 So, welcome, Steve, and thank you very much for coming to Perth. We're all looking forward to your talk. Yeah, I'm very excited about being here. Good, and this is presumably your first time in Perth. Oh, no, I've actually been here before. Really? Yes, I've addressed business groups, I've addressed education groups. I've been, yeah, very lucky. I do a lot of this, actually. And this was as part of Apple, or just on my own? No, no, no, just on my own, yes. Spousing views and opinions. More than anything else, I try to inspire young people. That's my main thing. Yes. So, talking of that, I wanted to just talk to you about education first. And you, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and others, essentially left university before finishing their degrees and starting your own. And I'm the only one who actually went back. My name was well known by then, so I went back under a fake name, and my Berkeley diploma reads Rocky Raccoon Clark. So, I got mine, finally. So, why did you feel that it was important to finish your degree? You'd already succeeded. Already? I'd been successful, but I had never sought business success. I had never sought wealth, money, power. I had only wanted to bring great computers to people as an engineer. And I had three years towards an engineering degree done. I only had one more to go. And I could tell my kids, I went to college, where I graduated from, that I was proud of, like my father told me. And so, what degree did you end up actually getting? Oh, WCS, electrical engineering, computer science, hardware, and software. It was an early point in time. Remember, when I started college, introduction to computers was a graduate course. And as a freshman, I got my A-plus. But no, so anyway, it was engineering at Berkeley. So, when you first started, I know there's some confusion there on Wikipedia. You've left Colorado under somewhat of a potentially a cloud. So, I don't try, I ever read even things like Wikipedia about me because I assume it's a lot of wrong stuff because in books, I just, nothing ever comes out right. I left Colorado for one reason. I, when I got my A-plus in that class, I wrote every program I could to calculate tables of numbers that scientists use, and I ran them five times over budget. I didn't know there was a budget. I thought they have a computer and they let you use it if you're in the class. And this budget thing, I was so scared. It was more than out of state tuition. I mean, it was something like today, maybe it'd be $100,000 that they're talking about. I ran a class over and they might charge me that money. So, I didn't try to go back. I was too afraid. My parents might discover, you know, the stuff about it. But that doesn't matter. I got well educated wherever I go. It was in my own head. As a matter of fact, look at the computer stuff. I really knew almost everything in the classes back in, taught myself in high school. So, did you encourage your kids to go to university and finish their education? I only serve as an example, and I try to talk about the benefits of going to college. But I speak to it, to my own children, more that it's the most fun for years of your life. Nobody's going to want to miss out on the most fun for years of your life. I feel very strongly and I have a heartfelt feeling for people who are in poor communities who don't even want to graduate high school because they're not going to be able to afford to go to college. You know, I wish we could do more for them. So, there's been much talk about disruption of the higher education sector, especially with massive open online courses. Do you see that this is a sector that's ripe for disruption and you see MOOCs as potentially that way? I think MOOCs are very adequate for higher upper level education, university level. I do not see them for primary education up through like what we call high school because there's just like a boring book and it's an example, it's an assignment that I've been given and I have to do. It's not like your best friend is doing something along with you and you're a team. It's not the same sort of thing. So, I don't think they are as good as if we had one great teacher per student and even computers don't give us that. A human being, one great human being teacher. At least computers don't do it yet. Yes. So, when you first built the Apple One, you talk about in your book about programming in BASIC and that people would be potentially learning BASIC as the first language. Turns out that I had never programmed in BASIC in my life. I had programmed in scientific languages, Fortran, Algol, PL1. BASIC was like a kid language, but games. It was used for a lot of games and I knew that for a home computer, for computers to ever come in the home, games were going to be the key. The Apple One could run some very simple computer games in BASIC, but it was not the revolution. It came as a quick accident of modifying something else that I designed before. The real computer designed was the Apple Two and that was the first time ever arcade games. That means games with little moving colored objects on the screen were going to be color. They were never colored before. Atari was making arcade games for arcades and they were black and white. It was the first time that they were software, meaning that a kid could write, let vertical equals one, let vertical equals two, let vertical equals three and move things on a screen that easy in real time and they had never been software before. When they were hardware, you had to study all these chips and signals and electronics. You had to have ten years of training almost and it would still take half a year to design a new video game that was an arcade game. The Apple One, people looking over my shoulder at the club where I gave it away, they saw that's the formula. A keyboard, a little program that's looking at what you're typing on the keyboard, skip that, all that front panel with the big old computers full of switches and lights that you see on TV shows. That was really the formula for an affordable personal computer that was useful, but it wasn't quite a completely done. It was like an Ikea of computers. You bought a board from us with all these parts on it but you still had to buy a keyboard and hook it up and you had to get some transformers to hook it up and you had to get a wooden case to hook it up so the store sold all the parts and it was just a little bit of assembly. But did you see at the time though that kids primary school potentially would be taught a computer language and that would be based on the work that you'd done? Almost more than any other single reason, that was the reason I designed these computers. I was in a community, a club of people that included college professors talking about how education was going to be transformed. Once we had computers that could give you a question, you type what you think the answer is and then explains to you you're right or wrong and here's why and here's what it was and reteaches you. Education was going to be like it was never before so I was a great, a skilled designer. Everyone else what they were trying to build. So I built the real useful computer and like you said I had to write my own basic just like Bill Gates did. You don't have a computer without being able to type in programs and education was important to me. I was scared that the kids once they had computers were going to be so smart that we adults were going to be out of business. So do you think Apple now with playgrounds they're promoting SWIFT as a programming language for school kids to learn and the playgrounds application on the iPad allows them to do that in a graphical way. Do you think that's really a transformation now in terms of educating children on STEM and computing? I think it's really great. There are little simpler languages than SWIFT that are being used. My son even teaches some to young kids programming languages but anywhere being able to buy inexpensive projects, build them up, turn them into something that impresses other people we had little hobby kids when we were young, pure electronics flip the switch and push a button and a buzzer goes off, simple little things but now you can do that and programming is really the heart of it learn how to program and what a program is all about only a few of us are going to just say I want to do this for life but they should have the advantage of seeing it at least public schools don't always explain to you what that's all about technology, the way you're going to change the future come up with an idea of a better way to do something even educate you don't really get the opportunity to do it in most schools it's not like a course and that's the most important thing you might do in your life someday Yes, so talking about changing the future and starting businesses in Australia with investments as it stands at the moment potentially Apple wouldn't have been funded in Australia as if it came along today and pitched that idea what would you say to young people starting a startup and trying to look for that investment? The success of the personal computer industry on through laptops and internet and mobile devices and smartphones all of this is so prominent that it's opened up the eyes of a lot of the world that a lot of people have money everywhere in the world even in the poorest countries so people have big money are they willing to invest in these risky technology things where you don't know if it's going to go over or not it's almost like making a song it's almost like making a game you can do something really good that can help people and not get the sales just didn't have enough demand and compulsion to buy it so I think Australia is moving way up in that regard everywhere I go in Australia I've even been talking to people in Australia for about 30 years but in the last 10 years more and more and more every year emphasis and interest in being a part of this technology creation you know digitizing the world every single business whether it has anything to technology or not is becoming digitized because digital the digital world and all the the tablets and the communication methods and all that it's just improving our life In terms of the way that engineers are portrayed in popular culture there's been now a number of series you actually spearheaded really the rehabilitation of the engineer in society people are taking us a little bit more seriously and in fact in popular culture we're seeing series shows like Big Bang and Mr. Robot and Halton Catch Fire in fact Halton Catch Fire sounds uncannily like your story of going out Oh my gosh yeah I love that Have you watched these series and do you think they're portraying an action? Although I haven't watched the entire series I actually got to introduce them before they ever came on on the air with that show I got to introduce all the cast and talk about it at a presentation at South by Southwest So you've been on Big Bang? I know what it's about I've been on Big Bang Theory but you know what a lot of these things we say popularize the geek because of people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and myself and coming up from nowhere out of school young school kids with an idea humble start can take you somewhere but I really think if you go down back to school you're going to find that these little geeks that know how to do all that stuff aren't that any more popular than they were maybe some people talk about it but I think it's an older age when life has come to mean something to you and wow starting your own thing having a business is important that it gets more you know recognition maybe by university level but I think before university a geek is still kind of something people don't want to necessarily be it's like I'm stuck here I'm not normal but I love doing what I'm doing So Apple has taken a very strong stance on privacy and to the point of even defying government opinion and the FBI do you think that's the right thing for Tim Cook to have done? Just about every major technology company has taken a strong stance on privacy Apple's the only one that kept their word they do it they do it for real they don't just talk to talk privacy nobody will get your data except us a lot of them say no Apple says we even we won't get your credit cards and your history and all that and they're the most trustable and I'm very proud of that And so do you think that was Tim Cook that brought that culture in or do you think that existed prior to Tim? I think it existed prior to Tim but I think I'm very thankful that Tim is at the head of things because the hit is the ultimate decider and I'm glad to see it all happening it's rare he's even stood up to the FBI and you know what Apple he's made a point Apple will gladly help the FBI in legitimate ways but people have to have a part of their personal life there's a reason for privacy that you can have things in your life and you'd be too scared to talk about your behavior becomes very modified and very constricted if you don't have enough privacy So in Australia currently Apple's in a slight dispute with some of the banks what do you think of the banks position? Oh, that one I don't know I do know that Apple pay is in Australia and I walk up to every terminal and I just pay with my watch and it's so easy and we'll have a ring Visa announced, somebody announced they're going to have a little Visa card ring So these are great things I don't know what the dispute with the banks is maybe it's over what percentages everybody gets that's one of the reasons we aren't see we have an international standard on Wi-Fi If you have Wi-Fi on your computer it works anywhere in the world the same but all these banking systems and mobile payments and ones that are online and you're stored digitally on your computer on your smartphone everybody wants their piece of the cut and there's no one standard there's a whole bunch of everybody's trying to get in and get their way But do you think Apple should have opened up the NFC wireless radio to an API? I haven't thought about that one deeply but usually when I think about it I say at least to some in some ways a lot of these technologies should be open so that everybody can jump into one standard but Apple's way is a lot well we want to make sure you have to we get your money using our system rather than I think licensing the system around very reasonable rates or making an open standard would help it happen I would love there to be a worldwide standard like one credit card that works everywhere alright well thank you very much Steve for joining us unfortunately we have run out of time so you've got to be on stage so look forward to it wish we had more time, thanks