Steve Jobs in RollingStone

RollingStone has an interesting interview with Steve Jobs, the quasi-CEO (or some lame title) of Apple, mainly about the digital music revolution (link via jordoncooper.com)

My favorite part is when Jobs is asked about the threat of Microsoft building their own version of iTunes, and Jobs points out that many other Internet-based companies have been successful in the face of Microsoft.

“As you may know, almost every song and CD is made on a Mac — it’s recorded on a Mac, it’s mixed on a Mac, the artwork’s done on a Mac. Almost every artist I’ve met has an iPod, and most of the music execs now have iPods. And one of the reasons Apple was able to do what we have done was because we are perceived by the music industry as the most creative technology company. And now we’ve created this music store, which I think is non-trivial to copy. I mean, to say that Microsoft can just decide to copy it, and copy it in six months — that’s a big statement. It may not be so easy.”

I think there’s a bigtime reason all those creative types use a Mac, and that’s because they work simply. I’m not trying to be a Mac pusher here (I’ve never even owned one), but can you imagine a Microsoft music store? The equivalent of the blue screen of death every other time you try to play a song. No thanks.

And I love this comment, about the lack of interest in subscription services: “I think you could make available the Second Coming in a subscription model, and it might not be successful.”

OK, that’s my Steve Jobs/Apple plug for the day. I just had to beat Josh.

One thought on “Steve Jobs in RollingStone”

  1. I was actually going to avoid that one for fear of doing Apple-related stories too much. Kinda funny how the blogosphere somehow balances itself out, isn’t it?

    Oh, and there’s nothing “quasi” about Steve’s CEO title. He was “iCEO” about six years ago, but he dropped that in 1998 or 1999 and became a fully-fledged CEO, just like he should be.

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