Pixar ventures (Pixar interview from 04:15) is hosted on allaboutstevejobs.com via Google Drive.

6. 1996

   TV feature on Apple, NeXT and Pixar with interview

   A 1996 television feature recapping Jobs’s Apple, NeXT and Pixar careers, followed by an interview mostly about Pixar in the wake of Toy Story.

7. 1996

   WebObjects demo at The Sharper Image store opening

   At the opening of Sharper Image’s Sutter Street store, Jobs demonstrates NeXT’s WebObjects powering the retailer’s online catalog – a dynamic site at a time when most web pages were static and hand-built.

8. 1996

   Charlie Rose with John Lasseter

   Weeks before Apple bought NeXT, Jobs and John Lasseter sit with Charlie Rose to discuss Toy Story’s success and Pixar’s approach: ‘Toy Story is not about technology, it is about telling a story.’

9. 1996

   Pixar business-model interview (released by the Steve Jobs Archive, 2025)

   Published 18 Nov 2025 for Toy Story’s 30th anniversary, this unseen interview has Jobs explaining Pixar’s model of giving artists and engineers a stake in their work, lessons from Disney about focus and discipline, retention incentives, and the goal of making lasting stories.

10. 1996

    Apple/NeXT acquisition press event with Gil Amelio

    On the evening of December 20, 1996, Amelio and Jobs appeared together before Apple employees and press to announce the NeXT deal. Still photographs from the event (Apple evangelist Tim Holmes’s QuickTake shots) are well known; brief TV news excerpts exist but no complete recording was found online.

11. 1997

    Macworld Expo San Francisco (return to Apple)

    A week after Apple announced it was buying NeXT, CEO Gil Amelio brought Steve Jobs on stage during a rambling two-hour-plus keynote to talk about NeXT’s OpenStep technology as the foundation for the next Mac OS (Rhapsody).

12. 1997

    WWDC 1997 closing ‘fireside chat’ Q&A

    Still an adviser, Jobs takes unscripted questions from developers: focus means saying no, why OpenDoc was killed, ‘start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology’, NFS ‘dial tone’, licensing Mac OS to cloners, and the famous rebuttal to a heckler about OpenDoc.

13. 1997

    Macworld Expo Boston keynote (the Microsoft deal)

    A month after Gil Amelio’s ouster, Jobs announced a new board of directors and a five-point recovery plan, then the Apple-Microsoft deal: a $150 million investment, a five-year Office for Mac commitment, Internet Explorer as default browser and a patent cross-license.