Remember Steve Jobs’ quote about Apple as “musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world”? That’s his old quote about the Macintosh team, and it’s one of my favorites (I admit to being a bit nostalgic about the old days, when the software business was not a fashionable post-MBA career, but often a world littered with freaks, oddballs and some of the brightest minds you could find).
You can see the difference between the two CEOs of Apple and Microsoft. Here, Ballmer laughs about the iPhone’s high price in this video (via):
Jobs, on the other hand, practically conjures up magical genies and phantasmagoric images with his presentation of the iPhone. Incredible salesmanship? Yes. But the entire presentation is soaked with Jobs’ extraordinary vision.
Say what you want, but the difference between the two companies can be quite striking. No, I’m not bashing Microsoft. My only point is the difference in style (and it’s worth noting that despite all the grumblings about Microsoft, they have some of the best engineers and developers in the business).
I won’t be going out to replace my PC anytime soon with a Mac. But that iPhone… boy, that is interesting
Alex Eckelberry