No he just knew what the fuck he was doing. No "spells".
Well, sometimes anyways. As a CEO, he really wasn't all that great. As someone who wanted to make products, he was pretty good but even then he had falters.
Just another way of saying only stupid people buy Apple products. Casting spells but he could see right through them because a wizard too? My ass.
I also enjoyed the silly hubris of "Steve & I were both minor wizards", but you didn't expect Mr Gates to admit that he was always totally outclassed by Mr Jobs did you ;-)
He was being entirely complementary to Jobs. Contrary to your interpretation, he didn't say Jobs was a minor wizard. He deprecated his own status by claiming himself to be a minor wizard. I am both amazed and saddened that you and so many others read the article and came away with a complete lack of understanding of what you read.
Calling Jobs ability to galvanize and motivate "magic" is akin to calling Steph Curry's 3 point shooting "witchcraft" ← it's not though, it's voodoo. It's like calling Jordan's ability to intimidate opponents "soul stealing". Same thing as saying Brady cheated by deflating balls... no wait... Same thing as calling Brady's field presence "god like". All those terms, magic, witchcraft, voodoo, soul stealing, god like,,, all of them are just creative ways to express admiration for something. Supporting evidence of Gates expressing admiration is right in the article. Literally everything he said about Jobs was complimentary: 1. he turned a dying company into a great one. 2. a magical ability to mesmerize or captivate an audience. 3. great judge of people and products: "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.
He said Jobs was magical. The exact same descriptor many Apple fans use to describe Apple products. The only way to read that piece and come away with a negative narrative is to actively and intentionally create one.
"but because I'm a minor wizard, the spells don't work on me," said Gates."
This sentence completely kills your illusion that Gates was giving compliments. What a di**.
That's dumb as hell. You take one sentence out of context and ignore the rest of the entirety of what he said? Like I said, you have to be looking to be negative to find negative in that piece. We all know your entire shtick is denigrate anything that isn't Apple. So finding the negative is right up your alley.
It seems that Mr. Gates has played enough Dungeons & Dragons in his life. However, he has the character classes all wrong. Whereas Mr. Jobs was correctly identified as a wizard, Mr. Gates‘ character class would actually be thief.
People generally mellow down as they grow older, so he's probably genuinely admiring Jobs now. However, if the stories that Gates banned Apple products in his house is true, it shows that he used to be very petty.
Sorry Bill, it wasn't Steve's magic spells. It was the products that simply worked.
Spot on.
I had the misfortune to have to write software that was mostly for Windows Systems for close on 20 years. Talk about a moving target... Windows sucks when compared to Apple products. By contrast, writing for a Unix/Linux target was a hell of a lot easier.
I am so glad that I'm done with MS products for good and that's even on an Apple platform.
Sorry Bill, it wasn't Steve's magic spells. It was the products that simply worked.
If you can't recognize that, among his many talents, Jobs was charismatic on stage and a MASTER presenter of his story, then you are not seeing the full picture.
Anyone not understanding what Gates is saying here clearly never had to present to large crowds and garner buy-in from key stakeholders. There is a skill and an art to it and it's not something that people can be taught to do. Apple makes huge investments in to its products and they are great but you can't underestimate Jobs' ability to win over crowds when he spoke that helped drive mainstream adoption. Apple products are better than Microsoft produces but when you look back to the times when people weren't nearly as tech savvy as they are now it was Jobs' ability to connect and win people over that was the major catalyst for Apple taking over MS. Microsoft couldn't compete with the fact that Apple had a guy who could talk the talk and the products that could walk the walk...Gates knew that and is giving credit where credit is due
think this s appropriate here: Bill and Steve obviously had a great deal of respect for each other and, as we see here: Steve needed Bill and Bill needed Steve.
Bill needed Steve. Steve would have been better off without Bills thievery.
I'm sure that casting spells is exactly the way Gates viewed Jobs. Gates is a plugger, and no dummy, but he was also very lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Gates has never had taste or an eye for design. He remains extremely envious of Jobs's charisma. He is Salieri watching Mozart.
As they say, any technology sufficiently advanced will appear to be magic. So given the crud Gates was used to at Microsoft, I’m sure the products from Apple did appear to be magical.
Minor wizard, my ass! Bill Gates surely must be a grand wizard for being able to suck so many people into using the streaming pile of bat poo called Windows.
Gates just doesn't get it and never will. While Jobs certainly had a talent for presenting products and ideas in an entertaining and convincing way, the reason for this is because he truly understood the human needs behind those products. The reasons why other people would want or need them. And he was working with very talented people who also understood the human needs their work was being applied to and were inspired by it. People weren't falling under a spell, they were having their needs and wants spoken to directly.
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.
Another factor you left out is caring - actually caring about the end result. You know damn well most, if not all of Microsoft's products were "sent to the press" with the line, "Screw it! It's good enough." You don't have to be a visionary like Steve to understand that is probably the most important aspect of creating good products; sweating the details regardless how small. If it doesn't feel right, then it's wrong. And we're always hearing executives from Apple talk about the insanely great products they were developing that ended up on the cutting room floor. I just heard an interview with an ex-Apple industrial designer who couldn't believe all of things that were shelved simply because the timing wasn't right... every other company she worked at would've pushed those onto the market without thinking twice about it.
Steve Jobs was right when he said, "They have no taste." When talking about why he disliked Microsoft. Microsoft was run by a bunch of engineers. It was all about, "So what? Just make it work." and never about, "Can't it be better than that?" That's all there is to the "magic" that Bill Gates doesn't seem to understand.
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People generally mellow down as they grow older, so he's probably genuinely admiring Jobs now. However, if the stories that Gates banned Apple products in his house is true, it shows that he used to be very petty.
He is, but with that little jab of sour grapes that reveals the sad tool that he is.
There, see, I complimented him.
Another factor you left out is caring - actually caring about the end result. You know damn well most, if not all of Microsoft's products were "sent to the press" with the line, "Screw it! It's good enough." You don't have to be a visionary like Steve to understand that is probably the most important aspect of creating good products; sweating the details regardless how small. If it doesn't feel right, then it's wrong. And we're always hearing executives from Apple talk about the insanely great products they were developing that ended up on the cutting room floor. I just heard an interview with an ex-Apple industrial designer who couldn't believe all of things that were shelved simply because the timing wasn't right... every other company she worked at would've pushed those onto the market without thinking twice about it.
Steve Jobs was right when he said, "They have no taste." When talking about why he disliked Microsoft. Microsoft was run by a bunch of engineers. It was all about, "So what? Just make it work." and never about, "Can't it be better than that?" That's all there is to the "magic" that Bill Gates doesn't seem to understand.