by Jason Snell
The Mac’s 35th birthday
It’s the 35th anniversary of the Mac, which also means it is (and I can’t really believe this) the 15th anniversary of my interview with Steve Jobs on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Mac:
Well, we’ve always been very clear on that. We don’t think that televisions and personal computers are going to merge. We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on.
We spent months negotiating the interview and the ground rules were kind of ridiculous: It’s a 20th Anniversary interview with no questions about the past. Jobs so clearly didn’t want to be there and he was off the line within five minutes. That article is a transcript of every word he said—with the exception of my final question, which asked him about his future as Apple CEO at a time when he had just received a secret cancer diagnosis.
It’s also the fifth anniversary of this interview I had with Phil Schiller and other Apple execs in which they reassured me of Apple’s commitment to the Mac:
“There is a super-important role [for the Mac] that will always be,” Schiller said. “We don’t see an end to that role. There’s a role for the Mac as far as our eye can see. A role in conjunction with smartphones and tablets, that allows you to make the choice of what you want to use. Our view is, the Mac keeps going forever, because the differences it brings are really valuable.”
Apple’s strategy with the Mac seems to have shifted quite a bit in the last five years, but I think it has led to a place where the company is focusing more attention on the Mac than it was back then, not less.