Steve Jobs got a lot off his chest in his Q&A session with developers at WWDC 1997 — the first after he returned to Apple (AAPL) from his years in the desert at NeXT.

We’ve dipped once before into the 70-minute video (available here) to highlight his remarks about Wall Street and the press. (See The stock will take care of itself.)

But there’s lots more where that came from. What is perhaps most relevant today, a week or so before Apple is expected to launch iCloud, is the part where Jobs describes his vision for what is now known as cloud computing.

He lays it out in a 5-minute segment — excerpted below — using his own personal computer set-up as a template for what he hoped Apple might someday be able to make as “plug and play for mere mortals” as it made the user experience a decade earlier.

“I can’t communicate to you how awesome this is until you use it. And what you would decide within a day or two is that carrying around these non-connected computers or computers with tons of state in them — tons of data and state in them — is Byzantine by comparison.”

Video below the fold:

We’ll find out how well Apple has managed to deliver on Jobs’ vision — 14 years later — when iCloud finally launches.

Via: Business Insider’s Dylan Love. Video trimmed from JacobsFrederic‘s 8-minute version.