[ Music ]

>> Steven Jobs figures heroically in the history

of American entrepreneurship.

At the age of 22 he founded a company called Apple Computer

and proceeded to grow it into a $2 billion business.

In the spring of 1985 he lost a power struggle inside Apple

and left the company he had created.

He spent the summer considering his next move

and resolved to begin again.

In September he started a new computer company

with his own money.

With characteristic flair, he called it NeXT Incorporated.

This morning at its offices in Silicon Valley, California,

the company is about to get a first look at its new trademark,

the signature it hopes to make familiar around the world.

The designer, Paul Rand, created the logos for IBM,

Westinghouse, UPS, and many others.

Rand doesn't normally work for infant companies even

if they could afford him, but NeXT isn't an ordinary startup.

>> The idea is to, please don't open,

don't look at the back first.

This is the front.

And don't get scared, this is not the design.

[laughter] The reason I did this was to sort of floor Steve

when he saw it, you know and think,

Jesus 100,000 bucks down the drain.

[laughter] [Inaudible]

>> Jobs has had a sneak preview of the logo and loves it.

As he waits for a verdict

from his staff he can hardly contain his excitement.

Assertive as he is, he values consensus.

Most of these young computer and software designers were

on the team that developed the Macintosh.

They left secure jobs at Apple to follow their boss

in pursuit of his new vision.

Steve's goal is to transform the learning process at the college

and graduate school level with a powerful computer

and a new kind of software.

>> And we decided we wanted to start a company that had a lot

to do with education, and in particular, higher education;

colleges and universities.

So what our vision is is that there's a revolution

in software going on now on college and university campuses,

and it has to do with providing two types

of breakthrough software.

One is called simulated learning environments.

It's where you can't give a student

in physics a linear accelerator.

You can't give a student

in biology a $5 million recombinant DNA laboratory

but you can simulate those things.

You can simulate them on a very powerful computer,

and it is not possible for students to afford these things.

It is not possible for most faculty members

to afford these things.

So if we can take what we do best which is

to find really great technology and pull it

down to a price point that's affordable to people,

if we can do the same thing for this type of computer

which is maybe 10 times as powerful as a personal computer

that we did for personal computers,

then I think we can make a real difference

in the way the learning experience happens

in the next five years.

And that's what we're trying to do.

[ Waves crashing ]

Companies come and go at the crest of the wave.

I mean you know IBM had their day way back when when they,

you know, they were at the crest.

>> In December, 1985, in business for just 90 days,

Jobs and his 11 employees hold their first retreat.

Company retreats like this are the continuation

of a tradition Steve established at Apple early on.

Watching him in action at these brainstorming sessions is an

opportunity to observe him at his lucid best

as a company builder and motivator.

>> Slicing into the future.

>> His opening remarks reveal his faith in high technology

and his idealism, an unusual combination

that is part of his uniqueness.

In effect, he is planting the seeds

of a new corporate culture.

>> More important than building a product, we are in the process

of architecting a company that will hopefully be much,

much more incredible-- the total will be much more incredible

than the sum of its parts.

And the cumulative effort of approximately, you know,

20,000 decisions that we're all going to make

over the next two years are going

to define what our company is.

And one of the things that made Apple great was

that in the early days, it was built from the heart.

Not by somebody who came in

and said I know how to build a company.

Here's what you do.

Da da da da da da da.

It wasn't built that way.

It was built from the heart.

Now unfortunately we didn't always use our heads

and we can do better in many respects because we are wiser

and smarter and know more and those kinds of things.

But one of the most important things,

one of my largest wishes is that we build NeXT from the heart

and the people that are thinking about coming to work for us

or buying or products or who want

to sell us things feel that, that we're doing this

because we have a passion about it.

We're doing this because we really care

about the higher educational process,

not because we want to make a buck.

Not because, you know, we just want to do it to do it.

>> Jobs can be overbearing and impatient,

but this team knows what to expect

and is not easily intimidated.

They are smart and they are focused.

And their preferred language is computer ease.

>> They actually provided analogous

to [inaudible] small talk.

[Inaudible] provided you a way to drop actually

into [inaudible] and program the actions that happened

when you double clicked on an icon

or when you dropped something on an icon.

>> We have to create a product that's an order

of magnitude more powerful than the current generation of PCs.

>> For two solid days the group listens

to progress reports from each department.

The goal is to arrive at design decisions, production deadlines,

and a marketing strategy aimed at selling on college campuses.

>> is define the problem.

>> The point is that June, July,

and August are the timeframes when people do work.

When they, when the school's out and when the people

or researchers and the staff that deal

with making computing happen for September,

that's when they do work.

>> That is, that's like a bomb run.

You don't change your target when you're in the bomb run.

>> From the sidelines, Jobs probes and challenges.

He has a remarkable ability

to identify the conclusions implicit

in what the others have to say.

>> So really the next 90 days are real important.

>> We are going to make it or break it based

on whether we can provide products to higher education

and services and relationships to higher education

that no one else provides.

And I think we ought to spend 100%

of our time thinking about that.

And if we can't do that, then we ought to go broke.

There needs to be someone who is sort of the keeper

and reiterator of the vision

because there's just a ton of work to do.

And a lot of times, you know, when you have

to walk 1,000 miles and you take the first step it looks

like a long ways.

And it really helps if there's someone there saying well we're

one step closer.

You know the goal definitely exists.

It's not just a mirage out there.

So in 1001 little, and sometimes larger ways,

the vision needs to be reiterated.

I do that a lot.

>> There was the price one, the schedule one--

>> The technology.

>> and technology.

>> Yeah.

>> Jobs continually interrupts to focus the lens

of his vision on priorities.

By the end of the first day the team has established the

critical importance of keeping the price of the computer

within the reach of students and professors

and bringing the product to market by spring 1987.

A survey of college campuses has indicated

that the new computer should sell for no more than $3,000

to be considered affordable.

Since college buying takes place in the summer, Jobs is concerned

that a failure to have their product ready

by spring 1987 will delay the company an entire year.

>> If we don't deliver this by spring '87,

we're out of business so my first priority is

to make sure this damn thing is out by spring '87.

>> I think spring can basically push out to summer,

but I also hear that that is number one.

>> Right.

>> I guess I disagree with price being the second thing

because unless we have,

unless we have this technology that wows people--

>> Um hum.

>> we're not going to have a firm foundation

that people are going to buy from.

And I think people are going to be a lot more flexible saying,

well jeez, this runs three times faster, seven times faster than,

you know, a computer--

>> Well what's the highest we could go here?

>> Oh well [inaudible] technology jumps ahead in price.

>> Well we couldn't make this 5,000.

I think we're, they didn't say

if you made it go three times faster we'd pay 4,000.

They didn't say that.

>> No they said [inaudible].

>> That's right, they said if it's $3,000 it's a hot product.

>> But they were--

>> They said you're over 3,000, forget it.

>> Yeah.

>> That that's their magic number.

They've also told us that nobody else says they can do that.

And they think that's a really big number.

Now, whether it is or not in reality, who knows?

>> Um hum.

>> Whether it is or not in terms of their commitment--

>> Yes.

>> to push us, we've established that.

>> Um hum.

>> That's right.

>> If we really do believe that we have to ship this by summer

of '87, then how are we going to move that up?

I don't think price is going to change the schedule that much.

I think the real risk is

in the technology, it's not in the cost.

>> Yeah.

>> There's another option, it can go to the spring of '88.

>> Yeah, we could.

[laughs] But the problem is if we do that, then the--

>> Then [inaudible].

>> Well wait I think--

>> No that's not the worst thing.

The worst thing is, every, the world isn't standing still,

so by the spring of '88 well we want color.

The technology window sort of passes us by

and all the work we've done we throw

down the toilet and we start over.

And you know since we've proved we can't do something great

in 18 months, why should we believe we could do it,

you know, a year later?

>> I don't care what you're saying, reality--

distortion is reality distortion

and its has its motivational value and that's fine.

And I think it has a very strong point

and a very important value.

However when it comes to the, when it comes

to that date affecting the design of the product,

that's when we get into a rut.

Real, deep, shit because if we are unrealistic about this date,

we make design decisions that we have to then go over, reiterate,

throw out, start all over again.