Bill Says Steve has Taste, and Steve Says Bill can Partner

In my quest to figure out what is happening in the computer business I have been thinking a good deal about how we got here.  In two separate conversations in less than a week friends have pointed me back to the 2007 All Things Digital conference where Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal interviewed Steve Jobs and Bill Gates together.  The whole thing is available on YouTube here.  There are many fine moments, but if you want to cut to the best one, go to 3:30 of part 11.  Where an audience member has just asked what they had learned from each other and Bill Gates says:  "Oh I would give a lot to have Steve's taste."  He then goes on to eloquently summarize the magic of Steve Jobs all in a couple of sentences.  

The focus moves to Steve and he talks about Microsoft's skill at partnering: "Bill and Microsoft were really good at it." and Steve further explains how Apple didn't need to think that way because they were building the "whole banana" and Microsoft needed to be good at it because they needed partners to succeed.  This could not be more true today.  While a fair amount has transpired in the three years since this interview was taped, the basic facts are as the two founders said on that day:  Apple has taste and Microsoft knows how to partner.

There has been all kinds of news out of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner conference this week about how Microsoft is going to leverage its partner ecosystem to be the biggest player in the cloud and other areas.  I don't think anyone could have said it better than Bill and Steve did in 2007.

The entire hour is very much worth watching and amazingly revealing about post PC devices, tablets, social media, multiple screens -- all the stuff we are talking about today.  Check it out.

Ballmer Brings Ozzie to D8

I was at a small conference last month where Ray Ozzie spoke and he demonstrated, as he has done many times before, a refreshing grasp of the state of the industry and Microsoft's position within it.  Steve Ballmer did the right thing by bringing Ray to D8.  There has been a great deal of coverage, so instead of adding to the heap, here are some links:

• Ars Technica: This one is probably the best distillation 
• eWeek: A quick summary
• All Things Digital: A rough transcript
• Engadget:  This one contrasts Job's comments about PC = Truck to Ballmer's response

In the end Ballmer seemed on the defensive, and was not able to land an innovative forward thinking idea.  Ray Ozzie had some well crafted thoughts about the industry direction but in the few video clips I saw he seemed to get cut off right before he was going to say something meaningful.  Microsoft still has great deal of work to do.

Steve Jobs at D8

Steve Jobs was the big feature at the All Things Digital conference yesterday.  He was humble about the market cap thing: “It’s surreal, but it doesn’t really mean anything” and about Apple itself: “Apple is a company that doesn’t have the most resources in the world, and the way we’ve succeeded is to bet the right technological horse, to look at technologies that have a future. We try to pick things that are in their springs. And if you choose wisely, you can be quite successful.” And he did not take the bait on war with Microsoft: “No, we don’t see ourselves in a platform war” says Jobs. “We never saw ourselves in a platform war with Microsoft, either…Maybe that’s why we lost. But we never thought of ourselves in a platform war; we just wanted to make good products.” or on war with Google: “Well, they’re competing with us...we didn’t go into search.”  

There is a really interesting riff on the development path that brought about the iPhone and eventually the iPad: 

Jobs: “I’ll tell you a secret. It began with the tablet. I had this idea about having a glass display, a multitouch display you could type on with your fingers. I asked our people about it. And six months later, they came back with this amazing display. And I gave it to one of our really brilliant UI guys. He got scrolling working and some other things, and I thought, ‘my God, we can build a phone with this!’ So we put the tablet aside, and we went to work on the iPhone.”

This just emphasizes how Jobs has the metal to make big decisions and make them decisively.  There have been a lot of these big decisions lately including Flash of course, and the market is being shaped and reshaped by Steve Jobs yet again.  This shaping will continue with Steve pulling for newspapers over bloggers: “I don’t want us to see us descend into a nation of bloggers,” civility and control over openness: “We have a rule that says you can’t defame people,” and his own curating of ideas: “The best ideas have to win, no matter who has them.”

Steve Jobs is still the best CEO in existence.  Quite a performance.