"We're the last people in this business who give a shit about making great computers."

I already shared this clip on X and Bluesky earlier today, but I wanted to say a little bit more about it. I think that this newly discovered footage of Steve Jobs congratulating Apple employees at an outdoor all-hands meeting at the Infinite Loop campus following MacWorld New York in 1999 is some of the most important that exists of him. It was published by former Apple software engineer Akira Nonaka on YouTube.

It’s awfully rare footage, not just because it’s an internal meeting but because it shows a behind the scenes look at life at Apple in those early days of Steve’s return. The footage also not only shows what he was like internally with staff versus onstage for the public, but he talks about why he came back to Apple. “The reason I came here had nothing to do with turning Apple around because that’s about the company, and I know we all love this company but what we love even more is putting these great products out into the world and seeing people use them.” As Steve says in the clip, he just wanted to make really good products and this was his best chance. He sums it up pretty cleanly: “We’re the last people in this business who give a shit about making great computers.”

When referencing consumers, creatives, and students, Steve also says “These are our customers. It just feels good to me. This is why Apple was put on this earth, to serve these kinds of customers.” It feels prescient given the MacBook Neo’s emergence. Everything he says about the iBook in this video applies.

The 28-minute clip is chock full of quotes that I love, really encapsulates who Steve was, and shows the kind of place Apple still aspires to be. He calls the iMac G3 “lifesavers.” He waxes about the possibility to making Apple great again. And at the end, he delivers the understatement of the century: “I think we’re gonna really be able to rock and roll the next few years.”