Steve Jobs on the iMac: Making Great Computers Easy

All right, 15 years ago, Apple was almost down and out before bringing back co-founder Steve Jobs to right the ship. But when Neil spoke with Jobs back in 1998, while he was still interim CEO, and just a day before the launch of the iMac, it was clear Steve Jobs had a plan to change the world. Take a listen. Steve, good to have you. Thank you for coming. Thanks for asking me. The iMac itself is getting rave reviews, and I'm almost wondering whether the demand for the machine, which seems very strong, whether you have enough machines to meet it. Right. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, we're making a lot of them. But we're going to find out, since the iMac goes on sale this Saturday, tomorrow, across the U.S., and in about two weeks in Europe and Japan, we're going to find out what the real demand is.

And it could exceed lots. So we don't know yet. You, in fact, I'm told, came up with the campaign, I think, therefore iMac. Is that true? Oh, the campaign is much broader than that. That's just one of the lines from one of our billboards. We've got some other great ones. One of my favorites is chic, not geek. Well, for the geeks in the audience, myself included, we appreciate that. I notice that this campaign is very gutsy in that it harkens back to the Apple of old. Was that your mission statement here, to get back to the Apple of old? You know, our mission statement is to just make some great computers that can really make a difference to people. I mean, the iMac, you can take an iMac home, take it out of the box, and be cruising the Internet in ten minutes. You know, try that on a PC. You're talking more like an hour.

So I think what we want to do is make some great products and then tell people about them. And I think tell people about them in an intelligent, witty, kind of fun way. And hopefully the ad campaign that breaks this Sunday on Wonderful World of Disney starts to do that. About this issue that some of the purists mentioned, there is no floppy drive, so they're worried about that. What do you say? You know, when you move forward, sometimes people don't understand, but the floppy drive is pretty obsolete. You know, there's a few things you could use it for. You could distribute software on it, except that all software is now distributed on CD-ROMs. You could back up your multi-gigabyte hard disk, except you'd need thousands of floppy drives to do that, so nobody does it. And you could use it for sneaker net, except everybody's using the Internet for that now. So it turns out that it's kind of obsolete.

Now, if you want one, of course, on an iMac, you can add one. I think they're going to be about $80 or $90. But more customers will probably choose to add nothing or potentially a much higher capacity zip drive or iMation SuperDrive, which can hold 100 megabytes or more. Given all of your other undertakings, is this a labor of love, or is it just your mission statement now to get Apple back on track? You know, I think Apple started in my parents' garage, and Steve Wozniak and I put a lot of years into it, and I think Apple has a lot to contribute still. And I think the computer industry is still very young, and I think Apple is the company that's made great technology really easy and really approachable for people.

And I think the world would be a slightly worse-off place without Apple Computer. Let me ask you about personally what you want to see now. How long do you stick with Apple in this interim basis to see the company through the hard times? You know, I decided about six or nine months ago that this wasn't my problem. And so I wasn't going to worry about it. And I don't worry about it right now. I just worry about things like getting the iMac launched and making enough. So would you have veto power, Steve, over who might or might not take the helm of the company? You know, I have no idea. I assume that they would seek my advice. Have they? It's not even a topic of discussion right now. I think the topic of discussion is how can we make the iMac – how can we make as many iMacs as we can?

How can we get them out there? How can we support our dealers? What kind of marketing campaign are we going to put in place? We've had, you know, tremendous success with our software developers. The developers are coming back to the Mac in droves and working with them. These are the things that are on our mind right now. All right. Steve, a pleasure. Thank you. And congratulations again. Okay. Steve Jobs. Take care. Terrific interview with Steve Jobs.