Steve Jobs on programming, craftsmanship, software, and the Web

In 1995, Steve Jobs gave a rare interview to Robert Cringely for a PBS special called Triumph of the Nerds to talk about the genesis of the personal computer. Most of the hour-long interview had been cut down to a few minutes to use for the three-part special, and the original master tape was thought to have been lost after production. Shortly after Jobs' death in October 2011, however, director Paul Sen found a VHS copy of the entire interview in his garage. Cringely and Sen worked to clean up the footage and presented "The Lost Interview" in a handful of art house theaters across the country. Magnolia Pictures eventually picked up the remastered footage for wider release, and made it available via iTunes and Amazon Video on Demand this week.

During the interview, Jobs was "at his charismatic best—witty, outspoken, visionary," according to Cringely. Jobs certainly wasn't pulling any punches, blaming Apple's poor performance in the mid-'90s on then-CEO John Sculley's mismanagement, the mediocrity of computing on Microsoft's lack of taste, and a glut of poorly designed consumer gadgets on companies overrun by "sales and marketing people."

To place the interview in context, it was taken about a year or so before Apple bought NeXT for its NextStep operating system, which became the basis for Mac OS X and later iOS. The acquisition also brought its estranged co-founder back to lead the company from near-bankruptcy to soaring profits and market share, with Apple becoming a leader in portable music players, notebook computers, smartphones, and tablets.

We watched the interview after it was posted to iTunes this week, and some readers wanted to know what kinds of things were included in the release. So here are a few of our favorite quotes and quips from the interview:

On the importance of the computer as a tool for advancing human abilities: A Scientific American article Jobs had read compared the efficiency of various animal species in terms of kilocalories expended per kilometer of movement. Humans ranked about a third of the way down the list when walking, but far exceeded any other animal when using a bicycle. "Humans are tool builders, and we build tools that can dramatically amplify our innate human abilities," Jobs said. "I believe that the computer will rank near, if not at the top, as history unfolds—it is the most awesome tool that we have ever invented."

On the importance of computer programming to cognitive ability: Jobs was asked what practical purpose he and other early Apple employees envisioned for programming personal computers. "It didn't have to do with using them for anything practical; we used it as a way to mirror our thought process. I think everyone should learn how to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think. I view computer science as a liberal art, something everyone should learn to do."

On the importance of having good product people running the company: "When you have a market monopoly, the sales and marketing people end up running the company. The product people get run out of the company. Then the companies forget what it means to make great products. The [researchers] at Xerox PARC used to call the people who ran Xerox 'toner heads.' They just had no clue about a computer or what it could do."

On the importance of craftsmanship: "One of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left, John Sculley got a very serious disease. And that disease—I've seen other people get it, too—it's the disease of thinking that a having a great idea is really 90 percent of the work. And if you just tell people, 'here's this great idea,' then of course they can go off and make it happen. The problem with that is that there's a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between a having a great idea and having a great product."

On the importance of software to the computer industry from 1995 on: "There hasn't really been a revolution in how we created software, at least not in the last 20 years. [But] software is infiltrating everything we do these days. Software is going to be a major enabler in our society."

On the importance of the Web: "It's really sort of the realization of our original dream, that the computer would not be a machine for computation, but would be metamorphosed into a tool for communication. And with the Web, that's finally happening. I think the Web is going to be profound in what it does to our society. The Web is going to be the defining technology, the defining social moment for computing."

On the importance of taste: "The way that we're going to ratchet up our species is to take the best [stuff], and spread it around to everybody, so everybody grows up with better things... If we can nudge [the computer] in the right direction, it will be a much better thing as it progresses. I think we've had a chance to do that a few times." And how do you know the right direction to nudge it? "Ultimately, it comes down to taste."

Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview is available for streaming to Apple TV or watching on iOS devices via iTunes as well as Amazon Video on Demand. A DVD release is planned, but there are still a limited number of theatrical runs in the US throughout July and August.