"I'll tell you a secret," said Jobs during a Q&A session with D8 hosts Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg. "It began with the tablet."
So the iPhone, arguably the most significant technological device of the 21st Century, was actually an afterthought that came into being while Apple was drawing up plans for the iPad.
"My God, I said, this would make a great phone," Jobs recalled. "So we shelved the tablet and built the iPhone."
Nice move.
While D8 marks the first of two occasions when Steve Jobs will speak publicly this week, it is not every day when the founder and CEO of the world's most valuable technology company shares his thoughts with a worldwide audience.
What else did Steve have to say?
Why he defends Apple and its pursuit of the "lost iPhone"
"When this whole thing with Gizmodo happened, I got a lot of advice from people who said you've got to just let it slide. You shouldn't go after a journalist because they bought stolen property and tried to extort you. I thought about that, and I decided that Apple can't afford to change its core values and simply let it slide. We have the same core values as when we started, and we come into work wanting to do the same thing today that we wanted to do five years ago."
On the reality of a world with 200,000 apps
"People are using apps way more than they are using search. So if you want to make developers more money, you've got to get the ads into apps. But the mobile ads we've got today rip you out of the app ... . That sucks."
How the iPad represents the "post-PC-era"
"The transformation of PC to new form factors like the tablet is going to make some people uneasy because the PC has taken us a long ways. The PC is brilliant, and we like to talk about the post-PC era, but it's uncomfortable."
Defending AT&T
"They're doing pretty good in some ways and in others they could do better. We meet with them once a quarter. Remember, they deal with way more data traffic than anyone else. And they're having trouble. But they have the fastest 3G network, and they're improving. I wish they were improving faster. I'm convinced that any other network, had you put the iPhone on it, would have had the same problems."
Apple's rivalry with Google and Microsoft
"(Google) (Nasdaq: GOOG - News) decided to compete with us and got more and more serious. Right now, we have the better product."
"We never saw ourselves in a platform war with Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT - News). Maybe that's why we lost. But we never thought of ourselves in a platform war, we just wanted to make good products."
A soft spot for traditional media?
"I don't want to see us descend into a nation of bloggers. I think we need editorial oversight now more than ever. Anything we can do to help newspapers find new ways of expression that will help them get paid, I am all for."
The future of television
The television industry fundamentally has a subsidized business model that gives everyone a set-top box, and that pretty much undermines innovation in the sector. The only way this is going to change is if you start from scratch, tear up the box, redesign and get it to the consumer in a way that they want to buy it. But right now, there's no way to do that.
Why he still loves Apple's culture
"I have one of the best jobs in the world. I get to hang out with some of the most talented, committed people around, and together we get to play in this sandbox and build these cool products. Apple is an incredibly collaborative company. You know how many committees we have at Apple? Zero. We're structured like a start-up. We're the biggest start-up on the planet. And we all meet once a week to discuss our business."
