Video: Steve Jobs addresses NeXT, 1990

John Gruber dusted off these videos from the 1990 in which Steve Jobs gives a “chalk talk” to his employees at NeXT. There’s plenty of interest: the slightly less cautious speaking style of a Jobs two decades younger; the apparent inability for NeXT to cater to a fledgling market in a fight against Sun (a market which sounds an awful lot like the modern Macintosh marketplace); the complete absence of any mention of the internet, despite NeXT machines’ great networking capability. This last bit is understandable considering the time, but still very odd. Twenty years ago we were excited just to get computers talking to each other within the same building, never mind always-on persistent worldwide networking.

1. [semiotix]

   Whoa! Check out that futuristic ink-on-plastic chalkboard he’s using! It must be made of space-age polymers and cost thousands of dollars.

   Seriously, in 1990, that alone would have blown my mind. I think I’d seen little dinky dry-erase message boards, but to have it scaled up to full blackboard size… the opulence!

2. [OM]

   …And of course he totally skips over why the NeXT was just as color blind as the Macs. It wasn’t cost, Jobs, being just as color blind couldn’t see the “need” for color monitors.