Steve Jobs at D8: Foxconn, iPhone prototype, TVs, and more
In case you hadn't heard, Steve Jobs got downright conversational last night at D8, riffing on questions from Walt, Kara, and the attending audience of elites. You can hit up the entire liveblog for a timestamped play by play, or browse through some of the highlights below.
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We put some extra scintillating quotes after the break to shield the eyes of your children. Just a note, however: all of these are paraphrased quotes typed live as Steve was speaking, and not to be construed as the verbatim Word of Steve Jobs, though the gist is certainly there.
"In its day, HyperCard was more popular than Flash."
"Our goal is really easy -- we just made a tech decision. We aren't going to make an effort to put this on our platform. We told Adobe to show us something better, and they never did. It wasn't until we shipped the iPad that Adobe started to raise a stink about it. We were trying to have a fight, we just decided to not use one of their products. They made a big deal of it -- that's why I wrote that letter. I said enough is enough, we're tired of these guys trashing us."
(Asked about Valleywag's published email from Jobs) "He never identified himself as a journalist. I was up late and working and this guy starts sending me obnoxious emails... and I wanted to straighten this guy out. I'm just enough of a sucker... and he publishes it!"
(Asked if he sees a platform war with Google, Facebook) "No. And I never have. We never saw ourselves in a platform war with MSFT, and maybe that's why we lost."
(Asked why Apple didn't build a tablet first) "I'll tell you. Actually. It started on a tablet first. I had this idea about having a glass display, a multitouch display you could type on. I asked our people about it. And six months later they came back with this amazing display. And I gave it to one of our really brilliant UI guys. He then got inertial scrolling working and some other things, and I thought, 'my god, we can build a phone with this' and we put the tablet aside, and we went to work on the phone."
(Asked whether the tablet will replace the laptop) "When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks. But as people moved more towards urban centers, people started to get into cars. I think PCs are going to be like trucks. Less people will need them. And this is going to make some people uneasy."
(Asked about app store controversy) "Well let first say we have two platforms we support. One is open and uncontrolled -- that's HTML5. We support HTML5. We have the best support for it of anyone in the world. We then support a curated platform which is the app store. It is the most vital app community on any platform. How do we curate this? It's a bunch of people, and they come into work every day. We have a few rules: has to do what it's advertised to do, it has to not crash, it can't use private APIs. And those are the three biggest reasons we reject apps. But we approve 95 percent of all the apps that are submitted every week... We're doing the best we can, we're fixing mistakes. But what happens is -- people lie. And then they run to the press and tell people about this oppression, and they get their 15 minutes of fame. We don't run to the press and say 'this guy is a son of a bitch liar!' -- we don't do that."
Walt: "Okay, one theme we want to ask about here is privacy. Sorry Mark. There seems to have been a spate of mistakes or false starts: Facebook, Buzz..." Steve: "Or Google's WiFi collection."
"We want to let people watch whatever they want, when they want. That's what needs to change... It's happening now. I think that is changing a lot. I even think you'll be able to watch a first run movie before it hits theaters... if you want to spend a bunch of money."
