What Bill Gates misses here is that Jobs was one of the best salespeople on the planet. Go back and watch basically any keynotes or, my favorite, his prerecorded demo of the NeXT operating system.
Jobs was also a huge music lover and had strong opinions for how he wanted to listen to music.
I could imagine him in a meeting with music executives convincing them of his vision quite easily.
As I recall he also was the driving force behind convincing the Beatles to put their music on digital services. I think I remember when that was an iTunes exclusive.
I remember Apple convinced Cingular to relinquish a lot of carrier control over to Apple for the original iPhone, as another example.
Steve Jobs on Bill Gates: “Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas.”
Given his similar life experience Jobs could smell his own.
Woz and an endless stream of actual engineers developed Apple hardware.
Steve just focused on minutiae and details he cared about. He could not engineer his way out of a wet paper sack he would be too stuck on the color of the sack.
And the engineers likely had no taste or vision. Takes both types to make something great. Steve could synergize and extract greatness from teams of individuals. On their own, they would have just tooled around and not produced anything substantial.
I feel like at least some of Steve’s later personality has to have been influenced by interactions such as the one with Bill Atkinson, where he was told rounded corners were "incredibly difficult" to program, only to come up with an implementation a mere 24 hours later. A lifetime of such interactions, such as the one with Larry Kenyon, might have taught him that people aren’t going to do anything (unless he really really insists) and consistently lie to him.
And yet the unimaginative had to bail out the design genius and best salesperson on the planet.
Plus I really don't think the whole Design thing was ever true to begin with tbh.
Apple has never beat Microsoft in a clear head 2 head design battle , Microsoft was either not interested in what Apple was doing or had to simply ignore it in order to avoid being broken up by the Government.
On the other hand Microsoft mopped the floor with Apple on the GUI design battlefield
Jobs had some vestige of the value system of Reed College in him - respect for literature, typesetting, fine arts ... which dramatically evolved into a taste for the power-money politics of Silicon Valley, distantly akin to big-business Hollywood at the time.
The "Barbarians of the North of Seattle" had a frat-guy MBA wolf-of-wall-street element that actively mocked and preyed upon artists.. artists were weak and whiny entitled people.. their product was not art with a markup value, but something to be commoditized in the spreadsheet That Must Be Your Master. Bill Gates, after building a what, thirty thousand square foot house? prominantly announced that he had massive digital screens to display art, not purchasing any physical paintings or similar design pieces.. maybe it sounds distant today but at the time it was a specific statement to do that, and announce it.
Even as a lifelong Apple fan since the early 90s, I had never heard this POV before, but I think it's accurate. Is there a place to learn more about it?
A related story about iTunes negotiations: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/jim-gian...
What Bill Gates misses here is that Jobs was one of the best salespeople on the planet. Go back and watch basically any keynotes or, my favorite, his prerecorded demo of the NeXT operating system.
Jobs was also a huge music lover and had strong opinions for how he wanted to listen to music.
I could imagine him in a meeting with music executives convincing them of his vision quite easily.
As I recall he also was the driving force behind convincing the Beatles to put their music on digital services. I think I remember when that was an iTunes exclusive.
I remember Apple convinced Cingular to relinquish a lot of carrier control over to Apple for the original iPhone, as another example.
Steve Jobs on Bill Gates: “Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas.”
Classic Steve Jobs. Ungrateful and rude.
And mostly correct.
Given his similar life experience Jobs could smell his own.
Woz and an endless stream of actual engineers developed Apple hardware.
Steve just focused on minutiae and details he cared about. He could not engineer his way out of a wet paper sack he would be too stuck on the color of the sack.
Always the bike shedder, never the painter.
Microsoft could use someone like that, though.
You don’t need an engineer to be the CEO of the company. The company has hundreds or thousands of engineers already.
The CEO’s job isn’t to make things, it’s to make decisions - and often it’s helpful for that person to have a strong sense of taste.
I’m reminded of this interview with Rick Rubin: https://blockbuster.thoughtleader.school/p/rick-rubin-i-have...
And the engineers likely had no taste or vision. Takes both types to make something great. Steve could synergize and extract greatness from teams of individuals. On their own, they would have just tooled around and not produced anything substantial.
I feel like at least some of Steve’s later personality has to have been influenced by interactions such as the one with Bill Atkinson, where he was told rounded corners were "incredibly difficult" to program, only to come up with an implementation a mere 24 hours later. A lifetime of such interactions, such as the one with Larry Kenyon, might have taught him that people aren’t going to do anything (unless he really really insists) and consistently lie to him.
[dead]
And yet the unimaginative had to bail out the design genius and best salesperson on the planet.
Plus I really don't think the whole Design thing was ever true to begin with tbh.
Apple has never beat Microsoft in a clear head 2 head design battle , Microsoft was either not interested in what Apple was doing or had to simply ignore it in order to avoid being broken up by the Government.
On the other hand Microsoft mopped the floor with Apple on the GUI design battlefield
Erm, what's the good/great GUI aspects that MS delivered? Apple extended/stole from Xerox - who did MS steal from other than Apple?
Windows 95 has changed everything and it was a Microsoft product, not Apple's.
He said, she said about stealing ideas etc I don't care about it.
The first rule in this game that forcefully push into 14 year old wanna be entrepreneurs is that ideas aren't worth anything.
Jobs had some vestige of the value system of Reed College in him - respect for literature, typesetting, fine arts ... which dramatically evolved into a taste for the power-money politics of Silicon Valley, distantly akin to big-business Hollywood at the time.
The "Barbarians of the North of Seattle" had a frat-guy MBA wolf-of-wall-street element that actively mocked and preyed upon artists.. artists were weak and whiny entitled people.. their product was not art with a markup value, but something to be commoditized in the spreadsheet That Must Be Your Master. Bill Gates, after building a what, thirty thousand square foot house? prominantly announced that he had massive digital screens to display art, not purchasing any physical paintings or similar design pieces.. maybe it sounds distant today but at the time it was a specific statement to do that, and announce it.
Even as a lifelong Apple fan since the early 90s, I had never heard this POV before, but I think it's accurate. Is there a place to learn more about it?