Steve JobsSource: Rene Ritchie/iMore

What you need to know

  • Steve Jobs thought the Mac was going to peak in 1989.
  • A new recording of Jobs at an NeXT event in 1988 has been uncovered.
  • Jobs said that the Macintosh architecture would peak sometime in the next year.

A new recording of Steve Jobs at an NeXT launch event reveals he thought the Mac would peak in 1989.

A new Fast Company report reveals that a recording of Steve Jobs presenting at an NeXT launch event in Boston from 1988 was made:

I heard from Charles Mann, who had made professional audio recordings of dozens of BCS meetings and other computer-related events in the 1980s and early '90s. Unbeknownst to me, he had sold many of them on audiocassette at the time, under the name The Powersharing Series. In 1988, when I was basking in Jobs's presentation, Mann was elsewhere in the hall recording it. Here it is in its entirety:

Jobs started NeXT after being forced out of Apple in 1985. At an event in 1988, Jobs unveiled NeXT's first computer. During the event Jobs is recorded stating that the Mac would peak the following year and that there were enough cracks in the wall already:

"The Macintosh architecture is going to peak next year sometime. And that means that there's enough cracks in the wall already, and enough limitations to the architecture, that the Mac's pretty much going to be everything it's ever going to be sometime next year."

As Fast Company notes, the NeXT had a Unix-based operation system, 1 million pixel display, and 256MB of optical storage. It cost $6,500. Apple eventually bought NeXT in 1997, with Jobs returning to lead the company.

You can catch the recording in full here.