In a newly surfaced 15-minute video from an internal Apple company meeting on July 27, 1999, Steve Jobs addresses employees at the Apple campus in a relaxed, ripped jeans-clad appearance, celebrating the recent launch of the iBook and outlining the company’s turnaround and ambitious future plans.
The video, uploaded on March 17, 2026, by YouTube user Akira Nonaka (a former Apple engineer), shows Jobs in high spirits, opening with casual remarks and applause from the audience. He highlights the massive success of the iBook launch at Macworld New York, which drew nearly 50,000 attendees and earned widespread positive press coverage. Jobs praises the cross-functional teams — engineering, operations, marketing, and finance — for delivering a stylish, affordable, consumer-friendly laptop featuring innovative elements like the Airport wireless networking system (developed in partnership with Lucent).
Jobs emphasizes Apple’s refreshed product lineup, including the colorful iMac, Power Mac G3, PowerBook G3, and the new iBook. He stresses the importance of rapid iteration, noting that Apple plans to refresh products frequently to stay ahead of competitors. The company had achieved seven consecutive profitable quarters, including a $200 million profit in the most recent one, but Jobs makes clear that the goal extends far beyond financial recovery: “We’re not just turning Apple around. We’re making Apple great again.”
Key strategic themes in the speech include:
• Innovation in connectivity: Spotlighting Airport wireless technology and FireWire as differentiators.
• Targeted market focus: Prioritizing creative professionals, the education sector (where Apple aims to regain lost share), and consumers, rather than chasing enterprise sales like rivals such as Dell or Compaq.
• Integrated advantage: Apple’s control over both hardware and software, combined with strong evangelism, allows it to bring innovations to market faster than fragmented competitors (including Microsoft).
• Operational excellence and growth ambitions: Jobs expresses pride in the team’s execution and forecasts “explosive growth,” with expectations of shipping 4–5 million computers per year and more groundbreaking products lined up for the holiday season.
In the speech, Jobs is rallying the troops around a shared vision of building world-changing computers. Audience reactions include cheers and applause throughout.
This never-before-seen footage (or at least rarely seen) provides a candid snapshot of Apple’s culture during its late-1990s resurgence under Jobs’ second stint as CEO. It captures the energy and clarity of purpose that helped transform the company from near-bankruptcy into the innovation powerhouse it later became. The video has quickly gained traction online since its upload, with viewers noting the nostalgic feel and Jobs’ charismatic leadership style.
MacDailyNews Take: We miss you every day, Steve!
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