The painting is by Nitrozac, the co-creator of the excellent comic strip The Joy of Tech, and it instantly reminded me of this photo I snapped at that keynote, which I’ve published on Technologizer several times:

At first, I thought that Nitrozac’s painting might have been based on my snapshot. But nope–and not just because the angle is very slightly different. I’m pretty sure that I never posted the photo anywhere until 2009. Nitrozac created her work in 2008. She just happened to paint the exact same moment that my photo captured. It was a great moment, and it’s a great painting.

He was also a charismatic leader and public figure, who held people in thrall with his product announcements and presentations.

But does that mean you would enjoy watching a 16-year-old, 70-minute, videotaped interview, visually consisting of one continuous close-up of his face?

Surprisingly, the answer is Yes. That charisma, combined with the simple fact that Jobs had some interesting things to say back in 1995, make Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview–a film playing in special theatrical engagements around the country this week–a reasonably interesting and informative film. But it could have been much better.

In those long-ago days of the first Clinton administration, technology journalist Robert X. Cringely interviewed Jobs for the PBS series Triumph of the Nerds. Aside from a small portion used in the final cut, the interview was believed lost. Then someone found a VHS copy, and the rest is, if not history, than at least movie distribution.

There’s no filmmaking craftsmanship whatsoever in The Lost Interview. After a brief, new introduction by Cringely, the camera stays on Jobs as he talks. Occasionally an unseen Cringely asks a question. Every so often, the image freezes and Cringely (the 2011 version) provides a little narration to help bring us over to the next part of the interview. Since the image was transferred from VHS, it looks horrible.

But 1995 was a great moment to capture Jobs in amber (or at least videotape). He had been fired from Apple a decade earlier, soon after his triumph with the Mac. Apple was on the skids, and Jobs’ second startup, NeXT, had failed to set the world on fire. The following year, Apple would buy NeXT, and Jobs would triumphantly return to the company he’d co-founded, leading it to greater successes.

Jobs talks about how he first became interested in technology, about the Apple I computers that he and Steve Wozniak built by hand, and the astonishing success that followed the release of the Apple II. He remembers first seeing a graphic user interface at Xerox PARC and realizing that that will be the future of computing. His only complaint about Microsoft (the truly big giant in the industry in 1995) “is that they just have no taste.” He predicts, accurately, that the Web will change everything, but assumes that Apple’s days as an important company are over.

He’s at his best early on, when he describes how he and Wozniak–then teenage buddies–slowly and almost accidentally turned their hobby into one of the most important and successful businesses in history. He also does well when he discusses how companies (including Apple) go wrong. Companies, especially successful ones, become driven by marketing, or by process (which he doesn’t really explain that well). Either way, they forget about improving their content, which is–after all–what it’s all about. Not surprisingly, he has nothing nice to say about John Sculley, the PepsiCo Vice President who became president of Apple and fired Jobs (“I hired the wrong person”).

I’ve never been a Jobs fan–or an Apple fan. I don’t trust charisma (except in performing artists, where you don’t have to trust it). And I don’t like Apple’s “walled garden” approach to technology, where the company that makes the box gets to decide what you can do with it. That’s limiting and it leads to vertical monopolies. Nevertheless, I found the interview interesting and informative, at least most of the time.

But there’s a limit to how much time you can watch a single close-up, and The Lost Interview begins to wear out its welcome well before it’s through. With a little extra work–perhaps inserting illustrative photos over the course of the interview–Cringely and his team could have made an invaluable documentary, capturing an important figure at a career low point that would soon end. Instead, they merely give us a record of in interesting conversation.

Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview will play for two days—this coming Wednesday and Thursday—in selected theaters around the country. The Aquarius theater in Palo Alto, California will host the film’s only seven-day run.

[This post republished from BayFlicks.net.]

But Steve Jobs’ passing on October 5th was a unique moment in computing history. And as an ex-computer magazine person, I’m fascinated by how the computer magazines that are still around chose to handle the news, which many of them put on their covers. The issues that do so are just now coming out–read on, and I’ll show you some of them, borrowed from Zinio and other sources.

First magazines first: Macworld, whose first issue featured the most famous Jobs cover of them all, has the classiest tribute computer-magazine cover I’ve seen. (I’m also partial to TIME’s cover, but I’m biased.) I’m not sure where Macworld’s photo came from, but I like it.

Other Macworlds around the planet created their own Jobs covers. Here’s the UK’s version, which cleverly features that first Macworld cover.

In Australia, Macworld used a monochromatic treatment of the same photo as its US cousin–and it’s donating part of the proceeds from the issue to cancer research.

Macwelt, Macworld’s German edition, put a commemorative flap on what looks like a typical cover, and bundled a disc with Jobs’ classic Stanford commencement speech. (I like that “Stay hungry, stay foolish” is in English.)

In the UK, MacUser is still a print mag, and its cover used a big video Steve/little flesh-and-blood Steve photo from the iPod Nano launch that reminds me a bit of one I took at the later MacBook Air debut. (You know what? I like mine better.)

This Italian publication uses a photo I don’t recall seeing previously–but I’m sorry, the original iBook wouldn’t even be on my list of the 50 Greatest Things Steve Jobs Was Associated With.

In Russia, as in much of the world, computer magazines cram as many stories onto the cover as possible–and in this case, Jobs’ passing was one of them.

Okay, back to the U.S. Unlike Macworld, its principal competitor, MacLife, didn’t devote its entire cover to Jobs. But it did mark the news with a band across the stop.

iPhone Life (no relation to MacLife) displays the danger of mixing such a sad event with random tech-related stuff: If it’s your ANNUAL HOLIDAY BUYERS GUIDE and your main story is Best Apps and Gear Ever!, it’s a trifle undignified to shoehorn that omnipresent Jobs photo onto the cover.

PC Magazine no longer publishes in print, but it does distribute a digital edition through Zinio. And it found room for a reference to Jobs’ death, but no photo. (I’m not sure what the GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT was, but I hope it wasn’t Boot Camp.)

And PCWorld? Well, it didn’t break tradition and use a photo of Jobs on the cover. But it did acknowledge the news with a brief story (by..well, me) that aimed to look forward rather than backward.

I’m not sure when the last time was that a specific person was even mentioned on the cover of PCWorld, but it may have been the early 1990s. And I suspect it’ll be a long time before it happens again.

On design:

Steve Jobs Would Annoy Jony Ive By Taking Credit For His Design Work [Business Insider]

“Jonathan ‘Jony’ Ive, Apple’s design maestro, was regularly frustrated with his good friend, and boss, Steve Jobs taking all the credit for Apple product’s design.”

On apps:

Steve Jobs resisted third-party apps on iPhone, biography reveals [The Guardian]

“Apple chief was initially reluctant to allow non-Apple apps but was swayed by lobbying from execs and board members.”

On the iPad:

Jobs ‘annoyed and depressed’ following iPad announcement, biography reveals [ZDNet]

“Isaacson recounts how Jobs had received hundreds of emails to his personal email account in the twenty four hours following the announcement and how ‘most of them were complaining.’”

On Facebook:

Jobs Admired Facebook’s Zuckerberg for ‘Not Selling Out’ [BusinessWeek]

“Steve Jobs, who mentored Silicon Valley technology leaders in the months before he died, said he admired Facebook Inc. co-founder Mark Zuckerberg for ‘not selling out.’”

On Apple TV:

Steve Jobs’ biography spurs round of iTV, Apple TV handicapping [ZDNet]

“Analysts are projecting a launch of an Apple iTV in the second half of 2012 based on Steve Jobs’ comments in his biography.”

On cancer treatment:

Steve Jobs’ Cancer Treatment Regrets

“Jobs’ ‘magical thinking’ may have defined his business brilliance, but it could have been his downfall in his fight against cancer.”

On Jobs’ temper:

‘Steve Jobs’: an apt portrait of a jerk and a genius [CNet]

“Jobs, along with the bold company he built, gets people’s blood boiling with loyalty and with loathing. Vitriol often is the chief characteristic of debates between the Mac fans and the Windows fans, the Android fans and the iOS fans.”

On Microsoft:

Apple’s Steve Jobs Talks Microsoft, Gates, Ballmer in New Bio [eWeek]

“Apple’s Steve Jobs spends a chunk of his new biography drawing contrasts between Apple and Microsoft, while opining on Microsoft CEOs Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.”

When Steve Met Bill: ‘It was a kind of weird seduction visit’ [Fortune]

“Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were the ultimate frenemies.”

On Google:

Will Steve Jobs’ final vendetta haunt Google? [AP]

“The biography drips with Jobs’ vitriol as he discusses his belief that Google stole from Apple’s iPhone to build many of the features in Google’s Android software for rival phones.”

On adoption:

Biographer says Steve Jobs saw himself as ‘chosen’ [MercuryNews.com]

“A key to understanding Steve Jobs, his hand-picked biographer Walter Isaacson said, can be found in the Apple co-founder’s childhood in Mountain View.”

[This post republished from Techland.]

Over at the New York Times, Christopher Bonanos has a nice piece comparing Steve Jobs to the entrepreneur/technologist he resembles most by far: Polaroid’s Edwin Land. Bonanos says that virtually none of the Jobs obituaries mentioned Land, but I remembered to do so in my piece for TIME–in the third paragraph, in fact. And last June, when I wrote about Polaroid’s SX-70 camera, I found the Land/Jobs parallels so compelling that they threatened to take over the article.

My friends at TIME had just finished work on the issue that comes out this Friday when the world learned of the passing of Steve Jobs. They stopped the presses, called an emergency meeting–here’s photographic evidence–and put together a new cover story. (And what a cover that is.) I’m honored to say that the obituary I wrote for TIME.com became part of the print magazine’s coverage. (I also have another story in the issue, on Facebook’s new Timeline and Open Graph features.)

In 1985 Apple had a promotion called “Test Drive” where you could borrow a Mac for the weekend from your local computer reseller.  At the same time they had a sales contest for reseller sales people.  I had just finished my undergraduate degree (Animal Science/Microbiology) and needed to make some money for grad school, so I went to work for a local computer reseller in Ames, Iowa (I was always the computer guy in the lab).  At the end of the sales contest I got a letter from Apple (I knew it was legit because it was done on a yet to be shipped LaserWriter) saying that I’d won and was invited to Cupertino (my first trip to California).  There were other winners from other regions (but I sold the most :) ) and I got to have dinner with Steve and Mike Murray (VP of Marketing). As a guy that had been playing with Apple II’s since 1978, it was more than a dream come true.  I was 24 years old,  having dinner with Steve Jobs.  I personally understand the term “reality distortion field”.  I also spent the week with other sales and marketing execs at Apple in interviews, a tour of the factory and meetings. at headquarters.  Steve gave me the keys to a Porsche 944 and then about 3 months later, Apple called back to see if I would consider moving to California and work at headquarters.  I stayed for 10 years.  After my second sabbatical, I helped found a new networking and communications company called Packeteer as CEO, took it public in 1999 and retired in 2002 at 41.

Lots of people can rightfully say that Steve Jobs changed their life.

Me, too.

And here it is. The tribute must have been deeply moving for Steve and his colleagues at the time it was made, and if you can watch it today without getting at least very slightly emotional–particularly as you listen to Dylan’s lyrics–you’re reading the wrong blog.

For a film that doesn’t include NexT, Pixar, the iMac, the Apple Store, the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone, or the iPad, it does a remarkable job of summing up Steve Jobs; I don’t think a film that did tell the story that was yet to unfold could have improved on it.

The film includes so many memorable items I’d never seen before that I’m not even going to try to account for all of them, but I particularly like the boyhood photos, the ones of Jobs with Ella Fitzgerald, and the ending–presumably from an in-house video–with Steve as FDR. And I was happy to see a photo of Eliot Hall at Reed College, an institution which appears to have meant an awful lot to Jobs considering that he dropped out after one semester. (It means a lot to me, too: My dad taught there.)

“For the first thirty years of your life, you make your habits,” says the Hindu proverb at the start of the film. “For the last thirty years of your life, your habits make you.” It will be forever sad that Jobs only got a total of fifty-six years on earth, but boy, did he pack a lot of living into them. And his habits didn’t just make him: They changed our world.

Many thanks to Craig Elliott–Apple employee 8128, who worked there from 1985-1996–for sharing this gem, and to his fellow Apple veteran Tom Hughes for telling me about it.

What can be said that hasn’t been said already? Wednesday brought the news that we had all expected for some time now, but not this soon. Steve Jobs, arguably one of tech’s greatest visionaries, gone at the age of 56. As a journalist, you’re taught to separate yourself from the story, and I did in the initial minutes and hours after the news broke.

But now I’ve had some time to sit and reflect on the day’s events, and it floors me. I don’t think we yet grasp the true gravity of what has happened, and we very well may not for months if not years to come. In the simplest terms this is an incredible loss.

Yes, I understand Jobs didn’t do all the work himself. He’s had the help of an incredible designer in Jonathan Ive, the savvy business acumen of Tim Cook, and the marketing skills of Phil Schiller. In the end it was Jobs who had the final say though, and in every product since his return in 1997 has had his mark on it.

Since I made the switch to covering the Apple beat all-but full time in 2006, I’ve had the chance to watch Steve turn a company that everybody left for dead into one of Silcon Valley’s biggest success stories. What has happened here is nothing short of amazing, and Jobs deserves full credit for it.

He arguably had the best stage presence of any CEO in modern history, and had a knack for selling his products in a way that you’d believe the littlest improvements were the best thing since sliced bread. It was so effective that his critics snakily called it the “reality distortion field,” and he was able to play everyone (including the press) to great effect.

It was hard not be sucked in. I’ll fully admit at times I was too.

Did he make mistakes? You bet — but his successes have far eclipsed his failures. Just look at his two last major products. iPhone? A worldwide success, and still on its own the best selling single smartphone model in history. The iPad? It created a new market where most analysts (including this journalist) thought there was none.

See, being successful in business isn’t just about doing what people want. It’s about showing people what they need – and by God, Steve was good at it.

That leaves us the most important question: where does Apple go from here? Obviously, Jobs’ work will live on far after his passing. It’s not out of the question that he was already working on devices several revisions into the future, possibly some we don’t even know about yet, as these just aren’t developed overnight. The iPhone? It existed itself two or three years before we even knew the company was working on it.

But there’s going to come a time and place when an Apple product will no longer carry his mark, and that’s where the true loss of Steve Jobs will be measured. Has he prepared Apple for that point properly? We can only guess yes, but when your company is so intertwined with you personally, it begs the question if Apple will ever be the same.

For those of us who follow the company, this will be what we watch closely over these next weeks, months, and years. I don’t think any of us can truly say at this point if we know that Apple as we know it can survive sans Jobs, we can only hope.