That would be his willingness to go up against the likes of the big telecommunications companies and wrest control of the design and functionality of the phone away from them ... and give us a new paradigm for the “phone” and how it should be ... for the consumer ... one that isn’t exclusively and solely dedicated to the whims of these big telecommunications companies.
What he did was akin to hacking into Sony and releasing their movies. Those "blue boxes" recreated proprietary phone signalling and equipment control signals to give the hacker operator/technician tools which they misused to steal long distance service from the phone company. It was deliberate "hacking."
For a company that jealously guards it's proprietary technology and intellectual property rights, don't you think it is hypocritical to be deliberately undermining those rights for other companies?
I think Steve Jobs would have shrieked a lung out at anyone who did to him what he did to others. There is no nice way to spin this. Steve Jobs was at heart a "thief." At least at this point in his life.