Steve Jobs explains how NeXT used partnerships with Sony, Motorola, and Canon to access research labs cheaply. The company set one low price for all computers so students at small colleges like Reed paid the same as those at UC Berkeley, embedding fairness into its architecture from the start.
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start this company in the first place, and he's president of Georgia Institute of Technology. Who's the mic right there if you want it? I was supposed to have one on here, actually. Who makes our disk drive? We were really lucky when we started NeXT in that we got calls from the presidents of Sony, Motorola, Canon, and others, and they said, "Hey, when you guys were in your former lifetime, you used to romp through our technology laboratories." And you used to spot technologies and help us form them into marketable products. And we really liked that because both of us won. So we'd like you to keep doing that. And we'd like you to keep doing that because A, maybe you'll be the next big computer company, and B, because you're the cheapest R&D we could ever do. So we had access to, I think, probably more of the in-depth technical research going on at some of these companies than most other people have the the good fortune to have. We think more in terms of what impact is this computer going to have on the people that use it. And so we aren't— you know much more about the industry than we do at this point. We're focusing on the people that are going to use this thing and how to bring the most far-reaching capabilities to them. And so that's where our focus is right now. I am exceptionally proud of the 175 people that work at NeXT. Because they started without, in some cases, when we started the company, of course, we just started it with a fresh sheet of paper. And as people have joined us over the months and the years, they have joined based on not a product, not even a description, they've joined on the vision. University what? A degree? Oh, you mean the fact that I don't have, I'm a dropout. Actually, I have a pretty fond spot for higher ed in my heart. What happened was I went to Reed College, just like Dr. Richard Crandall, and I ran out of money after about 6 months, so I dropped out. But they let me drop in for about a year and a half after that, and Stanford let me drop in for a year. And it's kind of something that's always stuck with me. I didn't have any money to pay, and they said, "Fine, just take the classes and learn." And that to me is what it's been all about. So hopefully, I think all of us feel really great about being able to put something like this back into that community. And again, I can't stress enough, this thing wouldn't be here today if it were not for our advisory board. They have, they have let us into their research labs, they have let us hire their best grad students, and they have kicked us in the pants when we wanted to compromise, and more than once, matter of fact. So if it weren't for them, this machine would be a very different machine, and I think all of us at NeXT feel an incredible debt to them for hanging in there with us and making sure this thing came out great. Actually, a very important decision at NeXT, we said, why should a student at Reed College, a small liberal arts college with 1,000 students, or a professor or a researcher at Reed, have to pay more for their computer than someone at a very large institution, let's say the University of California at Berkeley? And the answer is, they shouldn't. And so we decided, what's the best price we're gonna give to anybody? And we said, can we architect our company in a way that it doesn't cost us any more to sell one computer than it does to sell 1,000? Obviously, we made some distance there, and we decided to offer our best price to everybody. So everybody gets the best price, and that's how we decided the price. It's very democratic, and I think it's in the spirit of what we're trying to do with higher education. Thank you very much for coming today. We really appreciate it a lot.
