Steve Jobs: 'I never did it for the money'

[dArKeR]

He had, according to one former colleague, an "athletic, bouncy swagger, weight balanced towards the tips of his toes -- rather like a boxer, aggressive and elusively graceful, or like an elegant jungle cat ready to spring at its prey". Steve Jobs is a man who inspires superlatives. This week he launched Apple's iTunes digital music store in London, with a little help from the singer Alicia Keys. It was the latest of his brainchildren to be presented over here, a year after its successful launch in the US.

Jobs is a co-founder of Apple, the man behind the astonishing success of the computer animation firm Pixar -- of Toy Story and Finding Nemo fame -- a billionaire regarded as a visionary in the industry. Yet compared with Bill Gates he is practically unknown.

"Partly it's because Bill Gates has a lot more money," says Alan Deutschman, the author of The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, a book that recorded Jobs' triumphal return to success after being ousted from the company he formed.

http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=117501

This I believe! And from a 'users' standpoint, I think the Mac is much nicer than any Win! Somehow Apple didn't market their product as well and Microcrap. Or Microcrap illegally and/or immorally obtained and advantage.

[parasim]

1. so, the question is...

is bill gates a pirate or a pioneer? i'd guess pirate, but i am a mac-head, so that's be expected... :evilgrin:

[emulatorloo]

5. Neither - Robber Baron. . . n/t

[Robert Oak]

2. beyond outright theft and dirty dealings....

Micro$loth had an open architecture, Apple was closed.

Kiss of death not letting the competition develop for your platform.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. Maybe Apple didn't market the idea properly because it was

pilfered from Xerox? Gates only genius was that he built something slightly different, if not inferior, to avoid trademark infringements.

Well, it's early in the morning, and I have insomnia. I'm entitled to be crabby.

[emulatorloo]

4. Do your research - Jobs had a contract w Xerox. . .

Here let me buy you a second cup of coffee.

http://www.mackido.com/Interface/ui_history.html

<snip>

Jobs was so hot on the concepts of UI, and the living Demos he say, that he, later, negotiated a deal with Xerox. He gave Xerox a large sum of stock in Apple (worth Millions) if he could come back, and bring some programmers -- to inspire them moreon the concepts of GUI. This was like a one-day tour. This was agreed to by Xerox, and so by no stretch of the imagination could this be called "ripping-off".

PARC was a research center -- meant to inspire development. But they did not really develop products (in the commercial sense), they developed ideas. Saying that Apple learning some of the base concepts and then applying them was "ripping-off" is like saying that Air-Bags are ripping off Newton -- because Air Bags work because they adhere to some of the laws of physics first expressed by Sir Isaac. A silly silly argument. Knowledge builds on knowledge. Xerox didn't see Apple as competition, that is why they let them in -- but they charged Apple, since Xerox believed that their research had value.

<snip>

The letters do seem to agree that the Macs UI was created at Apple, by Apple and for Apple. And that little if any Xerox work was taken, and the Mac was in a completely different universe. Some broad concepts were in common, but that is about it. Apple furthered those concepts, developed their own, and had totally different implementations.

The differences in UI between the Xerox UI and Apples' Mac were startlingly different.

<snip>

Add link and quote

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. Non compete clauses are now standard.

Not ripped off. Just stole it fair and square. There are pages written on Xerox's short-sightedness. The irony is that Xerox did become a great base for ideas in the industry. It just never could capitalize on them. Sort of a reverse corporate mentality.

[mastein]

7. Gates was/is a better business man than Jobs

And he forced IBM, among others into signing some very nasty contract language tying Microsoft's payments to the numbers of computers sold (in what was then called the microcomputer class) by IBM regardless of the OS. So, IBM, who was the big leader in selling computers at the time either had to include MS DOS on the machines or face not getting the most from their deal. Of course Gates was smart enough (or at least his lawyer father was) smart enough to be able to sell MS DOS to other computer makers making his system (no matter how good or bad it is, and yes I think it sucks) and get the same per machine deal.

Gates has never had an original idea in his head, unlike Jobs. He just used some nasty contract language to bring a huge, profitable corp. to its knees in less than a generation, while at the same time making himself the richest man in the world.

Jobs on the other hand is a techy's techy. He hires people to do the business side of his dealings, and as such doesn't get as much "original business thinking" as his competition.