Developers, developers, developers

STEVE JOBS: Hello and welcome to the 1999 Apple Worldwide Developer Conference. I’m pleased to say we have some very good news for you.
DEVELOPERS: What is it?
STEVE JOBS: Nothing.
DEVELOPERS: Nothing?
STEVE JOBS: Yep.
DEVELOPERS: Nothing?
STEVE JOBS: Zilch. Zero. Nada. Sweet Fanny Adams.
DEVELOPERS: But Steve, haven’t you forgotten something?
STEVE JOBS: Cheerily No, don’t think so. Unless… Thinks No, no, nothing.
DEVELOPERS: What about the hopeless excuses for your disastrous financial results?
STEVE JOBS: Checking his script No, can’t see anything.
DEVELOPERS: What about announcing yet another U-turn in your OS strategy?
STEVE JOBS: Er… no, doesn’t seem to be on here.
DEVELOPERS: Reassuring us that sacking your entire developer relations team and cancelling all your developer schemes doesn’t mean you don’t care about developers any more?
STEVE JOBS: Ah, yes, you’re right… No, apparently not. Not this time.
DEVELOPERS: What about the bit where you mention all the technologies you’ve been encouraging us to pour R&D money into for the last two years but have recently and unceremoniously scrapped, and we boo you?
STEVE JOBS: No. Shame. That bit used to be cool.
DEVELOPERS: Puzzled So… What are we going to do for the next four days?
STEVE JOBS: Um, well, I guess you can play around with some of this new technology stuff. You know, incredibly fast chips, groundbreaking user interface developments, quantum leaps in underlying OS functionality, all that.
DEVELOPERS: Hmm. It’s not quite like the old days, is it?
STEVE JOBS: Sorry, guys. We’ll try and have something for you next time.
DEVELOPERS: Hopefully Broken promises?
STEVE JOBS: Maybe.
DEVELOPERS: Pathetic, lame-brain initiatives that we all know damn well will be dead and buried by the time we see you next year?
STEVE JOBS: We’ll do our best.
DEVELOPERS: Because, you know, we’ve sent our partners and kids to Center Parcs for a couple of weeks, so they don’t have to cope with our black depressions and violent mood swings when we get home from WWDC. We don’t want to have that investment wasted.
STEVE JOBS: Oh yeah, of course. Er… You know the new G3 PowerBook?
DEVELOPERS: Ye-e-e-s…?
STEVE JOBS: Still weighs five pounds, doesn’t have FireWire and costs two grand.
DEVELOPERS: Thanks Steve! We knew you could do it!

First published in MacUser, 28 May 1999

Tagged as: Apple, Business, Mac, MacUser