To truly get an inside look at what was behind Steve Jobs' approach to building Apple … twice … we need to visit with him when he was down, not when he was at the top of his game. That's what makes the film Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview truly interesting. It wasn't conducted when he was in the middle of his successes with the iPhone and iPad, or after he had been given the news that his cancer was terminal. This was conducted a decade after he'd been pushed out of Apple, and eighteen months before he would make his return.
This interview was conducted in 1995 for an ongoing series. They used the bits of the interview they wanted, and the remainder of it was presumed lost. The bits that were thought to be lost on the proverbial cutting room floor recently turned up, and it was decided to release the interview in its entirety.
Jobs talks openly and warmly about his first forays into computers, and especially about starting Apple with Steve “Woz” Wozniak. It's also clear what his true feelings about Microsoft are.. He doesn't hold back and talks about Microsoft having no ingenuity or creativity. But where he struggles to hold in his emotions is when talking about his ouster from Apple after CEO John Sculley, a man he hired, pushed him out.
And through Jobs' introspections, as he talks about how to build a successful company, how to build a team, his appreciation of other ways to think, that he didn't do this for the money, that he knew he hired the wrong guy in Sculley, and how he thought the Internet would change everything, we can see how he was primed for another go at this. He got that chance and knew exactly what to do as he took a company that was 90 days away from bankruptcy and transformed it into arguably the most successful company in America.
Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview is currently available on iTunes. You can read more of my interview this Friday when the the digital magazine TechLife News goes on sale.
