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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?