The State of California’s News (press release):

For California’s American Innovation Coin, Governor Gavin Newsom has recommended world-renowned innovator Steve Jobs. The coin, which will be minted by the U.S. Mint, highlights California’s legacy as a global hub of innovation.

The American Innovation $1 Coin Program, launched in 2018 by the U.S. Mint, celebrates the spirit of ingenuity that defines America. Each state, territory, and the District of Columbia is honored with creating a unique coin recognizing an innovation or innovator from their region.

I applaud the selection, but I wasn’t familiar with the American Innovation $1 Coin Program, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. A perusal suggests most coins depict innovations closely associated with an individual, with designs focused on the innovation, not the person.

Governor Newsom is quoted:

Innovation and California are synonymous, and Steve Jobs encapsulates the unique brand of innovation that California runs on: innovation not driven by business alone, but as a vehicle to forever change the world.

I imagined an image of Steve, surrounded by representations of his innovations: the Apple II, Macintosh, and iPhone; or perhaps a menu bar, mouse and pointer, or (dare I hope?) Clarus the Dogcow.

That does not appear to be the plan for this coin, according to The Mercury News:

The designed (sic) preferred by the governor’s office and Jobs’ family pictured a younger Jobs sitting cross-legged amid a California landscape with oak trees and rolling hills, along with the inscription “Make Something Wonderful.” Myers said that image better conveyed Jobs’ love of California nature, which was an important part of who he was. Other designs incorporated Jobs’ image with circuit designs and keyboards and one just featured his name with a tree growing circuit-like branches.

OK… more of a “California inspires innovation” vibe, with Steve as one of California’s most recognizable innovators, I guess?

But the committee opted to recommend a design with a more familiar image of Jobs — older and wearing glasses and his trademark black turtleneck. The design — which isn’t final and could be altered before the coin is minted in 2026 — is fittingly simple and elegant.

A silhouette of Steve in glasses and turtleneck makes sense; it’s probably the most recognizable version of him.

But to represent just Steve feels misguided. The press release includes this passage:

By focusing on who he was innovating for – other people – Jobs was able to use technology to connect people to each other and to the broader world, bringing people onto the same level by providing them with equal access. And that approach was built on a willingness to try new ideas and push the boundaries of what was possible – an approach that embodies the California spirit.

A singular image of Steve does not suggest using “technology to connect people.” It focuses too much on the man, not his work.

Compare this proposed design to coins from Arkansas, Pennsylvania, or the especially evocative “tele-phone” design from Massachusetts. Each celebrates the person through their innovation.

Since the design remains subject to alteration prior to minting, I hope a more compelling design is created. As it is, they chose the right man, but the wrong imagery.

The Steve Jobs Archive opened their second online exhibit recently, The Objects of Our Lives. It’s a beautiful retrospective of a talk Steve gave early in his time at Apple:

On a sunny June morning in 1983, Steve waits at the back of a giant tent, ready to take the stage at the International Design Conference in Aspen. This year’s theme is “The Future Isn’t What It Used to Be,” and he is here to talk about computers to an audience of several hundred designers and design-lovers.

For me, and perhaps for many of you reading this, Steve Jobs was a personal hero. My introduction to, love for, and eventual career in computers were all sparked in 1981 by an Apple ][, and Steve Jobs was the face of Apple for me. 

One of many things I enjoyed about Steve was watching him talk. I’ve been fortunate enough to see him present in person several times, and countless times on video. He has an ease to him, like he’s just sitting in my living room, shooting the breeze, telling a story. Unhurried, yet very deliberate. A showman, without being showy. And an unparalleled ability to explain complex ideas with compelling simplicity.

As former Apple design head Jony Ive writes in his introduction to The Objects of Our Life:

Steve remains one of the best educators I’ve ever met in my life. He had that ability to explain incredibly abstract, complex technologies in terms that were accessible, tangible and relevant. You hear him describe the computer as doing nothing more than completing fairly mundane tasks, but doing so very quickly. He gives the example of running out to grab a bunch of flowers and returning by the time you could snap your fingers – speed rendering the task magical.

What a treat, then, to watch Steve speak; already tremendously successful, but not yet at the peak of his success. This is the year before his iconic introduction of the Macintosh computer. Before he’s exiled, before he returns to Apple for his remarkable second act. The easy, deliberate storyteller is already on display—unpolished if only in comparison to his later appearances, but unmistakably there.

Ive, again:

I find it breathtaking how profound his understanding was of the dramatic changes that were about to happen as the computer became broadly accessible. Of course, beyond just being prophetic, he was fundamental in defining products that would change our culture and our lives forever. 

The written piece alone is wonderful. But to see and hear Steve speak, passionately, predictively, prepared but seemingly unrehearsed—that is a true treasure.

A few select gems (with timestamps):

On the amount of time we’ll use computers daily (8:35):

By ’86, ’87, pick a year, people are going to be spending more time interacting with these machines than they do interacting with their big automobile machines today. People are going to be spending two, three hours a day sometimes, interacting with these machines—longer than they spend in a car. 

I definitely spent way more than that on my computer during that time!

On shrinking computers (25:25):

What we want to do is we want to put an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you, that you can learn how to use in 20 minutes.… And we really want to do it with a radio link in it.…

Steve offers three options on how to do this: do nothing (“not a good option”); squeeze a “garbage computer” into a book (“our competitors are doing that, so we don’t need to”); or

design the computer that we want to put into the book eventually, even though we can’t put it into the book now. And right now, it fits in a breadbox and it’s $10,000 and it’s called Lisa.…

The next thing we will do is we will find a way to put it in a shoebox and sell it for like $2,500. And that’ll be the next step. And finally, we’ll find a way to get it in a book and sell it for under $1,000. And we will be there within five to seven years.

The “shoebox” for “$2,500” would be the Macintosh he’ll introduce just seven months later. The first “book … under a thousand dollars” may credibly be credited to the Newton MessagePad; it was $699 when it went on sale in 1993, only three years later than Steve’s prediction, though that project didn’t start until 1985, the year Steve left Apple. I’d suggest Apple’s first “real” sub-$1,000 “book” was the iPad in 2010, which started at $499.

On using computers with proportional fonts and graphics (29:04): 

we’re solving the problems of injecting some liberal arts into these computers. That’s what we’re trying to do right now. Let’s get proportionally spaced fonts in there. Let’s get multiple fonts in there. Let’s get graphics in there so that we can deal in pictures. And let’s get to the point where three years from now, when somebody…there is going to be no college student three or four years from now that’s ever going to think of writing a paper without one of these things, just like they will not think of going to a science class without a calculator today. 

By 1985-86 this was already true for me: Every one of my high school papers were typeset and printed using proportional fonts (though with an Apple //c and dot-matrix printer, not a Macintosh and laser printer).

On computer scientists:

They’re fun. They play in punk rock bands on the weekends and all sorts of stuff. Computer people aren’t…you read all this computer-nerd stuff. It’s not really true anymore. They’re really a lot closer to artists than they are to anything else. They come in to work at about, I don’t know, anytime they want, but usually about eleven in the morning, twelve in the morning, play a few rounds of Ping-Pong. They work really hard, but they’ll work…and generally about four, we’ll go out and maybe play a game of volleyball somewhere or something like that. And then in the evening we work. And then they’ll have dinner. And we’ll go out to a Japanese restaurant for dinner or something and come back. And they’ll work till about two or three in the morning. And they go home and wake up at eleven the next morning and come in to work.

Some things never really change.

(Via @Philip Schiller.)