Apple Releases 'Lost Interview' With Steve Jobs On iTunes Music Store

The best TV interview [Steve] Jobs ever gave is now available on iTunes.

Apple has released the film Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, which features nearly 70 minutes of unedited, never-before-seen footage of a conversation between the iconic Apple founder and technology expert Robert X. Cringely, is now available on the iTunes Music Store for $3.99.

From the iTunes description:

Candid, controversial and funny ... the original and unedited interview with Steve Jobs, conducted by tech journalist and former Apple Inc. employee Robert X. Cringely, from 1995 when Steve Jobs was still CEO of NeXT Computer and Pixar.

Cringely released the film to select Landmark Theatres back in November, just a month after Jobs' death following a years-long bout with cancer. The original footage in his film was derived from a 1996 three-part miniseries for PBS written ahd hosted by Cringely called Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of the Accidental Empires. For that miniseries, Cringely interviewed several high-profile personalities in Silicon Valley, including Microsoft executives Steve Ballmer, Paul Allen and Bill Gates, as well as Apple's Jobs and Steve Wozniak. At the time of the Cringely's interview, Jobs was still working at NeXT, a computer company he founded after being ousted by Apple executives in 1985; by the time Triumph of the Nerds aired in 1996 however, Apple had acquired NeXT and Jobs was back at Apple after a 10-year exile.

Even though Cringely called his interview with Jobs candid, controversial, and funny, by the time the film was ready for release in 1996, less than 10 minutes [of Jobs' interview] were used in the series and the other 59 minutes were lost forever when the master tapes disappeared in shipping.

Fifteen years after the documentary aired, the original footage with Jobs resurfaced in London when the old Triumph of the Nerds director uncovered a dusty VHS tape in storage. Once he recovered it, Cringely connected with entrepreneur Mark Cuban, the owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks and the operator of Landmark Theatres, to bring the footage to audiences.

Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview has a 100 percent freshness rating on movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.