Bill Gates equates Steve Jobs' talent to 'casting spells'
Bill Gates has spoken of Steve Jobs' ability to mesmerize people an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS show, equating Jobs' talent to magic.
According to Bloomberg, Bill Gates was impressed by Steve Jobs' ability to take a firm that was "on a path to die" and turn it into one of the most valuable companies to date. He claimed that this was largely because Steve Jobs possessed an almost magical ability to mesmerize people.
"I was like a minor wizard because he would be casting spells, and I would see people mesmerized, but because I'm a minor wizard, the spells don't work on me," said Gates.
Gates also went on to discuss Jobs' ability to innately understand what made both people and products a worthwhile investment.
"I have yet to meet any person who [could rival Jobs] in terms of picking talent, hyper-motivating that talent, and having a sense of design of, oh, this is good [or] this is not good," Gates continued.
CNN's segment is the latest in a series of interviews with many publications, in which Gates has spoken specifically about Apple. In one recent conversation, Gates expressed regret over not successfully competing with Apple in the mobile market.
"The greatest mistake is whatever mismanagement I engaged in that caused Microsoft not to be what Android is," he said. "That is, Android is the standard non-Apple phone platform."
CNN has not released the interview online yet, but has featured a prior Gates' interview in which he discussed his thoughts on government regulation of technology firms, as well as what he would have done differently.
According to Bloomberg, Bill Gates was impressed by Steve Jobs' ability to take a firm that was "on a path to die" and turn it into one of the most valuable companies to date. He claimed that this was largely because Steve Jobs possessed an almost magical ability to mesmerize people.
"I was like a minor wizard because he would be casting spells, and I would see people mesmerized, but because I'm a minor wizard, the spells don't work on me," said Gates.
Gates also went on to discuss Jobs' ability to innately understand what made both people and products a worthwhile investment.
"I have yet to meet any person who [could rival Jobs] in terms of picking talent, hyper-motivating that talent, and having a sense of design of, oh, this is good [or] this is not good," Gates continued.
CNN's segment is the latest in a series of interviews with many publications, in which Gates has spoken specifically about Apple. In one recent conversation, Gates expressed regret over not successfully competing with Apple in the mobile market.
"The greatest mistake is whatever mismanagement I engaged in that caused Microsoft not to be what Android is," he said. "That is, Android is the standard non-Apple phone platform."
CNN has not released the interview online yet, but has featured a prior Gates' interview in which he discussed his thoughts on government regulation of technology firms, as well as what he would have done differently.
Comments
He wasn't dissing Steve or marginalizing him or his talents. Quite the opposite. What he said was:
""I have yet to meet any person who [could rival Jobs] in terms of picking talent, hyper-motivating that talent, and having a sense of design of, oh, this is good [or] this is not good,""
And, he said that he himself was only a "minor wizard" -- so he couldn't do what Steve did.
Today things seem to be all about beating the other guy at any and all costs -- and showing respect is a sin. These two (eventually) rose above that nonsense.
He really doesn't seem to understand that if genuine competition played out, Microsoft wouldn't have been anywhere near as successful as it was.
In a D Conference interview (IIRC) he and Jobs were asked what they admired about each other. Gates was again surprisingly candid and sincere while Jobs came off as being a little cagey and trying to say something nice without being complimentary.
As a presenter, Jobs did posses near mystical power to charm an audience. He was very charismatic. You at least generally listened to what he said, before making up your mind one way or the other. <s>Haters,/s> Some people have chosen to dub that ability as the RDF. That's incorrect. That's Hate-Speak.
As for their relationship, you’re just on the outside looking in, you don’t know. In the Becoming Steve Jobs biography the authors suggest they were friends long before, apart from the public rivalry narrative.
As for your last claim...are Cook and rivals publicly clobbering each other?
But, even in this interview Gates said:
""I have yet to meet any person who [could rival Jobs] in terms of picking talent, hyper-motivating that talent, and having a sense of design of, oh, this is good [or] this is not good,"
That sounds like respect and admiration to me.
As for my last point: No, there are still some mature people around. A few.
Neither totally outclassed the other and Gates is correct. MS should have beaten Google but did not. There were two keys elements that they failed to kill google on: enterprise integration/security and games.
Had they played to these two strengths they may have beaten Android. The first would have required better than blackberry security and device deployment/management with top tier mail service. The second would have required a lot of effort in optimizing for phone gpus and high quality ports of games available on Xbox.
His nonsense about not falling under the "spell" is simply because he has never connected with the needs of others in a way which has made him see the importance of them. He (and his company) worked hard at creating copy-cat products because he'd never have had the vision to create entirely new products if left to his own devices. There are so many people in the technology industry who lack this same ability to connect with others, and who simply dismiss Apple's success the same way.