Posted on 05/03/2005 5:44:55 AM PDT by OESY
...The Apple CEO's gifts to the world -- from Macs to iPods -- have vastly improved our lives....
For all this, America loves Steve Jobs. Me, too, though I shouldn't. Years ago, he phoned me on a Saturday morning and tried to squash a story my then-magazine, Upside, was about to print on NeXT, Inc. NeXT was his second startup after Apple. But it was failing and our story said so. On the phone Mr. Jobs cooed and threatened....
The driving impulse of Steve Jobs is to change the world for the better....
But like many revolutionaries, Mr. Jobs appears to be one who loves the world and loathes people. He has been known to bring misery to people's lives, and not just book authors. His capacity for cruelty runs the gamut from verbal lashings of his own customers to rumored summary dismissals for the sin of having brought him the wrong brand of bottled water. He denied the paternity of a daughter for years. In a book called "Infinite Loop," writer Michael S. Malone describes how, in the early 1970s, Mr. Jobs even screwed over his eventual Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak. At the time, Mr. Jobs was a young freelance software writer for Atari but in over his head. He convinced his boyhood friend, the technically brilliant Woz, to help him write a game called Breakout. He told Woz they'd split $700. Woz, who had a job at Hewlett Packard, stayed up nights to write Breakout. He did all the work. His marriage suffered. Upon completion, Atari paid Mr. Jobs $7,000. Mr. Jobs took credit for writing the game and paid his friend Woz "half" -- $350....
The genius, idealism, charisma, salesmanship, obsession, paranoia and cruelty that come together in Steve Jobs....
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Makes Billy Gates look downright likable.
Woz was, and I'm sure is, the better man.
Agree. Wozniak, and for that matter Bill Gates, likes technology. Steve Jobs is more of a technology parasite, but a tough entrepreneur too, IMHO.
Those who are highly successful in business are often highly disagreeable. Goes with the territory.
What 'genius' is found in not listening to this...
"What does it profit a man to gain the world..yet lose his soul?"-Jesus of Nazareth
Also, panning the guy like this is a really sissy thing to do.
But, the end line is a winner. Free enterprise takes would-be Lenins and turns them into Jobs'. Or L. Ron Hubbards.
Your point about good people and good companies can be proven hundreds of times. Jobs may be good at some business like Pixar and rebuilding Apple - but employees at SW Airlines or The Container Store work for leaders and ENJOY their managers.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/86/stollenwerk.html
Stolenwork? Sounds like Bill Gates! ;-)
Oh, Stollenwerk...sorry.
Well, if being disagreeable was a key to business success, than Bill Gates would be working shifts as my doorman. Regrettably, a success takes much more than unpleasant character.
than=then
Mean guy bump
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