Steve Jobs on Computers as a New Medium (1983)
At 28, Jobs explains why personal computers represent a revolutionary new medium of communication, drawing parallels to the electric motor's evolution and television's development. He argues designers must shape this technology beautifully, outlines Apple's strategy to miniaturize and democratize computing, and discusses how software, education, and interconnected systems will transform society.
What Is a Computer?
Computers Are Simple Machines Moving Electrons
A computer replaces mechanical gears and pistons with electrons that move around in response to instructions. The challenge is that electrons are invisible and billions operate in tiny spaces, making computers feel intimidating despite executing only trivial, mundane operations at extraordinary speed.
Speed Creates the Illusion of Magic
Computers execute simple instructions—fetch data, add numbers, test conditions—at roughly one million instructions per second. This speed makes basic operations appear magical, just as if someone could run at 100 times normal speed to fetch flowers, they would seem superhuman.
Computers Are Exceptionally Adaptive
Like the human brain, computers can move electrons to different locations based on previous results, allowing them to respond dynamically to changing conditions. This adaptability is fundamental to their power.
Computing Is a Young Field
Computers were invented in 1947, and the first university computer science degree (a master's) was awarded by UC Berkeley in 1968, meaning the oldest computer scientist in 1983 is only 39 years old. The average age of professionals at Apple is under 30.
The Evolution of Computing: From Large to Personal
The Electric Motor Analogy
The electric motor evolved from large, centralized units (early 1800s) to fractional-horsepower motors that could be deployed individually. Computers follow the same trajectory: from massive centralized machines (ENIAC, 1947) to time-sharing systems (1960s) to personal computers (1976 onward).
Time Sharing Brought Computers to the Masses
In the 1960s, one large computer could execute instructions so quickly that it could serve multiple users simultaneously (Fred's job, Sally's job, Don's job, Susie's job), each believing they had the whole machine. This made computers practical for college campuses and businesses.
Apple's Fractional-Horsepower Breakthrough
Apple discovered fractional-horsepower computing five years before competitors, embedding a microprocessor chip in a 13-pound machine that was a complete computer, not a terminal. People initially could not believe it was the entire computer until Jobs explained it repeatedly.
Personal Computer Market Explosion
The personal computer was invented in 1976. By 1983, the industry shipped over three million units. By 1986, more computers will ship than automobiles in the United States.
Design and Industrial Design Crisis
Computers Look Like Garbage; Design Matters
Most great product designers work on automobiles and buildings, not computers. Yet three million computers will ship in 1983 and ten million in 1986, regardless of appearance. It costs no more to make them beautiful, and they will dominate people's work, educational, and home environments.
America Has Lost Industrial Design Leadership
Most automobiles, televisions, audio equipment, watches, cameras, bicycles, and calculators are no longer designed in America but in Europe and Japan. The personal computer represents a rare opportunity to reclaim design leadership.
Computers Will Dominate Daily Interaction
By 1986-1987, people will spend two to three hours per day interacting with computers—longer than they spend in cars. Industrial design and software design must receive the same consideration given to automobiles, if not more.
Apple's Marketing Investment
Apple alone will spend over $100 million on media advertising in the next 12 months. IBM will spend at least an equivalent amount. The industry generates tens of millions in brochures and posters—more than the auto industry. This design and marketing work can be great or mediocre.
Computers as a New Medium of Communication
Personal Computers Are a New Medium
Like books, telephones, radio, and television, computers are a technology of communication. Each medium has unique opportunities and boundaries, and each shapes not only the content but the process of communication itself.
Medium Shapes the Process, Not Just Content
Telephone requires both parties present simultaneously. Electronic mail allows asynchronous communication—a recipient can retrieve a message at 12 a.m., three days later, or from New York. The medium fundamentally changes how people interact.
New Media Recapitulate Old Habits
When a new medium arrives, people initially fall back into old-media habits. Early television was radio with a camera pointed at it. It took the better part of the 1950s to understand television as its own medium. The JFK funeral and Apollo landing were watershed moments showing television's unique power.
Videodisc: Still in Old-Media Habits
The optical videodisc can store 55,000 images per side or an hour of video, randomly accessible. Currently, it is being used for movies—a reversion to old habits. Experiments like MIT's interactive Aspen street-walking system hint at future interactive possibilities, but the medium will take another 5-10 years to mature.
Personal Computers in the I Love Lucy Stage
Personal computers are currently in an early, imitative phase. They run COBOL and do business accounting—old-media habits. Only in the last four years have they begun breaking out into new possibilities like graphics and drawing.
Breaking Out: Lisa and New Possibilities
Lisa Enables Artistic Expression for Non-Artists
Lisa Draw allows anyone to create artistic pictures, erase, move, shrink, grow, and change texture. An airbrush darkens with more scrubbing. Users can combine pictures and words, then send them via electronic mail. This represents breaking out of old-media habits into new creative possibilities.
Proportional Fonts and Graphics Integration
Previous computers used nonproportional fonts where I's were as wide as W's, making typography poor. Lisa features 30-40 proportionally spaced fonts at approximately 80 dots per inch on screen and up to 300 dpi on laser printers. The goal is 600-800 dpi, integrating graphics with text to inject liberal arts into computers.
Vision: No Student Will Write Without a Computer
Within three to four years, college students will use computers for writing as naturally as they use calculators in science class today. The goal is for users to think, 'Wasn't this the way it always was?'—seamless integration of technology into daily life.
Computer Programs as Archetypal Ideas
Programs Have No Physical Form; They're Ideas
Unlike television programming, which captures specific experiences (like the JFK funeral), computer programs capture underlying principles. These principles enable thousands of different experiences that all follow the same laws.
Video Games Demonstrate Archetypal Principles
Pong follows the laws of gravity and angular momentum. No two games are identical, yet every game obeys the same underlying principles. This is the power of archetypal programming.
Hamurabi: Macroeconomic Learning for Seven-Year-Olds
The game Hamurabi lets children manage a kingdom for ten years, making decisions about land, grain, and population. If they do not plant enough, people starve. If they plant too much without enough workers, land goes unused. Children play for hours, learning macroeconomic principles interactively.
Future: Capturing the Spirit of Great Thinkers
If computers can capture underlying principles and ways of thinking, future generations might interact with machines that embody the wisdom of great minds like Aristotle. After a thinker dies, their machine could answer, 'What would Aristotle have said about this?' This preserves human knowledge in a new form.
Networking and Interconnection
Computers Will Connect Like People
Personal computers currently operate in stand-alone mode, but soon users will want to hook them together for communication. Over the next five years, standards for interconnection will evolve. Computers will sometimes work together well, sometimes not—just like people.
The Italian Farmer and the Third Wire
When an old telephone installer was asked if he could transmit Italian over the phone, he replied he would need to run a third wire for an extra $50. This humorous anecdote illustrates the current state of computer networking: different machines speak different languages and require custom solutions.
Xerox PARC: Local Area Networks and Emergent Communities
Xerox PARC connected 100 computers on a local area network. Distribution lists evolved for work groups (November forecast, new product Delta), but then unexpected communities formed: a volleyball list, a Chinese food cooking list. Before long, there were more lists than people—showing how networking facilitates bringing people together around shared interests.
Timeline for Solving Interconnection
Apple estimates five years to solve office computer networking and ten to fifteen years to solve home networking. The problems are fierce, but many teams are working on them.
Apple's Strategy: From Lisa to Portable Computing
Three-Step Product Roadmap
Apple's strategy is to design the computer it wants to build eventually, even if it cannot build it now. Step one: Lisa (fits in a breadbox, $10,000). Step two: Shoebox-sized computer for $2,500. Step three: Book-sized computer for under $1,000 within five to seven years. All will include radio links for wireless communication.
Lisa Funds the Future
Lisa is sold out for the next year and will generate over $100 million in first-year revenue. The office market values personal productivity enough to pay $10,000 per person, funding development of the technology that will eventually reach consumers at lower price points.
Learn to Use in 20 Minutes
Apple's goal is to create a computer so intuitive that anyone can learn to use it in 20 minutes. This ease of use is central to democratizing computing.
Design Tools for Graphic Designers
Proportional Fonts and Multiple Typefaces
Every computer to date has used nonproportional fonts where I's are as wide as W's, making it impossible to use multiple fonts or embed graphics with text. Lisa offers 30-40 proportionally spaced fonts at 80 dpi on screen and up to 300 dpi on laser printers, with a future goal of 600-800 dpi.
Injecting Liberal Arts Into Computers
Apple is solving the problem of bringing liberal arts—typography, graphics, design—into computers. The goal is that within three to four years, college students will use these tools as naturally as they use calculators, and will not think of writing papers any other way.
Graphic Design Tools Are Not Apple's Forte
Apple acknowledges that providing graphic design tools will never be its primary strength. However, relative to nothing, what Apple can deliver in the next five years is substantial. Eventually, people will be able to create images as good as any other method, but it will take the better part of the decade to reach affordable price levels.
Privacy, Information, and Knowledge
Information Abundance, Knowledge Scarcity
There is an incredible amount of information available, but very little ability to distill knowledge or wisdom from it. People are bombarded with data from congressional budgets, testimony, books, and journal articles. The challenge is filtering this information to what is relevant and turning it into actionable knowledge.
Distribute Intelligence to Prevent Concentration
To ensure a distributed society where knowledge is accessible to everyone, the first step is to give people tools to turn information into knowledge. Right now, these tools are centralized. Distributing this intelligence prevents concentration of power.
Personal Filtering and Civic Engagement
With proper tools, a person could filter all congressional testimony, journal articles, and newspaper articles on a topic of interest (e.g., gun control), discover their congressman's recent testimony, and send him a response via email. This empowers individuals to engage civically.
Electronic Funds Transfer as Privacy Risk
The most pressing privacy concern is electronic funds transfer, which could create a history of a person's whereabouts and financial transactions. Large centralized databases are less concerning than the ability to track individuals through their financial activity.
Education and Social Impact
California Commission on Industrial Innovation
Former California Governor Brown established the California Commission on Industrial Innovation in 1980 to plan infrastructure for future growth. The commission found that 44 percent of new jobs in California in the 1980s come directly or indirectly from high technology, with education identified as the biggest bottleneck.
Computer-Haves and Computer-Have-Nots
California is turning out almost as many welders as computer scientists, with few jobs for welders. A computer-haves and computer-have-nots divide is emerging. Schools that cannot afford computers will leave their students behind.
The Kids Can't Wait Program
Apple proposed giving a computer to every school in America (100,000 schools) at a cost of approximately $50 million. Apple offered to pay $10 million (25 percent of its 1981 profits) if Congress paid $40 million. The federal effort failed, but California passed the same law. The program, called The Kids Can't Wait, began rolling out 10,000 computers to California schools, one free per school.
Exposure, Not Transformation
The Kids Can't Wait program will not fundamentally change education, but it will ensure that interested students in under-resourced schools get exposure to computers. This is a catalyst, not a complete solution.
The Information Age and Economic Transition
Already in the Information Age
Over half of the gross national product is contributed by companies and people already in the information business. Most people manipulate information for a living. The transition is not future—it is now.
Retraining Displaced Workers
Most people laid off from General Motors will never return to that work. Unless they are retrained and given new skills, they will face severe hardship. This is one of the biggest problems facing America, yet it receives insufficient attention. Transitioning workers from manufacturing (e.g., putting fenders on cars) to information work is extremely difficult.
Software Distribution and Discovery
Too Many Programs, No Discovery Mechanism
There are about 20,000 programs for the Apple II and about 2,000 for the IBM PC. When buying software, consumers do not know what to choose and ask dealers, who also do not know. This is unlike records, where people know exactly what they want because radio stations provide free sampling.
Need a Software Radio Station
Software needs a discovery mechanism like radio for music. Instead of shipping physical media on trucks to dealers, software should be transmitted electronically over phone lines. Users could get 30 seconds free, five screenshots, or a one-day trial before purchasing with a credit card.
Entrepreneurial Opportunity in Software
A 13-year-old in Chicago started Aristotle Software with a 14-year-old friend and was making $4,000 per week selling three game programs. With one million Apple IIs in the market at $2,000 each, a $100 program that enables new functionality is a good deal. If a programmer sells to just 10 percent of existing owners (100,000 copies at $25 profit per copy), that is $2.5 million profit in the first year.
Apple's Culture and People Strategy
Low Turnover Through Ownership
Apple's turnover has been under 5 percent since inception. One hundred percent of professionals at Apple own stock in the company. This eliminates traditional labor-management barriers and aligns everyone toward the same goal of increasing stock value.
Shared Mission and Putting Something Back
Apple employees feel they are in the right place at the right time to put something back into human experience. People did not make their own clothes, grow their own food, or develop the language and mathematics they use. The ability to contribute to the pool of human knowledge is deeply motivating.
Hiring Great People, Not Just Good Ones
Apple believes some people are so good they can run circles around five pretty good people. These are idiosyncratic, artistic, fun people—the artists of the world. Apple maintains a small workforce (under 5,000 people) relative to revenue (approaching $1 billion) by hiring exceptional individuals.
Hiring for Potential, Not Current Fit
Apple hires people much better than needed for the current job, knowing they will be stretched within six months. The company also hires people to tell Apple what to do—to be independent thinkers who define their own roles rather than fill predefined positions.
Minimal Management Layers
The oldest and largest organization in the world—the Catholic Church—has only four layers of management (five if counting the highest order). Apple sees no reason to need more than four layers and typically operates with three: president, division manager, and marketing or engineering manager.
Open Access to Leadership
Anyone at Apple can see Jobs, John Sculley, or other leaders anytime they want (though scheduling may take a day or two). People at all levels float around and visit leadership. This maintains connection as the company grows.
Lisa as Company Bet
Apple gambled the entire company on Lisa. If Lisa had failed, Apple would have been just another computer company. For three and a half years, the best people at Apple worked on this product with no backup plan. This risk-taking culture attracts people who want to do great work.
Computer People Are Artists, Not Nerds
Computer professionals are closer to artists than to stereotypical nerds. They come to work around 11 a.m. or noon, play Ping-Pong, work hard, play volleyball in the afternoon, have dinner, work until 2-3 a.m., then wake up at 11 the next morning. They play in punk rock bands on weekends.
Future of Human-Computer Interaction
Voice Recognition Is a Decade Away
Voice recognition is better part of a decade away from practical use. The challenge is not just recognizing voice but understanding language, which is contextually driven. One word means different things in different contexts. People interact gracefully, going in and out of levels of detail. This is much harder than simple voice recognition.
Keyboard Will Remain for Years
Skilled typists will remain tied to the keyboard for many years. Voice recognition is not imminent, and even when it arrives, it will not replace typing for many applications.
Rising Technical Literacy
Technical literacy is gradually rising. Hewlett-Packard calculators with reverse Polish notation, Casio watches with 18 alarms, and automatic bank machines were once incomprehensible. Now people understand them. The problem is that people are learning on garbage devices, so education is still necessary even with better products like Lisa.
Move Away From Programming
People do not want to program computers; they want to use them. Apple's strategy is to write 90 percent of programs generically and let users fill in the last 10 percent. Word processors, database programs, and spreadsheet-modeling programs exemplify this approach. The future is programming with graphics—connecting dots.
Notable quotes
The computer will become the predominant medium of communication, just as television took over from radio. — Steve Jobs
It doesn't cost any more money to make it look great. We have a shot at putting a great object there. — Steve Jobs
Computer programs are archetypal. They capture underlying principles, not the experience itself. — Steve Jobs