Conversation between Steve Jobs and Developers at WWDC 1997 (opens in new tab)

Actually, listening to this conversation it's completely clear that he'd been imagining a device like the iPhone even then. It clearly solves a problem he has. Remember when he introduced the iPhone as "three revolutionary new products"? There were two that people really wanted: A touch screen iPod. A phone. And one that got lukewarm reception because people didn't know what to make of it: An breakthrough internet communicator. The iPhone was always about the third part for Steve, but you need the other two to sell it to the public.

As for your glib comment about a keyboard, I find the iPhone keyboard is wonderful for typing on. Yes, it's software, but it is a keyboard.

The iPhone does have a keyboard in the sense that he meant: he didn't want a "little scribble thing"...which the software keyboard is not.

I can absolutely imagine Jobs answering a question about, for example, the App Store approval process in a similar way. He knows what he is doing, he knows how to be persuasive and how to not come of as an idiot.

Given Apple’s success (also, he’s now the CEO), however, Jobs doesn’t have to answer questions like that. It would be nice if he had to from time to time.

Watch the D conference videos. He deals with some none too pleasant subjects in them.

16:00 when he is talking about cloud storage is what drove this home for me. Really amazing for me to see him forecasting "The Cloud" and thin clients.

Still waiting for better SSO in OS X though...

I think that's a basic insight for everyone who wants to create innovative software.

You need to realize that customers don't think in a creative way. They only think of what's easiest to think of for them. But most of the time those ideas are not great, because they tend to complicate things instead of simplify them.

Truly game-changing concepts take their time to ripen.

But maybe that's just me who thinks in this way. I don't know anyone from Silicon Valley, because I live in a completely different country. So I'm clearly not part of the American startup culture.

Wow, this was your first comment.

What time of the week was it previously posted to HN? Something like this will likely do better on the weekend, when there's less going on in general, and people have more time to watch hour long videos.