Apple's vision transcends anything imaginable by Microsoft, ever

I, Cringley:

Microsoft bought Skype to keep Google from buying Skype.

Notice I didn’t mention Apple. In terms of being the baddest MoFo in the market Apple has no peer, but Apple is following its own very different course. Apple isn’t the next Microsoft, you see. Apple is not the next anything because the role it aspires to transcends anything imaginable by Microsoft, ever. Google is the next Microsoft, so Google is seen by Ballmer as the immediate threat — the one he has a hope in hell of actually doing something about.

This speaks to the essence of fearless entrepreneurship (still due for a name change, coming up…).

Where do your ideas come from?

They come from a place where you sense into a future that is trying to emerge. That’s a form of sensing or seeing that doesn’t come from the brain in your skull. It comes from your heart and intuition, to use the words of Steve Jobs.

Microsoft doesn’t get that. They’re all left brain people. They’re all about rational thought. As is Google.

But Apple is about something much deeper than that. They know how to be rational. But they don’t try to use their rational left brain as the source of their ideas or their designs. That would be idiotic. That’s not what rational thought is meant for. Rational thought is great for thinking through the practical, logistical issues of carrying out your ideas. Not for coming up with them.

MIT professor Otto Scharmer calls this process Presencing, combining the words presence and sensing. Sensing into a future that wants to emerge by sensing from a place of complete presence.

Unless your ideas come from this place, they’re going be like the Zune. When you tap into this place, you have a shot at creating an iPad or an iPhone.

That’s why Cringley is so right, when he says that Apple is not the next anything, because the role it aspires to transcends anything imaginable by Microsoft, ever.