- Steve basically has 4 points to make during his prepared slides and he drags them out over 30 minutes. He's basically lecturing the press and just shy of scolding them for their vacuous reporting.
- Steve talks about how much they love their customers, and want to do right by them. The iPhone 4S keynote also features one of those Apple Store grand opening videos with crowds of happy customers. This has basically vanished from the brand persona... Tim may have said it in a monotone, but you don't feel it anymore.
- The members of the press do not come across as particularly competent in the Q&A. One of the questions is basically, "You previously shipped a software update that addressed cellular issues. Why are there still cellular issues?" They got really hung up on the fairly clear details of the free case program.
- The live Town Hall keynotes are so much more pleasant to watch. Not just pleasant but more comfortable to watch. The highly-produced modern keynotes are exhausting.
- I had no recollection of Apple releasing watch faces for the iPod nano* so it could be worn on the wrist, a few years before the Apple Watch. (*macOS autocorrect still enforces such capitalization of this 21-year-old product.)
I always use a case on every phone and never had a single issue with the 4.
An anecdote from the book "Steve Jobs in Exile" I just read: at the beginning of one product announcement, Jobs told the audience that he was a little nervous, but his coworkers said that he was never nervous for keynotes. It was pure manipulation.
Everything about this Q&A was thoughtful, well-meaning, and heavily considered. And it's true: while the iPhone 4 had ways it could be better, it wasn't materially worse than any of the other phones of its era. A recall would have been ridiculous because that would have required them to have a fix for something the industry at large hadn't yet solved.
And they were extremely measured in their response. If you're unhappy with your cell reception, they were happy to give you a case to improve the situation, no questions asked. If you still weren't happy, they had (and had had, and continue to have) one of the best return policies in the industry. They wanted to you to be happy with your purchase, and if you weren't, they wanted you to be able to get a phone you would be happy with.
Steve Jobs may have been a terrible person in many ways, but one of the good things about him absolutely was his unfailing commitment to his customers.
The iPhone 4 'Antennagate' Press Conference Q&A
https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/iphone_4_antennagate_q_an... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49829984)
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He doesn't actually answer the question until over 25 seconds have passed!
He takes a sip of water, sits in silence, the crowd starts heckling. Jobs gives a small quip to buy time. Sits in silence again. It's an eternity on stage.
You wouldn't be nervous without an audience, so why would the coworkers be talking about the practice talk and not the real talk?
Obviously lying to people you know is generally unhealthy but when you are putting on a performance to an audience I don’t judge so harshly. Of course I imagine he did both.
Edit: what a weird thing to downvote lol
You can search YouTube for Steve Jobs demo fail for plenty of examples of it not going smoothly. He practiced but he still did live demos and had plenty of opportunities to mess up
> You have 14 calendar days to return an item from the date you received it.
Or are you saying that they claimed he was nervous before the talks or backstage, but that the nerves went away once he stepped onstage? If so, why would he need to manipulate his coworkers into thinking he's nervous?
Or are you saying that he was nervous during the talks in a way that couldn't be captured by the cameras or the audience? In which case again - manipulation wouldn't have worked.
Or am I missing something?
EDIT: It seems I misread the original comment - he actually told the audience he was nervous. I'd love to know which product announcement that was and see it for myself. I'm still not sure how a coworker would be able to know what he was feeling any better than the audience did.
Correct.
> I'd love to know which product announcement that was and see it for myself.
Some NeXT computer.
> I'm still not sure how a coworker would be able to know what he was feeling any better than the audience did.
Because his coworkers had known him for years, worked through many product announcements with him, and the audience did not?
The whole book "Steve Jobs in Exile" was basically the reminiscences of his coworkers.
> Because his coworkers had known him for years, worked through many product announcements with him, and the audience did not?
I'm skeptical. There are video interviews from that era (I think) where he appears very nervous on camera, asking repeatedly if "we're on", self-interrupting and asking for a second try to attempt an answer, taking lots of sips of water, etc. I'd have to try to find the video.
EDIT: here it is, his first TV appearance (1978), he is extremely nervous: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ODMJE6lDbY. So it doesn't contradict the anecdote from the NeXT era, but certainly seems like he got used to the job rather than simply being some kind of psychopath/manipulator.
Sounds like an interesting book though, I'll check it out.