The Steve Jobs Revolution

How great are Macs? Back in the 1990s when I was a lowly staffer for Windows magazine, our editors told us to tell anyone who asked that our glossy was designed and laid out in Windows.

Besides the idea of editors telling their reporters and reviewers to lie, the notion that a major magazine could be produced on a Gateway PC running Windows for Workgroups was just laughable. If I remember correctly, this was before the introduction of the Intel Pentium processor. Oh, the folly.

While you'll see Mac products in your homes -- iPhones, MacBooks, and more -- you won't see too many on the trading floors of most Wall Street firms. You'll find plenty of Dell and HP blade servers, for example, along with monitors from the same companies and software from Microsoft, IBM and others that will never be household names. Back in the 1980s and '90s, Apple went after the creative class in the nation's classrooms and design firms and they didn't breakout until the explosive 2001 release of the iPod. This tiny, elegant and powerful music player lead the way for iMacs and MacBooks to enter small business, homes and universities and beyond.

Advanced Trading often visits cutting-edge trading floors -- here's the most recent tour of the Bloomberg TradeBook trading floor, for instance -- and you have to squint to see anything with Steve Job's fingerprints on them. But if you look closely, you will see iPads and iPhones on traders' desks. The men and women who execute trades are not afraid of new technology that is easy and invigorating to use. But though you may only see an iMac or two at a tony hedge fund, the vast power of Wall Street is almost all Windows.

This isn't a bad thing. Apple is doing fine with consumer electronic, telephony, and high-end software for graphical imaging. Remember, this company has more cash in reserve that any state in the Union. They don't have to be ubiquitous.

But one last thing: Before I had to put my sons on the bus this morning, Matthew, my 10-year old with autism, handed me a Steve Job's product. It was a DVD of Finding Nemo and we watched a few minutes of this magical Pixar film, made by a company that Steve Jobs bought from George Lucas. After I helped Matt on with his hoodie I saw him climb into his short bus. In his backpack was a brand new iPod Touch with some communication software installed on it for him and his teacher.

I am sure that if Matthew does speak on his own one day, it will be thanks to the help of a company and revolution started by Steve Jobs. Phil Albinus is the former editor-in-chief of Advanced Trading. He has nearly two decades of journalism experience and has been covering financial technology and regulation for nine years. Before joining Advanced Trading, he served as editor of Waters, a monthly trade journal ... View Full Bio