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Steve Jobs has been right twice. The first time he was right, we got Apple. The second time he was right, we got NeXT. The Macintosh ruled. NeXT tanked. Still, Jobs was right both times. His fundamental insight -- that personal computers were destined to be connected to each other and live on networks -- was just as accurate as his earlier prophecy that computers were destined to become personal appliances.
On a foggy morning last year, I drove down to the headquarters of NeXT Computer Inc in Redwood City, California, to meet Jobs. The building was quiet and immaculate, with that atmosphere of low-slung corporate luxury typical of successful Silicon Valley companies. Ironically, NeXT is not a success. After burning through hundreds of millions of dollars from investors, the company abandoned the production of computers, focusing instead on the sale and development of its NeXTSTEP operating system and on extensions into object-oriented technology.
A different type of executive might have talked only about Pixar [the imminent IPO of Pixar, which Jobs founded in 1986, was about to make him a billionaire]. But Jobs was fixed on the next big thing. After all, people often become more interesting when they've failed at something, and with his fall from Apple, the struggle at NeXT, and the triumph of Pixar, Jobs is now moving into his second circuit around the wheel of fortune. What has he learned?
The Macintosh computer set the tone for ten years. Do you think the web may be setting the tone today? The desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased. Microsoft dominates with very little innovation.
That's over. Apple lost. The desktop market has entered the dark ages, and it's going to be in the dark ages for the next ten years, or certainly for the rest of this decade.
It's like when IBM drove a lot of innovation out of the computer industry before the microprocessor came along. Eventually, Microsoft will crumble because of complacency, and maybe some new things will grow. But until that happens, until there's some fundamental technology shift, it's just over.
The most exciting things happening today are objects [software modules that can be combined into new applications, much as pieces of LEGO are built into toy houses] and the web. The web is exciting for two reasons. One, it's ubiquitous.
There will be web dial tone everywhere. And anything that's ubiquitous gets interesting. Two, I don't think Microsoft will figure out a way to own it. There's going to be a lot more innovation, and that will create a place where there isn't this dark cloud of dominance.
Why do you think the web has sprouted so fast? One of the major reasons for the web's proliferation so far is its simplicity. A lot of people want to make the web more complicated. They want to put processing on the clients, they want to do this and that. I hope not too much of that happens too quickly.
It's much like the old mainframe computing environment, where a web browser is like a dumb terminal and the web server is like the mainframe where all the processing's done. This simple model has had a profound impact by starting to become ubiquitous.
And objects? When I went to Xerox PARC in 1979, I saw a very rudimentary graphical user interface. It wasn't complete. It wasn't quite right. But within ten minutes, it was obvious that every computer in the world would work this way someday. And you could argue about the number of years it would take, and you could argue about who would be the winners and the losers, but I don't think you could argue that every computer in the world wouldn't eventually work this way.
Objects are the same way. Once you understand objects, it's clear that all software will eventually be written using objects. Again, you can argue about how many years it will take, and who the winners and losers will be during this transition, but you can't argue about the inevitability of this transition.
How will objects affect the web? Think of all the people now bringing goods and services directly to customers through the web. Every company that wants to vend its goods and services on the web is going to have agreat deal of custom-application software to write. You're not just going to be able to buy something off the shelf. You're going to have to hook the web into your order-management systems, your collection systems. It's going to be an incredible amount of work.
The number of applications that need to be written is growing exponentially. Unless we can find a way to write them in a tenth of the time, we're toast.
The end result of objects -- this repackaging of software -- is that we can develop applications with only about ten to 20 per cent of the software development required any other way.
We see how people won the battle of the desktop by owning the operating system. How does one win on the web? There are three parts to the web. One is the client, the second is the pipes, and the third is the servers. On the client side, there's the browser software. In the sense of making money, it doesn't look like anybody is going to win on the browser software side, because it's going to be free. And then there's the typical hardware. It's possible that some people could come out with some very interesting web terminals and sell some hardware.
On the pipe side, the RBOCs [regional teleco companies] are going to win. In the coming months, you're going to see a lot of them offering a service for under $25 a month. You get ISDN strung into your den, you get a little box to hook it into your PC, and you get an internet account, which is going to be very popular. The RBOCs are going to be the companies that get you on the web. They have a vested interest in doing that. They'd like to screw the cable companies; they'd like to preserve the customers. It's under the ground like the roots of a tree, it's going to spring up and you're going to see this big tree within a few years.
As for the server market, companies like Sun are doing a nice business selling servers. But with web server software, no one company has more than a single-digit market share yet. Netscape sells hardly any, because you can get free public-domain software and it's very good. Some people say that it's even better than what you can buy.
Our company decided that people are going to layer stuff above this very simple web server to help others build web applications, which is where the bottleneck is right now. There's some real opportunity there for making major contributions and a lot of money. That's what WebObjects is all about.
What other opportunities are out there?
Who do you think will be the main beneficiary of the web? Who wins the most?
People who have something... To sell!
To share. To sell!
You mean publishing? It's more than publishing. It's commerce. People are going to stop going to a lot of stores. And they're going to buy stuff over the web!
What about the web as the great democratiser? If you look at things I've done in my life, they have an element of democratising. The web is an incredible democratiser. A small company can look as large as a big company and be as accessible as a big company on the web. Big companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars building their distribution channels. And the web is going to completely neutralise that advantage.
What will the economic landscape look like after that democratic process has gone through another cycle?
The web is not going to change the world, certainly not in the next ten years. It's going to augment the world. Andonce you're in this web-augmented space, you're going to see that democratisation takes place.
The web's not going to capture everybody. If the web got up to ten per cent of the goods and services in this country, it would be phenomenal. I think it'll go much higher than that. Eventually, it will become a huge part of the economy.
What's the biggest surprise this technology will deliver?
The problem is I'm older now, I'm 40 years old, and this stuff doesn't change the world. It really doesn't.
That's going to break people's hearts.
I'm sorry, it's true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We're born, we live for a brief instant, and we die.
It's been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much -- if at all.
These technologies can make life easier, can let us touch people we might not otherwise. You may have a child with a birth defect and be able to get in touch with other parents and support groups, get medical information, the latest experimental drugs. These things can profoundly influence life. I'm not downplaying that. But it's a disservice to constantly put things in this radical new light -- that it's going to change everything. Things don't have to change the world to be important.
The web is going to be very important. Is it going to be a lifechanging event for millions of people? No. I mean, maybe. But it's not an assured "Yes" at this point. And it'll probably creep up on people.
Then how will the web impact our society? We live in an information economy, but I don't believe we live in an information society. People are thinking less than they used to. It's primarily because of television. People are reading less and they're certainly thinking less. So, I don't see most people using the web to get more information. We're already in information overload. No matter how much information the web can dish out, most people get far more information than they can assimilate anyway.
If you go back five years, the web was hardly on anybody's horizon. Maybe even three years ago, it wasn't really being taken seriously by many people. Why is the sudden rise of the web so surprising? Isn't it great? That's exactly what's not happening in the desktop market... The web reminds me of the early days of the PC industry. No one really knows anything. There are no experts.
All the experts have been wrong. There's a tremendous open possibility to the whole thing. And it hasn't been confined, or defined, in too many ways. That's wonderful. There's a phrase in Buddhism: "Beginner's mind." It's wonderful to have a beginner's mind.
How does the web affect the economy? We live in an information economy. The problem is that information's usually impossible to get, at least in the right place, at the right time.
The reason Federal Express won over its competitors was its package-tracking system. For the company to bring that package-tracking system on to the web is phenomenal. I use it all the time to track my packages. It's incredibly great. And getting that information out of most companies is usually impossible.
But it's also incredibly difficult to give information. Take auto dealerships. So much money is spent on inventory -- billions and billions of dollars. Inventory is not a good thing. Inventory ties up a ton of cash, it's open to vandalism, it becomes obsolete.
It takes a tremendous amount of time to manage. And, usually, the car you want, in the colour you want, isn't there anyway, so they've got to horse-trade around. Wouldn't it be nice to get rid of all that inventory? Just have one white car to drive and maybe a laserdisc so you can look at the other colours. Then you order your car and you get it in a week... You find that it's not how long it takes to make stuff; it's how long it takes the information to flow through the system. And yet electronics move at the speed of light -- or very close to it.
The best way to think of the web is as a direct-to-customer distribution channel, whether it's for information or commerce. It bypasses all middlemen. And, it turns out, there are a lot of middlepersons in this society. And they generally tend to slow things down, muck things up and make things more expensive. The elimination of them is going to be profound.
Does the web foster more freedom for individuals? It is a levelling of hierarchy. An individual can put up a website that, if they put enough work into it, looks just as impressive as the largest company in the world. I love things that level hierarchy, that bring the individual up to the same level as an organisation, or a small group up to the same level as a large group with much greater resources. And the web and the internet do that. It's a very profound thing, and a very good thing.
How did Windows become ubiquitous?
A force of self-interest throughout the industry made Windows ubiquitous. Compaq and all these different vendors made Windows ubiquitous. They didn't know how to spell software, but they wanted to put something on their machines. That made Windows ubiquitous.
So it just kind of happened. No, it was sort of an algorithm that got set in motion when every- one's self-interest aligned toward making this happen.
And I claim that the same sort of self-interest algorithm is present on the web. Everyone has a self-interest in making this web ubiquitous and not having anyone own it -- especially not Microsoft.
Apple has won a reputation for making well-designed products. Why aren't more products made with the aesthetics of great design? Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn't what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. It takes a passionate commit- ment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don't take the time to do that.
Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesise new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.
Unfortunately, that's too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences. So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
