Steve Jobs on selling apps based on life beyond the Net

January 21, 2001 3:52 AM

Steve Jobs on selling apps based on life beyond the Net "I edited a digital movie of my children using our iMovie software," he said. "It took me about an hour, and when I showed it to my wife, she started crying. It was clearly the most emotional thing I've ever done on a computer in my life." ... "The Internet is a wonderful thing and for a while it was such a blinding bright light that it obscured every other bright light," he said. "It's a wonderful thing, it's a magical thing, but there are other wonderful things too. Music is a wonderful thing. Movies are wonderful things."
posted by allaboutgeorge (13 comments total)

Profitability is a wonderful thing
posted by fullerine at 5:59 AM on January 21, 2001

"And I'd just like to say that this Oscar isn't just for me..." -- Steve "Gwynnie" Jobs
posted by holgate at 8:10 AM on January 21, 2001

It's pathetic that he ranks the consequence of an hour's time dicking around on a computer with some home videos as something more emotionally significant than all of the work he's done with Apple and helping to usher in the age of home computing.
posted by crunchland at 9:23 AM on January 21, 2001

I think it's pathetic that he's descended to being maudlin in order to sell his computers. Is that the level of desperation to which he's reduced?
posted by Steven Den Beste at 9:48 AM on January 21, 2001

There are still some people in the world to whom the uses you can put your computer to are more important than the numbers behind it. If Steve gets one person to buy a Mac so that they can do something cool with iMovie and iDVD, he's succeeded.
posted by darukaru at 9:54 AM on January 21, 2001

Steve is older now and has different priorities than he did when he was a young iconoclast. He appreciates things like family now in ways he didn't before. I'm sure he enjoys being CEO of Pixar not because it's a cool 3D company but because they make great movies everyone can enjoy.
posted by kindall at 10:53 AM on January 21, 2001

I don't normally have this type of attitude, but it's bubbling out of me now.

Until you've done it, shut your mouth.

I've used Final Cut Pro and Premiere for many years, but I recently took my digital video camera, plugged it into a low level iMac, fired up iMovie, and a short time later I had a Christmas movie playing fullscreen with 0% frameloss. I called everyone into the room and shared my cheesy holiday movie with my extended family.

There were tears.

Jobs' comments may sound silly, but it's true that a movie with a soundtrack has far more emotional power than the first time you printed out a spreadsheet, used a browser, or scanned a photo. Say what you want about business practices, colored plastics, etc. Steve's right on this one.


posted by jragon at 11:33 AM on January 21, 2001

Hey Mac people...
This is not a holy war. A computer is just that, a computer. An OS is just that, an OS. Windows and Mac seem to be the same anyway. If you want to use Mac OS that's fine, but you don't need to make such a big deal out of it.
posted by Bag Man at 6:34 PM on January 21, 2001

Geez, Steve, get a life!No one gives a damn about your cheesy home videos (even if you used a Mac to edit them)Oh wait, the Apple zealots probably do! I stand corrected!
posted by Mr. skullhead at 7:44 PM on January 21, 2001

The point is not Steve Jobs's cheesy home videos, but the ease with which his company's product allows you to create your very own cheesy home videos. People seem to really like that, for more or less the same reason that they liked camcorders and slide film.
posted by kindall at 7:50 PM on January 21, 2001

Bag Man: who are you talking to?
posted by ookamaka at 6:25 AM on January 22, 2001

Exactly kindall and jragon. The reason I bough an iMac DV was to edit down the hours of video I have of my son into something that's pleasant to watch. I already owned Macs before, but I would have bought a Wintel machine to do that if they had done it first and as well.

Of course, the thing they don't tell you in those Jeff Goldblum iMac/iMovie ads is that if you want to edit 7 hours of video down to 30 minutes, you're going to have to watch that 7 hours or raw video at least twice. Talk about fun.




posted by idiolect at 7:45 AM on January 22, 2001

Can a man not speak sincerely and also sell computers?
posted by Marquis at 8:04 PM on January 23, 2001