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[Start of Audio]
Steven Levy: Thank you, Andy.
Andy Plesser: And
you’ve connected with your audience a little bit tonight?
Steven Levy: Yes, I have. Actually, it’s a lot of fun because most people come up and ask me
something about having iPods. Well, we
feel guilty for not having an iPod so we could talk about what they’re doing
with the iPod and whether their iPod – as one person tonight told me, “You can
only play Steely Dan too much.
Andy Plesser: Steve,
you have unbelievable access to Steve Jobs,
and you’ve built that over the years, covering the company for such a long time
and so authoritatively. What were your
impressions of your interview with him in San Francisco?
Steven Levy: It’s kind of funny. This year, the PIPE, the pre-conference, pre‑Keno
seemed to reach some sort of peak that what it was about before and what it was
going to be about took on a life of its own, and I went to CBS before the Keno
in Las Vegas, and everyone in CBS – there are 2,700 companies, 150,000 people,
and everyone what was in Las Vegas; they were talking about what was going to
happen in San Francisco.
So this one guy has managed to overshadow this whole giant
conference, the world’s biggest conference, so Steve, himself, was really never
more in command. He took two hours for
his Keno, which is normally – you know, you’re sitting there for a two‑hour
speech – it was like listening to the Castro go on.
But the two hours went by like nothing. You look at you watch afterwards, and he
says, “Wow, that was two hours?” You
didn’t look at your watch while it was going on except for when the Cingular
guy talked, in which case it was like air was being let out of a tire.
And the phone, the iPhone was brilliant. There was a lot of incredibly imaginative
things they did with interface to try to solve the problems that had been there
in trying to integrate email and making phone calls and web-browsing on the
small device. He and his team applied a
lot of innovation to bring those problems under control.
Andy Plesser: What’s
your thought of the iTV and Apple’s role in that?
Steven Levy: So in Las Vegas, there were literally dozens of schemes to bring
digital content either from your computers or your Internet into your living
room television set. And Apple is one of
the simplest ways to do it. It is really
an elegant way to get your key computer content, meaning your photos, your
music, the movies and TV shows you might have stored in there onto your
television set.
I want some more channels. I want a channel with You Tube and Google video, Internet content
directly on there, and that might be in the works, but it isn’t there yet. But in the short term, I think it’s probably
a nice way to get your computer hard-disk stuff onto your living room TV set.
But again, I think what people hunger for is to have their –
be TV on their TV sets, right?
Andy Plesser: Yeah,
how’s the response to the book? And
you’ve written different books. How’s
the response to this one, and what’s the feedback like for you?
Steven Levy: The response I’ve been getting from people who
read it, and a lot of the reviewers; it’s been positive, and I wanted people to
have fun with it, which seems to be happening.
Andy Plesser: That’s
great. Well, congratulations, man.
Steven Levy: Thank you.
Andy Plesser: All
the best.
Steven Levy: Thank you for helping here.
[End of Audio]
Steven Levy, Steve Jobs, iPhone, Apple,
Esther Dyson, Apple iTV