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After appearing separately in interviews at All Things Digital,Disney-Pixar Animation president Dr Ed Catmull and Oracle chiefexecutive Larry Ellison sat together to discuss "the Lessons ofSteve Jobs." Dr. Ed Catmull on Pixar and Disney In his initial interview with Kara Swisher, Dr. Catmull describedhis background in studying physics before helping to lay thegroundwork in CGI as a grad student, working in an ARPA-fundedprogram to build the initial frameworks of rendering complexcomputer-generated images. After being recruited to join George Lucas' computer graphicsdivision of Lucasfilm in the early 1980s, Dr. Catmull met Jobs justafter his ouster from Apple. He described Jobs interest in whatwould become Pixar at a time when the unit was principally ahardware company attempting to sell advanced imaging systems. In 1991, five years after Jobs bought Pixar, the company signed adeal with Disney to produce a series of CGI films. At the time, CGIwas entering the mainstream as films such as Terminator 2 and Beauty and the Beast arrived using technology developed by Pixar. By 1995, Pixar had its first full length CGI movie in Toy Story. Dr. Catmull pointed out that the film intentionally focused ontoy characters to avoid the problems in depicting realistic humanfaces, which the existing technology simply couldn't do well. He also noted that Pixar focused on the goal of making good movieswith a compelling story, while others were focused on solvingtechnical problems. For Pixar, technology was not the goal, butrather the infusion of technology into the artistic process. Dr. Catmull also described Pixar as intentionally focusing onstorytelling, abandoning or completely rewriting projects thatweren't telling a compelling story. Pixar benefited early on from its proximity to Silicon Valley hesaid, particularly from seeing other companies fail after makingpoor decisions. Even after begin acquired by Disney, Pixar remaineda separate entity, being far enough away from Hollywood to remainindependent. Despite managing both Pixar Animation and Disney Animation, Dr.Catmull noted that each group is run independently, and the twogroups were designed to be unable to help each other, even whenfacing serious problems. That independence helped both units togrow stronger. Larry Ellison at Oracle Following Dr. Ed Catmull, Walt Mossberg introduced Ellison, who hasserved Oracle as its chief executive since 1977. Ellison detailedthe progressive evolution of cloud computing, starting withattempts to replace complex PCs with simpler NCs or NetworkComputers in the late 1990s. Ellison contrasted the Internet, a complex network supportingcomplex client PCs, with the water, telephone and electricitynetworks where network complexity allows for simple devices on theclient side. Ellison has long worked to realize a future whereInternet clients were simple, something that has only recentlyappeared with Apple's iPad and smartphones. "The PC is a ridiculous device," Ellison stated as he described theemergence of network server-based "software as a service,"referring to Facebook as "a brilliant piece of technology," anddiscussed the monumental efforts of Google. Ellison also discussed modern marketing, where social networksallow companies to get immediate feedback, stating that "consumersare instrumented" before marveling that the consumer market is nowlarger than the enterprise market. He also pointed out thatOracle's acquisition of Sun has already paid for itself, and that"hardware is mostly software," noting that the iPhone isdifferentiated and valuable principally because of itssophisticated software. Catmull and Ellison on Jobs After their individual interviews, All Things Digital presented avideo of a series of clips of Steve Jobs' appearances at theconference, and invited the two speakers to talk together abouttheir experiences and recollections of working with Jobs. Both men met Jobs shortly after his ouster from Apple in 1986 aquarter of a century ago. Among their observations was that Jobshad the ability to learn from mistakes. Ellison particularly notedthat Jobs' departure from Apple was largely the result of Job'spoor negotiation skills with Apple's board of directors. Apple's board "made a terrible mistake" largely because of apersonality issue, Ellison noted, before pointing out that, becauseof Jobs' past, today's generation of young leaders in SiliconValley "don't trust their boards anymore," specifically noting thatGoogle's Sergey Brin and Larry Page and Facebook's Mark Zuckerbergcan fire board members but can't be fired by their boards. Jobs' ability to learn from his mistakes or from efforts thatweren't working prompted Dr. Catmull to observe, "when you test theboundaries, what do you do with it?" Particularly at Pixar, Jobs'focus on the importance of people resulted in an original design ofthe company's headquarters, rather than just being a lip serviceconcept. Ellison noted that "in addition to his genius, he had a singlemindedness and attention to detail," describing Jobs as "a bit of acontrol freak," and saying "he wanted to engineer every aspect " ofnot only the user interface of devices, but also how you paid forit in the store, how it looks in the box, the experience of openingit, how you bought apps and so forth. "Steve was a god of perspiration, how he applied that horsepoweruntil the problem was solved," Ellison said. "There are a lot ofgood ideas, but translating that into a great product isunbelievably hard," he observed, particularly noting the fictionthat Jobs simply copied the Macintosh from Xerox PARC. Ellison said he was familiar with using the Alto computer PARC hadbeen working on, but that "finishing the Alto and turning it intothe Macintosh was enormously complicated," adding that "Henry Forddidn't invent the car, but he made it cheap and accessible." Dr. Catmull noted that Jobs "never came to a story meeting. Hetrusted that others knew things he didn't." He added that Jobs'"heart intellectually was inside Apple. He knew the difference ofwhen to be in it and how to support others." Despite frequently arguing with employees over the merits of aparticular design decision, Jobs could be convinced that he waswrong. "The best idea wins. You had to persuade him, but he wouldlisten. He wanted to build the best possible products." Ellison added that despite not being a programmer, Jobs "had enoughknowledge and understanding of the complete system to work withengineers as a great editor," adding that Jobs had "Picasso'saesthetic and Edison's inventiveness." Asked how others could copy Jobs' secrets of success, both agreedthat "if you're copying the surface your copying the wrong things,"with Ellison noting that "Apple became one of the most valuablecompanies on earth and it wasn't even one of his goals!" Jobs was obsessed with making great, beautiful products, and wasalways talking about products, the next big thing. Both alsodescribed Jobs' "brilliance of not being a follower," with a"contrarian nature. If everyone is doing this, what if they'rewrong?" Ellison said. We are high quality suppliers, our products such as China Toyota DVD Navigation System , China Ssangyong DVD Player for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits BMW Car DVD Player.
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