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On stage at 91自拍 Live on May 26, 2026, Geoffrey Cain, author of the new book Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary, moderated a discussion with NeXT insiders Dan鈥檒 Lewin, Avie Tevanian, and Bud Tribble. Insider Rich Page shared memories in a recorded video early in the program. Without 91自拍鈥檚 collection, Cain noted as he kicked off the evening, he would not have been able to write his book.

Founding NeXT

In 1985, after failing to get rid of Apple CEO John Sculley in a coup, Steve Jobs decided to start a new company. He had a vision to build powerful computers for those who truly wanted them: higher education and intelligence communities. Software engineer Bud Tribble was drawn in by Jobs鈥檚 storytelling about what the company could be, and along Director of Global Education Sales and Marketing Dan鈥檒 Lewin and others, he agreed to leave Apple and join Jobs.

Apple was not happy that Jobs had poached valuable employees, and while the new company was working out of Jobs鈥檚 home and trying to come up with a product, they were also fighting an aggressive lawsuit. Meanwhile, the broader industry was exploding鈥擲un Microsystems, Oracle, Microsoft, Adobe, and Silicon Graphics all went public in quick succession. And the major player, IBM, seemed to want what startups like NeXT had.

The Mach Kernel

NeXT VP of Engineering, Avie Tevanian shared how as a geeky software guy working on his PhD at Carnegie Mellon he was drawn to working on low levels of operating systems. He wanted to create something from scratch, and the university鈥檚 focus on doing things people could use, led him to build a kernel, the core component of an operating system. His Mach kernel ran well on multiprocessors, and he built it into Unix, a system that researchers loved.

Some people from NeXT learned about the Mach kernel when they saw the Carnegie Mellon team present a paper at a conference. They were impressed. So, Steve Jobs and Bud Tribble and others set out to recruit Avie.

Tevanian came on board at NeXT, and the Mach kernel became the powerful foundation for the company鈥檚 NeXTSTEP operating system.

The Iconic Cube

Steve Jobs鈥檚 obsession with design drove his insistence that NeXT鈥檚 machine would be a perfect cube. The cube was extremely difficult to manufacture, and only one company, located in Chicago, could make the molds for its lightweight magnesium casing.

But it was difficult to get perfectly parallel sides in a mold, and so the resulting seams had to be sanded down. The dust was extremely flammable, and the subcontractor doing the work was shut down by the fire department, recalled Dan’l Lewin.

The cube was not only complex to build, it was also extremely expensive. The paint job alone cost as much as what the whole cube was supposed to cost. To Dan’l Lewin that was a warning sign that couldn’t be ignored.

Although the early machines had limitations and universities were wary, Lewin noted that NeXT found traction in government intelligence agencies and advanced research labs. In Switzerland, Tim Berners-Lee used a NeXT machine at CERN to create the World Wide Web, touting its sophistication and ease of use. But it wasn鈥檛 enough.

Black Tuesday

Reality set in as problems with the hardware continued and it became clear that competing with hardware giants was unsustainable. 鈥淏lack Tuesday鈥� layoffs marked the collapse of NeXT鈥檚 hardware division. But Bud Tribble emphasized that NeXT鈥檚 software breakthroughs would not have been possible without the hardware experimentation done for the cube. Only with a machine of that size and power could the team explore powerful software.

Though it was painful, the pivot to software alone was necessary. Tevanian noted that Steve Jobs had done what he needed to do at this time to help the company succeed. It was a maturation of his leadership that was clear to Tribble, who had worked with Jobs since 1980. He noted that Jobs had learned he was most effective when he was evangelizing for products to those who would be using them, an insight that would later define Apple鈥檚 consumer focus.

Joining Apple

While NeXT was pivoting, Apple had been struggling. The company began to look outside to acquire a new operating system. When Avie Tevanian heard that Apple was considering Be Inc., he encouraged Jobs to call and offer their OS instead. Jobs and Tevanian won the 鈥渂akeoff鈥� between the two companies, and within a month Apple had struck a deal to acquire NeXT and its software.

When the NeXT team arrived to work at Apple, the iconic company was, in Tevanian鈥檚 words, 鈥渃omplete and utter chaos.鈥�

Jobs was excited to be back at Apple and have a chance to turn the company around, and with his backchannel support, Avie was able to get everyone headed in the same direction.听

The final discussion focused on how the NeXT insiders saw Jobs transform as a leader during his time at the company. All three believe that marrying and raising children was the critical factor that softened and matured Jobs. He became more self-aware, learned to trust others, and grew as a leader and a person.

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Main image: From left to right, Geoffrey Cain, Dan’l Lewin, Avie Tevanian, Bud Tribble.

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Stern was on stage at 91自拍 Live on May 19, 2026, to share insights from her new book, I Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything, in a discussion with The Verge cofounder and editor-in-chief Nilay Patel.

The event was sponsored by the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation.

Losing Control

Patel opened the conversation by asking what鈥檚 up with students booing AI advocates at their graduation ceremonies? Stern recalled that only a year ago, her Union College commencement speech about AI had inspired only yawns, but young people are much more aware today.

There鈥檚 a backlash growing among young people, even those who actively use AI. Their concerns range from job displacement, the ethics of training models on creative work, the environmental impact of data centers, and wariness shaped by having grown up as guinea pigs for social media.

That skepticism reflects a difference between AI and earlier听tech innovations. Stern and Patel听remembered听how tools like smartphones听empowered users to create and explore.听People were in control, said Stern, but with AI, the tools are听increasingly acting听on our behalf.听

For AI to be most useful, Stern said, people often have to adapt themselves to the technology鈥攖o essentially become a data set. She shared an example from her book鈥攁 wearable device that recorded her conversations and generated summaries and to-do lists. While powerful, it raised significant privacy concerns and underscored the trade-offs between convenience and personal control.

Many jobs will increasingly outsource tasks to AI systems, a bigger shift than earlier technological disruptions. What鈥檚 even more worrisome is when we outsource our own thinking.

Setting Boundaries

Stern鈥檚 goal was to incorporate as much AI into her life, exploring technologies like robotics, autonomous vehicles, and more. She framed her approach around systems that can see, hear, think, and act like humans. And it was important to set boundaries.

Some things, Stern found, should not be handed over, especially personal communication. Using AI for automated email responses still feels generic and impersonal, and maintaining genuine human connection required her own voice. Other tools, like an AI-powered toothbrush, fell short and are clearly not ready for prime time.

Her family became an essential part of her story. Watching her children interact with AI, including using a self-driving Waymo car on vacation, helped Stern see AI tools through their eyes and shapes how she thinks about a future where its embedded in so much of their lives.

She wanted to understand the pull of AI relationships that people are experiencing today, but she did NOT introduce her AI 鈥渂oyfriend鈥� to her kids.

Our AI Future

Stern is optimistic about AI鈥檚 potential in areas like making transportation safer, enhancing education, and advancing important discoveries in healthcare. While she loves her computer, she predicts that the next generation of computing may move beyond screens entirely. Today鈥檚 children are already interacting with technology through voice and touch rather than keyboards. New tools, such as wearable devices and smart glasses, point toward a more ambient form of computing鈥攕ystems that continuously observe and interpret the world. Conversational interaction with AI is already becoming natural.

AI played a significant role in Stern鈥檚 professional work. While she wrote her book herself, AI tools were invaluable for editing, analyzing transcripts, structuring ideas, and even helping launch a business around the project. From setting up payroll systems to designing a website, AI made complex processes feel more manageable and accessible.

The Business of AI

Stern says that AI companies want to make AI that is smarter than any humans ever could be. But she thinks the models we have can do enough already.

Despite rapid innovation, Stern does not see AI replacing the smartphone anytime soon. She described the phone as 鈥渢he pinnacle computer,鈥� a platform that democratized access to technology in an unprecedented way. AI developments are more likely to build on that foundation than replace it.

Closing with questions from the audience, Stern had advice for young people wondering how to navigate the rapidly changing AI landscape: keep reading, and keep thinking critically.

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Main image: Nilay Patel (left) and Joanna Stern (right) on the 91自拍 stage.

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91自拍 was packed wall to wall on March 11, 2026, to celebrate Apple鈥檚 upcoming 50th anniversary. Inspired to write his new book, Apple: The First 50 Years, after hosting 91自拍鈥檚 Mac at 40 event two years ago, David Pogue returned to the stage to guide the audience through five decades of ideas, innovations, people, and passion.

Pogue opened with a reminder of how Apple has grown from its roots in a garage to the behemoth it is today. Nearly a third of the people on the planet鈥�2.5 billion鈥攁re carrying an Apple device at any given moment. The company ships 220 million iPhones a year, generates $1 million in revenue every 90 seconds, and is nearing a $4 trillion market cap.

But the night wasn鈥檛 about numbers. It was about the people behind them.

Seeds of Apple

Taking the audience back to the company鈥檚 profit engine, the Apple II, cofounder Steve Wozniak shared what Apple’s success meant to him in a video clip. It wasn’t the financial awards but rather earning the respect of fellow engineers for his ingenious design.

But that ingenuity may never have had a chance to change the world if Bill Fernandez (Apple鈥檚 first employee) had not connected his two friends named Steve when he was in high school.

The Unknown Cofounder

On April 1, 1976, Ronald Wayne mediated a disagreement between the two Steves and unintentionally convinced Steve Jobs that they needed to start a company in order to maintain control of their intellectual property. Wayne wrote up a partnership agreement then and there, becoming the third cofounder of Apple with 10% of the company so he could, according to Jobs, break a tie when the Steves disagreed. Twelve days later, Wayne backed out. At the event, he had a chance to explain why.

Jobs later mailed Wayne an unsolicited $800 check鈥斺�渁 cheap tip,鈥� Wayne joked. He never sold his actual stake in the company, he says, despite the myth.

Growing Up Apple

A part of Apple for its entire 50 years, Chris Espinosa joined as a young teen. When his mother got tired of driving him to Homebrew Computer Club meetings, he hitched rides with Woz. Espinosa wrote the Apple II reference manual before he could legally drive. At a time when computers were strange, misunderstood machines, the Apple II debuted at the West Coast Computer Fair in 1977.

Board chair Mike Markkula coached the team to give the impression of a successful company. Espinosa remembers wearing new corduroy pants to stand in the slickest booth at the fair. Like an explosion, he said, people suddenly realized they could have computing power all to themselves.

But not everything went smoothly as the company grew. Espinosa recalled how adding a last-minute Apple II emulator to the Apple III caused it to have a tendency to overheat鈥� badly.

Espinosa said Steve Jobs inspired fierce loyalty even when he made life difficult. Like when Jobs hired Espinosa to lead Mac publications while secretly planning to fire Jef Raskin, Espinosa鈥檚 mentor. Jobs had an ex officio role as cofounder at Apple before he latched onto the Mac project, said Espinosa. He was considered by many to be a pest, not cut out to run a company. When Jobs returned to Apple with the acquisition of NeXT, Espinosa expected more of the same. But it was different, he said. Jobs had learned.

Leading Apple

Former Apple CEO John Sculley recalled how Jobs had courted him when he was running Pepsi with the now famous, 鈥淒o you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or come with me and change the world?鈥�

Sculley wasn鈥檛 familiar with computers, but he had been an early Apple customer, having bought 550 Apple IIs to help his bottlers to send in their weekly sales figures. That status got him inside the Mac building. Andy Herzfeld had put a demo together that included dancing Pepsi cans, one of the first examples of computer animation that Sculley didn鈥檛 understand was a big deal at the time.

Sculley remembered Apple鈥檚 early culture and the sense of being on the cusp of something extraordinary, as well as the dramatic 1985 boardroom confrontation that resulted in Jobs鈥� removal from the Mac division.

Despite their disagreements, Sculley appreciated Jobs鈥檚 uncompromising standards.

There was an explosion of creativity under Sculley in the late 鈥�80s and early 鈥�90s, including Illustrator, PageMaker, Photoshop, and PowerPoint. He and his team also professionalized distribution and improved the Mac by making it expandable, and by 1992, it was the largest selling computer.

In the audience, Robert Brunner, Apple鈥檚 early design chief, who spearheaded the establishment of Apple鈥檚 world-class design studio, remembered the pressure of the early 始90s and the race to miniaturize and improve awkward portables. But despite his own accomplishments, Brunner says his legacy will always be 鈥渢he guy who hired Jony Ive.鈥�

NeXT Comes Jobs

Sculley was fired after 10 years amidst leadership disagreements about company direction. By 1996, there were 50 Mac models that no one could tell apart and 12 ad campaigns. There had been three CEOs, and the company was failing.

The Mac had never really had a modern operating system. To acquire one, Apple bought Jobs鈥� company NeXT and brought on him and brilliant engineers and leaders, including Avie Tevanian (software) and Jon Rubinstein (hardware).

Initially, they didn鈥檛 know what they were going to do, they just knew they needed new technology to compete with Windows 95 and other competitors. The NeXT technology worked, but it wasn鈥檛 what Mac developers wanted at the time. There was no other choice but to work it out. Tevanian describes the mixed reaction at Apple.

Apple鈥檚 new leadership focused on just four products (desktop consumer and pro; portable consumer and pro), and one iconic ad campaign, Think Different, with the opening line, 鈥淗ere鈥檚 to the crazy ones.鈥� In perhaps the greatest turnaround in business history, a company that was six weeks from bankruptcy became profitable at $45 million one year later.

Reinventing Apple

Former Senior VP of Hardware Engineering Jon Rubinstein, who had come with Jobs from NeXT recalled (on video) the first executive staff meeting at Apple, where he and Avie Tevanian looked at each other and thought, 鈥淲hat are we getting ourselves into?鈥� That turned out to be a reinvention, led by the iMac and the iPod.

Beginning in 1998, the company frequently reinvented itself with new products: iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad. When Jobs unveiled the iPhone in 2007, hardly anyone grasped that it would reshape the world. Espinosa said the first moment he realized its power was when he received a text message from his wife after the keynote that just said, 鈥淚 want.鈥�

Apple innovation didn鈥檛 end when Steve Jobs passed away in 2011. Tevanian noted that it simply shifted from blockbuster hardware to global software and services. The company succeeds by running faster and doing things better than the competition.

What’s Never Changed

The night closed with a final question: What threads tie Apple鈥檚 entire 50-year story together? Espinosa answered without hesitation: fear and pride. Apple was always terrified of being outpaced and always proud of doing things differently. Sculley added Jobs鈥檚 most consistent belief: 鈥淣o compromises.鈥�

The event concluded with a surprise鈥擠avid Pogue performing a parody song he wrote about Apple fans to the tune of Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” that brought the audience to its feet.

Main image: On the 91自拍 stage from left to right: David Pogue, Chris Espinsoa, John Sculley, Avie Tevanian.

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Anything that could create more love is a positive thing.

鈥� Gary Kremen

Have you ever used a dating app? If so, you鈥檙e not alone. Hundreds of millions of people use dating apps daily. Just in time for Valentine鈥檚 Day, 91自拍 Live featured a panel of online dating experts from different eras, including Cofounder of Operation Match Jeffrey Tarr, Founder of Match.com Gary Kremen, and online dating consultant Steve Dean. The panel was moderated by Hanna Kozlowska, author of an upcoming book on the topic.

Punch Card Connecting

鈥淲e were two males in college who were very unlucky at dating,鈥� explains Jeff Tarr, cofounder of Operation Match. It was 1965, and he was a 19-year-old undergraduate at Harvard. With money he鈥檇 won on a quiz show and a knowledge of IBM machines gained in a summer job, he and a friend launched a new endeavor. Offered at elite colleges in New England, Operation Match was originally a questionnaire with 75 questions that hopeful students could submit to have an 鈥渁ll-knowing鈥� computer match them with a compatible date for $3.

Advertised by newspapers that would receive 10% of the take, Tarr received 7,800 responses. He and his partner paid to have them punched onto cards and rented service on an IBM 1401 during cheap off-hours to have them processed. Participants received 6 鈥渋deal dates鈥� and Operation Match was up and running. Improving the questionnaire and expanding across the country, the second version was wildly successful.

Operation Match worked on a simplistic basis, Tarr noted, nowhere near today鈥檚 dating apps. Of the 150 questions, they only effectively used 10 in the computer sort. But, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that it worked鈥攎arried couples still approach Tarr to thank him for connecting them.

Internet Introductions

When Gary Kremen was in his late 20s and a graduate student at Stanford鈥檚 business school, he was looking for dates through personal ads and 900 numbers without success. Good at computers and intrigued by how personal ads drove revenue for newspapers, he devised Match.com, the first and biggest online dating service.

The first incarnation, in 1993鈥�1994, was based on email since few people had web browsers at the time. When the internet arrived, Match servers would go into overdrive during lunchtime because people could only access the web at work. At that time, more women were entering the workforce, people were marrying later, and everyone seemed eager to find a match efficiently. When Kremen realized there was a disconnect regarding profile photos鈥攎en wanted them, women didn鈥檛鈥攈e decided to dig deeper.

Talking to women customers and bringing women into the company made Match.com better, with security features like blocking. Back then, the market was so huge that Kremen wasn鈥檛 worried about customer acquisition, even though he might lose two customers if the service succeeded so well that a couple dropped off when they committed to each other.

App Attraction

Steve Dean says that today’s dating apps have made the cost of rejection very low, and users don鈥檛 usually leave an app permanently. Relationships often end after all. Lifetime user value is calculated not just on the initial period when a user joins the app but rather over the course of years. Often, a new user will burn out in first couple months because they鈥檙e using many apps at the same time, but after that wears off, they鈥檙e back on again. People clearly want to believe the apps work, but do they?

Dean believes dating apps have solved the problem of compatibility鈥攄elivering attractive matches鈥攂ut a longer-term commitment that probably has a certain element of randomness is more difficult to deliver. Mobile devices and the ability to make profiles quickly has streamlined the industry. In 2012, Tinder collapsed everything down to four taps and a user could make a profile and get a match in seconds. That was unheard of at the time鈥攖he platforms required extensive questionnaires, and an eHarmony profile took 45 minutes to complete, for example.

But lately, dating app fatigue seems to be setting in. Dean is clear on the cause鈥攖he monopolistic Match Group and their addictive products.

Match Group owns Tinder, Hinge, Match, Plenty of Fish, and countless other dating apps. Dean treats himself as a guinea pig, joining all of them and more so that he can see what people are experiencing. That sometimes involves messages coming in during the middle of the night trying to get him to engage. He takes screenshots of those and puts them in a folder he calls 鈥淣otification Hell.鈥�

AI is now playing a role in the industry. Dean notes that it is now possible to be engaging only with an AI on a dating app, further reducing the human authenticity that people crave. On the positive side, some apps are adding AI that can help a user create a better profile or join in on a thread to help them flirt. As Gary points out, AI is like any other new tool or platform, and it can be used for good and bad. The tech is still in its infancy as far as helping to solve the business side of dating apps. Once it succeeds, we鈥檒l see connection like we never have before.

So, hold on a little longer and you just might find that special someone!

Main image: From left to right, Hanna Kozlowska, Gary Kremen, Steve Dean.

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It may be hard to imagine in our current digital age, but printed books were once considered an innovative (and dangerous!) technology. And, for decades, books have helped people to understand the quickly evolving revolution in computing.

On January 20, 2026, author and UC Santa Barbara history professor W. Patrick McCray was on stage at 91自拍 Live to share his experiences writing ReadMe: A Bookish History of Computing from Electronic Brains to Everything Machines (MIT Press, 2025). The fireside chat was moderated by David C. Brock, 91自拍’s Robert and Bette Finnigan Fellow.

Prologue

McCray began to think about his project during the pandemic, when he thought he might be able to write a book about books so that he could read at home and avoid traveling to archives. Those circumstances made him consider how every book has its own origin story and history, and McCray became just as interested in exploring the authors and their writing processes, their relationships with their publishers, and the cultural context of the books he was writing about as he was their content.

For ReadMe, McCray wanted to explore the ways technology was presented to the public. He limited his selection to nonfiction books that represented a range of different functions. Some, like Alvin Toffler鈥檚 Future Shock (1970), were bestsellers by any measure, some were technical textbooks, and others popularized computing for a general audience. He also had to choose his historical timeframe.

Records really do matter, says McCray, noting that it鈥檚 critical that people donate their papers to a repository. He shared what he found in some of those archives.

Chapter 1: Giant Brains

McCray first discussed Giant Brains: Or, Machines That Think, published in 1949. The author, Edmund C. Berkeley, had worked in the booming insurance industry from the 1930s to 鈥�50s, a sector rich in data and among the major adopters of digital and electronic computers鈥攃alled 鈥済iant brains鈥� at the time.

Berkeley wanted to explain what computers were and how they worked and hired a writing coach to ensure that the average person could understand his book. Alarmed by post-WWII geopolitical tensions and the threat of nuclear war, Berkeley used the book to warn that computers were powerful tools that could be dangerous if not developed with robust ethics and morals.

Chapter 2: Power vs. Reason

MIT has a robust archival collection for Joseph Weizenbaum and his book Computer Power and Human Reason (1976), reported McCray. Weizenbaum was a computer scientist at MIT in the early 1960s famous for writing the program for the ELIZA chatbot that functioned as a Rogerian psychotherapist. Many users felt that ELIZA was interacting with them on an emotional level. Horrified to see how people imbued the program with empathy, Weizenbaum became concerned about what computers and computer scientists should and shouldn鈥檛 do. His book was a critique of the profession, and perhaps of himself.

Chapter 3: Manifesto

Ted Nelson鈥檚 1974 Computer Lib/Dream Machines combined two books back-to-back, assembled and self-published by the author himself. It was a political manifesto that promoted computers as tools for personal liberation, freedom, and democracy. Nelson also predicted that people would someday have computers in their pockets and considered how they would interact with hypermedia and multimedia, like images, sound, and text. Reprinted in 1987, after the PC revolution had not unfolded the way he鈥檇 hoped, Nelson lamented that ubiquitous computers could oppress people from everywhere.

Chapter 4: Fonts and Text

Don Knuth, author of the influential The Art of Computer Programming series, was sitting in front of the 91自拍 stage. When reading Knuth鈥檚 lectures about typography and typesetting, McCray recognized a shared appreciation for printing, fonts, books, and history. He felt that Knuth鈥檚 book on creating digital typesetting, The TeXbook听(1986), had to be included in his own book somehow. Fortunately, many of the papers related to the book are at Stanford and many have been digitized.

Chapter 5: Radical Textbook

Carver Mead and Lynn Conway鈥檚 Introduction to VLSI Systems, published in 1979, was a textbook, but also a catalyst for the formation of a community. McCray found robust archival materials, for Mead at Caltech and in Conway鈥檚 online archive to explore how a textbook about how chips were designed actually had radical agenda.

Later, in the 鈥�80s and 鈥�90s, Conway told an interviewer that she could see her enduring influence at engineering schools, where chip designs reflected the principles laid out in her and Mead鈥檚 textbook.

Chapter 6: Newspapers and Newsletters

In addition to books, McCray also included newspapers and newsletters as important media for communicating about the computing revolution. In her Release 1.0 electronics newsletter, business analyst Esther Dyson explained the new world of cyberspace to the average reader in the 1980s and 鈥�90s and became a regular talk show guest.

McCray included the San Jose Mercury News in his book in order to discuss the evolution of the modern tech journalist. Today, there are hundreds writing about some aspect of the tech industry, but the tech journalist was only beginning to emerge in the late 鈥�70s and early 鈥�80s.

People like Evelyn Richards, a Mercury business reporter with traditional journalism training, and freelancer Michael Malone, who had once written promotional copy for HP, began writing about Silicon Valley at a time when mainstream publications were still learning what the place was all about. They helped bring attention and understanding to it, covering both the good and the bad.

Chapter 7: Readers

The enthusiastic audience shared their favorite books about computers and computing, with the clear winner being Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder, published in 1981. They also reported what books featured in McCray鈥檚 ReadMe they had read. See the results below.

Epilogue

McCray says that one of the most interesting aspects of writing his book was seeing the way that ideas like 鈥渁uthor,鈥� 鈥渨riter,鈥� 鈥減ublisher,鈥� and 鈥渂ookstore鈥� were dynamic over the time period he covered. How students learn about books, purchase them and consume them today is very different than in past decades. And introducing AI into the mix is making things even more dynamic. What does it mean when computers become authors? That remains to be seen.

In the meantime, be assured that Patrick McCray wrote every word of his book himself.

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On stage for 91自拍 Live on November 20, 2025, insiders told the behind-the-scenes story of how Silicon Valley investment bankers rallied around the struggling company next door. They wrangled founder Steve Jobs and manufactured an improbable IPO that rescued Pixar and delivered the first feature-length, computer animated film鈥攖he beloved Toy Story. The program was made possible by the generous support of J.P. Morgan.

Moderator Paul Noglows, formerly of Hambrecht & Quist, is cowriting a book with JP Mark, formerly of Robertson Stephens, on the two companies, which, along with Cowen, were the investment banks behind the Pixar IPO (initial public offering). He opened the discussion by asking Levy what it was like at Pixar in the spring of 1995, less than a year before the IPO.

The Setting

Levy had arrived at Pixar in late 1994 and quickly realized the company was doomed. It was facing three major challenges. The first was Steve Jobs, who was at a low point in his career and as difficult as ever. The second was that Pixar had no business, profits, or money. Despite their groundbreaking RenderMan graphics software, Jobs was covering payroll with personal checks. The third problem was that the company had signed a crippling contract with Disney.

Although Pixar was in dire straits, Steve Jobs had aspirations for it to go public, and he wanted Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to underwrite the IPO. But the investment banking behemoths immediately saw that the company did not have 鈥渦p and to the right鈥� growth potential and declined to invest.

So, with Jobs鈥� begrudging agreement, Levy took the deal to his 鈥渓ocal heroes at Robertson Stephens.鈥� Former President and CEO Michael McCaffery remembered that it was hard to figure out who on staff could check out a company that wasn鈥檛 like anything on their typical list of semiconductors, software, computing systems, and communications. They, too, realized the numbers weren鈥檛 there, but that didn鈥檛 scare them. And when they saw what Pixar was doing, they were excited.

Cristina Morgan, the head of technology investment banking at Hambrecht & Quist at the time, also went down to see Pixar. As a Board member of Steve Jobs’ NeXT, CEO Dan Case had told Jobs that H&Q would play any role he wanted them to in an IPO. Like H&Q, she, too, was impressed with what she saw at the Pixar studio.

The bankers knew they were taking a risk with Pixar, but they believed that Pixar鈥檚 first movie, Toy Story, was worth betting on.

The Plot

With the investment banks on board, the Pixar team had to finish Toy Story, and that was a nearly impossible task from a technical standpoint. Everything in the movie was set in rooms inside a house because computer graphics could do boxes. They didn鈥檛 know if they could even make an outdoor scene. And they only had a matter of months before the film’s scheduled Thanksgiving release to figure it out.

Then there was the challenge of deciding when the IPO should happen. If they did it after a successful movie release, they could be accused of hyping the stock. If they did it after, and the movie was a flop, they could be accused of duping investors. And, of course, if the movie听flopped, Pixar was dead.

Plot Twist

They decided to move forward with the IPO, and Steve Jobs set out on a three-week 鈥渞oad show鈥� to pitch the company to potential investors. Cristina Morgan and Mike McCaffery went along. Picky about everything鈥攆rom the hotels to the food and every detail in between鈥擩obs created plenty of difficult moments.

In New York City, potential investors were invited to a rented theater in the Upper East Side and told to bring their families to view Toy Story. To sweeten the pot, they offered free candy. The events were designed to, in Mike McCaffery鈥檚 words, 鈥渃reate the sugar high of all time.鈥� After New York, the road show was supposed to go on to Boston for a breakfast meeting with investors. But there was trouble.

While the investment bankers knew that Pixar鈥檚 future depended on Toy Story鈥檚 opening box office success, Levy says that he and Jobs worried about beating the stock price that had been set. No one knew if investors would pay $22 per share, and if Pixar wasn鈥檛 鈥渙versubscribed,鈥� the IPO could be deemed a failure.

And, of course, Jobs felt that Disney was not doing enough marketing and everything they did do was terrible. He was on the phone telling a company that had been releasing movies for 50 years how it should be done. The stress was getting to everyone.

Point of No Return

Toy Story opened on Wednesday, November 29, 1995, on the night before Thanksgiving. It made $29 million its opening weekend and went on to become the #1 film in the US. It was the first non-Disney animated film that was a blockbuster.

The IPO happened a week later, and shares closed at $39, up 78% from the offering price. Jobs鈥檚 80% stake was worth over $1 billion. Everyone involved could enjoy the success. Morgan recalled the incredible talent, and the artistry of the revolutionary graphics and technology. She said that it was striking how different and compelling Toy Story was and that without the movie鈥檚 magic there would have been no IPO.

Happy Ending

Although the stock price had dropped to $12 three weeks later, Pixar鈥檚 IPO had been a success as well as something of a miracle. Morgan credits the investors for their long-term vision in seeing the company鈥檚 potential. And Toy Story鈥檚 success allowed Levy to renegotiate the terrible Disney contract.

Twelve years after Levy arrived at a company with a negative retained earnings of $50 million, Pixar was sold to Disney for $7.6 billion. He recalled 鈥渨alks and talks鈥� with Jobs to make decisions and appreciated that Jobs was always more interested in getting to the right answer than in being right. After Pixar, Jobs returned to Apple in a remarkable comeback story that resulted in the revolutionary iPod and iPhone.

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In college, Honghong Tinn built her own computers, using parts from electronic stores at her local shopping mall. While pursuing a PhD, she decided to research other Taiwanese “tinkerers,” uncovering how in the 1960s, 鈥�70s, and 鈥�80s they gained the skills and laid the groundwork for global tech giants like Acer, Asus, Quanta, and TSMC.

On November 4, 2025, Tinn, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, was on stage at 91自拍 Live to share insights from her book Island Tinkerers: Innovation and Transformation in the Making of Taiwan鈥檚 Computing Industry. 91自拍 Curator Hansen Hsu moderated the discussion.

Foundations

Tinn first provided a helpful summary of Taiwanese history. After World War II and the Communist takeover of China, Nationalist leader Chiang Kai Shek moved to Taiwan with 1.2 million followers. One thousand were alumni of National Chiao-Tung University, an engineering school dubbed the 鈥淢IT of the Orient.鈥� They worked together to lobby the government to reopen the university in Taiwan, arguing that electrical engineering was critical for both the economy and the military during the Cold War. They succeeded, and the university opened in 1958, enabling a new generation of engineers.

A United Nations technical aid program allowed the National Chiao-Tung University to install the first two mainframe computers in Taiwan. They are IBM 650 and 1620 computers. Technicians, visiting professors, and other computer users had the opportunity to tinker with the mainframe computers. Soon, students in Taiwan began to build minicomputers and calculators from scratch. Many of the parts were not available, said Tinn, and they had to source recycled items, work with factories to custom make some components, or else import expensive parts. Future business leaders, like Barry Lam, the founder of Quanta Computer, was one of those students.

Factories

Taiwan became an important components manufacturing center in the mid-1960s, when the government encouraged multinational corporations to set up factories with tax breaks and inexpensive labor. American, European, and Japanese companies like Wang Laboratories, Philips, General Instrument, and Philco-Ford signed on. Women factory workers soldered IC chips, assembled transistor radios, black and white TVs, and wove copper wire into magnetic core memory units, sometimes under a microscope.

In 1972, just $200 US dollars could enable a tinkerer to buy a microprocessor and build a calculator, creating many entrepreneurial opportunities, and by 1978, 20% of calculators in the global market were made by Taiwanese companies. Those companies often transitioned to building computers in the 1980s. Entrepreneurs could choose to build one-of-a-kind computers and find customers, create an Apple or IBM compatible computer, or make a counterfeit knockoff.

Companies that built compatible machines for the export market had to make sure they weren’t running afoul of copyright infringement or risk being labeled as a counterfeiter. Apple, in particular aggressively pushed back against compatible computers with lawsuits claiming unfair foreign trade practices, working with US Customs and Congress to bolster their position. Tinn related how Taiwanese products and entrepreneurs were often stereotyped as counterfeiters.

Tinn used 91自拍 oral histories to explore computer company Multitech (later renamed Acer), whose founder, Stan Shih, worked with engineers to ensure that his compatible computers did not copy Apple. As a franchisee for US companies like Texas Instruments, Zilog, and Intel, it was important that he was not seen as a counterfeiter. In fact, his computers had a unique feature to display Chinese characters, missing from US computers.

Unlike Apple, IBM allowed compatible computers until 1987, when they began to charge royalties for patents and licensing. Each company, including Compaq and Acer, negotiated their own rates. In the 1980s, those two companies, one American and the other Taiwanese, were the first to produce IBM PC compatible computers using Intel鈥檚 new 32-bit 386 chip amid a global competition. Doing so was a great technical accomplishment, and the companies also demonstrated their strong manufacturing capabilities and even marketing skills.

By around 2011, Taiwan had 90% of the global market share for laptops. Desktop market share was also growing, and if components made in Taiwan were counted, the numbers would be much higher. When a huge earthquake rocked Taiwan in 1999, CNN interviewed Steve Jobs, who noted that the whole industry gets components from Taiwan and implied that it could cause significant supply chain delays for people building computers.

Foundries

Tinn believes that tinkering activities prepared Taiwanese entrepreneurs and skilled labor that could advance computing technologies. For example, in addition to engineers, companies developed strong quality control and equipment maintenance roles and processes. In fact, an entire ecosystem of universities, factories, startups, and hobbyists were all interested in engaging with hardware and tinkering with technology.

This entrepreneurial ecosystem was evident in the case of global giant TSMC, founded by Morris Chang, who combined governmental and non-governmental support to create a company dedicated to fabricating chips for designers in a 鈥渇oundry鈥� model.

Founded in 1987, TSMC grew along with ASML, a Dutch spinoff of Philips that supplied lithograph machines for TSMC’s integrated circuit, or IC, wafer manufacturing. By 1995鈥�96, 60% of TSMC鈥檚 revenue came from IC design houses, and Nvidia began to work with TSMC around 1998. And, in 2014, the company reached a turning point when Apple became a client and they began making chips for iPhones. Looking back on his long career, Morris Chang was most proud of his contribution in advancing the evolution of smartphones.

Gone were the days where Taiwanese tinkerers were seen as counterfeiters.

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