Steve Barnes' World of Happiness

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A Steve Jobs interview from 1996.

This is the first time I'd found this Fresh Air interview from a lesser-referenced time in Jobs' life. It's the first I'd heard him frame NeXT as having failed as a hardware company (despite having built a "great" computer), and having knowledge of his future righting Apple's course, it's a little melancholy to get the impression his primary concern at the time of this broadcast was to help invent server-based software – the technology that would evolve the web from a realm of mainly static pages to a realm that could include dynamic ones.

But mainly, it's just good to hear another example of his voice and didactism captured well. Apple has done great without him in its attempt to recall his spirit without anxiously guessing what he would do, but his rehearsed lucidity of phrase and directive is missed and feels absent from the current year, when technology is evolving more rapidly – and potentially confusedly – than ever.