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Steve Jobs on Apple in 1996, prior to his return

by Kelly Hodgkins Sep 19th 2011 at 10:00AM

In 1996, Steve Jobs sat down with PBS' Wall $treet Week host Louis Rukeyser and discussed his current business ventures - Pixar and NeXT. He also touched briefly on his former project, Apple, which in 1996 was at an all-time low and considered to be "one of the failure stories of Wall Street." You can almost feel a twinge of pain in his voice when he says the company that he helped create has failed to innovate and lost its 10-year lead on the computing industry. Little did everyone know, Jobs would soon return to Apple and restore the company to its former glory.



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In 1996, Steve Jobs sat down with PBS' Wall $treet Week host Louis Rukeyser and discussed his current business ventures - Pixar and...
 

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John Zabba McLean

lol computer nerd

September 21 2011 at 5:06 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Daniel Morgan

The interviewer seems a little out of his depth. I know it was the 90's but the guy is supposed to be a professional. You don't refer to them as computer nerds!

September 19 2011 at 4:56 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
fn0000rd

He was around for the OS8/OS9 debacles, and the complete lack of a solution for real multi-tasking.

It's not like they were 10 years ahead of everyone when he left.... They were years behind.

September 19 2011 at 4:35 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to fn0000rd's comment
puhsitch

That was right after Jobs came back to Apple, not before. Mac OS was a mess when he returned...which is why the idea from day 1 was to convert NeXT's OS into the Mac's next generation OS. I think it worked out pretty well!

September 19 2011 at 6:54 PM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down Reply
macserv

Uh, not to find fault or anything, but that's a crock. Steve left Apple in 1985, with System 2.0 as the latest Macintosh operating system. It was certainly many years ahead of any competition at that point.

Sculley and Spindler took that lead and flushed it down the crapper. Amelio finally trimmed the fat and did what it took to right the wayward ship, including killing Copland and seeking a true successor to the classic Mac OS. It came down to BeOS or NeXTStep. He chose NeXT's technology, bought the company, and brought Steve back.

Steve had his teams do their best to rev the existing Mac OS while working on Mac OS X (you can't just stop selling an operating system for a couple years while you get the next one ready), and OS 8 and 9 were hardly a "debacle". For a debacle, I'll refer you to Macintosh System 7.5.3 / 7.5.5.

September 19 2011 at 10:38 PM Report abuse +2 rate up rate down Reply
Billy Razzle

Why is there a different pic of Jobs instead of a screen shot from the video?

Also, that fellow at the end is pretty fancy.

September 19 2011 at 3:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Colin Chapman

I too often wonder if Steve is relaxing on the holiday weekends, while I sit in my deck chair with my fake background. *Sips on that cool ice tea*

September 19 2011 at 11:25 AM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down Reply
lewdvig

Computer nerds? What a fossil (even back then).

September 19 2011 at 11:04 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jay

The last 20 seconds is completely unexpected and hilarious

September 19 2011 at 10:17 AM Report abuse +2 rate up rate down Reply
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