“What if, instead of having to accept the board presence of Steve Jobs as a cost of getting Pixar’s animation talent and film library, Disney actually views the transaction as buying Pixar TO GET Steve Jobs and then gaining the animation bits as a bonus? If Disney CEO Robert Iger is really an exceptional leader, he’ll see it exactly that way,” Robert X. Cringely writes for PBS. “I am not a big Steve Jobs fan. No fawning here. I once called him a sociopath in a book that was translated into 18 languages, and I don’t take it back now. But even a sociopath has his moments, and I am beginning to see that this moment belongs to Jobs.”
“If Robert Iger creates a miracle at Disney, which I think he will, that miracle is Steve Jobs. We’re in a new century with new realities, but we haven’t yet found a new archetype for enlightened corporate power. Bill Gates? Give me a break! What we have are people in power who have no muse and wouldn’t recognize one if they could even hear her. Steve Jobs knows his muse,” Cringely writes. “For the entertainment industries, the next 10 years will be the most revolutionary in a century. Broadcast TV as we knew it is going away, replaced by a Chinese entertainment menu of such complexity that even knowing what’s “on” tonight will be beyond the abilities of most viewers. At some point, too, movies will be subsumed into television and recorded music will find its own new place with new rules. This will be Steve Jobs’s world and we’ll all just be visitors. It’s obvious to me and, evidently, to Iger, too.”
Cringely writes, “I still don’t like Steve Jobs. I’ve known too many people he has hurt. But this is clearly his time, maybe even his century. And what of Bill Gates? Bill Gates is a very successful philanthropist, but he’s no Steve Jobs… Bill once told me that there was no way that Steve could win, so he wondered why Jobs was even still in the game? Bill now knows why.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews reader “Rainy Day” for the link.]
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