Rob Enderle, head of The Enderle Group, compares Microsoft's Steve Ballmer to Apple's Steve Jobs

May 7, 2008 09:45 GMT  ·  By

"Unhealthy" because anyone who's ready to switch to the Mac and reads Rob Enderle's "A Tale of Two Steves" is most likely going to end up very confused, not to mention negatively influenced. Rob Enderle runs The Enderle Group. In Mr Enderle's opinion, "Jobs is like a master craftsman" while "Ballmer is a master salesman." Sure enough, if he'd have left it at that, everything would have been dandy. But he didn't...

"Jobs is like a master craftsman," Rob notes. "The first things he did when he took over at Apple were get rid of the bozos (underperformers), massively simplify the company and its products, and force tightly integrated products that approach - and sometimes surpass - amazing. To Jobs, the customers are end users who don't really know what they want (he correctly doesn't use research - specifically focus groups - to create great products); IT is made up of bozos who should be ignored; and excellence is defined as well-integrated products and services that catch your breath every time you use them."

The ever-arrogant-Steve emphasis is undoubtedly accurate, as well as a few other aspects of Jobs' personality. But then Enderle goes and says something like "Ballmer is a master salesman," adding that "where Jobs gets stuck is that he doesn't get that in the PC segment, for about 70 percent of the market, IT gets the 'No' vote, and they are understaffed and overworked, not 'bozos.'"

So, does this mean that Steve is like... a bit of a retard every now and then? Is that what Rob Enderle is trying to say? The MacDailyNews' first spotted Rob's piece. Naturally, they had a few things to point out as well. But let's get back to Rob Enderle's story of two Steves.

"For Jobs to 'make a dent in the universe,' he needs to scale up massively and probably partner more aggressively so he can offer a more complete solution," Rob Enderle goes on.

This segment right here doesn't even begin to touch reality. Jobs is making huge dents in the industry as we speak, and every Mac user and reader of this piece will surely condone. No need to explain by which means, as I'm sure you'll let your personal experience with Apple's products sound off in the comments.

Rob says the two Steves have "a lot in common." No, they don't. They're just both called Steve, one couldn't sell his TV set for 20 bucks, while the other could potentially come up with a device to enable you and me to share photos with the aliens over the Einstein-Rosen Network. In fact, Rob himself states in the introduction that "they're both named Steve and they both are in charge of a couple of the largest technology companies in the world," which pretty much sums the whole thing up. Now, if you want to go into the details, two separate articles are probably in order. What say you dear reader?

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Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc.
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