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Steve Jobs Makes Some Amazing Predictions in This ‘Lost’ Portion of a 1983 Speech

Oct. 3, 2012 3:04pm Liz Klimas

Some would describe the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs as visionary. But just how forward thinking he and the company was early on might not have been realized to its fullest extent — until now.

A recently uncovered 1983 speech puts Jobs at the International Design Conference in Aspen. Marcel Brown with Life Liberty Tech points out the speech was highlighted earlier this year but cut off after Jobs’ 20 minutes of prepared remarks, leaving a Q&A session “lost.” Brown has recovered and digitized the full audio.

These unprepared remarks, Brown writes, show Jobs’ “incredible insight into his vision of future technology.”

Listen to Steve Jobs Futuristic Remarks from 1983 International Design Conference in Aspen

This cassette was given to Brown from a client who was an attendee of Jobs' 1983 speech. (Photo: Marcel Brown/Life Liberty Tech)

“This talks shows us just how incredibly ahead of his time he was,” Brown writes.

Listen to the full speech — both the prepared 20 minutes plus the Q&A (Note: new audio starts at 21:30. The entire speech is 54:23.):

In the speech, Jobs says, “Apple’s strategy is really simple.” He goes on to essentially describe the MacBook but notes that there were technical impossibilities preventing their idea from coming to fruition at the time but envisioning achieving goals within the decade. “So, we had three options,” he says.

“Option one was to do nothing. As I mentioned, we are all pretty young and patient, so that was not a good option.

“The second was to put a piece of garbage computer in a book. [...] our competitors are doing that so we don’t need to do that.

“The third option was to design the computer that we want to put in the book eventually, even though we can’t put in the book now. Right now, it fits in a bread box and is $10,000… it just so turns out, fortunately, there is a giant office market out there that is buying these things a lot faster than we can make them.”

Jobs goes on to say that the next thing they planned to do with this technology is find a way to put it in a shoebox (referencing the size) and sell it for $2,500.

Steve Jobs, left, chairman of Apple Computers, John Sculley, center, president and CEO, and Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, unveil the new Apple IIc computer in San Francisco, April 24, 1984. (Photo: AP/Sal Veder)

“Finally, we’ll find a way to get it in a book and sell it for under $1,000.”

The birth of the MacBook went as Jobs described.

Here are a few of the futuristic highlights from the speech pulled out by Brown (Editor’s note: headers mentioning the current Apple technology were added to Brown’s highlights ):

iPhone: He confidently talks about the personal computer being a new medium of communication. Again, this is before networking was commonplace or there was any inkling of the Internet going mainstream. Yet he specifically talks about early e-mail systems and how it is re-shaping communication. He matter-of-factly states that when we have portable computers with radio links, people could be walking around anywhere and pick up their e-mail. Again, this is 1983, at least 20 years before the era of mobile computing.

Google Street View: He mentions an experiment done by MIT that sounds very much like a Google Street View application.

MacBook: He says Apple’s strategy is to “put an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you that you can learn how to use in 20 minutes”. Does that sound like anything we are familiar with today?

iTunes and Apps: He thought that the software industry needed something like a radio station so that people could sample software before they buy it. [...] He foresees paying for software in an automated fashion over the phone lines with credit cards.

Siri: Right at the end of the Q&A session, a question is asked about voice recognition, which he believed was the better part of a decade away from reality. Given the context of Siri today, it is interesting to hear him talk about the difficultly of recognizing language vs voice because language is contextually driven. He says, “This stuff is hard”.

Brown obtained the whole of the speech from John Celuch of Inland Design, who as an attendee of the conference was given a cassette recording of it at the time.

Check out Brown’s full post for more insights on the speech here.

Brown also writes that Celuch, who met Jobs at the conference, was given something to put into a “time capsule,” which has yet to be dug up. Brown writes that he’ll provide more information on this in future articles.

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Comments (34)

bernieyuiop
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 8:41pm
Most of the people bad mouthing Jobs on here are Microsoft Geeks who make their living fixing the PC garbage that never works right the first time, unlike Mac’s. They just work, right out of the box. No drivers to load, no blue screens of death, no virus’s, or open ports for people to steal your money or identity. Plug in a peripheral, it works. No prompts no reboots. Jobs was the visionary Gates always wished he could have been. Go wallow in your worthless Windows machines trying to get them to function like a Mac. Meanwhile I’ll be making money with my Mac. Plus my Mac holds it’s value unlike your PC which will be worthless a year after you buy it. I can sell my used 5 year old Mac for almost what I paid for it 3 years ago. Show me a PC that can do that? You can’t. Their garbage, right out of the box. ha!

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- Mikev5
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 10:49pm
  bernieyuiop
  
  You are an apple zombie a Microsoft computer is nothing like you say get off the meds and Microsoft doesn’t make computers you fool it makes software a big difference if a Microsoft OS supplied computer crashes it’s the hardware not the OS with the problem fool. I happen to know a Mac computer will crash and does crash quiet frequently and they do lock up and they do not work at times they are not the perfect computer as you proclaim not even close.
  
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- bernieyuiop
  Posted on October 5, 2012 at 9:51am
  First of all I don’t take “meds” don’t believe in pharmaceuticals or the industry that promotes them. Second of all, thank you for making my point. Apple strictly controls the hardware and software of their products thus making them much more secure and less prone to crashing due to poorly written software and inferior hardware by third party vendors. Thirdly, by its very nature a Mac is more stable and secure because it is based on the Unix operating system. I have been in the computer business longer than you have probably been alive. I have lived and continue to live in both the PC and Mac world and there is no comparison in terms of quality of product. You get what you pay for. Microsoft has made great strides in making their systems better, or more like a Mac if you will, I will admit that. But they are far more likely to be attacked and infiltrated with malware and virus’s simply by the nature of their code not to mention sheer numbers of machines. I want to turn my computer on and have it work, like a television does. I don’t want to have to tinker with it when it fails to figure out why it isn’t working. I just want it to work. Mac’s do on occasion lock up, but in no way do they experience the same kinds of problems you find in the PC world. It’s why there are so many IT people, you need them to fix all the problems that arise with the equipment. I will give Microsoft this, they are great job creators. For that they get an A+
  
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rsanchez1
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 8:17pm
I think it’s a bit of a stretch to call these “predictions”. What they show is that Steve Jobs had a clear vision of where he wanted computing to go in 20-30 years, and since he was at the helm of a computer company, he made these things happen.

A lot of people ascribe a “messianic” status to Jobs. I think that by saying he “predicted” these things, it betrays a lot of Jobs worshipers working at The Blaze.

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timg47
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 6:35pm
Steve Jobs a visionary? oh please, he is anything but. if he got his way there never would have been an app store. apple (Jobs) never has been and never will be an innovator. Half the technology for twice the price. if you too dumb for technology you worship apple.

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- manandwolf
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 7:25pm
  oh please old man, though apple has become joke after the soccer mom/preteen market, and they are tyrants with their systems, to say that jobs was not an innovator only makes you look foolish, like a liberal spouting off…..
  
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MikeBMc
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 6:26pm
Did he say “Vote for Romney” at 51:04? Wow, he really was a visionary. LOL

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rafa2design
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 6:25pm
Steve Jobs moved the company in so many right directions, even cloud computing which was ahead of its time and now everyone is on it. I’ve read a lot of things he had said over the years and it makes for great business advice today. Sadly though since his passing, it seems like Apple has been playing it safe and has lost some of its wow factor that it had back from 1998-2007.

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BelieveMe
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 6:13pm
Listen to Steve Jobs. Listen to him. He is dead. His “vision” has caused the deaths of millions of people who simply don’t like his vision. Are you still listening to him? He is dead.

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BelieveMe
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:59pm
STEVE JOBS is DEAD. Hopefully, he is in HELL. Now, WE have to EVOLVE from this mess he left us in. We have kids who are idiots and becoming dumber, if that is possible. We have adults who cannot pass a DMV exam which is OPEN BOOK. We have COMPUTER ADDICTS who do nothing all day long except download or upload… STEVE JOBS is DEAD. He didn’t solve a SINGLE PROBLEM. He is responsible for CREATING MILLIONS of PROBLEMS, including how to LIVE in a DIFFERENT THREAD of LIFE. STEVE JOBS is DEAD! Thank you, God! Thank you!

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- ReaganBaby
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 6:25pm
  you are STUPID! Anything can be turned for evil, but its how we use it or teach our children to use it that can be a good thing. Steve Jobs didn’t make people dumb, but he made my life a whole lot more efficient which saves me time and money. And as far as wishing Steve Jobs to Hell, well I would not wish anyone to that eternal torment except for maybe the worst of the worst and even those if i was wishing anything i would wish they would not choose to be evil to go to hell in the first place.
  
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- amtsoundsmith
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 6:43pm
  Then turn off you computer idiot! What’s that…? Oh, you’d rather b1tch and moan about how awful technology is? I see…
  
  Report this comment
- one.dakine.howlie
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 7:21pm
  You’re a moron… Not even worth the time I’m taking to respond to your puke-filled comment.
  
  Report this comment
- yiska8
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 9:22pm
  @Believeme
  I agree that our children are becoming lazier and dumber because of too much technology. I grew up using computers as tools, but learned how to look up a word in the dictionary (before google) and learned how to do research in a library without a computer with an ancient card catalog! Yikes, right?. Parents don’t parent, the unions and the Dept of Education, and crappy teachers are more responsible for the downfall of this nation’s future.
  
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yiska8
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:39pm
Never been a tech zombie.Grew up with Apple,Tandy, and Commadore. They were taught to us as TOOLS, not entertainment or communication. Jobs was very far-seeing and highly inventive. I’m not a tech zombie, and can be pretty content without them and the PHONES! I think that kids now cannot live without them, and it’s scary. Computers are a great medium and convienient on many levels, but it’s about moderation. I had a couple of hours of tv and that’s it. Turn it off. We’re way past it that now. Nothing is ever turned off and it’s got people stressed and losing it with or without it. Jobs deserves the credit he gets and did leave a tremendous legacy that will span history and technology.

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thegodfather
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 4:52pm
Obama said in his infamous “You didn’t build that speech”……..”You think you’re so smart? There’s a lot of smart people out there” .

That goes double for you Jobs. Obama says ANYBODY could have invented that stuff you make. You’re just lucky Mr Jobs. “you didn’t build that”….

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- UseReasonNotMagic
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 5:22pm
  Have you read Malcolm Gladwell’s Book ‘Outliers’? Part of it is luck…luck of being born in the US at the time that would set them up to be graduating college when the computer industry was being born, Lots of data to support this, the richest folks in the world were all born in small clusters of times that the opportunity was good for various industries, Industrial revolution and computer revolution included. The other part is the smarts and motivation to actually do something. Its annoying how guys hammer that tired misunderstood quote over and over. 47% 47% look i can do it too. Its a weak strategy.
  
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UseReasonNotMagic
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 4:51pm
haha, a lot of jealous folks on theblaze, Ya, he was egotistical, and a bit foolish in some regards (like his choice of cancer treatment) but he certainly changed the world.

Maybe he wasn’t the first person to think of these ideas, but he did lay a lot of the groundwork that lead to them. He was out there doing…Did you listen to the tape? He was talking in practical terms of how to make it happen, giving practical time lines in years as to when this will happen. Long tern thinking people… that’s the problem with a lot of folks today…cant see past the tip of their noses.

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thegodfather
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 4:31pm
HA HA…..That dumbbell Jobs…everyone knows “you didn’t build that”

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Balthazor
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 4:19pm
I’m not seeing anything particularly “visionary” in the items listed here in the article. Things like this should’ve been common-sense to anyone in the computer industry back in 1983. It’s just another example of the neverending effort to transform Jobs into some kind of genius demigod. Everyone seems to forget that Apple was a joke of a company and almost an afterthought in the industry for many, many years and barely managed to survive until their one big innovation: the iPod. I’m always astounded by how quickly a couple decades of mediocrity and failure can be forgotten in today’s trendy Steve Jobs = Computer Messiah world.

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- timg47
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 6:31pm
  My thoughts exactly, very well said Balthazor. Steve Jobs was anything but a visionary.
  
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- Minnaloushe
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 6:51pm
  Now *this* is visionary:
  Neuromancer, William Gibson, 1984
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer
  
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jman-6
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 4:13pm
As most know and all will find out, rejecting GOD never ends well. I hope he had a change of heart and realized he needed a Saviour.Sad since he had a 99% chance of survival. As he said in his own words he would still be alive today had he received normal treatment instead of opting for experimental non-sense. You only try that after exhausting all regular options.

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- BelieveMe
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 6:00pm
  Thank you, God. Thank you! STEVE JOBS was one of the most EVIL MEN I ever knew!
  
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KwaiChang
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 4:10pm
Hey, if all we’re talking about is someone making predictions, then I must refer you to Robert Heinlein’s “The Lives of Lazarus Long” (and nearly everything else he wrote) with his predictions from the 1940′s through the 1970′s (especially regarding technology) and Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451″, with predictions of interactive wide screen TV and live cop shows. The list of prescient sci-fi authors is way longer than the list of dead Soviet cosmonauts. Prediction is easy; however, if we’re talking about the guys who actually built the stuff, then Steve Job’s name should be at the top of the list.

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Detroit paperboy
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 3:44pm
Wow ohh Wow………………

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- oldguy77
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 4:21pm
  You probably know this already but those were the last six words Steve Jobs said on his death bed.Oh wow three times.I often wonder just what he saw?
  
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Searchingforthelight
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 3:43pm
The government 55% inheritance tax is going to be like taking candy from a baby.

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Pat Alexander
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 3:31pm
Sadly, the government is working hard to make sure the next “Steve Jobs” will never get his ideas off the ground…

But he can get a free Bama’ phone..

:O(

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Anonymous T. Irrelevant
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 3:31pm
I predicted throw-away computers 10-15 years ago, does that make me amazing, too?

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Snowleopard {gallery of cat folks}
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 3:13pm
Amazing.

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Gonzo
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 3:12pm
Do you all have a room with a Jobs portrait and burning candles at Blaze headquarters?

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- Norm D. Plume
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 3:34pm
  No, but they do have little vials hanging around their necks, each containing a little stool sample.
  
  Expect these to be worth ridiculous fortunes in 2,000 years, along with Jobs’ burial shroud.
  
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- Joss
  Posted on October 3, 2012 at 3:58pm
  Jealousy is a terrible thing, eh?
  
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