The [NeXT] cube was, I think ... he [Steve Jobs] was always drawn to very simple and obvious geometric
forms. And if you even look at their new
campus, right, it's this big giant
saucer it's circular, right?
-- Right, it's a torus.
-- So he always liked to start with these
geometric forms. The Mac was a rectangle
standing up, a vertical rectangle, and so
the NeXT [computer] was a cube. But I do think
that at that time also the Connection Machine
was very much avant-garde in 
computer design, inside and out!
The whole idea that you could make a
computing device that ... there was a thought
that all of computing was going to go in
that direction at some point, right?
-- Yeah ..
That this was taking ... in a way...
it was, I don't want to say,
"miniaturizing," but it was compacting
shall we say, what had [been] the notion of a
parallel processing computer going from
the Cray [serial] to the Connection Machine [parallel].
You see this amazing shift
into something that also was taking
you into the future: that design, 
your design of the Connection Machine.
And this is where we talked about Steve saying, 
"Well, who designed it?"
and I said, "Too late, she's an
artist now!" was because he was
looking at everything that was the best
in design, whether it was Sony for
consumer electronics or he also wanted
to see what was happening in computing:
what signaled the future, the avant-garde
division of what computing could become.
--Do you know when he saw the 
Connection Machine the first time?
--That was pretty early on I think.
--You know I left the company in 1985,
June 4th 1985, and I think I would have known
if Steve Jobs had visited before that ...
--I don't think he ever visited, 
I think he saw it in publication. 
--Yeah, so it came out - the first CM-1 -  came out
the end of April 1986. I was in Boston I came
back to Boston from Munich for the
introduction and it was during that time
that Chernobyl blew up so it's
possible to fix the date fairly clearly. 
And, interestingly enough, online,
when Steve Jobs then approached
Paul Rand to design a logo for the NeXT
machine, what I've read online is that
that happened in 1986 and that he
when he approached Paul Rand he said, "It's
going to be a cube and can you design a
logo for it?" So it seems that, at that
point, he already had fixated on the
on the cube. So I was a little bit
wondering whether his idea for the cube
came because he saw the Connection
Machine or, you know, whether there was a
reciprocity there, or whether it was sort
of a coincidence that he then also came
to you, and said, you know ... I think
the way you worded it the first time you
mentioned it was he said to you, "Find
out who designed the Connection Machine,
I want them to design the NeXT cube." And then 
you said, "Sorry she [Tamiko Thiel] has gone to Germany
to become an artist!" 
---Right, right right ...
I think the cube idea probably he had pretty early on,
only because - and I think he
must have seen pictures of the
Connection Machine and gone, "Aha that's
what I need - this is what I'm more or
less imagining," you know, because ...
because as I said he really liked going
for simple stark geometric forms and you
know - manufacturing be damned!
--You know, "we're going to do something
incredible and we'll figure out how to
produce it, not vice-versa.
