Apple WWDC ‘97 Closing keynote, via df. Gruber posted this to point out that ‘focus is saying no,’ but I think the most interesting part is about 13 minutes in. Steve Jobs spells out iCloud 14 years early:

 ”Never have I seen something more powerful than this computation combined with this network … if Apple could make that as plug and play for mere mortals as it made the user experience over a decade ago, that’s one of the things where there’s a giant hole. And I can’t communicate to you how awesome this is unless you use it. And what you would decide within a day or two is that carrying around these non-connected computers, or computers with tons of state in them … is byzantine by comparison. ”

He’s talking in this case more about the traditional file system, simply remote, but the crux of the idea is to separate your data from where you use it, to make the device you happen to be on irrelevant. Which, in a nutshell, is iCloud.

Anyone who invents things, who has projects of their own, can relate to how long it sometimes takes to translate a sketch into reality, how certain projects mutate and evolve, and reemerge years later. I’m still working on software I sketched out years ago. It’s refreshing to see Jobs follow the same pattern. If an idea sticks around for 14 years, it’s probably still worth doing. My guess is that iCloud is more than a decade in the making.