Steve Jobs On Apple's iPod vs. Microsoft's Zune

My daily email from Charles Schwab recently contained a brief analysis of recent events affecting Apple's stock price. The text, which includes some quotes by Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, read as follows,

"APPLE COMPUTER INC. doesn't expect the iPod media player to be hurt by MICROSOFT CORP.'s Zune, Chief Executive Steve Jobs said in a magazine interview. Microsoft has touted Zune, a portable media player due to be launched in the U.S. in time for the holiday shopping season, as a potential threat to the dominant iPod because of its ability to share music wirelessly. "It takes forever," Jobs told Newsweek in an interview posted on the magazine's Web site on Sunday. "By the time you've gone through all that, the girl's got up and left." Jobs was equally unconcerned about the prospect of the iPod losing its cool factor as it becomes increasingly ubiquitous. "That's like saying you don't want to kiss your lover's lips because everyone has lips. It doesn't make any sense," said Jobs."

These statements by Jobs display some of the characteristics which I believe have allowed him to be so successful as a businessman. In particular, I believe they offer some insight into why Jobs has been successful at a variety of businesses, whereas the man he is most-often compared with, Bill Gates, has had a very fortunate ride, for a brief period of time, with only one business.

The statements attributed to Jobs let us see his basic appreciation for human behavior, and his inherent common sense. While Gates projects an image of the geek who got lucky, Jobs, with each passing year and business success, comes across as more thoughtful, sensitive, open-minded, and in touch with consumer behavior.

For instance, his quote about sharing music with a Zune is just priceless. He cuts right to the heart of the matter, as it were, saying what everyone knows is probably true- that the most ',mission-critical' role for such music sharing is in ice-breaking moments for some boy, trying to impress a girl, such as Jobs off-handedly described.

I don't know about you, but the quote enables me to see a young Jobs trying to pick up an attractive girl, and understanding how some cool techno-toy would help. The image of Gates trying something similar can't quite get composed in my mind's eye.

Jobs' second statement is equally poignant and sensitive. What a nuanced and clever analogy. Leave it to Jobs to position the iPod media experience, even in a casual interview conversation, as emotive, rather than analytical or technical. He clearly evokes the sense of users bonding with the beauty of Jobs' products' designs and operation, rather than their technical specs. Then he appeals to the reader to confirm his own sensibility in making this emotional-based analogy.

Very noteworthy. He doesn't come across as manipulative, so much as just being his own, complex self. He doesn't seem to think of his business, so much as the uses for, and attitudes people have toward, his products.

Thinking back on Jobs' career, and the video clip my partner sent me of the former's recent commencement address at Stanford, I see a connection between the nature of the quotes cited in the passage above, and Jobs' business experiences.

He began with nothing, a few partners, and created Apple. The very nature of the machine was anti-thetical to the sparer, more utilitarian PC and its Microsoft operating systems. Jobs went on to grow his company, leave it, start another (Next), return to his baby, Apple, and revive it. In the meantime, he also started an unrelated company, Pixar, and grew it so successfully that Disney bought it. Now, he's on Disney's board, still runs Apple, and is probably the only, and most, trusted 'techie' able to move through the geographically proximal, but culturally alien world of old and new media. Jobs has always seemed to be moving on a path, chasing a vision of bringing technology to the masses in a way that he can clearly visualize, including the detailed experiences of those masses with his inventions. You can feel and see his passion in his interviews.

Gates, by contrast, founded Microsoft, cleverly arbitraged someone else's operating system into a quick fortune, then grew his company's dominant market position in operating systems and leveraged it into business application software. Basically a one-trick, but very, very large pony, Microsoft followed a familiar technology business growth trajectory, and has now become an aged, sluggish software vendor in a comparative backwater of the technology sector. Gates has run the company for all of its life, presided over its apogee and decline, and has now announced his retirement in less than two years, as he busies himself with philanthropic pursuits.

It's hard to fail at giving away money, isn't it?

Meanwhile, Jobs is still busy creating value for shareholders, and new products and services, using digital applications processors, content provision systems, and larger media distribution enterprises, for their ever-more-intertwined uses by common people.

It's somehow reassuring that, even in a few brief quotes from an interview, one can glimpse some of what has made Jobs so broadly successful.