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Of Gates and Jobs

Re: what is really interesting...

Originally posted by sprescott1974
No matter how hard gates pushes windoze on the world, turn on any movie or tv show and people are always using macs. why? because macs are inherintly (sp?) cooler. from the design of the case to whats on their screens macs have always been and will always be cooler then wintel machines.
Click to expand...

While the Mac is, at best, 5% of the market, pay close attention to the screens of computers in advertisements. Notice they look distinctively Mac-like? I have been a die-hard Mac fanatic since 1989 (with my Mac IIcx) and believe that the MacOS is far superior in many ways. While Mr. Gates may have a shrewd and thieving mind, one thing he sorely lacks is a sense of aesthetics. Ditto the rest of the Windoze world. BUT, I might add, neither does much of the public.
 
Re: what is really interesting...

Originally posted by sprescott1974
No matter how hard gates pushes windoze on the world, turn on any movie or tv show and people are always using macs. why? because macs are inherintly (sp?) cooler. from the design of the case to whats on their screens macs have always been and will always be cooler then wintel machines.
Click to expand...

While the Mac is, at best, 5% of the market, pay close attention to the screens of computers in advertisements. Notice they look distinctively Mac-like? I have been a die-hard Mac fanatic since 1989 (with my Mac IIcx) and believe that the MacOS is far superior in many ways. While Mr. Gates may have a shrewd and thieving mind, one thing he sorely lacks is a sense of aesthetics. Ditto the rest of the Windoze world. BUT, I might add, neither does much of the public.

Oops! Sorry about the duplicate post...
 
I believe the true winners are neither Jobs nor Gates. Its all of us. I was fascinated by computers back in the days of the ZX80, Comodore, Atari etc. Then I learned to hate them when the uninspired PCs took over. By accident I saw the powerbook of my colleague. I was instantly in love with the MacOS. While I now (and still) own a Poerbook G3, I watched the introduction and success of the Titanium, iPod, and now the new iMac with a pleasure only comparable with the perception of art or music. Its the art of good design. And I am addicted to it.

Long live Apple!
 
in my opinion, the author is missing one important point: The vision. Steve is a somewhat crazy artist with a vision. If he could, I think he would erase the entire computer world and build up something completely different. Bill is a smart tech guy who guards what he has built up and is satisfied with doing what he has to, rather than feeling that urge to ghange everything completely. On the other hand, I've never met anyone of them in person, so it could be me just getting it all wrong from the media, as usual...
 
Two or three different things.

I see Bill Gates as a business man. He's very good at it.

I see Steve Jobs as a creative person. He's very, very good at that.

I admire both in their own way and I'd like to meet both in person.

I DID get to meet Jon "Mad Dog" Hall! I see him as a visionary.

LINUX/Open Source is the real wild card here...M$ knows that...

M1
 
AlphaTech,

M$ bought $150 million in common stock back when Steve Jobs first returned to Apple... if you don't know, common stock is non-voting stock (so the idiots that claim M$ owns Apple are way off). Apple had about 6 billion dollars in cash reserves at the time, so $150mil was small in comparison (2.5%), and definitely not needed to "bail Apple out." It was only one small part of an agreement made at the time (all the details are unknown)... remember at the time Netscape still had a larger user base than IE. Part of the deal also put IE on Apple machines by default.

M$ does not own any of the stock anymore that it had invested in Apple back in (I believe) 1997 according to a New York Times article.

It's quite annoying hearing people drone on about how M$ "owns Apple" or "saved Apple" or whatever as it is quite far from the truth.

Cheers.
 
Bail out

AlphaTech,

From what I understand, the agreement also included Microsoft continuing to make Office for the Mac while Apple made IE the default browser instead of Netscape. That's really what the money was for ? knocking Netscape out of the market (and Microsoft paid Apple to be the hit-man in Mac market)
 
re: owning apple

i agree with one point when you say microsoft never owned apple

but they did save apple according to analysts in the IT field and the 150 million was much needed at the time

i live in near silicon valley and i remember the dire straits apple was in under gil emilio and how the company had no confidence with the mac users in its own backyard

apple needed jobs to come back in 1997 and it also needed the 150 million dollars

people mention the cash reserves and revenue but fail to mention that the company had debts and expenses which would have overtaken the company if it hadn't had jobs to bail them out and that microsoft money

"why did you think that steve jobs made a big deal of that investment anyway?" and "why did that investment make history?"

too many people simplify business and make comments about apple and the silicon valley without knowing the culture of the IT field which they can't really know unless they are in the IT business and have experienced silicon valley first hand... many other comments i hear are speculative hogwash

the type of thinking that thinks that microsoft's investment was not important nor a threat to apple as we know it are the same type of people who thought hardware was where ALL the money was to be made in silicon valley and the IT field in gereral

bill gates pulled out of apple but wouldn't you if you had any "inkling" that the stock would go from lofty heights down to a mere 14 dollars a share?

do not underestimate bill gates and his aggressiveness
 
It's not just sour grapes...

If we take off the rose-tinted spectacles (or indigo-, snow- or sage-tinted ones for that matter) I think Mr. Cringely has a very salient point: Jobs and Gates targets are two very different targets indeed. Windows trades market share for a cost-effective solution minus the added iExtras; Macintosh bundles iBonuses to its loyal market base. I think it is as simple as that.

To put it simply: Gates is a businessman (pure and simple); Jobs is an artist (with a good designer at his side).
 
good view networkman

I agree with a lot of posts here. Microsoft, as evil as many of us would like to paint them, did save Apple and is a very powerful company that is good for everyone. Take a look at the stock market. On good days, u will see Microsoft up and doing really well....but when there's a crisis it's down. They have a lot of influence on business in this country & all over the world.

Gates is somewhat of a genius....he's more powerful than the goverment. He is cunning and aggressive, but what else would u expect from the world's richest man?
 
Re: might be related to this....

Originally posted by AlphaTech
I have a question for my fellow Mac fiends.

There is a person at work that continually claims that m$ bailed out Apple those years back (pre Jobs I believe) when they gave Apple some money. I do not remember the specific, but I thought it was to make sure that m$ would continue to make the office products for the Mac. He seems to think it was more.

I hope that Apple is around many years after m$ is dead and buried.
Click to expand...

To best of my recollection it was $250M in silent shares...silent as in no votes and no membership on the board. You can check nasdaq.com to find what company holds more than 5% of shares (so called major stock holders). Last time I checked it was AIM [Management] Holdings with 6% and NO other company.
Apple has around 4 BILLION dollars in cash or other short term easily liquidatable holdings. Apple is a HUGE company.
M$ reportedly sold their shares at a huge profit a while back so they didn't 'help' apple out much financially...it was more a show of "we're not enemies anymore". $250M is not a great deal of money in the grand scheme of things.
 
MS investment in Apple

it was just over 5 years ago, MS bought $175 in Apple shares. They agreed to stop fighting, for five years. The agreement just expired. MS needs Apple so they are not the only OS out there.
 
The world is like DisneyLanxd

I believe that the world of computers is like disneyland.

95% of the people in the world/park and average people, who just use computers. They have windows. Gates did a wonderful job of bringing everyone to the party!

the other 5% are the people who run the world/park. They use linux, unix, Macs, and every other concievable OS. They run the servers that make things possible, they design the software that makes using computers fun, and they are responsible for the major changes and revolutions. If it weren't for these people, then the world of computers would be a very ugly place.

You can also compare the world of computers to a match.

Only the very small part of the tip lights the match. This part is the Mac/Linux part. The rest of the match (the wood) just catches on, and had no real part in creating the revolution, or 'spark'. Now, if there was no 'wood' or rest of the match, then computer revolutions would never catch on, and become large scale ideas. On the other hand, if the match didn't have the tip to light it, then the match would go nowhere.

Jobs and Gates have each done what they orignally set off to do. Jobs is innovative and creative, while Gates is concerned only about his ca$h. Gates doesn't want to innovate, or create. He just wants more market share, and customers. Jobs, on the other hand, is the innovator. He doesn't give a flip how much money he makes. He just wants to influence the lives of as many people as possible. He wants to change the world, and he believes he can, "Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

go to this page and read it. You won't find anything like it on M$'s website.
 
In a way yeah thats true.
Apple all started from woz and jobs getting together and wanting to make computing what it is today (although it was really woz who created apple, jobs came up with the idea).
They were rebels (nicking some of gates' software), they were hippies/geeks/minor-hackers/phone-phreakers, and they always wanted to innovate.
Jobs has a love and will always have a love, for apple computers and electronic technology as a whole.

Jobs does care about his money, but he puts innovation above it.
 
Similarities exist:

Both Steve Jobs AND Bill Gates are highly aggressive businessmen. They both rely on others for making it all work. Neither one of them is a true Techie by any stretch of the Imagination. Bill Gates was (pardon the poisonous language) a rich little Punk. The Key difference was not in personality (they're frighteningly similar) but in approach. While Jobs was building his machines with the Woz and actually taking part in the meat of the process, Bill Gates was selling DOS (which M$ hadn't actually produced yet) to IBM as a generic platform for ANY IBM clone small enough to fit on a desk.That was the key difference. SJ was taking the approach of building machines for the common man from the ground up while Gates was simply making a deal with IBM to ride their coat tails into a market that IBM couldn't see. Without his inherited fortune and cadre of compitant techs Gates would be just another weasel. Gates has continued the trend of selling a product before it exists to this day.

So that, I suppose is the difference: Jobs actually produces THEN sells, and takes direct part in design. Gates sells whatever he thinks he can get away with before it exists and relys on his Cadre to make it happen.
 
the b-school is coming out in me, or it could be the old school of hard knocks, or it could be common sense...but i seem to be one of the only ones who would wish that jobs was more of a businessman

let jobs be a teacher or volunteer somewhere if he wants to be innovative, but he is running a company in one of the most competitive fields in business in the raterace known as silicon valley

if steve jobs put innovation first all the time, he will sink apple like the titanic

the imac was innovative as was the imac2, but as long as something works and brings in money for apple, killing that product in favor of innovation would be stupid

innovation needs to be tempered with a hand on the pulse of the financial health of apple inc
 
Yeah.
But the most noticeable difference about the two is that jobs is outgoing and always wants to push boundaries. You can see it in his background, growing up, stealing gates' software, getting hands on with technology, and with woz they really truly understood how it worked.
Woz and jobs are really 2 of a kind, there arent many of them who have experienced all the ups and downs of computing, they have been there from the start and are almost like the granddaddys of computing.

gates is just a sadistic ****.
 
Jobs isnt a bad businessman.

If you put gates in jobs' position then i would like to see how well he would do. Gates has a 90% hold on the market, it isnt really so hard business wise to hold that for as long as he has.

Jobs though has not got a big hold on the market, and he ash the problem of not having as many software developers on his side, also its harder for him to dig himself out of the hole than it would be for microsoft because he has to take care of hardware and software side of the mac, aswell as having to promote an unfamiliar machine to PC people.

I do agree with you though, jobs could be alot better business wise (drop moto).
 
if jobs were a teacher or something he would not be able to change the world, or even just the computer industry.

he has to work with the very talented people at apple to innovate.

because nothing ever happens by just dreaming about it or talking about it.

it takes force to thrust innovation to really happen.

the vision and passion of jobs, the loyalty and talent of the people at apple, both are needed to make the mac a computer that mac user love, and non mac user envy.
 
Jobs is slowly getting it I feel...

Jobs isn't bad....and he has done a lot for Apple. I'm definitely not as knowledgeable as some here with the IT industry, but it does make sense to me that to make a company successful, innovation is just a part of it.

But, I think Jobs is aiming for more than just being an innovator....by bringing iBooks into schools to boost interest and use is a great tool to gain some market share...even if it is forced by a deal with a school district. With this and the introduction of the new iMac, Apple's trying to slide it's way more into the heart of the average user rather than specifically catering to the pros...
 
jobs changed silicon valley more than anybody in the san jose area but it was bill gates who changed the world with windows and office as the common platform of computers around the globe

but it is true that bill "borrowed" from apple from time to time

i would rather have had microsoft come up with an idea and apple be the one to take it to the masses so we could be that 95 percent for a change

i guess all we can as macheads is brag about our innovation while microsoft futhers their reach in the age old quest for world domination
 
2 points.

1. Both Apple AND M$ stole the GUI from XEROX. Apple sued M$ over Windows and failed to make their case based on this. However, Apple hasn't stolen anything that made it to market from M$. As far as I know anyway.

2.History has shown that ONLY companies than innovate survive. That innovation may have nothing to do with the product, but I guarentee it's somewhere in the process. I think We've all come to assume, as a result of the dot-com crash that innovation kills.

The key point to remember about the dot coms is that most often they were NOT innovative but oppertunistic. The supporting point is of course that true techies should not under any circumstances run companies.

Jobs is not a techie though he understands at a fairly deep level how it all works, you'll never catch him proto-ing boards or writing any essential code. Jobs did solder and participate in design in the beginning when Apple was about 10 people, but he knew to let Woz run R&D. True, at first he'd be in there hampering progress with micro-management but he didn't try to go it alone as many dot commers did. Gates did better in Knowing he didn't have the technical brilliance to carry M$.

Both men have found their niches as visionaries that push the big picture scheme for their companies. Gates takes more chances and acts with sociopathic market brutality. Jobs does what's neccesary to foreward the vision of Apple he has in mind without the luxury of being able to economically support burning bridges, ransacking the town, then selling supplies and
workers to rebuild (with faulty bolts of course) which, of course Gates can.

What a lot of folks forget is that Gates started with HUGE capital from Gates family assets and won an exclusive contract with IBM for desktop OS rights.

The reason Wintel is as big as it is: IBM was the model for the bulk of the computing industry. When people started building kits, they built IBM clones that ran DOS by default. They built IBM clones because they were students that wanted an alternative to the IBM mainframes at the universities. It was IBM brand recognition that drove initial clone production, not preference for DOS. IBM's reluctance to see an emerging market amplified this effect and soon the students that were building kits were selling pre-built machines. All of these machines were IBM clones and, as such came with M$'s DOS. the enormous support industry for the huge, lumbering IBM business machines created a cheap, ready supply of parts for these clones so costs of production got cheaper and cheaper as the growing number of generic clones climbed. Gates chose the path of Fortune. That's all.
 
Ofcourse jobs wouldnt be able to change the world on his own. He needs a talented team on his side with the likes of Ive, Woz, Avie etc.
But you have to give the majority of the credit to jobs when it comes to apple. Jobs discovered Ive, It was Jobs' idea to team up with woz a couple of decades ago. I think sometimes people are a little critical of jobs because he isnt a dictator like gates, and yes he can do better if he apple produces the computers they do, but it would mean being unethical and not part of what apple is about.

Apple computers is jobs' baby. Has, and always will be.
 
Yes Woz did all the work when apple was little.
but it was all Jobs' idea in the first place, without Jobs woz would have stayed a techie/part time hacker.
 
i agree with everything you say except for the xerox/gui thing

apple saw where gui could go and xerox had it only as a pet project

just like dr. kildall or kildare (whatever his name is) from my area would not have known what to do with a contract with ibm

dr kildall taught as the naval postgraduate school in monterey (as a way to dodge military duty in vietnam) to develop the first workable operating system and as a true techie, he was not a businessman

it is so true when you say techies should never run companies and it is a fact that jobs and gates were not techies in the real sense of the word with jobs being a visonary and gates being an oppotunistic tycoon

gates had qdos and jobs had woz and neither gates nor jobs were stupid enough to think they knew the technical side and stuck to promotion instead

i guess i am not really, really rich because i am a techie and the first thing i think when i see an innovative product is, "wow, what's under the hood" instead of "gee, this thing can make lots of money"
 
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