Google chairman says Jobs forward thinking

Google chairman Eric Schmidt reminiscence over Steve Jobs revealed that the Apple CEO had talked about making tablets but that he hadn't seen a need for Google to follow suit. Jobs always had a better sense of what was possible in the long-term future for what became the iPad where Schmidt was focused only on what had gone before, Bloomberg heard. The then-CEO of Google interpreted poor Windows Tablet PC sales as a failure of the concept when it was really just Microsoft's flawed execution holding them back.

"When somebody tells you they’re going to do something and you say, 'I don’t understand how you’re going to do that,' and they succeed? That is the ultimate humbling experience," Schmidt said. "My interactions with Steve were always like that. He was always ahead of me. When he started working on tablets, I said nobody really likes tablets. The tablets that existed were just not very good. Steve said: 'No, we can build one.' One of the things about Steve is, he was always in the realm of possibility. There was a set of assumptions that Steve would make that were never crazy. They were just ahead of me."

While Schmidt was on Google's board, early Android work and early iPad work were underway. Jobs would later reveal that the iPhone was the offshoot of work on what became the iPad and that a tablet had always been in the plans. Google, meanwhile, had only been concentrated on smartphones and was caught off-guard by the iPad, which meant no native Android tablet interface until a year after Apple had cornered the market.

The late Apple co-founder was also seen as prescient in retail, understanding that the dependence on resellers wasn't working for Apple and wasn't helping Windows PC builders either. He recognized that people wanted a place to go for support, not just sales. As a whole, Jobs recognized that the intense loyalty to Apple could keep sales stable in the short run but expand them as the products increasingly met the expectations.

Jobs had an extremely thought-out argumentative style, he added. When at NeXT, he could outmaneuver Schmidt and a chief scientist of his in an argument, even though Schmidt had been convinced Jobs was wrong.

Schmidt expanded the increasingly public insight into Jobs' personal life by underscoring just how much his family connection mattered. With four children by the time Schmidt was on the Apple board of directors, Jobs understood the attachment that parents had and how much love they gave out to their children. The 'problem' with a child was that "it's your heart running around outside your body," he said.

By Electronista Staff