“Next week, Steve Jobs will stand on stage in San Francisco to make his keynote speech at the Macworld show, to unveil new – much-rumoured – products. Here’s something I discovered in my 22 years at Apple: some of the toughest competition for the best seats, or the first of those new products, comes from former Windows-centric executives who Steve has personally sucked into his ‘reality distortion zone’ in face-to-face executive briefings,” David Sobotta (formerly Apple’s federal sales manager) writes for The Guardian.
“You want to go to one? You want to meet Steve Jobs to persuade him that Apple should build a tablet computer, or an iPhone? Then besides having a big purchasing budget and persuasive reasons, you’d better bring a big ego,” Sobotta explains.
“It’s an amazing experience to take part in a briefing with Steve. Stories about him reprimanding customers are true. Once, when renegotiating a Pixar distribution deal with Disney, he humiliated Disney’s chief information officer in front of his staff. Steve pointed to a couple of recent Disney flops, and told the attendees that they could expect more of the same as long as the CIO was stupid enough to keep Macs out of the creative process,” Sobotta explains.
MacDailyNews Take: You want the truth? You can’t handle… Who wants to bet that Macs are in Disney’s creative process now?
Sobotta continues, “An executive briefing always looks, on paper, like a clash of titanic egos. From what I saw, most wilt quickly in Steve’s presence. And customers’ reverence for him usually overwhelms any hostility. In fact, it doesn’t really matter who is presenting or what is being discussed. When Steve enters a room, everything stops and attention turns to him. When he walks in you get the feeling that he has sucked all the other thoughts out of the room. As for quoting him precisely – you don’t take notes if you want to live.”
MacDailyNews Take: This is a fun read!
Sobotta continues, “So next week… I am 99% confident we will see an Apple phone, with enhanced music capabilities and maybe a few computing features such as email and contacts synchronisation with Macs or through .Mac. Steve’s ability to know where consumers and technology will intersect often creates a road paved in gold. That’s why he’ll focus his energy on mobiles. The potential there that only Steve can see could well turn into another must-have product for the legions who don’t even know they are part of Steve’s army.”
Full article – very highly recommended – with much more, including Jobs on Mac Tablets, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Marine Blue” and “typhoon john” for the heads up.]
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I hope Steve doesn’t mind you spilled the beans on his phone.
So the crooked Jobs is also an ass. I guess he holds up the idea that nice guys finish last. I must admit that even though I don’t like the guy I do like the products that he’s been involved with.
73% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
86% of all statistics that you read are false.
“Customers do not know what they want to buy. We have to tell them.”
That is sooo true.
only the truely usefull products are the ones that we all remember through the years. The other gadgets and gizmos die and are forgotten. And we wasted time and money on them.
I don’t think that enormous ego and an acerbic tongue in the absence of intelligence and intuition are universally synonymous with success. I reckon that anyone who schedules a meeting with Jobs and hasn’t done his or her homework is begging for a rebuke. Perhaps, more than anything else that Jobs adds to the corporate mindset at Apple, is the attitude of absolute commitment to performance. Raising the bar will motivate the best and eliminate the rest.
50% of people named ‘macromancer’ write off-topic. er… wait a minute…
SUOSMTP!
(Shut up or show me the phone!)
A rare post:
I really, really hope Apple enables text input on this iPhone aka a Treo. I switched to a Treo a few months back and I’m hooked. Even if it’s a “virtual” keyboard on-screen, I see this as indespensable.
I’m probably not alone in the opinion that notebook computers are becoming less needed for certain users because we can now email and take care of some business while out and about.
I dig the idea of .Mac synergy.
My 2¢.
74% of acronyms are not recognized by 92% of the population.
That was a great read. 99% certainty is pretty big. I keep thinking that if Apple does a phone, it would announce it in a special event, like iPod. I still think next week will be about Leopard and upgrades to computers– Mac Pro, mini.
Can’t wait.
You don’t go into a board meeting with tea and feather dusters. Fercrissakes… if you run a business well, you get shit done, and that means ego, not being a ‘nice guy’. Nice guys tend to get crushed on wall street, and a broke nice guy doesn’t do anyone in his company any good. Egos like Steve’s can move mountains.
I imagine working for Steve is a little like working for Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada, and in that kind of business, that’s what it takes. Sweet and polite does not sell $900 shoes.
Statistics can be manipulated to prove anything…..29% of the people know that!
I’m quite certain that I may not be able to trust this guy.
With all the hype about this, if Apple were not going to release iPhone next week, they’d say so. Remember when they did that before? I don’t remember what product it was for but they came right out and said it wasn’t on the menu. Maybe it was a new iMac or something?
False dichotomy: Civility vs. Honesty. How is it being ‘an ass’ to state an honest opinion about someone’s flops. More American executives need to have their failures thrown in their faces these days. God knows they’ve sure got lots of failures to hide from. I’d love it if somebody in the American auto industry had shown this kind of honesty and brass to the heads of General Motors in the past decade. Maybe they would have started building something other than behemoth gas-guzzlers.
I think we’re all a bit tired of this insistence on ‘civility’ when there are glaring problems to be fixed. I think Steve Jobs sees the entire history of the personal computer as a great deal of potential that was squandered when it was stolen away by lesser minds such as Bill Gates and Steve Balmer. Civility in a board room is what resulted in the Sudetenland being given away to Adolph Hitler in 1938. Too often, politeness is just another word for lacking the courage of your convictions.
I WANT people running things who have courage to press for their vision of how to proceed. If the only people who can speak are those with the conventional wisdom, you end up with the bullies running things unopposed. For this reason, I hope there is another, younger version of Steve Jobs somewhere at Apple occasionally ‘gettin’ all up in Steve’s grill’ about his own ideas. That is how genuine progress is made.
There is a market for cell phones with whiz-bang feature sets, but I just don’t see it being big business for Apple, like the iPod for instance. Selling cell phones is complicated, and not just from a marketing stand point. Maybe we’re going to find out.
53% of all Mac users represent just over half of all Mac users that use Macs.
Tergenev gets it.
My take on the Apple phone thingy…….. it will be announced this year; unfortunately just not next week.
Why I am betting my last dollar for my theory – next week is MacWorld Expo; not Apple Expo.
MacWorld SF keynotes will focus on all things Mac (especially the non pro hardware) related and unfortunately, the phone isn’t a Mac.
Hint: every year its the same old thing and the same old timing. Just recall the last few year’s keynotes (all of them) given by Steve and you can guess when the Apple phone would be revealed.
My guess to what Steve would reveal next week includes:
New Airport technology (wireless N)
iLife & iWork ’07 (even a 5 yr old would be able to guess this correctly)
12″ or 13″ MacBook Pro
new version of Final Cut Pro and/or Express
10.5 may not make it for this quarter, but Steve would give the dateline for its release
eSata connection for all new Macs
Tergenev has hit the nail…
Conventional wisdom yields conventional results, i.e. mediocrity and status quo.
That’s why Apple continues to lead. It’s not about conventional wisdom and looking at how things are (already) done. It’s looking at the potential for doing new things.
Windoze vs. Mac right there.
I personally don’t give a rats ass if Steve is naughty or nice; don’t give a shit if I were to hate him if I met him. Hell, I don’t care if he’s an absolute pig … er … well, never mind on that one.
Thing is, all I want from Steve is toys, lots and lots of really neat toys. And I don’t give a damn how he gets em made, if he has to kick ass, fine with me.
Fact is, I’ll never meet the guy, but I’ll buy his toys!
@Freddy the Pig
Word. The founder of Sony was the same way, he loved the gadgets, and built them for himself, not for a committee or a focus group. That’s why they were great.
-c
MW: ‘getting’ (better all the time)
OK, guys and gals. I’ve read this dork’s rantings on his blog in the past and they all have a highly negative tinge to it. Especially when the topic of SJ comes up. He is a disgruntled Ex-Apple employee whose bitter about being canned. Besides, we are supposed to believe his 99% certainty from a meeting he attended almost FIVE YEARS AGO? At the time, tablet PCs were being introduced by MS and SJ didn’t think it was a good idea to get into that area. So, because of this meeting in which Mr Sobotta was lucky to be present at, we are gonna see an iPhone from Apple. Pfffft!!!
if it can sync with your Mac by only using .mac, then its destined to fail.