How to Think Like Bill Gates by Smith Daniel

Author:Smith, Daniel [Smith, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781782433743
Publisher: Michael O'Mara
Published: 2015-05-27T16:00:00+00:00

As Microsoft surged ahead of Apple in terms of commercial success, the relationship between the two great figureheads deteriorated. It must have been a particularly difficult situation for Jobs to handle, since he also knew that Apple would face a real struggle without Microsoft software such as Word and Excel, whereas Microsoft could take comfort in the notion that were Apple to disappear overnight, another computer manufacturer would take its place and no doubt want to run Microsoft products too.

Jobs’s strategy was, characteristically, to go on the attack. The tactic was best epitomized by his decision to sue his counterpart on charges of ripping off the Mac’s graphical user interface in the production of Windows. That the case was all but thrown out of court hardly warmed relations, and both Apple and Microsoft kept plenty of lawyers in clover for many years as they arm-wrestled over patents and copyright.

By the time Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 for a second term as boss, having been unceremoniously dumped twelve years earlier, both he and Gates had mellowed. That, it might be suggested, is what age and a few billion bucks in the bank can do for you. At the time, Apple was but a shadow of the cutting-edge company it had been during Jobs’s first tenure, with much of the industry convinced that its best days were behind it. With his astute grasp of commercial reality, Jobs found the humility to strike another bargain with his old nemesis.

Microsoft bought some $150 million of Apple stock and agreed to keep producing software for its computers. Not only did this give Apple a fighting chance of re-establishing itself as a major player, but Microsoft’s investment was deemed a very public show of confidence by the biggest name in the global computing business. Jobs, as ever, had no intention of understating its importance: ‘I think the world’s a better place for it.’ Nonetheless, when a giant image of Gates was beamed into 1997’s Macworld convention (the company’s giant annual trade show), Apple fanatics began an impromptu round of booing. It was evidence of the poison that Jobs had spread against his rival over the years, and at that moment a rather embarrassing example of biting the hand that feeds.

As Gates’s retort to Jobs about their burgling of Xerox PARC showed, the Microsoft maestro was no pushover in private and it may be assumed he gave as good as he got in the face of Jobs’s sporadic antagonism. Yet he continued to make public utterances that cast his opposite number in a good light. For instance, in his speech at San Jose University in 1998, he graciously noted:

In terms of an inspirational leader, Steve Jobs is really the best I’ve ever met. I mean, he can make people work, you know, more than they should. He’s got to be careful, it’s such a strong power, he can overuse it. He’s a first-class magician, I’m kind of a second-class magician.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.