This is a great look back at Steve, freshly returned to Apple. This video is from June of 1997, just a few months after Apple’s purchase of NeXT was finalized.
Steve is sitting on stage, taking questions from the audience of developers.
The whole thing is great but, if your time is short, jump to 4:30, where the questions start. The first one, “What about OpenDoc?”, is a perfect opener. OpenDoc was a much ballyhooed architecture that Apple sold hard. When Steve came back, well, just watch the video.
So true.
I remember the time well. OpenDoc was a very interesting technology, with strong arguments for and against. And there was something awesome about this answer, because agree with him or disagree with him, it was an enormously considered opinion.
I never fully understood OpenDoc. It seemed like the inverse of logic.
I never fully understood OpenDoc. It seemed like the inverse of logic.
I’ve seen that OpenDoc question and answer before. If you ever wanted to understand the concept around mansplaining, this is the perfect example. Jobs is the expert, and the whole question is rubbish to begin with. OpenDoc was never going to solve anything and was never going to see major adoption by mainstream developers.
That always just makes me feel embarrassed. Why didn’t the guy know enough to shut up?
Sounded as though he’d invested a lot of time in the coolness of OpenDoc and couldn’t see past his own fondness for it.
I was in the audience for that one. I walked away thinking that, despite his protestations to that point, Steve was going to end up playing a bigger role at Apple, and quickly.