This WWDC closing keynote from 1997 shows Steve Jobs in his element. He’s lively, slightly snarky, and completely “On.” Interestingly, John Paczkowski from All Things D points out a specific part of the Q & A from Jobs:
I tried a Newton,” he said. “I bought one of the early ones; I thought it was a piece of junk, I threw it away. I bought one of the Motorola Envoys; I thought it was a piece of junk after three months and threw it away. … Here’s my problem [with these devices]: My problem is, to me, the high-order bit is connectivity. The high-order bit is being in touch, connected to a network. … What I want is this little thing that I carry around with me that’s got a keyboard on it — because to do email you need a keyboard. … And it needs to be connected to the Net. So if somebody would just make a little thing where you’re connected to the Net at all times, and you’ve got a little keyboard. God, I’d love to buy one. But I don’t see one of those out there. And I don’t care what OS it has in it. So, you know, I don’t want a little scribble thing. But that’s just me.”
Famously, Steve would later go on to say in 2010 “…if you see a stylus, they blew it.” While he was talking about a keyboard in 1997, and he was most likely thinking of a physical keyboard, this actually has a lot to do with his 2010 statement. Really, his problem with devices of that era wasn’t their lack of a physical keyboard. It was the way their screens worked and their lack of constant network access. Capacitive touchscreens that allowed for halfway decent portable keyboards combined with always on Wi-Fi and cell data have truly realized Steve’s dream device of the nineties.
Steve Jobs was always thinking, and this is just one example of his ability to find really good ideas and then execute on them.
Source: All Things D
