I, Cringely, and the rest of you...

Born in 1953, same year as I (a very good year -you wish- Jozef Stalin died), Bob Cringely is a rather known Press figure specializing in reporting about computers. A few years back he started a program of televised interviews with some of the finest and greatest of the industry. That led to a dozen interesting interviews with people that you'd be otherwise very unlikely to meet, let alone hear them talk about hot stuff.

I watched some of those interviews, with Billy Joy (after he left Sun), the kid that started Paypal, O'Reilly (the books guy), few of the early fathers of the Internet, and some other Industry figureheads (even the other Steve, el fatso Wosniak). Great initiative but it stopped there. Bob wasn't cool enough to be able to convince his producers for more.

Anyway, he's got his own site on the Net where he regularly publishes opinion articles.

In his latest contribution he takes the piss on His Jobness. He talks about Steve Jobs the a-hole that everyone loves to hate. His bitterness about Jobs dates from ten years ago when he set out to do a double act interview for Vanity Fair of Gates and Jobs talking about each other, in two separate takes. After having talked to Gates first, upon Jobs' request, he then found himself in front of El Jobso's closed door, who thought as inappropriate to talk about Gates at a time when Microsoft was going through a DOJ investigation. So Bob goes on and on about how pissed he was from the incident and he then resorts into a Freudian-like analysis of Jobs' style and character that makes you go WTF.

All this to explain the conspiracy theories behind Apple's recent price-cut of the iPhone and its generous 100 bucks rebate to early adopters who paid the full 599 plus taxes for the 8GB version...

In his article, somewhere midway, Gringely says:

...One thing that Gates told me in that interview was he didn’t understand why Jobs had gone back to Apple at all. “Why would he do that?” Bill asked. “He has to know that he can never win.”...

And I am thinkin': Define WIN my man! He himself (Cringely) says somewhere else that El Jobso is the best computer company manager on the planet. He commands with his little pinkies his company, his stylish products, the Press, and an immense and growing user community. What d'ye expect more? Any given event on any new Apple product announcements with His Jobness taking a central part, the world stops to function and people forget about anything else happening (unless it's a monster meteorite on a collision course to Earth). It blows me away, but how do reporters like Gringely in the US define winning? Of course if they consider the conflict in Iraq as winning, then I get it... El Jobso is by this standard a big loser. I'm sure Gates himself would reconsider his selection of words if he had to make the same statement today (that earlier quote was from the interview ten years ago). But Gringely keeps on whining like a middle-aged widow... he's probably past his due date long ago.

Anyways, Gringely's article makes some interesting passtime reading, regardless his emotional outbursts vis-à-vis His Jobness. Go have a look.