Steve Jobs To Newsweek: Dell Is Wal-Mart, Apple Innovates

by , 9:00 AM EDT, July 22nd, 2002

NEWSWEEK's Steven Levy has taken a look at Apple, MACWORLD Expo, and Steve Jobs in the latest edition of the news magazine. The article covers topics such as SoHo, Dell, and Mr. Jobs' opinion on the state of Apple. From the article:

Steve Jobs and New York's SoHo district are a natural fit. Both are icons in the nexus where taste, art and commerce all meet. Like SoHo, Apple CEO Jobs has evolved from scruffy beginnings to prosperity while maintaining a quietly hip edge.

SO IT'S NO wonder that when Apple opened its first store in New York City, Jobs chose the place where Giorgio Armani and the Keith Haring shop coexist. At its unveiling last Wednesday, Jobs was greeting media and muck-a-mucks at his 32d Apple retail store, a former Restoration Hardware outlet in a 100-year-old former post office. "I love the neighborhood," Jobs gushes.

Levy continues by discussing the news from MACWORLD Expo. Among the flurry of announcements, he found Rendezvous to be one of the big announcements that almost seemed to be pushed to the side during the keynote. As for the current economic conditions and Microsoft, Levy asked Steve Jobs himself:

Not that it's an easy road for Apple, which earlier in the week was reporting drab financial results. Jobs blames the economy. "I'd rather be us than some of the other guys out there," he says. "It's only us and Dell making money [among computermakers]. They're making money because they're Wal-Mart, we're making it because we're innovating." Jobs also shrugs off fears that Microsoft, expressing unhappiness at sales of its Mac version of Office, might abandon the platform. "It's just a spat," he says, predicting that new versions of Office will keep appearing on the Mac.

In addition, Mr. Jobs told Levy that, while the new Windows iPod may be less of an incentive for Windows users to switch, he felt that getting the iPod in the hands of Windows users might make them consider a Macintosh in the future. Speaking of the future, Steve has been at Apple for five years now. How does Jobs see Apple currently?:

Jobs says the best part of his five-year stint is working with his team at Apple. Though talk like this often rings of false modesty, the fact is that Apple under Jobs has been remarkably free of reorgs and confusion. "I know if I got run over by a bus tomorrow, Apple's going to keep on going," says Jobs. "Because the engines have been put in place and cultures have been put in place to keep innovating, to keep doing things at this level of quality." Does that mean that in five years there will be no more of the iconically hip CEO in black shirt and jeans? Jobs laughs. "I'm taking a vacation next week. That's as far ahead as I can think."

Mr. Levy's article is a great read, and offers an overall positive look at Apple. The full article can be found at MSNBC.

The Mac Observer Spin:

This article offers a nice look at Steve Jobs, the kind of look the public doesn't often get. We particularly enjoyed the comment about Dell, because the company truly is the Wal-Mart of computing. It's accurate, and the fact that Mr. Jobs acknowledges that Dell *is* making money shows that Mr. Jobs isn't being petty. Dell's business model is indeed a profitable one, though it comes at the expense of the entire Wintel hegemony being mired in the inability to innovate because of restrictions on R&D budgets.

We also found Mr. Jobs' comments concerning the state of Apple to be interesting.

NEWSWEEK Article