“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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