Here’s a fascinating description of the iCloud/Time Capsule remote computing system Apple may reveal on Monday described by Steve Jobs himself — back in 1997.
“I have computers at Apple, at NeXT, at Pixar and at home. I walk up to any of them and log in as myself, it goes over the network and finds my home directory on the server and… I’ve got my stuff wherever I am…”
“…we were able to take all of our personal data, our home directories we call them, off of our local machines and put them on a server, and the software made that completely transparent…”
“…so in the last seven years, do you know how many times I have lost any personal data? Zero. Do you know how many times I have backed up my computer? Zero.”
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
43 responses to “Watch Steve Jobs Describe iCloud Back In 1997 [Video]”
Anybody who knows where in the video it is?
Even more interesting are the comments regarding Microsoft about 30 minutes in — especially given the recent development regarding Apple’s market value eclipsing the combined value of Microsoft and Intel.
@Philip, the networking comments begin around 14:00, and the attributed quotes can be found around 16:00.
the future was made yesterday
What a man, what a vision and that 14 years ago !
Wow, so many things have come true since then. Amazing. Spot on.
At 1:02:50 steve jobs begins to explain why he started the iPhone. It is kinda funny. This whole speech is full of interesting tidbits.
And 10 years he had to wait to realize that … imagine the patience :-)
I think Sun Microsystems was already doing this way back then. I recall presentations by tech guys who were using a system just like Jobs described.
Remote home directories is an old UNIX thing…we do it with NFS/NIS or NFS/LDAP and it works wonderfully, even over internet (if your connection is good enough…if you lose the NFS link, all hell breaks lose on your workstation).
As for the rest…Jobs is a genious :)
Yeah, well NFS has been around a long time but how come nobody has successfully brought it to the masses like Apple is about to do? Oh, and by the way, Sun Microsystems ceases to exist today because their engineers screwed up on managing the company and couldn’t adapt.
Yeah, that’s nice fine and dandy but Sun Microsystems ceases to exist as a going concern (in other words, they died). Apple lives on.
Engineers are engineers not business people. The roadside is littered with superior technology because the customer, whether commercial, military, or consumer, did not understand the benefits. Steve is successful because he views products from the end user’s point of view and he understands that he can not do everything. He is not a genius but he can articulate his point with confidents and challenge people. I enjoyed the video.
The main description starts at 13:30 and ends at approximately 18:30.
he was probably really describing Home on iPod: http://www.appleinsider.com/ar…
Nice writer thanks for a sharing this situation.
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private jet
38:19 discusses complex workflows like Automator built in to Mac OS X. Before Apple even built such, as Steve doesn’t even think the same thought as the guy.
Very amazing to watch how much was discussed here that has since come to pass.
Of course they were, as were other UNIX-vendors. And Steve Jobs and NeXT were using it as well. Jobs isn’t telling that “wouldn’t it be cool if we had something like this?”, he’s telling what he’s using at that very moment.
Talk about patience! It’s almost zen-like.
Nice… it’s almost like… they have all this things planned out for the next 10 to 15 years!
At around 18:55 he talks about being totally vertically integrated. “Apple controls the marketing and distribution” Then backtracks on distribution.
Did he let slip on the Apple Stores 4 years before they opened?
Sounds like Onlive- except for everything else at 15 min