Jobs was interviewed in 1995 by a TV producer for a series called "Triumph of the Nerds." At this time Jobs had been out of Apple for ten years, and was successfully running a visionary but financially-shaky company called NeXT. Only a small portion of the Jobs interview was used in the series.
The rest of the interview was thought lost, after a trans-Atlantic shipment of the master videotape went missing. Some years later, after Jobs died of cancer in 2011, the series director of "Triumph of the Nerds" found a VHS dub of the whole interview in his garage. This movie is that videotape.
Jobs was at kind of a low point in his career in 1995, despite being proud of the work being done at pNeXT. He'd lost control of Apple in a power struggle with John Scully, and saw that company, his baby, sliding into mediocrity and was on an eventual crash-and-burn glide slope. He admits in the interview that NeXT is too small and too specialized to have an impact on the future of computing. He admits that he was out-maneuvered at Apple and felt somewhat powerless to turn anything around.
Of course we now know within 18 months of this interview Steve sold NeXT to Apple in return for stock options, and then used his stock position to leverage himself back into leadership of the company. He turned Apple upside down, launching the iPod, iTunes, iMac, iPad, and everything we know Apple for today. Apple was mere weeks away from bankruptcy in 1996, and instead has become the largest market-cap company in the world.
The interview is fascinating. Steve is almost humble, incredibly bright, and very dismissive of Apple's then-current leadership (and sadly, now again after his death). The interviewer asks him about the future of computing, which he sees as the Internet and e-commerce (I know, an easy bet by 1995). Steve discusses the "vision thing" and why Microsoft is the McDonalds of computing. He discusses why making products that change people's lives is important.
The man could be difficult but man he was brilliant.
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