Steve Jobs on Mac Clones: Why Apple Drew the Line
What Jobs talks about
Jobs says he went to the clone vendors because Apple was in danger of going broke if the arrangement continued. He argues that if Apple failed, the larger ecosystem would suffer too.
He explains that Apple was willing to honor existing licenses, but did not have to extend them to cover Chirp and portables. He says Apple wanted a fair percentage of costs for software licensing, not an exorbitant price.
The clip captures Jobs pressing the clone vendors repeatedly and being rejected each time. It shows his determination to protect Apple’s business model and set limits on cloning.
Jobs speaks throughout.
In his words
“We're going to go broke doing this”
“Apple's a very honorable company”
“We'd be glad to”
“I personally asked them to do this”
“We finally made the decisions we have to make”
Key points
- Apple would honor its existing licenses.
- Jobs says the clone arrangement was hurting Apple and the ecosystem.
- He wanted license extensions to cover Chirp and portables.
- Apple was willing to license software for a fair price.
- He personally asked the vendors five times over three weeks.
- The vendors refused, so Apple made the decisions it had to make.
Full transcript
I went to the clone vendors, and I said, guys, we're going to go broke doing this. And if we go down the shitter, the whole ecosystem will go down the shitter, and you won't be here either. So we've got to fix this. And we're going to honor our existing licenses. Apple's a very honorable company. But you want to extend those licenses in two ways. One, you want it to cover something called Chirp, and two, you want it to cover portables. And we don't have to extend those licenses. Nothing in our original license ever said we did. But we would be glad to. We love to license software. We'd like to sell you our software. But you've got to pay a fair price for it. Not an exorbitant price, just a fair percentage of the costs. And we outlined what that was. We asked them to do that. I personally asked them to do this.
And they basically told me to go pound sand. Being a man of perseverance, I asked five times over the next three weeks. Each time we were told to go pound sand, we finally made the decisions we have to make.
Transcribed from the audio with OpenAI Whisper. Timestamps link to the video above. Errors are possible.