A never-before-seen 1996 interview

To mark Toy Story’s 30th anniversary, we’re sharing a never-before-seen interview with Steve from November 22, 1996—exactly one year after the film debuted in theaters.

Toy Story was the world’s first entirely computer-animated feature-length film. An instant hit with audiences and critics, it also transformed Pixar, which went public the week after its premiere. Buoyed by Toy Story’s success, Pixar’s stock price closed at nearly double its initial offering, giving it a market valuation of approximately $1.5 billion and marking the largest IPO of 1995. The following year, Toy Story was nominated for three Academy Awards en route to winning a Special Achievement Oscar in March. In July, Pixar announced that it would close its television-commercial unit to focus primarily on feature films. By the time of the interview, the team had grown by 70 percent in less than a year; A Bug’s Life was in production; and behind the scenes, Steve was using his new leverage to renegotiate Pixar’s partnership with Disney.

In this footage, Steve reveals the long game behind Pixar’s seeming overnight success. With striking clarity, he explains how its business model gives artists and engineers a stake in their creations, and he reflects on what Disney’s hard-won wisdom taught him about focus and discipline. He also talks about the challenge of leading a team so talented that it inverts the usual hierarchy, the incentives that inspire people to stay with the company, and the deeper purpose that unites them all: to tell stories that last and put something of enduring value into the culture.  

At Pixar, Steve collaborated closely with president Ed Catmull and refined a management approach centered on creating the conditions for talent to thrive. When he returned to Apple a few weeks after this interview, his experience at Pixar shaped how he saw his role as CEO: building a company on timeless ideas made new through technology. 

Steve’s driving motivation

Today, we want to share one of our favorite clips.

It’s from an internal Apple employee-communications meeting held on October 23, 2007. 

The mood in the small room is buoyant as Steve enters, pours himself some water, and settles onto a stool. In January, in anticipation of a broadening product line and increased focus on retail and services, the company changed its name from Apple Computer Inc to Apple Inc. In June, the iPhone debuted to rave reviews and lines around the block. Revenues are up, profits are way up, and Steve marvels at how far the company has come. “People wanted $24 billion worth of the stuff that you guys thought up out of thin air and made,” he says. “I think that’s pretty cool.”

As he often did, Steve allocates more time for questions than his own comments. A few questions in, an employee asks how Apple will keep its brand and culture as it grows. Steve takes a sip of water, pauses, and gives an answer that includes this unexpected and revealing moment:

This idea—that the act of making something with a great deal of care is a way of expressing your respect and admiration for humanity—anchored Steve’s approach to business and drove him throughout his life.

It also drives our work here at SJA, so much so that we chose it as the title of our first book and use the quote as a guiding inspiration for our Fellowship program.

On Steve’s 70th birthday, we hope that you, too, will be inspired to make something wonderful and put it out there.

When photographer Norman Seeff arrived at Apple’s offices in January 1984, he didn’t know what to expect. An editor at Rolling Stone had told him only that this was a “weird company” full of hippies making computers. Now Seeff, along with reporter Steven Levy, was covering these “whiz kids” as they prepared to launch their latest product—a new machine called Macintosh.

The atmosphere inside the office was a world away from the power suits and perms typical of 1980s corporate America. An expensive Bӧsendorfer grand piano sat in the lobby; employees often played it during breaks. Nearby stood a first-generation Sony CD player hooked up to a gigantic pair of speakers. There were scooters. Pets. Babies. Everyone wore jeans; some even had bare feet.

“It looked like a commune,” says Seeff. “It was so alive.”

The staff had good reason to feel exuberant. The Macintosh aimed to be the first mass-market personal computer that was truly user-friendly. From seeds planted by others, including former Apple manager Jef Raskin and researchers at Xerox PARC and the Stanford Research Institute, this young team had worked around the clock to create a computer that was simple and sophisticated, designed to encourage creativity as much as to enhance productivity. Now they were just days away from launch.

Among the group’s one hundred staff, Seeff saw the small software team joking around in front of the colorful cubicle of designer Susan Kare. He grabbed his Nikon camera and started shooting rapid-fire. The team played along and then—hands on shoulders and knees on backs—assembled themselves into a human pyramid.

“I’m the lightest one, so I ended up on top,” says Rony Sebok, who had joined the Macintosh the previous summer as a software engineer. “It wasn’t a childish group: this was a bunch of mature people, even though we were young. But it was playful.”

Seeff snapped away.

On top of the pile next to Sebok was Kare, dressed in a gray sweatshirt and jeans: she had designed the system’s fonts and icons, and her smiling Mac logo made the machine feel almost human. There was Bill Atkinson at the center, with his striped sweater, glasses, and mustache: his graphics software was key to making the Macintosh so easy to use. Next to him in a bright red T-shirt was Andy Hertzfeld, a primary architect of its brave new operating system. The pyramid seemed a perfect encapsulation of the wider Macintosh team: talented individuals combining to build something stronger than any of them could make alone.

The group continued goofing around until the pyramid collapsed, everyone laughing.

Steve Jobs, who had managed the Macintosh team since 1981, had been peeking in on the shoot throughout. As the group fell to the ground, he saw his opportunity and joined the end of the huddle.

Seeff kept shooting.

Steve knew that the very best work conveys the ideas and intentions of the people who created it. And he believed deeply that this team of engineers, designers, and programmers, who were also sculptors, photographers, and musicians—a team that integrated technology and the liberal arts—could create a machine for everyday people, “a computer for the rest of us.”

At a time when computers were complex and difficult to use, it was a radical objective. To get there, Steve encouraged the team and protected them; he pushed them hard and shared his critiques. He asked them to sign their work like artists, even while reminding them that they were building a tool for others to use. “We’re going to walk into a classroom or an office or a home five years from now,” he promised, “and somebody’s going to be using a Macintosh for something we never dreamed possible.”

Not long after these photographs were taken, the Macintosh was announced to the world. The road ahead would not be straightforward—not for the product, not for the group who made it, and not for Steve himself. But one realization was clear even in January 1984: new things were now possible.

“I remember the week before we launched the Mac,” Steve recalled in 2007. “We all got together, and we said, ‘Every computer is going to work this way. You can’t argue about that anymore. You can argue about how long it will take, but you can’t argue about it anymore.’”

Note: this story originally appeared as a newsletter to our subscribers.

Thank you for signing up to receive these notes. I'm Leslie Berlin, founding Executive Director of the Steve Jobs Archive and a historian of Silicon Valley. We have so much to tell you about, but I want to start by sharing one of my favorite images from our collection. It's Steve in 1984, spotting a new Macintosh in the wild.

Steve's friend Jean Pigozzi, who calls himself a "serious amateur photographer," took the image and told me the story behind it. Although Jean did not work in tech, Steve invited him along to a software conference in New Orleans. One evening after the event, as they were walking down O'Keefe Avenue looking for dinner, Steve—a notoriously fast walker—pulled to a halt. Someone in a store window was working on a Macintosh.

He had to take a closer look. How was this person using the Mac? Steve is so curious, so lasered in on trying to understand, that he is bent nearly double.

As I zoom in on the image nearly 40 years later, I'm struck by its 1980s details: the woman's perm and overstated shoulder pads; the wired telephone on the wall; the way calculators get top billing in the store name ("Calculator and Computer Center"). And look, tucked in the corner at the far right of the frame—that's a pile of computer boxes and an advertising poster from Apple's chief rival at the time, IBM.

This is Steve at a pivotal moment. He's about to turn 29. Apple, which he co-founded and chairs, has recently become one of the youngest companies ever to reach the Fortune 500. The Macintosh has been met with rave reviews. He is on top of the world.

And he has no idea that it's all about to change.

No idea that while the Mac will revolutionize computing, it will also struggle for sales; no clue that he is months away from being fired by Apple, or that he will spend the next 11 years helping launch Pixar and NeXT; no hint that he will eventually return to Apple and find it on the brink of bankruptcy, then work for the rest of his life to turn it into the most valuable company in the world.

We see this in Steve's future, but all he knew in this fleeting moment on a New Orleans street was that somebody was actually using this product—one that he had poured his heart and soul into. And that was enough to stop him in his tracks.

Until next time,

Leslie