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STEVE JOBS INVITED JEFF BEZOS OVER FOR SUSHI.

Entrepreneur

January - February 2021

It was the fall of 2003, which were consequential days for both Apple and Amazon. Only two years earlier, Apple released its first iPod and Amazon turned a quarterly profit for the first time. Now Steve was inviting Jeff, me (Colin), and another Amazon colleague down to Cupertino for a chat.

STEVE JOBS INVITED JEFF BEZOS OVER FOR SUSHI.

We arrived and were ushered into a nondescript conference room with a Windows PC and two platters of takeout sushi. Everyone chatted about the state of the music industry while doing some serious damage to the food. After dabbing his mouth with a napkin, Jobs segued into the real purpose of the meeting: He announced that Apple had just finished building its first Windows application. He calmly and confidently told us that even though it was Apple’s first attempt to build a Windows application, he thought it was the best Windows application anyone had ever built. He then personally gave us a demo of the soon-to-belaunched iTunes for Windows.

During the demo, Jobs talked about how this move would transform the music industry. Up until this point, if you wanted to buy digital music from Apple, you needed a Mac, which made up less than 10 percent of the home computer market. Apple’s first foray into building software on the competing Windows platform showed how serious it was about the digital music market. Now anyone with a computer would be able to purchase digital music from Apple.

Steve said that CDs—which Amazon sold many of—would go the way of other outdated music formats like the cassette tape. His next comment could be construed as either a matter-of-fact statement, an attempt to elicit an angry retort, or an attempt to goad Jeff into making a bad business decision by acting impulsively. He said, “Amazon has a decent chance of being the last place to buy CDs. The business will be high-margin but small. You’ll be able to charge a premium for CDs, since they’ll be hard to find.” Jeff did not take the bait. We were their guests, and the rest of the meeting was uneventful. But we all knew that being the exclusive seller of antique CDs did not sound like an appealing business model for Amazon.