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Video of Steve Jobs with his NeXT team circa 1985
Seeing as this week is generally slow on Apple news (aside from Black Friday sales, of course), I thought it might be a good time to highlight an interesting video of Steve Jobs during his early days at NeXT. And by early, I mean just a few months into the company's existence. The video below was filmed as part of a broader documentary and highlights two company brainstorming sessions amongst Jobs and the first NeXT employees. The video includes footage taken in December of 1985 and in March of 1986. Note that NeXT itself was formed in September of 1985. The video provides an interesting look into the early days of NeXT (whose employees at the time included many folks who worked on the original Mac), the pscyhe of Jobs, and some of the more general problems and issues that accompany the launch a new startup venture. One particularly interesting moment in the video is when legendary graphic designer Paul Rand unveils the NeXT logo to the team for the first time. Rand, whose portfolio at the time included corporate logos for the likes of IBM and UPS, was paid $100,000 by Jobs to come up with the NeXT logo.
AT&T lowers Next device pricing, just happens to trump Verizon
Competition can be a beautiful thing. AT&T's Next upgrade pricing hasn't looked good when compared against Verizon Edge in the weeks since launch, but today is a different story: the carrier has quietly lowered the monthly payments for some devices. While the company hasn't said which hardware is cheaper, the Galaxy S 4 and iPhone 5 have dropped from $32.50 per month to $27. Prices are down for BlackBerry and Nokia devices as well, a tipster says. As MacRumors notes, the bargains are rather convenient. While AT&T isn't offering as good a deal as T-Mobile, a 16GB iPhone 5 now costs $1 less through one year of Next payments than it does with a similar Verizon Edge plan. You'll want to act soon if you like what you see, too. AT&T tells us that this is a promotion; although there's no firm end date for the discounts, we wouldn't count on these rates lasting forever. [Thanks, Anonymous]
Steve Jobs' NeXTcube on display
The Cartoon Art Museum held its annual NeXTEVNT fundraiser on Monday and one of the stars of the show was Steve Jobs' personal NeXTcube that was there on loan from Pixar. Photos of the NeXTcube on display were shot by Dave Hamilton of The Mac Observer. Hamilton attended the event on behalf of TMO, which co-sponsored the shindig with a handful of other tech companies. The NeXT Cube was brought to the NeXTEVNT event by Cartoon Art Museum board member Dr. Michael Johnson, who is a longtime Objective-C coder and Pixarian. Tickets to the event were US$200 each, and the money raised from ticket sales went to support the Cartoon Art Museum. You can read more about the event and check out some additional photos on The Mac Observer's website. It looks like some great geek fun.
Jon Rubinstein joins Qualcomm board of directors
When Jon Rubinstein left HP, it wasn't certain whether he would retire (again) or once more respond to the siren's call of technology. Clearly, he couldn't resist -- Qualcomm has confirmed that Rubinstein is joining its board of directors. It's not hard to understand why the firm would be interested, mind you. Between NeXT, Apple, Palm and HP, Rubinstein has extensive experience with Silicon Valley technology in general, and mobile in particular. While Qualcomm is already doing blockbuster business without his help, it no doubt wants to keep the money train going. Us? We're just happy to see a familiar name back in the limelight.
Next for iPhone seeks to easily log and track your spending, expenses
I feel like we're starting to see another boom in well-designed apps that do cool things easily. Next (US$1.99) is in that category, as the app's interface is clean, intuitive and responsive. That's good, because the app is designed to reduce the friction needed to log expenses -- something that can be a real pain when you're juggling a latte, briefcase and iPhone. But Next does it well, with a few caveats. Design If you're a fan of stitched leather, the minimalist aesthetic Next uses may not appeal to you. I like how the grid of buttons is like your iOS home screen, how swiping to see different views is like Reminders. Next is clean and efficient. Icons representing expenses are arranged in a grid, and as you enter expenses the icons get a darker shade of blue. I think the palette could use some expansion, however, as the icons are basically white, light blue or dark blue based on my range of $0-1,300 in expenses. As you are entering data into a category the icon turns red and a numeric keypad with just the right buttons slides up. You can enter numbers, change the date of the expense and hit a nice big checkmark to enter that number. The numeric pad stays up, so you can click other expenses and rapidly sort and enter your data. Swiping between the three screens reveals a week/month/year view (Statistics) of your spending and a day-by-day scrolling list (Expenses) of what you've spent. The typography is crisp, and the app is fast and responsive. Functionality Obviously Next is designed for speed, and it doesn't disappoint when it comes to entering your data. You can press and hold to re-arrange your icons, but you can't really name or add more info to the icons. You just get icons. The Statistics view shows a simple bar graph (most spent to least), but each item can be expanded with a tap to view a line graph of your spending over time. The Expenses view, on the other hand, is just a simple list by day with what you spent on what. A simple swipe to the left brings up a nice inline delete option on each item. Next keeps things simple but that can be a problem if you want to integrate with other tools. There's no way to move this data anywhere else, and no way to import anything. So Next is great if you just need a singular app for logging expenses, but not great if you're looking for a comprehensive personal finance tracker. Conclusion Ultimately Next is probably great for anyone needing to gut check their expenses, or if it works into your process for keeping your finances up-to-date. In terms of data entry, it is excellent. I love the crisp look, and the speed at which tasks are completed. If you don't need it to connect to anything and if you are developing a habit of logging expenses on your iPhone, Next is a slick way to do it.
Documentary on Steve Jobs building NeXT
The Loop has posted a link to a documentary that shows Steve Jobs running a meeting while he was at NeXT, the company he formed in 1985 after leaving Apple. The company's mission was to produce high-end workstations for colleges and the business market. It's always interesting seeing Jobs interact with people, and the video shows him listening and trying to move his colleagues along to his way of thinking. The documentary was shot over several months, so we see the earliest days of Jobs at NeXT and then see Jobs dealing with issues such as getting software shipped on time and dwindling funds. You'll also get a look at Paul Rand, one of the great logo designers who did the logos for NeXT, IBM, UPS, ABC and many others. Apple bought NeXT in 1996 and in 1997 brought Jobs back to the company he started. The rest, as they say, is history.
Next-gen iPhone parts purportedly leak again, get assembled sans innards (update: video)
Ready for another supposed look at the next-gen Apple iPhone? Matching up with previous leaks we've reported on, the elongated iPhone body with a miniaturized docking port and brushed metal back has appeared again, this time courtesy of iLab Factory. While many of its parts look astoundingly similar to what we've already seen, this is the first time we've gotten a solid look at it fully assembled from all angles -- well, aside from the missing SIM card holder. While most of its all-important innards are clearly absent, this assembly does come complete with what appears to be the locking ribbons for the screen and home button. As always, grab the obligatory spoonful of sodium chloride, then check it out for yourself at the gallery and links below. Update: Japanese site Macotakara (via PhoneArena) has published a video of the above chassis being taken apart and generally manhandled. It's embedded after the break.%Gallery-161320%
Daily Update for April 18, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Fast Company on the 'wilderness years' of Steve Jobs
Brent Schlender of Fast Company has written a great long-form article on Steve Jobs's so-called "wilderness years" -- the period between when Jobs was ousted from Apple in the mid 80s and his return in the late 90s. Many people (wrongly) tend to think of this period as Jobs sort of aimlessly drifting until his triumphant return to Apple, but Schlender convincingly argues that it was during this time that Jobs grew into the sort of businessman who could not only bring Apple back from the brink of bankruptcy, but transform it into the world's most valuable company. Jobs was indeed busy during that decade, founding NeXT and helping to transform Pixar into a giant force within the entertainment industry. While Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs goes into the details of this period of Jobs's life, Isaacson seems to treat both NeXT and Pixar as diversions or distractions from the bigger goal: Apple. Schlender instead argues that Steve Jobs brought the same devotion to those two companies that he brought to Apple, and his work at both companies made him into exactly the CEO Apple needed. Schlender's article is quite long, but it's a very good read. If you can, set aside some time and read the whole thing.
Stanford archives provide rare glimpse into Apple's early days as mere seedling (video)
Housed in a climate controlled storage facility operated by Stanford University, nearly 600 feet of shelf space is dedicated to preserve documents, videos and memorabilia of Apple and its early days as a young startup. The collection holds rare gems such as interviews with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, both of whom discuss some of the rationale behind Apple's name -- Jobs asserts that it was selected to place his company ahead of Atari in the phone book. Originally intended to furnish Apple's corporate museum, the materials were donated to Stanford in 1997 after Steve Jobs' return to the company, which was most concerned with financial survival at the time. According to the university, more than 20 significant collections have been added to the archives in the subsequent years. The warehouse holds blueprints of the Apple I, user manuals, magazine ads, TV commercials and T-shirts, along with thousands of photographs that document Steve Jobs during his years as CEO of NeXT. Other rarities include a $5,000 loan document -- signed by the two Steve's and the partnership's third co-founder, Ron Wayne -- a spoof of Ghostbusters that starred former CEO John Sculley and other company leaders, who played "Blue Busters" to eliminate IBM, and handwritten sales entries of the very first Apple II's. While the location of the facility is undisclosed, we can only hope that, some day, the collection will be showcased for fanboys, fangirls and the public alike.
Apple acquired NeXT 15 years ago, Jean-Louis Gassée still dreaming of what could've been
It might be hard to picture now, but back in the mid-nineties, the threat of bankruptcy was very real for a company headquartered in Cupertino. That would all change with the purchase of NeXT on December 20, 1996 -- a move that gave the fledgling computer maker a modern OS, but more importantly brought one of its founders, Steve Jobs, back into the fold. The rest is history, as Jobs eventually secured the helm, forming a team that would go on to birth products like the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. But hardware innovation aside, ultimately that comeback wouldn't have been possible without OS X -- an OS which arose directly out of the ashes of NextStep. Sure, there was the occasional misstep along the way -- G4 Cube and hockey-puck mouse be damned -- but frankly we can't think of any turnaround as epic, nor relevant. Can you?
On this day in 1996, Apple acquired NeXT (Updated)
Updated to clarify that 10.0 was the first official client version of Mac OS X, and that Mac OS X Server shipped prior to its release. On this day, December 20, just fifteen years ago, Apple paid $400 million to purchase NeXT. That's the move that brought Steve Jobs back to the company he helped to found, and it was the beginning of the incredible run of success that continues to this day. According to CNET's coverage on that day, the company was shopping for an operating system to replace the aging Mac OS. It had recently abandoned the Copland system project and was negotiating with Be and other companies. With the purchase of NeXT, Apple bought the core of what is now Mac OS X. It also gained WebObjects, the powerful Web app development tool that had been licensed to 275 corporate customers by the time of the sale to Apple. In addition to WebObjects, Apple also gained the powerful programming environment known as OpenStep. That was the core of the NeXTSTEP operating system, and is the heart of what became Cocoa for Mac OS applications. In fact, Cocoa classes start with the acronym NS, which stands for either the NeXT-Sun creation of OpenStep or for NeXTSTEP. In retrospect, it's humorous to look at then-chairman and CEO Gil Amelio's comment that "Apple expects to ship products with the NeXT operating system in 1997." The client version of Mac OS X didn't actually ship in a non-beta version until 10.0 "Cheetah" hit the market on March 24, 2001. Mac OS X Server 1.0 shipped in March of 1999, but it wasn't really recognizable as the Mac OS X we know today; it was a hybrid of NeXTSTEP UI elements and Mac concepts, and lacked the Carbon APIs. That $400 million dollar investment paid off in spades for Apple, both in the technology that it acquired and in bringing back Steve Jobs to save the company. It's hard to believe that everything that's happened in Apple's modern era started just 15 years ago, but it's true: OS X, and eventually the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad were all made possible by Apple's purchase of NeXT, and Steve Jobs' return to his company.
Inside NeXT: Steve Jobs documentary video
The Next Web has a fascinating link to a video documentary about Steve Jobs's time at NeXT that gives you some further insight into how he worked, and his determined and sometime volatile personality. The NeXT episode was filmed by John Nathan for a TV series called Entrepreneurs produced by WETA in Washington D.C. Some of the most interesting sections are Jobs pressing Joanna Hoffman at the 11 minute mark. Hoffman was one of the original members of the Mac team. His interaction with staff about delays in shipping at 15:33 is also a peek into the Steve Jobs worldview. You can watch the video clip below. Jobs introduced the NeXT computer in 1988 after he left Apple. In 1996 Apple bought NeXT, Jobs returned to Apple, and the rest, as they say, is history. [via TNW]
Steve Jobs's story of the stones
Next week, Landmark Theaters in 19 US cities will screen a 70-minute "lost interview" featuring Steve Jobs. The interview was done in 1996 by Robert X. Cringely for his PBS series "Triumph of the Nerds" and is being released in unedited form as Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview. Philip Elmer-Dewitt, writing for Fortune, said that his favorite section of the interview is when Jobs answers the question "What's important to you in the development of a product?". His response features a scathing blow to John Sculley -- "John Sculley got a very serious disease. It's the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work" -- as well as a sweet parable about the process of designing a product. In the interview, Jobs reminisces about an old man who lived down the street when he was a young boy. The man showed him a rock tumbler, and he and Jobs went out and got a handful of plain old rocks, then put them into the can with liquid and grit powder. They closed up the rock tumbler, turned it on, and then the man told Jobs to "come back tomorrow." The next day, the man opened the can and inside were these "amazingly beautiful polished rocks. The same common stones that had gone in through rubbing against each other like this (clapping his hands), creating a little bit of friction, creating a little bit of noise, had come out these beautiful polished rocks." Jobs goes on to say how that is a "metaphor for a team that is working really hard on something they're passionate about. It's that through the team, through that group of incredibly talented people bumping up against each other, having arguments, having fights sometimes, making some noise, and working together they polish each other and they polish the ideas, and what comes out are these beautiful stones." The interview will only be shown for two days in the US, so be sure to get your pre-sale tickets now. The theatrical trailer for the interview can be viewed below.
Computerworld releases long version of 1995 Steve Jobs interview
Computerworld has a piece of Apple history that Apple fans should watch. In 1995, a then 40-year-old Steve Jobs sat down with Computerworld's Daniel Morrow for a 75-minute interview. The one-on-one talk was recorded as part of an oral history project organized by the Computerworld Information Technology Awards Foundation. At this point in time, Jobs was still at NeXT and involved with Pixar. It was before he returned to Apple and took the technology world by storm with the iPod, iPhone and iPad. The interview is available as a single 75-minute clip for registered Computerworld users and as several shorter clips for those who don't have a free Computerworld login. The video interview discusses the early days of Steve Jobs's career -- his Silicon Valley roots, his removal from Apple and his time at NeXT and Pixar.
Journalist Brent Schlender shares memories of Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs interacted with many people over the course of his career at Apple, NeXT and Pixar. Employees and journalists covering his companies became part of his inner circle and got a rare glimpse of the real man behind the public persona. One such journalist was famed Fortune writer Brent Schlender. Schlender followed the career of Steve Jobs starting in 1987, covering him when he was at NeXT and then again as head of Apple. In a recent Fortune article, Schlender recounts his time with Jobs over the past two decades. He tells the story of how Jobs laughed when Schlender called him the "graying prince of a shrinking kingdom" in an article that appeared before Jobs introduced the iPod and turned Apple around. Schlender also recounts a time when Jobs invited him and his children over on a Saturday to show them an early version of Toy Story. Jobs wasn't interested in Schlender's opinion, he was watching the kid's reactions. Even though most of it was an animated storyboard and not fully fleshed out, the children were captivated by what they saw. You can read more about Jobs's interaction with Schlender and the media in his piece at Fortune. It may not be as comprehensive as Isaacson's biography, but it's still worth a read for those interested in a personal look at the man who co-founded Apple.
Steve Jobs on Apple in 1996, prior to his return
In 1996, Steve Jobs sat down with PBS' Wall $treet Week host Louis Rukeyser and discussed his current business ventures - Pixar and NeXT. He also touched briefly on his former project, Apple, which in 1996 was at an all-time low and considered to be "one of the failure stories of Wall Street." You can almost feel a twinge of pain in his voice when he says the company that he helped create has failed to innovate and lost its 10-year lead on the computing industry. Little did everyone know, Jobs would soon return to Apple and restore the company to its former glory.
SUFFER '11 farming robot plays a multitude of roles, takes commands via Wiimote (video)
So much for stereotypes, eh? The future of farming is being painted in a far different light here at NEXT Aarhus, where a team from the University of Southern Denmark brought in the largest Wiimote-controlled robot that we've ever seen. The heretofore unnamed beast (going by SUFFER '11 for the time being) is a farming-centric machine that's designed to take the load off of the landowners (while providing a bit of enjoyment all the while). Put simply, this modular bot can have various apparatuses swapped into its midsection -- one pop-in attachment could pick potatoes, while another could disperse pesticide, for example. There's even a module that'll enable it to detect rows and plow down the obvious routes, making it that much easier for farmers of the next millennium to take time off. Of course, the standout feature from our perspective was the inbuilt Bluetooth and WiFi, which allowed the demonstrator to operate the 'bot with a standard Wii remote. Per usual, the vid's after the break. %Gallery-131985%
Barobo iMobot teddy bear learns from your commands, will definitely make varsity (video)
Barobo's iMobot modular robotics system just launched earlier this year, and the folks behind it just started shipping the first kits last month. Turns out, they were on hand here at NEXT Aarhus with a bona fide demo, and we couldn't resist a quick demo. The actual kit is being hawked primarily to universities -- we're told that each $2,000 robot can be programmed to do just about anything, and if you stock up on a couple, you can produce full-on humanoids, a camera-toting rescue snake or something else that'll undoubtedly take over the world in just a few centuries. Each robotic piece is equipped with WiFi and Bluetooth, and aside from mounting points used for connecting family members, there's a couple of sensor ports that allow for rangefinders and proximity modules to be stacked on as well. The real show, however, happened when Elmo's long-lost cousin made an appearance. We're told that the creature is strictly a prototype using miniaturized versions of the robotic pieces that are on sale now. Those minis aren't up for order per se, but cutting the right check might land you with more than a smile. As you'll see in the video past the break, the software program written for the bear allowed it to "learn" movements that were dictated by the human holding it, and once the latest cheer was burned into its cotton-filled brain, a simple button press played things out in fantastical fashion. Have a look. You won't be disappointed. %Gallery-131980%
Live from Microsoft's Windows 8 preview event at Computex 2011!
Microsoft finally debuted the next version of its Windows operating system, codenamed Windows 8, at D9 earlier today, and now it's hitting up Computex over in Taipei with a partner preview event. We don't know quite what will be revealed here, but the new Win 8 UI has a touch-friendly look designed specifically to make tablet users feel more at home, so a peek at new slate hardware might not be completely out of the question. Join us after the break for all the live updates from the event.
