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Mea Culpa

At the end of a dispatch I filed from the Wall Street Journal's excellent D conference last week, I wrote that one of the most interesting things about Walt Mossberg's interview of Steve Jobs was what wasn't said:

Not a single word about his role in the stock options imbroglio. I assume, given the hard-nosed, take-no-prisoners approach of his inquisitor, Walt Mossberg, that a deal was cut ahead of time. You want Jobs, you pay his price.

Walt Mossberg recently emailed me, rightfully taking umbrage with my assumption. Walt says no deal was cut.

Sorry Walt. I didn't mean to impugn your integrity, which is beyond reproach. One of the things I admire most about you is that.

Still, you should have asked him about the stock options.

I love you, man

From D5

They started lining up a half hour before the doors even opened to the Grand Ballroom of the Four Seasons Hotel in Carlsbad, California. Wednesday night was to be the main event of the Wall Street Journal’s D Conference, and many here were already calling it, hopefully perhaps, The Smackdown: Bill Gates, the richest man in the world would be appearing on the same podium as his presumed nemesis, the most revered man in the world, Steve Jobs.

The Fathers of the Personal Computer have appeared together a few times. In fact, they were at D two years ago. Still, the power geeks twiddled their over-developed index fingers in anticipation of the fireworks sure to come. A lot has happened in two years. Apple’s share of the digital music market is as overwhelming as Microsoft’s in the PC market. Earlier in the day, when Jobs was on stage alone, he even gave the crowd a taste of blood when he responded to a comment about how popular iTunes had become on the PC platform: “It’s like giving a glass of ice water to someone in hell.”

The historic meeting tonight though turned out to be anything but a smackdown. It was more like a love fest. “We’ve kept our marriage secret for over a decade,” quipped Jobs.

Steve Jobs's Biggest Bet Yet

Business, unlike rock & roll, is an old man's game. Steve Jobs's performance at the Moscone Center today was his best since his triumphant return from NeXT to Apple in 1997. It was all the more remarkable coming from a man who claimed "I didn't sleep a wink last night." He was clearly riding the adrenalin-wave of announcing the newest revolution from Apple (AAPL). Or from anticipating the extra $1 billion that will flow into Apple should his company actually sell 10 million iPhones in the next year.

Of course, the beauty of Jobs is he is always first in line to drink his own Apple-ade—-not that there's anything wrong with that. (Every business would be better if we did that.) A perfectionist to an obsessive degree, Jobs won't unveil a device until every thing about it, from its design to its marketing campaign, thrills him. His products are almost always the closest thing we mortals can experience when it comes to seeing the Platonic ideal of form and function expressed in a gadget.

And that's why the iPhone  will be the biggest challenge of Jobs's insanely amazing career, and could yet prove to be his, and Apple's undoing...