It was September in Paris. And it was time of Apple Expo. I can’t find a document to prove if it was 2002 or 2003. But I have the feeling it was 2003. Anyway, there had been Steve Jobs’ keynote. And there had also been the usual Q&A session for journalists, after the keynote.
As usual I had been asking a lot of questions about what we could see by looking ahead. Jobs was not bored, he even seemed interested in answering. I don’t think he remembered me, but we had had quite a few interviews and Q&As before. Anyway I asked him: «But the iPod could be a phone?».
He answered after sort of thinking about it. «There is too little bandwith to download songs on the mobile network…». That’s what he said, but he seemed considering something else at the same time. If he actually was he didn’t tell.
Don’t take me wrong. During previous interviews I had also suggested some changes that Apple was already considering. Such as to do the iMac in different colours. Or such as introducing an Apple browser. In that case, I had been saying that the Explorer for Mac was not as good as the one for Windows: while I was speaking he was gesturing like someone that agrees, but then he said: «The Explorer is a very good browser». After three months, Safari was launched. It was fun to see that I sort of thought the same way as them. And it was interesting to see Steve Jobs in a thinking mode: when questions were similar to the questions that he had solved or at least considered he was really friendly.
The company seemed less friendly when you had to cope with those Apple’s international public relations guys. They even tryed once to make me fill in a “non disclosure agreement” before letting me in a press conference with some anticipations: I refused. But that was before Jobs’ coming back to the company.
After the Q and A, in 2003, one of the soviet-looking-and-acting public relations persons that Apple was using to deal with journalists and keep them away from any unintended move during the event came to me and asked me to follow him.
I followed him. He led me to another room. He opened the door and in the room I found Steve Jobs, Jonathan Ive and Phil Schiller. Nobody else. The room was full of products, mainly iPod accessories. The three of them seemed a bunch of friends chatting about the thinks they liked most, they didn’t react in surprise when I entered; it was like I was a usual presence, in any case nobody introduced me to the three of them and we didn’t feel the need for such an introduction. I had no words. There was a noise in my mind and a confusion in my stomac. Suddendly I didn’t know what to say and I didn’t even wonder if I was supposed to say anything. They asked me if I liked the new iPod. They showed me products they liked, such as a Bose system for hearing music with an iPod. Jobs was very fond of it, he wanted to show it to me and let me hear how it sounded. We spent some time and then it was finished. I went away in joy.
I forgot the episode until I’ve been reading some pages about the iPod in Walter Isaacson’s book. Why did I forget about that fact? Because nothing special happened. And because I never connected that episode to the fact that some time later the iPhone would come out. I knew that mobile operators and phone companies were not getting the internet opportunity they had: to create a device that was able to get the internet really mobile. It was to happen in 2007. I had probably been honored for my questions. And I had been inside the cultural evolution that was going to change a lot in the web world. But it was the present, and I thought that I was just living it: history is such a richer way to look at things that happen…
But there is more to think about that episode. Steve Jobs’ story has been transformed in an iconic piece of history, or criticized a lot. His public figure is a role model that it is difficult not to admire. Because it is the inspiration that we need. But when you are in the middle of living a story it is very hard to look at it in perspective. When you don’t know the future, and you are building it, anything just seems normal.
It seems to me that we should think at our present life in a way that helps us to seeing how important it is in perspective: any future comes from our present. Perspective connects past and future, action and thinking. Perspective is the discipline for building a new “science of consequences” that we deeply need.
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