Skip to main content

D5 Gates Jobs Interview

This has been out since May, but I would like to direct your attention to it. I thought it was a great interview. Heck, anytime you get Bill Gates and Steve Jobs TOGETHER on a stage, it's going to be a great interview.

http://d5.allthingsd.com/20070530/d5-gates-jobs-interview/

I really liked listening to how these two men interact and answer questions; it's apparent that they are very different in their philosophies, and perhaps aesthetics, but they do share some common ground. From listening to them, one can gauge each individual's strengths and weaknesses, and it's interesting to see how their character has directly impacted their companies, Microsoft and Apple. One thing is apparent though, and that is they both have a deep respect for each other despite the differences.

I can also see how Bill Gate's has in many ways, been the more successful businessman because of who he is. Microsoft is without doubt the bigger company. Gates has a strong personality like Job's, but he's not as picky about the style. His choice to allow the software on whatever platform was crucial, whereas Jobs inability, early on, to work well with others was fatal. This allowed Microsoft to grow rapidly with the cheap PC, and on the other hand, Apple's fortunes dwindled. Nonetheless, I think Jobs attention to aesthetics has paid off, at least in the iMac (which I'm typing this post with) and iPod. But I don't agree that the future is mostly in the post-pc items. Sure there will be plenty of opportunities to make a lot of money with portable hand-held devices, and Apple will be there to do so (I'd buy most of their products cause they are just so cool) but I agree with Gates that given their small screen size, it's no substitute for a desktop, or some kind of home computer, with a large screen. Given Gates understanding of how things will evolve, I definitely expect to still see Microsoft's dominance of the industry for some time.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Youthful Reminisces

These past four days have been a trip down memory lane. I'm going to try to organize some of the memories for blogging, though not all in this post. My parents, M and I took a road trip to Hualien, partly as a family get-away, and also to introduce our Taiwanese hometown to a group of my brother's ( Albert Wu see here and here ) students from France. Albert and his wife are jointly teaching a course in history in Paris, and over the last few weeks they have been taking their students on an abroad research-coursework-fun tour of Taiwan. If you know my father, he tends to try to get involved in some way with any of his sons' projects, and from our perspectives, it's great to get his help and/or just advice (from time to time). My brother and his wife planned a historical, social justice introduction to Taiwan (I wrote about a visit to Dadaocheng ). Important components to understand the complex identities and mindsets of Taiwanese today involves understanding the Ea...

Did X say that?

I was cleaning out old draft emails when I came upon these quotes. 1. “Set your goals high; make friends with different kinds of people; enjoy simple pleasures. Stand on high ground; sit on level ground; walk on expansive ground.” 2. In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit . -Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, musician, Nobel laureate (1875-1965) Both quotes resonated with me, and both quotes provide profound, provoking, prose projecting providence. But for the first quote I'm not sure who to attribute, and for the second, while I'd like to imagine he said that, I'm not really sure if Dr. Schweitzer did (because I have never met him!). In the internet age, I think it really behooves one to critically analyze everything read online. Does X make sense, did X say that? Sometimes it...

Goodbyes

It's hard saying goodbye. A good friend of mine is leaving Duke to return to Paris. He was fed up with the physics program here, and after securing a position in France, decided to return home. It's unfortunate that the department here could not do more to help, as he was genuinely bright; unfortunately he was suffering from depression, probably induced by the stresses of the PhD program as well as the dull boring city of Durham. In general how does one say goodbye? You don't really, especially if you're good friends. You just end up saying hello less often. At least that's my take. Unfortunately, more on goodbyes, it's goodbye to Duke's NCAA hopes for this year. We were outplayed by LSU. Sure the refs were really not entirely fair (from our point of view of course), but they closed our top scorer down. It was a fun run, and I enjoyed watching them play, especially since I thought they played such great team basketball, but it's over. Such a somber posti...