A 28-year-old Steve Jobs gives a talk at the 1983 International Design Conference in Aspen

Key ideas

Jobs argues the personal computer is a new medium still copying old ones, and asks designers to help make it great rather than so-so.

From a machine transcript of the audio. Quotes link to the moment they are said.

1. 1

   New media start by copying old ones

   Jobs says each new medium falls back on the habits of the last one: early television was radio with a camera pointed at it, and video discs were being used for movies. He places personal computers at the same stage in 1983, running COBOL and business accounting, and offers Lisa's drawing and mail tools as the start of a break from that.

2. 2

   Personal computing's fractional horsepower moment

   Jobs compares computers to electric motors, which spread slowly while huge, further once one motor was shared through a factory, and widely once small motors could sit where the power was needed. He maps this onto the first large computers, then time sharing, then the personal computer, and says Apple exists because it stumbled onto that last step five years before anyone else.

3. 3

   Good design costs no more

   Jobs tells a room of designers that computers look like garbage and will sell in huge numbers whatever they look like, yet making them look great costs no more money. He predicts people will soon spend more hours with these machines than in their cars, so he argues industrial and software design deserve at least the attention given to automobiles.

4. 4

   Build the future product before it fits

   Jobs says Apple's goal is a great computer in a book that can be learned in 20 minutes, with a radio link, which he calls technically impossible for now. Rather than wait or ship a poor one, Apple built the computer it wanted as a $10,000 machine. He says it just so turns out that an office market is buying it and will pay for the development, with cheaper versions to follow. He warns that once a company has something it is tempted to turn defensive, and says Apple gambled everything on Lisa with no backup.

5. 5

   Hire people who tell you what to do

   Asked how Apple grew so fast, Jobs says it hires people better than the current job needs and expects them to work out what should be done without convincing 30 others. He adds that every professional owns stock, that he wants few people for the revenue, and that three or four layers of management are enough. He describes the failure state as the day someone at Apple decides they can no longer make a difference.

In Steve’s words

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