Jobs would have ever have asserted that Bill Gates was not serious about technology. He was a huge pioneer in that world, albeit doing something quite different in approach from what Steve did. He was dismissive of Gates' foundation work as something he did to make himself feel better.

Whether or not he came to believe it - so many people, when they have a mission, come to believe something in a way that may have started out as a slogan. You know, L. Ron Hubbard, not to make a random comparison, started Scientology as a scam.

Jobs' incredible skill was as a storyteller, a salesman. He could captivate our imaginations and reel us in. He was more P.T. Barnum than Thomas Edison.

In a busy world, even as information is moving so rapidly, we have to learn who to trust in that regard even as we ourselves have to become more critical of the people who we want to trust. It's a weird situation.

As a filmmaker, I always took my inspiration from a filmmaker named Marcel Ophüls, who said, "I always have a point of view, but the trick is showing how hard it is to come to that point of view."

The stuff about film being a collaborative medium is no joke.

I'm still an Apple person, but let's just say the magic aura is gone. In a way that was a sad thing to lose, but I feel better for it. It's just a machine now, not linked with any greater mission or mystique.