Four days ago, this previously unseen Steve Jobs interview appeared. I enjoyed watching it. It was recorded on November 22, 1996. Today is the 29th anniversary of that interview!

That day was the day before Cheryl and I were married, in Edmonton. Around 9 years ago I wrote here about the many ways that time of my life was significant… it was just before ~NeXT acquired~ Apple acquired NeXT, just before my Grandpa died, and just before I picked up OpenStep and taught myself Objective-C and AppKit and what would become Cocoa and later power the iPhone’s UIKit. I just find it amazing all these years later, I’m still working on software for Apple devices, and that the decisions being made 29 years ago are still so profound in all aspects of my life.

It’s interesting that during that interview he suggested it was possible people wouldn’t be using Macs in 5 years, just as people weren’t really using Apple II anymore at that point. I wonder if the interview didn’t see the light of day for all these years because of that (mis?)statement and how it could impact Apple and therefore himself and NeXT. I assume he was already negotiating the Apple/NeXT merger while this interview was conducted.

The Mac is over 40 years old now, NeXTStep just a few years younger than that, and both still live on today at Apple. It doesn’t seem he forsaw computing platforms living that long, which suggests he may not have forseen tech companies becoming quite as behemoth as they’ve become over the last decade or two.