What do you think about Steve Jobs (Apple), Bill Gates (Microsoft), and Elon Musk (Tesla)? Who is the best technology visionary? What is their best talent?
Perhaps you have picked the wrong one.
Bill Gates and Elon Musk are best at marketing to make their company well known and successful by drawing investors in to help fund their R&D.
Steve Jobs is the best technical visionary, who made products at high quality and features that people wanted. Steve was not good at marketing.
Back in 1990, Apple computer or Macintosh was really good and reliable with graphics and windows. However Steve didn’t know how to market and made it essential equipment in each household.
Bill Gates could market “horrible” Windows 2.1, Windows 3, and Windows Me as superior products with help from other computer hardware makers. Restarting the PC was a common and essential feature of Windows. People around the world were drawn in and eventually made Windows the popular OS around the world.
Many people have said that Bill Gates copied the ideas of building “windows” from Apple Macintosh. Earlier than Windows 2.1, Microsoft DOS was the only product of Microsoft. The popularity of Windows 2.1, Windows 3, and Windows Me has put Apple on the verge of bankruptcy even though Apple had come up with the development of Windows earlier. Bill Gates defended to the media that both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs copied this idea from Xerox. Did Bill Gates understand “Xerox?” ideas about windows or until looking at Windows on Macintosh by Apple?
Elon Musk drew people’s attention in a bet to build/deliver energy storage for Australia in record time. He even said that if Tesla missed it, he would lose only $57M USD. He spent $57M in marketing, which drew in all investors to help Tesla as large as today. He also marketed “auto pilot” to draw in all buyers, even though autopilot was like assisted driving tools and it didn’t implement critical features preventing car accidents or driver’s negligence in relying in auto-pilot taking care of handling the wheels.
Steve Jobs made it again with iPhone and iPad with features that most people like, i.e. moving or operating devices with fingers. This time, Apple got help from media, and became successful. Btw, iPhone and iPad were released with good features and reliable in their first versions. I don’t like iPhone or iPad, but it was way better than Windows 2.1 and auto-pilot.
Anyways marketing and media is critical to make your company known worldwide and being successful. Having quality products seems to be the second choice of customers.
The reason that I preferred Microsoft Windows over MacBook was simple. Windows 2.1 or 3.1 was cheaper and used in schools by professors with required tools and programming languages in their early days. Windows 10 became more reliable and used in many companies. I have been working in many hi-tech firms, and they all used Windows. It won’t take me lots of time or cause me trouble to get myself familiar with MacBook or iPhone, but most of the tools are developed for Windows. I don’t want to spend time searching for tools that I may need, because this was not my main focus on a task. By the way, I was familiar with Apple and Macintosh in McGill University lab earlier than 1990, and I liked it; I had to get myself familiar with the “restart” feature of early versions of Windows. How many times that old timers of Windows have had to insert “floppy disks” to reinstall Windows 2.1, 3.1, or Windows Me?
Who do you want to copy? Bill Gates, Elon Musk or Steve Jobs?
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Author: Vinh Nguyen, B.Eng., LLQP
Email: canvinh@gmail.com
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