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More than that I've noticed about 30 years of consistent and regular fluff pieces to glamorize people such as Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. One of the notable exc
by MCRed 11y ago
More than that I've noticed about 30 years of consistent and regular fluff pieces to glamorize people such as Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. One of the notable exceptions is Steve Jobs who stopped giving interviews to these kinds of reporters in the 1980s, and also stopped getting covers around that time (after that, if he's on a cover he's holding a new product.)
One observable consequence of this is that Steve Jobs who gave us so much is widely reviled, while Bill Gates who destroyed the packaged software industry, almost killed the internet and went so far as to have schools raided by SWAT to make them buy windows licenses for their computers (computers that were Macs, by the way, back when Macs ran PowerPC and couldn't run windows anyway)... is widely regarded as a humanitarian[1]. Jeff Bezos (whom I've known personally) is widely regarded as a Tech guy (despite being really just a pointy haired boss.)
There's a reason these guys spend money on PR-- the PR becomes the public perception.
[1] I've been in the room when both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos lost their cool (three separate occasions, fortunately I was not the target.) Steve was quietly upset "how are we going to fix this?" and "we're never going to let this happen again, are we?" with all the weight those comments imply. Bezos and Gates both lit into the person with a clear intention to make their victims feel like nothing (both in different ways brought up the victims family as well.) I worked at Amazon and Microsoft, but not Apple.
- abawany 11y agoRe. Gates/humanitarian: he is not regarded as one for his work at Microsoft but due to his work at the Gates Foundation. Are you able to say that the world would be better off if the Gates Foundation did not exist?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- johansch 11y agoThe more relevant question is: would the world be better off if Microsoft (and thus also the Gates Foundation) never existed?
- Nullabillity 11y ago> One observable consequence of this is that Steve Jobs who gave us so much is widely reviled, while Bill Gates who destroyed the packaged software industry Hahaha, what? iOS set a huge negative precedence and pretty much killed off any hope for a mainstream phone that wasn't focused on consuming pre-approved content.
- eli 11y ago> iOS set a huge negative precedence That's unfair. Before iOS you typically had to go to your carrier's app store to download anything. Verizon's policies about who gets listed and how much it costs were much worse than iOS.
- enjo 11y agoPalmOS had a wide open app model and it was awesome.
- jshevek 11y agoYes. The iPhone was a huge step backwards in my opinion, but at the time the only people who seemed to understand this were PalmOS users.
- robotresearcher 11y agoAnd Blackberry users. Blackberry was pretty damn good.
- Nullabillity 11y agoEven S60 had a pretty decent open market.
- Spooky23 11y agoYes, the dozen applications available were great.
- 11y ago
- pboutros 11y agoTo be fair, Larry Page apparently declined several times to be interviewed for this article.
- tamana 11y agoJobs gave these interviews for Apple products not himself. He arranged massive puff pieces (magazine covers) on Apple and their products to coincide with launches of new products.
- tamana 11y agoJobs gave these interviews for Apple products not himself. He arranged massive puff pieces (magazine covers) on Apple and their products to coincide with launches of new products.