Steve Jobs on Pixar and Music: Quality, Storytelling, and the iPod

And we continue with the journey of Steve Jobs, but after his legacy, I suggest we talk about the man himself and hear from him. As someone from our region met and interviewed him, that person is you, Christopher DeSvetsov, television station. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you for being with us. We are going to discuss and talk together about the man, but before that, let's watch a few minutes of the interview you conducted in 1996. It is an exclusive document. Steve Jobs had created Nexty. He was then about to take over the reins of Apple and turn it into the success we know today. He was also working on the success of Pixar. Somewhat boring.

Exactly. But I say that all of Switzerland in general strikes me that way. I love it there, but it's a great place to visit. I love parts about the Swiss as much as I know them, like a very strong feeling about quality, which I love. I mean, really, they're perfectionists. They like quality. Pretty conservative. Very pretty conservative. So Steve Jobs, you founded Pixar in 1986 when you bought that computer division of Lucasfilm. Did you know right then what was going to happen in this business? Did you already envision that this was going to be a major business 10 years later? Well, when I first met Ed, who ran the computer division of Lucasfilm and who I founded Pixar with, we did it together, Ed showed me what they were working on and I was blown away.

The graphics were years beyond anything I'd ever seen before. And he told me of his dream to make the first computer animated feature film. And I bought into that dream, both sort of emotionally and financially. And we founded Pixar. And that dream has been what's driving us, that dream has driven us for the last 10 years and we finally did it. It took longer than we thought it would, but most things in life do take longer than I think they will. But we did believe that we could achieve that milestone sooner or later. You expected it was going to take that much time to, no, I thought we would do it faster, but I'm always anxious. So actually, how do you see the technology?

There are so many things being done out there, not just at Pixar, but if we look at the web, if we look at different things, do you think all these different novelties are going to merge in one way or another with all these, what is the next big thing that you see out there? Well, clearly the internet's really big, but you know, mostly I'm focused on what we're doing here at Pixar, which is to, you know, create awesome technology that I think is years ahead, maybe 10 years ahead of what anyone else is doing, but in service of the storytelling. And this is what I stay mostly focused on. And we don't, you know, our competitors are not like Microsoft or another studio even, and we're not competing against somebody else making a film.

So your interview was conducted almost 15 years ago. There's a Christopher side of Steve Jobs that we didn't know. He already had an opinion on Switzerland, but above all, the way you landed this interview is quite funny. It's true that it was, it was quite surprising, actually. We were correspondents in the United States, a whole team, and we were actually trying to get in touch with him. It was impossible. I mean, his PR firm refused all contact, and actually we found a system. It was the very beginning of email addresses, and what we wanted to do actually was to try to test email addresses. So we did. And we sent him an email saying, look, I would like to do an interview. And very strangely, one of them came back very quickly, a few seconds later, 30 seconds later saying, excellent idea. Tomorrow at noon in my office. So it was a bit of a shock because we had to prepare a little for this instant reaction, but he was already completely into it.

So it was 96, the very beginning really of this interaction, interactivity via the internet. And it's true that, well, it was a unique opportunity to be able to meet him and talk with him. His opinion on the internet at the time was also quite, quite strange. He didn't really believe in it. Very clear cut. Meaning that for him, he was already saying very clearly, the internet is fine, but it's not really the big thing. What's interesting is what we will manage to do with it and what we will do around it. And it's true that there he already had a quite astonishing vision. In 96, he was likely already imagining all the types of products that could come later by relying on the big network by relying on the big net. And it's true that for him, once again, he was saying, no, not the internet. Stop talking about it. I'm not an internet guru. To me, the internet is obviously something, but it's just plumbing. The important thing is what will come around it. Was he quite relaxed? We see him. He's a bit the symbol of the CEO in sneakers and jeans.

We see him in shorts in the interview. We see him in shorts in the interview. What was he like as a person? Well, he was, he was quite someone. It's true that during the interview, we moved to different, different places. In fact, we were at Pixar during this interview. John Lasseter was also present, the director of Pixar, who was also the director of Toy Story and others. The three of us were talking like that. What was quite surprising was his bit of coldness. He was someone who was very clear, who brought ideas. I remember he was trying to be convinced at that time to make animated films for adults. And in the discussion, as we were drinking coffee, he said, stop talking to me about fairy tales. Stop wanting to make films for children, make films for children, make films for adults, and it will work. That's quite amazing, right? I mean, it was 96. And then afterwards, it's clear that this trend, he also succeeded there, not only in machines. We always talk about the iPhone, the Mac and all that.

But in this field, which is animated cinema, he brought about enormous changes. He created blockbusters that were based on animation. And besides, he later sold Pixar to Disney, to the Disney Group. He became one of the members of the Disney board of directors, and he revolutionized an entire section of that industry, too, even though for him, in the end, it was an idea he had on the side, alongside what he was going to do at Apple, not just a computer visionary of cinema as well. In this case, do you have a good memory of this? Excellent memory. He was really someone very impressive, I must say. He really had an idea. He was extremely informed. We felt he was a stickler for details. He spoke with a great respect, by the way, in this interview that he had for the Swiss and the quality of Swiss work. I think he was someone who must have been 200 percent committed to everything he did. And I think he cared enormously about quality and respected people who worked very hard. Well, thank you very much, Christopher RCH, for this testimony.

Thank you very much. Have a good evening. Following tonight's premiere, you may not know this man, yet he has changed our lives and he will continue to do so. Steve Jobs' revolution coming up right now. He almost never speaks on television and from what we've been told, never live. We are very happy to welcome Mr. Steve Jobs this evening. Good evening. Good evening. Exclusively for Nessie Polento. So in the early 80s in California, you were the father of the personal computer. You revolutionized our lives. You created the Macintosh and founded the Apple company that you preside over today. And you continue as a visionary to invent new things, notably a giant jukebox on the Internet that will allow all those who don't want to pay 20 or 30 euros to buy an album or a record to download a track directly for one euro.

We will talk about that in a moment. But first, in California, in your home with your wife and your three children, how many computers do you have at home? How many? Three. Three. Three. And how many? Four. iPods. It's an iPod. It's an iPod. It's an iPod. So there you go. We'll talk about the iPod. It's a new portable player, in fact, that allows you to download music directly. So more iPods than computers. And how much time do you spend on your computer? Every day. Day. Boy. With email, maybe all in all, I don't know, two to three hours a day. Two to three hours a day. So for those who don't know Steve Jobs well, I suggest we take a few minutes to look at how he has already been changing our lives for years and how he will continue to do so.

A presentation by Steve Jobs starts a bit like a rock concert. Jeans and sneakers, the guru of the Apple tribe is on tour in Paris. You're the best. Thank you very much and welcome to Apple Expo. A pop star style show for one of the highest paid CEOs on the planet, even if he hates talking about it. Salesman Steve Jobs has come to present the latest offerings from the Apple brand, including among other things in store, a wireless mouse and keyboard, the new iPod, a digital player where you can store up to 10,000 songs, and the G5 range, the most powerful desktop computer in the world.

It's really cool, isn't it? It's cool and for 27 years, this former hippie has been revolutionizing the world for every man and woman. In 1976, with the tinkerer Steve Wozniacki, founded Apple and invented the first personal computer in the back of a California garage, consumer computing was born. A new revolution in 1984 with the Macintosh, an ultra simple computer with two major innovations, the mouse and the graphical interface, you know, the desktop with the little icon. Steve Jobs' other passion is animation. With his company Pixar, he created the first animated films made entirely with computer generated imagery. The success was immense. In 1997, he revived Apple with the iMac line, colorful computers with a unique design.

We are going to keep innovating for you. That's what we do. That's what we love to do. Steve Jobs wants to move the computer from the office to the living room to make it the family's main tool for consumption and entertainment. His latest target, music. The new age boss hopes to bury the old audio CD with his virtual jukebox, the music store, with 200,000 songs to download. from the internet for less than a dollar a track. Thank you very much. So Steve Jobs, after having, you have an audience of fans, after inventing the personal computer, the mouse, the mouse, was it you who had the idea for the mouse? Did you invent it? Did you invent it? You know, the mouse was invented about five years before we started the Apple company, but it cost about a thousand dollars to make.

So what we did, we learned how to make it for ten dollars, so everyone could have one. So today what you're doing is you're also going to revolutionize the music industry. You're not holding back? You say, buying records in stores today, that's going to be over tomorrow. This industry is practically doomed. Actually, let's look at the numbers. The music industry is down today with piracy, because of piracy in particular, this market has fallen 20 percent in three years. And so you've decided to, and I believe this is a first put a giant jukebox on the internet, where we can download our tracks, and it will be legal. So how did you even get the idea? We actually have two ideas about music. The first idea is that it's great to have a music collection at home, but we aren't home most of the time.

So what you have to do is take your entire collection with you. So we invented the way to do it with the iPod. Now you can fit 10,000 songs into this thing and put it in your pocket and take it with you wherever you go. And it's truly extraordinary to have your music library everywhere you go. It's extraordinary. So that's the first idea. Second idea, when we started getting rid of CDs and storing our music electronically, we didn't want to have to go to stores to buy CDs to get music anymore. We don't believe in pirates and piracy. We think that when you steal music on the internet, it's bad karma. It's not a good thing. So we wanted to create a way to have a much better musical experience than stealing music and at a low price.

So we worked very hard with the music companies. It took us a year and a half to convince them to work with us, and we succeeded. We thought that in six months, we would sell a million songs a month. And we actually sold a million songs a week. A million songs a week. You talk about karma, you are very sensitive to karma. I think it's wrong to steal these things, that's all. So today, thanks to this giant jukebox on the internet, you say you sell a million songs a week, but you can only have it in the United States and only if you have a computer from your company. So is it coming to France tomorrow? Will we even have it in France, first of all? The ability to download music directly onto this jukebox?

The first thing we're doing is bringing it to Windows in the United States by the end of this year. So everyone in the United States will be able to use it. We then want to bring it over to Europe. We want to do that? Yes, sir. The problem is the music publishing companies. The music companies, we are working with them to get the rights for Europe. I think next year, we will absolutely be able to bring it to Europe. But the problem is the following. Well, for example, a song that is distributed in Great Britain might be published by one music company, and the same song will be published by another company in France. So it's a bit crazy, and we need to sort all that out, and that's what we're doing. It is true that it's a complicated market. How did the big music companies react? Because they might be afraid that we won't buy albums in stores tomorrow.

They reacted well to your project because it's much cheaper today to download a track for $1 compared to an album you buy for $20 you buy for $20 or $30. Yeah. You know what worried them was one thing, that if we only sold songs individually, which is how the music industry actually started, with singles, if we only sold songs individually, albums would disappear. That's right, that's what essentially worried them. But something interesting happened. So far, we've sold over 10 million songs, and half of them, 46%, were sold as albums, or... So we're giving users a choice, and half choose to buy individual songs, and half choose entire albums. Is there another object you dream of inventing today?

We still have a lot of work to do on music. It really doesn't exist in Europe yet. As you said, we haven't brought it to the rest of the world yet. So we're really focusing on music right now. But our computers, well, we realized three or four years ago that the personal computer was changing again in two key areas. The first area is productivity, spreadsheets, word processors, and that's what drove the industry forward. But we've hit a plateau in that area. Then the next era arrived, the age of the Internet. The Internet arrived, everyone bought a new computer to get online, and boom, it took off like a rocket. Then it flattened out again. The curve hit another plateau.

We invented software that lets you edit movies on a Mac for consumers. Without being an expert at reading a manual, you can plug in a camcorder, make a movie, a movie. It was fantastic. We realized that we could then work on movies, music, and now digital photography, and we wrote the best applications in the world to perform these tasks on the Mac. So if you have your digital camera, well, you can keep your entire photo library on your Mac. You can do amazing things. So what's happening is that your personal computer is becoming the hub of your digital life. If you have a digital camera, you can't do anything else with your photos except put them on your computer. Thank you, Steve Jobs, for being with us. I remind you that there is also the Pixar studio that is going to release Nemo, the film with Disney, the new animated feature, and perhaps tomorrow we will only make animated films digitally with inventions like those you have created.

You can see a few images, by the way. You are truly in the age, obviously, of the computer and the Internet. Thank you for being with us. We continue. Thanks for the info. Hit a moment effectively with a question. Is television that broadcasts all of Ben Laden's images complicit with Ben Laden? That Al Jazeera. And then a poll. If you could legally choose the sex of your child tomorrow, it is possible today. We will show you in a while. Well, would you do it? See you right after a commercial break.