Digital Cowboy

Since there’s no such thing as an atheist (every human has at least one god), if I didn’t believe in and know Jehovah, I would worship Steve Jobs. If I ever managed to achieve my (very minor) dream of having dinner with him, I suspect it would end in a fist fight because we disagree on everything, politically and spiritually. But you can’t argue with results.

For those of you that aren’t geeks, he’s the co-founder and (once again) CEO of Apple Computer as well as the majority owner and CEO of Pixar, which was just “sold” to Disney for $7.3 billion. He developed Pixar from a fledgling studio that he bought from George Lucas for $10 million. Pixar did the Toy Story movies, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, etc.

The man is a freakin’ genius and a true “alpha male.” He’s so good at it that geeks talk about his “reality distortion field.” He’s truly a visionary that can sell anyone anything and he immediately owns every room he walks into, whether it’s occupied by world leaders, tech CEO’s or media CEO’s. That’s how he broke the ground for online music sales and built the iTunes music store when no one else had ever been able to get the “major 5″ record companies to all agree to the same terms. He followed that up by getting the major TV networks to let him sell their TV shows for download at the store.

Anyway, Vox was just talking about alpha males and I was reminded of what he had written tonight while reading more about Steve. In particular, what reminded me of what Vox wrote, was this:

In 1999, I was commissioned by Vanity Fair magazine to write a story about the relationship between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. While I know both men, I know them separately, not together, and I just wanted to better understand how they got along. The only hint I had was from a joint interview they did several years ago for Fortune magazine in which Gates said that when they were together, Jobs bossed him around. It is very hard to imagine anyone bossing around Bill Gates. I had to know more.

And this:

Asked in late 1997 what Jobs should do as head of Apple, Dell Inc.’s (DELL ) then-CEO Michael S. Dell said at an investor conference: “I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”

Here’s the rub. Apple recently surpassed Dell in market cap. When it happened, Steve sent an email to all Apple employees that read:

“Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn’t perfect at predicting the future. Based on today’s stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve.”

Who’s the big dog now?

Alpha, indeed.

(I recommend clicking the links. Even if you’re not a geek, I think you’ll still find them amusing and enlightening. There’s some life lessons for all of us buried in here if you dig.)