Depends, some value loyalty and honesty above achievement. You can count me among those and after reading years ago how Jobs screwed Wozniak on the Atari gig Jobs fell off the admired list.
I do offer prayers for those he left behind and hope that he corrected that character flaw but the way he treated Gates after Gates saved Apple with cold hard cash, I doubt the correction ever happened.
How many time do I have to SHOOT down that !@#ing canard? Gates did NOT save Apple with cold hard cash! OK, one more time... here are the actual facts:
Apple won a copyright infringement LAWSUIT settlement against Microsoft for stealing the Quicktime software code (which included as smoking gun evidence the Apple engineer's mother's maiden name in the code in MS's newly released Microsoft Windows Media Player!) that included a $150,000,000 settlement that they agreed would be handled by MS buying NON-VOTING, restricted Apple preferred stock.
The judge in the case indicated that, with the smoking gun evidence, it was likely going to be a multi-billion dollar judgement, the largest such copyright case in history! Microsoft DID NOT NEED THAT with the US Justice Department looking to break them up into at least three companies. He strongly suggested a compromise. Steve Jobs, newly returned to Apple as interim CEO, approached Microsoft, and offered a settlement. . . and MS blinked!
Had this been an actual "bail out," don't you think the bailer, Microsoft, would have demanded a seat on the Apple board of directors, to oversee the safety of their investment? That's the normal way such large bailout investment's in troubled companies are handled. Microsoft did not even get VOTING STOCK... much less a seat on the board! They got Preferred NON VOTING stock, with no say at all in how the company would be run!
Steve Jobs let them save face by allowing them to pay their infringement penalty by making it an "investment." Microsoft was not let off the hook easily, though. . .There was a lot more to the lawsuit settlement:
In addition to the monetary penalty for the infringement, Microsoft agreed to PAY Apple yearly, for a period of 5 years, an undisclosed, VERY LARGE amount for a license to use the QT code, plus another large yearly amount to license more of Apple's intellectual properties. In addition, Microsoft agreed to grant to Apple, in perpetuity for the lives of the patents and copyrights, licenses to use unspecified intellectual properties, AT NO COST, FREE!
Furthermore, as part of the settlement, Microsoft agreed they would re-open development and distribution of Microsoft Office for Mac which they had cancelled as part of their lawsuit leverage, and continue said development and distribution for a period of FIVE YEARS.
For its part of the settlement, Apple agreed to issue the pieces of paper (the stock certificates) in exchange for the $150 million (that cost to Apple was probably in excess of $100!), and Apple agreed to include Microsoft Internet Explorer—along with Netscape Navigator—as an included browser with all new Apple computers for a period of 5 years, Apple would agree to license—for the undisclosed fee—the disputed QT code that Microsoft had stolen for use in its MS Windows Media Player, and Apple would dismiss the lawsuit with prejudice.
That's quite a lopsided agreement, wouldn't you say? That's because Microsoft would have LOST the lawsuit had it gone to trial. . . and they knew it. . . and Steve Jobs knew it. But it was cheaper than going to trial and losing. Both sides came out winners.
All of this is all laid out in three interlocking agreements which were reported in contemporary news reports (and which are now unsealed and you can look up on the Internet), all signed on the same day, all referencing each other, as part and parcel of the lawsuit settlement.
Shortly after that, Steve Jobs made his first appearance as iCEO at the MacWorld conference and then SURPRISE! Gates appeared at on the big screen to announce the "partnership" of Microsoft's continuing development of Office for Mac and Apple's inclusion of Internet Explorer in all new Macs. . . and got roundly boo'd by the audience.
It was only LATER, as PR SPIN, that it became a "bail out" by Microsoft of a "failing Apple"... but Apple had over $2.4 billion in liquid assets and had already posted a profitable quarter when the $150 million was transferred. Apple could not counter the spin, because they were under a DNR that was part of the settlement... and were always close mouthed anyway. That the myth has lived FAR too long is great testimony to the power of Microsoft's PR department.
By the way, Microsoft, SOLD that preferred stock as soon as they could, after the restrictions expired, and made quite a bit of profit from the sale... something like doubling their money.
As to the Wozniak scam, that was not a good thing he did, but I would think that making Woz a multi-hundred-millionaire many times over has more than made up for the $600 the Atari deal difference was all about... especially considering Woz would have been happy with an "atta boy, neat computer" from the members of the Homebrew Computer Society over designing the Apple II... and didn't expect anything more than that, and has said so. Woz says he doesn't hold it against him.