The story is usually told something like this: ‘During an attempted demo involving a digital camera, Steve got pissed off because he couldn’t find/operate the camera’s power switch. In a rage, he threw the offending camera at a nearby Apple employee, who barely escaped with his life’
It was the keynote presentation at MacWorld New York in July 2001. Steve had just come back to his desk at the left side of the stage to demo some new OS X features, including its ability to automatically download images from an attached digital camera.
A bit of background is in order:
- The camera Steve was using had been specifically selected because it was easy to turn on and it had an easy to connect USB cable
- This demo had been rehearsed several times and worked perfectly each time
- Apple employees didn’t normally stand at the edge of the stage during the keynote
…what really went wrong?
…how could anyone believe/report that Steve didn’t know how to turn on the camera?
…who was the unlucky employee? why was he there?
…was it a ‘throw’ or a ‘toss’ or a ‘lob’?
…what does this have to do with the Apple DVD Player application?
…you’ll find out.
oh great make us wait! hehe
Adam Jackson
http://mypersonalgetaway.com
Ouch, you’re mean.
Mind you, it keeps me coming back, always wanting to know the outcome…
Keep ut the great work!
I guess Jobs is more mature than throwing it over his worker
I can’t believe you’re devoting an entire chapter on this issue! LOL I’ll wait with great anticipation to the revelation of this age old debate
Aulia – calling it a ‘chapter’ would be a gross overstatement…it will just be a short description of the incident as I observed it.
Do the RSS feeds update automatically?
I was there when it happened; sitting about 7 rows back from the stage. He seemed to lob it to someone at the edge of the stage. It didn’t seem to have any force behind the throw (wasn’t overhand, or a softball pitch).
It was the kind of thing you’d do to throw a wallet to a friend across the room.
Oh please, do go on writing, i’m loving your stuff! Can’t wait to see the end of this story – will your book be available internationaly, I WANT IT! I live in Austria though…
I saw that on the webcast. I shouted to my wife, He’s got our camera!” It had a quirky ON button where you sometimes didn’t know that it was on for quite a few seconds after you pushed it. So you push it again, turning it off. Then push again, and again…then you toss it to someone to fix it and then, another quirk–the battery door flys open and the batteries fall out. It’s hapened to me, and I remember watching it all play out as if in slow motion.
I remember an issue of the brazilian Macmania magazine, saying that when the QuickTake started to fail, Jobs threw it to a techguy who was just coming from the backstage to help him out.
The employee just wasn´t fast enough to grab it, so the camera bounced once in the stage floor before the guy would reach it.
The article said the audience went “Oohh” but there was nothing about Jobs trying to actually strike the poor guy with it.
Could this be about the same episode?
Speaking of cameras…Does anyone know if Steve Jobs ever used/tried/owned an Apple QuickTake or did he absolutely hate the thing? And was it Steve who discontinued the QuickTake camera products or Gil Amelio before him? Great stories, keep them coming and hope you finish this one soon.
I’ve found a video where you can see the ‘camera incident’ yourself (among other things), check:
Keynote Bloopers