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An Insider's Take on Steve Jobs
Jerry Rivers writes "Business Week has an interesting, if short, interview with Edgar Woolard Jr., the man who brought Jobs back to Apple in the dark days of 1996. "Old money" Woolard offers some interesting insights into the man behind the iMac and the iPod, including his take on Jobs' 'five special characteristics' that make him the success that he is."
Yeah. This damn guy knows exactly how to make money. When every company was making computers, he decided to produce art and he still made money. How many CEOs would work for nothing just to prove that they aren't there for the money? Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer wouldn't - that's for sure.
I'd heard this before, too. I thought this must be corp. myth, similar to the way Caesar refused to be emperor... each time he refused, he was less resistive to the idea.
The Admin and the Engineer
Actually, I'd probably pick #3 as his greatest talent. Look at who he's gotten to work for him.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
ok, this has nothing to do with jobs, but... buisnessweek isn't the most realiable and/or good place ever.
Definitely true, John... most people are underinformed. I think the Amelio chapter of Apple's history is one that most Mac fanatics are wrong about. The man got the right people into the company, stopped the downward slide, set the designers free (there were curvy, bondi designs long before iMac), and welcomed Steve back in to the company.
Gil could have done a lot better, but even if he had, the people would have still wanted Steve back, and quite rightly. The company needs Steve, and his influence is obvious. His ability to be prepared when opportunity strikes (some would call that luck - I don't believe in luck) is legend. Apple has an easier time dealing with huge corporations that most any other company, since Steve is at the helm.
I think that the only downside of his CEO position is that he doesn't get to spend enough time walking around, communicating with his engineers and designers, and corraling their managers.
They're opposites, you're right. Steve Jobs is by nature the person Bill Gates has been trying his entire career to be. Throughout modern computing history, Steve Jobs has consistently been involved with projects that were both visionary and innovative (Apple, Macintosh, NeXT, Pixar, etc.), often so innovative that they were unviable in the marketplace simply because no one quite knew what to do with them yet despite waves of "oohs" and "aahs."
Bill Gates, on the other hand, has never innovative, nor has his company innovative. While Steve Jobs' projects have always been light on their feet, leading edge, ahead of their time, and customer-oriented, Gates' projects have always been heavy-handed, borderline plagiarism, behind schedule, and very, very corporate-bureaucratic in nature.
You're quite right in your assessment that what Jobs has managed to do by merit (win a place for himself and his creations in history), Gates has done via ruthlessness, leverage, and mere financial brute force.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
No, I'm fully convinced that a large percentage of the "leaks" from Apple are intentional marketing tactics to pique people's interest. They happen way too frequently and are way too easily prevented for them to all be accidents.
Except that the rumors frequently exceed the finished product, which is not something Apple wants. Look at the rumors that were floating around before the iPod Mini came out, for example.
[Quoted from FoRK Archive.]
The thing I'm *most* worried about is that Steve Jobs is to Apple as Edwin Land is to Polaroid. In a nutshell: Polaroid was Land's company through and through. The problem was that after Land died, so did Polaroid, just a lot more slowly.
While I strangely have no such issues with Gates and Microsoft, I'm genuinely concerned that when Steve goes to that great bitbucket in the sky, we really won't have any visionaries left to push the computing/entertainment/whatever world ahead a step.