
Think different about Jobs - andyking
http://james.cridland.net/blog/think-different-about-jobs/
======
ryan-allen
While you can point at how he conducted himself at Apple and scream
"Monster!", what isn't mentioned in this post but is dealt with at length in
his biography is how he conducted himself at Pixar.

He was much more low-key about the 'products' at Pixar, he mostly was an
enabler and negotiator for them. In Pixar's early days he invested an awful
lot of his then-fortune into keeping it alive, and it was his cunning
negotiation skills that kept Pixar from being swallowed by the then flailing
Disney.

If you contrast his behaviour at Pixar and at Disney, I think it illustrates
that he didn't consider the work at Pixar to be 'his art'. There were other
people at Pixar who were leading the 'art' there and it was all in hand.

At Apple on the other hand, it's completely clear that Jobs' considered the
products to be 'his art' and his conviction was such that he literally was
going to drag everyone, kicking and screaming, to realise his vision. And that
he did, in a world of horrible consumer electronics he would not abide, he set
out and truly lead the creation of some very awesome and uncompromising
products. It was his Art.

Imagine if Andy Warhol or Piccasso or any other famous artist relied on the
expertise of many individuals to realise their creations. Do you think they'd
be considering that all you want is your 9-5 job and your 401k and 4 weeks
holiday a year. Nope, they'd be behaving in exactly the same way: aggressive
and fervent conviction. Work ceases to become merely a job and you're no
longer working, you're crusading.

In a world of unambitious and mediocre individuals, you have to move mountains
to do great work that requires multi-disciplined collaboration. You're going
to upset people along the way but that just comes with the territory.

I don't think it's fair to blame him for his behaviour. The world needs more
people like him: true leaders who will stand up for their convictions, no
matter what the cost.

~~~
ditojim
even if the cost is other people? your last statement is a dangerous stance.

~~~
junk2312313
(Assuming that his behavior was necessary to the quality of the product (an
assumption neither Steve nor his biographer were willing to make)):

He didn't "kill" them. He hurt their feelings.

Weigh a few bruised egos versus hundreds of millions of people with
delightful, time-saving devices. As the book points out, yes, there is a real
and measurable cost to wasting people's time with a badly designed device. And
there is a benefit to delighting people.

I see a lot of people fixated on the, let's face it, pretty mundane human
costs, unable to see what he actually accomplished. I don't want these people
to be leaders, and in my opinion we are in a worse position when these people
become leaders. They harm the rest of us because they cannot overcome their
fixation on a few pitiable people to see the larger picture.

~~~
spacefungus
That's a pretty clear way of looking it.

The problem I have is that these attitudes are fragile. If you have a monarch,
for example, with complete control over a country and who has tons of money
and doesn't need to ask for permission, he can build a great nation of he's a
good person.

When he dies and his son, who's an asshole but equally determined and
powerful, takes over, now you have a bad situation.

Fortunately Steve Jobs wasn't in such control. But the point is that, yeah, if
someone that determined and set in their ways and they're _right_...awesome!

But when people are like that and they're _wrong_ , which happens a lot...god
damn it's not good.

So I guess the question is whether this sort of "riskiness" is good? Like,
when you win a horse race it's badass. The other 9 times out of 10 when you
lose it sucks. Is that the human behavior we should model ourselves after?
Interesting...

~~~
mikeash
There are tons of behaviors which are great if you're right and bad if you're
wrong. Should we never stand up for what we believe in? Should we let others
decide things because we might be wrong?

And keep in mind that bad people won't care about these arguments. Only good
people with reasonable and healthy self-doubt will be convinced to make less
of an impact, and that's the opposite of what we should want.

~~~
spacefungus
I'm not at odds with your opinion, I agree. My point is that a lot of other
fragile attitudes impact the person holding them. But a cavalier attitude like
with Jobs or people set on having an impact on the _world_ is fragile in that
it can impact many others. That's the only concern with me.

------
brisance
Anyone else read Sam Smith's "The Jordan Rules"? Jordan is without doubt one
of the greatest, if not the greatest, basketball player the world has seen. He
is also known to be egotistical, as many competitive athletes/alpha males are
(it's probably the testosterone).

Like Steve Jobs, Jordan would not suffer fools gladly, would "bully" team-
mates, had laser-focus etc. Had a good wingman in the form of Pippen (Tim
Cook). Yet one cannot fault him for his many accomplishments. He rose to the
occasion time and again (how many times have we seen him take the buzzer-
beater?), and had an admirable work ethic.

As the saying goes "haters gonna hate". The fact is that Jordan, Steve Jobs,
and many other people changed their respective industries and beyond. Jordan
not only changed professional sports, but also sports management and sports
equipment marketing. Steve Jobs' achievements probably need no introduction.

~~~
loso
Have you seen the perception of Jordan lately? I was and probably still am one
of the biggest Jordan fans ever but he's a dick and as a fan I have to admit
it. His former teammates do not have many nice things to say about him and the
people he played against even less so. Right now there are a bunch of young
NBA players, who grew up watching Jordan's accomplishments, considering
boycotting Jordan brand sneakers because of him being an asshole during the
lockout negotiations. Even take a look at how poorly his hall of fame speech
was regarded by the general public and his peers. The chip on his shoulder
helped him be a winner on the court but not so much off of it.

Yes, your egotistical ways might lead you to win in your field but don't
expect the people you ran over to all of the sudden see the light and respect
you as a person. You can respect a persons accomplishments while also
despising who they are as a human being.

~~~
brisance
There is no way to please everyone all the time. I saw the HoF induction
speech. Did it come across as self-centered... yes, I thought it did. But
that's his privilege, he earned it.

About a person's qualities as a human being: I feel there isn't much need to
pass judgment on others, whether they are celebrities or not. Each of us are
also humans and are also prone to our own lapses of judgment, integrity etc.
That's what we are. Otherwise we'd all be saints and life would be predictable
and boring. :)

There was a time in the 90s where there was all this talk about being a "role
model" and Barkley famously got into trouble for it. It's touching on exactly
the same issues. And I agree with Barkley: that parents should be the ones
bringing up their offspring, not the media,entertainers, sports/tech heroes et
al.

Coming back on topic: I respect Jobs for the things he'd done, to "push the
human race forward". He was a giant, and my opinion is that the world became a
better place for it. You're free to disagree (refer to RMS's stance), but that
doesn't mean my own opinion is any less valid, and I'm sticking with it. :)

~~~
loso
I agree with you about Jobs and even about Jordan. They most likely have
probably made the world better than when they came in. But there has been a
sacrifice made in that achievement. On a personal level. But to be considered
great that is always going to be the case.

And I also add Bill Gates to that list as well. His enemies were more
competitors than personal but he has gathered a lot of bad will over the
years. But he was able to place computers in a lot of homes at a reasonable
price. He sacrificed a lot of good will in the tech community to accomplish
that.

------
gbog
> (Incidentally, my Kindle crashed three times while reading this book.)

I don't know which Kindle the author is talking about, but it seems weird to
me, I never heard of a Kindle crash and I have 4/5 around, not counting
colleagues'.

And, maybe it is off-topic, but maybe it is not. Why would the author add this
parenthesis if it was not a necessary adjunction to his point? Maybe it was a
way to underline how non-Apple products have the bad habit of crashing
randomly just for the purpose of annoying their owners?

It is the same with "I’ve yet to encounter a businesswoman, on any level, who
treats people in an unpleasant way". This is a way to say, "I am a very gentle
guy, I don't want to discriminate against women, love me please", but this
apparently innocent statement is 1) pure and simple sexism 2) plain wrong.

Then the main point, Job being a "detestable human being", well, it seems
obvious. Let's just hope no too many people idealize him for too long a time.

~~~
polyfractal
The closest I've ever come to a "Kindle Crash" was a multi-second delay on
page turn, which has only happened once. I've been using mine every day on my
commute for the last year.

No idea what the author was referring too. Maybe the new Kindle Fire?

~~~
larsberg
Agreed. I use Calibre to download all of my news subscriptions to it and
between that and a several books per week, I've _never_ seen my kindle 3 crash
in the many months that I've been using it.

As opposed to my iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and iPad2, all of which I've taken
down rather horribly with just the normal apps (typically frozen, sometimes
insta-reboot), not even counting things that bad programs _I_ wrote were
doing.

------
michaelpinto
I've read quite a few biographies and what i hate about Walter Isaacson is
that everything becomes an oversimplified Time magazine article, which makes
every character into a flat cartoon caricature. My guess is that Jobs could be
a jerk, but then if you were a multimillionaire in your early 20s how could
you not be a jerk? Also the tech industry is filled with tons of very bright
people who are social cripples. The harsh reality is that to build something
like a Macintosh you might have to be quite nasty to pull off the scale of cat
herding that may be required.

I also hate to admit this: But I half suspect Jobs picked out Isaacson because
he'd draw a cartoon sketch instead of doing a serious biography. I'm still not
done reading the book yet, but I almost feel that I know less about Jobs than
before I started reading the damn thing. And the other thing that drives up
the wall is that you get the feeling that Isaacson doesn't have a clue about
technology -- so you half wonder how much he missed. And I suspect Jobs wanted
it that way -- instead of burning his papers he just picked a lightweight.

By the way if any of you want to read an amazing biographer look at the work
of Robert Caro who is a real writer. His first book "the Power Broker" is an
amazing study Robert Moses who is a very flawed hero who really made NYC what
it was (for both better and worse). He's also written several books on LBJ who
also starts out as a progressive and does both amazing and terrible things in
his life. I wish someone like that had done this bio...

~~~
LaGrange
It paints Steve Jobs as a jerk far before he became a millionaire.

Also, the harsh reality is that neither of us knows if your assumption about
the state of the harsh reality is valid.

------
bfrs
\----------------------------------------

From Malcolm Gladwell's "The real genius of Steve Jobs" [1]:

Jobs, we learn, was a bully. "He had the uncanny capacity to know exactly what
your weak point is, know what will make you feel small, to make you cringe".
Jobs gets his girlfriend pregnant, and then denies that the child is his. He
parks in handicapped spaces. He screams at subordinates. He cries like a small
child when he does not get his way. He sits in a restaurant and sends his food
back three times. He arrives at his hotel suite in New York for press
interviews and decides, at 10 pm ... the flowers are all wrong: he wanted
calla lilies. When his public-relations assistant returns, at midnight, with
the right flowers, he tells her that her suit is "disgusting". Machines and
robots were painted and repainted as he compulsively revised his color scheme,
Isaacson writes, of the factory Jobs built, after founding NeXT, in the late
nineteen-eighties. He insisted that the machinery on the 165-foot assembly
line be configured to move the circuit boards from right to left as they got
built, so that the process would look better to visitors who watched from the
viewing gallery. ...when Jobs returns, in the late nineteen-nineties, and our
natural expectation is that Jobs will emerge wiser and gentler from his
tumultuous journey. He never does. In the hospital at the end of his life, he
runs through sixty-seven nurses before he finds three he likes...

...Even within Apple, Jobs was known for taking credit for other's ideas.
Jonathan Ive, the designer behind the iMac, the iPod, and the iPhone, tells
Isaacson, "He will go through a process of looking at my ideas and say,
'That's no good. That's not very good. I like that one.' And later I will be
sitting in the audience and he will be talking about it as if it was his
idea."

\----------------------------------------

If Jobs was really such an _A-level asshole_ , I think he was _goddamned
lucky_ to have Steve Woz as his co-founder. From what I know about Woz, in
addition to being a first rate engineer, he is also a very good guy. Maybe if
Woz was even half (milli-Jobs?) the asshole that Jobs seems to be, he would
have kicked him out before Apple went public (à la Saverin in _The Social
Network_ ) and Jobs would have been just another tantrum throwing hippie
hanging around some starbucks in Berkeley or wherever it is angry hippies like
to hang about these days.

[1]
[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/14/111114fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/14/111114fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all)

~~~
sipefree
There would have been no Apple for Woz to kick anyone out of if it wasn't for
Jobs.

They needed each other, that's why they split the company 50/50.

~~~
nirvana
In fact, that they split the company 50/50 when Jobs could have likely easily
talked his way into a 70/30 split, is proof positive that the stories about
Jobs being an asshole are bullshit.

When you have high standards, a lot of people are going to call you an
asshole. When you produce fantastic products that are hugely successful,
you'll get scores and scores of stories on hacker news from jealous people who
want to tear you down.

But anyone who looks at the facts will see the truth.

~~~
gbog
Well, if the Park at handicapped place thing is true, then asshole seem to be
adequate, even if SJ invented a way to bring water to Sahara.

------
sjs
I hope he also avoids products and media made my anyone who has not been an
absolute saint their entire life. It's perfectly acceptable to dislike Jobs,
no question about that whatsoever. It's also acceptable to stop buying Apple
stuff for _any_ reason. But if you're going to put a proverbial line in the
sand on moral grounds then you had better stick to your guns and apply that to
everything or you just end up looking ... silly.

(Nice attempt at a clever title, but it misses the intended meaning of "think
different" which is not "think differently" but more along the lines of "think
bigger", as in "think of something different".)

~~~
andrewcooke
you really think that "anyone who has not been an absolute saint their entire
life" is a equivalent to "Devoid of any kind of feelings towards anyone else,
he shouts, screams, cries and sulks his way through his petulant life"?

because i don't. i think there's quite a difference. everyone can be an
arsehole sometimes, sure. but that doesn't excuse those that are consistently
unpleasant. there's a clear difference. so you can distance yourself from the
latter without having any problems with the former.

~~~
sjs
If anyone believes that Steve Jobs was "devoid of any kind of feelings towards
anyone else" they are only fooling themselves. Painting him in a universally
negative light is just as naïve as painting him in a universally positive one.
Few things are black & white, and fewer humans are 100% good or bad.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/mona-simpsons-
eulo...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/mona-simpsons-eulogy-for-
steve-jobs.html?pagewanted=all)

~~~
nirvana
In 30 years, I've never seen the kind of people who hate Steve Jobs or hate
Apple be honest about either.

------
furtivefelon
If people think that the reason for Job's success is because of his attitude
is indeed lacking in intelligence. It is more correct to say that Job succeed
in spite of his attitude. This trait is perhaps the easiest to emulate,
therefore it will be sad if people emulate Job's worst trait and think that it
will make them successful.

~~~
zobzu
actually its both "thanks" to his attitude and other traits (intelligence,
etc. putting it all in the same bag)

if you aren't an asshole, at least a little bit, it's difficult to manage a
company successfully. you'd be seen as weak and/or other sharks would eat you
anyway.

~~~
cageface
Ed Catmull is anything but an asshole and he's run Pixar brilliantly. It's
also possible to get people do what you want just because they respect the
hell out of you.

~~~
jonhendry
And he's worked for Jobs for over 20 years.

~~~
cageface
I worked for Ed for ten of those. Jobs was very hands off at Pixar. I think he
realized that Ed had things under control.

~~~
jonhendry
True, but if anyone at Pixar was going to experience the worst of Jobs over
the years, it would probably be Ed, because he would be one of the few
interacting with Jobs.

~~~
cageface
Probably, which makes it that much more impressive (IMO) that he never tried
to emulate Steve's less admirable qualities.

------
csallen
Human communication is a funny thing.

We possess fragile egos and staggering amounts of pride. Consequently, we take
great offense if even the simplest of statements are misworded (regardless of
intention). Consider the difference between, "Give me the salt", and "Hey,
would you mind passing me the salt? Thanks." We constantly pollute our speech
by adding phrases whose only purpose is to prevent offense. And anyone who
doesn't is an asshole. An arrogant jerk.

You've heard the advice, common in books on communication or leadership, that
the best way to persuade another is to avoid harming his ego. Allow that
person to save face at whatever cost. Lie if you have to. Suggest that your
idea is really _his_ idea, and that it's brilliant.

Is this type of manipulation (and let's be honest -- this _is_ manipulation)
really so much better than blunt honesty? It's more effective, to be sure. If
you don't already command the respect of a deity, you have to play this game.
But for a Gates or a Jobs, is bluntness really such a travesty? Is it _really_
the end of the world because Steve Jobs told you that your shitty design was
shitty?

~~~
jonhendry
"Is it really the end of the world because Steve Jobs told you that your
shitty design was shitty?"

Especially if you then went on to make a truly great design.

------
ethank
Wouldn't it be nice if the people behind the things we loved were as pure and
perfect as our love for the products they created?

It doesn't happen.

I ended up great friends with someone who created a body of work I hold dear.
He isn't perfect. His faults make the relationship between who he is as a
person, as an artist and the body of work he's created complex. But that
fissure between the creator and the created is what makes the work that much
better.

Jobs seemed to be similar.

The art of creation is a messy thing indeed.

~~~
codelust
It is not limited to just creation, we seem to be giving up easily the ability
to grasp that not everything is black or white. There was much to admire and
like about the man, there was much that was flawed about him. But, for most,
it is either fully angelic or 100% the devil's cohort that they work overtime
to fit him into.

------
podperson
I think there's a difference between being pleasant and being good and the
writer of the linked article appears not to. A lot of good people aren't
especially pleasant (Richard Stallman, much as I disagree with many things he
says, might serve as a nice example). Jobs certainly seems to have been
unpleasant in many ways, especially when he was young.

As far as I can tell, Jobs is guilty of three major sins in the book:

1) He screwed Woz on the Breakout deal. (Well-documented.) He did not screw
Woz on the Apple IPO, however, and made him a very rich man.

2) He behaved abominably to his daughter Lisa's mother, but tried to make up
for it later. Lisa's mother comes across as a dissolute user (e.g. she cons
Lisa into signing over a house Jobs had given her to live in but bought in
Lisa's name, and then sells it to go traveling with her guru). We don't know
if Jobs had reasons for what he did, but Lisa chose to live with him.

3) He screwed Kottke out of equity in Apple during the IPO, deciding that his
contribution was insufficient. This seems pretty unfair based on what we learn
(which isn't much) in the book.

That's it, as far as I can recall. There's probably a few minor things, but
those are the ones that stuck with me. Aside from that there's a lot of
screaming, shouting, and whining, but it's basically pretty much a story of an
incredibly dedicated guy trying to make great products and not really caring
about money.

(How is Jobs supposed to have used Ives? By making him rich and giving him a
huge amount of power?)

If you wrote the life story of pretty much any businessman, I think you'd be
unlikely to find fewer immoral acts.

He also did some really mean things to some of his friends early on, but -- at
least in most cases -- he owns up to them and tried to make amends. This is
not like, say, Bill Gates who pretty much screwed everyone he did business
with at some point and rationalizes it all away. But hey, he's curing malaria
now so all is forgiven. (Bill Gates also comes across as an asshole, not to
mention unhygienic and smelly, in various biographies.)

------
grandalf
I don't care what Steve Jobs' personality is like... or Larry or Sergey's, or
Hans Reiser's or Linus Torvalds'.

If a product is well-engineered I can respect the narrow aspect of the
engineer's brilliance, which is enough. The rest is silly to waste time on.

 _Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss
people._

------
purephase
First off, I say all this as a fan of both Isaacson and Jobs.

I am convinced that this book is Jobs' attempt to counter worries that Apple
is in trouble without him at the helm. Given that he was a perfectionist, that
he would both commission, support and supposedly proof a work that paints him
in the light that it does, there must be a motive to the caricature it paints.

Think about it. Everyone is worried about the staying power of Apple without
him at the helm. He is the quintessential micro-manager, so the concerns are
valid. He was also a very private person that, despite some oft-reported
claims, held a demi-god like status in the company and with a lot of people
around the globe.

The book repeatedly (oh god, the repetition) remarks on his intent on
"creating a legacy", "making a dent in the universe", "working only with the
best" which speaks directly to Apple's future without him.

Isaacson even doles out micro-biographies on Cook and Ive. Two entire
chapters!

It then completely obliterates his demi-god status by painting him as a
petulant child, terrible father (early on), liar and narcissist. I cannot
imagine anyone reading the book and idolizing Jobs afterwards. It makes him
very, very human which is an ideal image to paint if you are/were worried
about Apple's future.

I am more interested in the biography on Jobs that will be written in 10-20
years from now.

~~~
philwelch
I wouldn't say I "idolize" Jobs after reading the biography, but I still
consider him a hero. His arrogance and narcissism is justified in the end; an
inflated self-image is unbecoming in someone mediocre, but Jobs really was a
special and important person. Still, Jobs never seemed outright grandiose, as
he often acknowledged his own flaws and appreciated people who stood up for
him. His other flaws, while he could certainly do without some of them, do
seem to tie into his greatest strengths. And his heroic qualities greatly
outweigh everything else. He was never physically violent, never even seemed
to cheat on his wife, and aside from the Breakout incident, never outright
screwed anyone out of money.

There's a line between mean and immoral, and Steve stayed on the better side
of that line a lot more than a lot of other people who get idolized with far
less question. I'm not even talking about people who are unfairly idolized,
like Edison or Mother Theresa or the Dalai Lama. I'm talking about people like
JFK or Martin Luther King or Winston Churchill, genuinely heroic figures who
cheated on their wives or killed innocent people.

~~~
purephase
I agree! I think the book portrays him unfairly. I think Isaacson fudges a few
facts here and there which to someone unfamiliar with Apple and the early days
of modern personal computing, really puts Jobs in a poor light.

My point was more about why Jobs allowed the book to portray him like that. I
have a hard time believing that there is no motivation behind it.

------
pbreit
This article has a gaping whole: most/all of the people mentioned would not
feel that they were mis-treated by Jobs. Quite the opposite, in fact: most
people who worked closely with Jobs consider it the highlight of their lives.

~~~
spacefungus
I think he's more commenting on Jobs' behavior and how he doesn't like it. I
mean, lots of people at Enron talked about it being the thrill of their lives.
But as observers we can recognize that their behavior sucks and not like it.

(reference -> "Enron: Smartest Men in the Room")

~~~
pbreit
I would not equate breaking the law and causing lots of people to go broke
with hurting peoples' feelings.

------
c3d
There's one thing about Jobs I didn't see mentioned here or in the target web
site. Jobs did things out of love: love for his customer, love for his
products.

As a result, Apple was one of the few companies that self-improved with each
flaw in its products. Self-improvement is hard, and it takes a lot of
discipline. Jobs' screaming and shouting may have not been the best way to
achieve the goal, but it worked. And until we have proof by counter-example,
it may be the most efficient way to achieve the greater good.

Think about your own teachers or coaches. For me, the ones I remember most are
not the one who always told me "good job". It's the teachers who fought my
flaws, pushed my limits. In many cases, that involved tedious exercises,
boring discipline, "coldness" or shouting. I have yet to see a good sports
coach who is always smiling on the field and drives the team with "good job"
during the match.

To me, Jobs is the best illustration of "There's a difference between knowing
the way and walking the way." Jobs knew the way, and made others walk it.

------
Bratwurst
The book just didn't have the Mona Simpson speech moments, or the Pineapple
Pizza moments in Steve's life:

[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Pineapple_Pizza.txt&characters=Steve%20Jobs&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date)

------
moxiemk1
>> But what worries me is the amount of stupid businessmen who’ll be copying
Jobs’s behaviour. (I say “businessmen” on purpose, since I’ve yet to encounter
a businesswoman, on any level, who treats people in an unpleasant way).

Recognizing that I say this from a white, cis-gendered, born to highly
intelligent (if not at all successful) parents perspective, I don't think that
comments like that are appropriate. First, it continues to perpetuate the
mindset that women and men should be approached due to their gender, not their
being. Second, to counter the anecdote, I _have_ met such people.

Using only male-gendered pronouns and nouns would (as regrettable as this is)
probably have gone unnoticed by me. That sentence put my conception of the
author squarely into the most nefarious category of misogynists: those who try
to better their own image while still perpetuating the problem.

~~~
spacefungus
This is completely irrational and irrelevant. A misogynist is someone who
hates women and/or girls. He's saying he's never encountered a bad business
woman, which is not hatred at all under any circumstance. He's a man writing
about a man, so the gender of pronouns shouldn't mystify or bother you. And
"those seeking to better their own image while perpetuating a problem" isn't
any form or category of misogynist. See the definition at the beginning of
this comment for reference.

And he did not say "negative businesswomen do not exist". He said he's never
personally encountered any.

~~~
philwelch
While in normal discourse "misogynist" means "someone who hates women and/or
girls", in formal academic feminism a misogynist is someone who disagrees with
the feminist dogma. It's not difficult to spot third-wave feminists: usually
by the time someone uses jargon like "cis-gendered" (which is Women's Studies
for "doesn't suffer from gender identity disorder") you're well above 90% odds
that you're dealing with some type of left-wing identity politics wonk.
Interestingly, "misogynist" itself is a high-probability marker as well. It
would be interesting to run a Bayesian classifier and find out what the
observed probabilities actually are....

------
petercooper
_the biography has actually made me think twice about buying anything Apple-
branded again._

This seems as asinine as refusing to buy a Volkswagen because VW was founded
by Nazis.

~~~
spacefungus
Nope, it's not asinine at all.

The problems this guy has with Apple are things still going on _now_.

Your comparison is equivalent with "one time long ago cotton was picked by
slaves so I won't wear cotton".

That is irrational as its not happening right now. But the horrible apple
conditions are alive and well.

~~~
petercooper
_The problems this guy has with Apple are things still going on now._

Every problem the author notes in _this_ article is specifically with _Steve
Jobs'_ behavior, not Apple's. I'm commenting on what was in the _submitted_
article.

However, you reiterated my point beautifully with your cotton anecdote. I'm
not sure why you needed to repeat the sentiment but, yes, it's similarly
irrational.

------
mikerg87
Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, they're all sausage factories. You really
don't want to look too close at how all this stuff is made.

~~~
puredemo
How is Google a sausage factory? Just curious..

~~~
rdl
The internal politics are pretty bad, from what Google employees have
reported. For an organization originally without politics, in the mid-2000s
there was a whole mess of PMs and managers.

------
richcollins
I doubt many will try to emulate his sociopathic behavior unless they
themselves are sociopaths.

Hopefully all entreprenuers will try to emulate his focus on product and his
refusal to accept anything other than the best work that the company can do.

------
joelmichael
You either hold yourself and others accountable to a high standard, or you
rationalize their failings to avoid the sin of judgment. I'm with the former
camp.

~~~
philwelch
The question is, how harshly do you judge Steve Jobs for not being nice, and
how harshly do you judge mediocre but nice people for not reshaping a half
dozen different industries in a single lifetime?

------
alexwolfe
I think the real take away should be that we are all flawed as human beings.
No matter what we do, how much we achieve, how great we become, we are still
human and very imperfect.

There are certainly some detestable people on this earth, I wouldn't put Steve
Jobs in that category even if I didn't agree with his treatment of others.
There are much worse people out there, he simply had many faults.

I think its good you don't want to be like Steve Jobs, be yourself. If you
hold yourself to a high standard of morality, even better. But don't judge
someone completely based off this book, its hard to know what someone felt or
thought unless you walked in there shoes.

Also, never buying another Apple product is a little short sighted. Jobs,
while a great visionary, is hardly everything Apple. There are many many
talented, hard working, brilliantly creative people that helped Apple become
what it is today. I think it is human nature to want to point to a leader, a
genius, "the man". The reality is that these products were created from the
collective genius of many, not one person.

Anyways, my two cents.

------
rdl
The main thing I learned from the book (having read a lot about Jobs in the
past), is that he actually seems like a good father, especially to his son
Reed, toward the end; after being horrible to Lisa early on.

------
Tichy
I've read only parts of the books, but I get the impression I only get part of
the story. It describes his unpleasantness, but at the same time it describes
how lots of people were enchanted by him. The book doesn't explain how that is
possible. So I take it with a huge grain of salt.

~~~
jonhendry
The 'hero/asshole roller coaster' is a widely accepted description of what it
could be like working for Jobs.

On the other hand, there are plenty of people who worked for him for decades,
and people who worked for him, left, and then returned.

I suspect part of it was learning how to deal with Jobs and his tantrums, part
of it was being talented enough to spend more time as a 'hero' than an
'asshole', part of it was feeling that Jobs was trying to achieve something
significant and thus the expected effort was worthwhile, and part of it was
finding ways to stay out of Jobs' sight when necessary.

------
forgottenpaswrd
Napoleon and Alexander the Great killed a lot of people.

Colombus wanted to profit owning a big part of what he "discovered"(including
the people).

Most of the founding fathers of America had slaves on their properties and
also killed people.

America's pioneers killed native Indians, stole everything they owned and
eradicated Buffaloes, dried rivers, cut ancient forest, contaminated the water
for profit.

The best generals on the WWs killed people, cheated on their wifes, drank a
lot, let their people to beat and rape their enemies...

And here we are discussing that some guy was not perfect. Of course not, learn
and focus what you can about the positive and try to incorporate in in your
life, if you can.

------
jamescridland
I said "think twice", not "refuse"...

------
nirvana
Isaacson's book is a hatchet job, with many errors, and some downright
dishonest statements. It is a shame that Jobs cooperated with that hack.

In numerous passages, Isaacson will quote Jobs saying something perfectly
truthful[1], and then follow it up with a claim that Jobs is lying. Most of
the time, he doesn't provide any evidence that Jobs is lying, just the
assertion, because, as Isaacson is careful to tell us many times in the book,
Jobs is famous for his "reality distortion field". I guess this means that
Isaacson doesn't have to back up his assertions, and of course Steve Jobs
isn't around to defend himself.

One example of this is Jobs talking about how NeXT's software gave the Mac new
life. Isaacson says this is a lie, and then goes on to quote Bill Gates who
says none of the NeXT code made it into OS X. Now, this is an obvious and bald
faced lie on Gates' part, but Isaacson doesn't know any better. He's decided
that Jobs is a liar, and therefore , whenever someone says anything that
disagrees, it must be evidence that Jobs was lying.

Reality is, OS X is NeXTSTEP with the Mac UI put on top of it, and at this
point another 10 years of evolution. Gates was lying for whatever reasons
Gates lies (and gates really is pathological in this regard).

Another example is how he treats the statements of Alvy Ray Smith. One of the
really nice things about the PBS show on Jobs a few weeks ago was getting to
see Alvy. He's clearly disgruntled. And this makes sense, given the extreme
difficulties Pixar had in the early years before they were able to start doing
features. As a result, as the company kept needing money, and since they
couldn't' get outside Capital, they kept using Jobs' capital, and other
founders would get diluted as Jobs would buy more and more shares by putting
more and more money into it to keep it afloat. In Isaacson's book, however,
this isn't really explained, and it comes off as if Jobs was ripping off the
others. Isaacson takes Alvy at face value.... but doesn't seem to ask Catmull
or others about it.

This makes Isaacson a sucker for anyone who has any "dirt" on Jobs, and he
clearly didn't ask Steve about many of these claims (or if he did, he didn't
put Steve's response in the book.)

The book is an excellent piece of propaganda. It pretends to glorify someone
who it is obvious the public recognizes as a major positive impact on society,
while subtly and at every turn, engaging in character assassination.

For the past 30 years, I've seen constant repetition of lies about Apple. I'm
not really surprised to see Isaacson do a hatchet job-- as every other book
about Jobs has been one as well. His is a little more classy, but a hatchet
job none the less.

If you think you've got nothing to learn form Steve Jobs, or that he was a bad
guy, well, that reflects a lot more on you than on him.

It's sad that, now that he's died, it seems the haters-- all of whom seem to
be completely ignorant about the history of Apple and constantly repeating the
same mindless party line-- feel that they are free to keep posting these
bullshit stories and voting them up.

Its time to stop. I know you kids think its cool to bash Steve Jobs because
"android android derp derp derp!" but this is Hacker News. This is the site
for technology enthusiasts who want to do Startups. If you don't respect Steve
Jobs for taking a garage startup all the way to being larger than Exxon Mobile
in 30 years, by doing a small number of products exceedingly well, I don't
think you should be hanging out here.

[1] I've had Apple products for 25+ years. I've been following the company for
that long and have met a fair number of their executives over the years and a
lot of Apple employees. I'm extremely well versed in all things Apple, to the
point that I caught many innocent errors in the book. There are things I don't
know about, of course, such as current plans, and things Jobs said that were
private. But when I say "something perfectly truthful", I mean, the statement
is something I know to be a fact from an independant source (not Steve Jobs)
and it is at least a fair statement of the facts (leaving room for some of the
statements being opinions. On at least one occasion, Isaacson calls an opinion
a lie.)

~~~
kiba
Honestly, I don't really care about how good Apple products are or how
innovative are. I don't use them, I don't hate them either. It's just not for
me. My beef with apple is how they felt entitled to control the devices that
apple made but consumers own, making them unhackable.

When I buy something, I own it, period. I should be able to reverse engineer
anything on the market, because I obtained the copy.

I don't give a damn about how much Apple have in its bank. Google is fucking
rich too. But, if Apple win the mobile war, we are screwed as far as freedom
and ownership is concerned.

I very much respect Steve Job for his ability to build a company and innovate,
but it doesn't mean that he get to choose the models that damage our freedom
in the long run.

I don't really care about how inferior Android is to the Iphone. I use it, and
if necessary, I can extend it without permission from Google.

We are hackers. What is it that we do? We hack things and make it better.
Apple doesn't want us to modify the phone that we own and make it better.
Excuse me?

Does it not concern you that Apple exhibit control freak behaviors regarding
iphone? What if it dominate the market and crush all competitors? This is the
kind of level that you don't even see in microsoft regarding window operating
system.

If android dominate and crush iphone and apple tomorrow, that is fine with me.
Somebody can alway polish their own android version and make it like the
magical apple products that I hear so much about.

Steve Job was not a hacker.

~~~
unalone
> But, if Apple win the mobile war, we are screwed as far as freedom and
> ownership is concerned.

Sentences like this are why the phrase "mobile war" should be taken away from
all of us and placed on the high shelf next to the cookie jar. "Mobile war" is
an exciting idea – much more exciting than "competitive mobile marketplace" –
and so we like to think in these terms despite how misleading they are.

There is no mobile war. Apple is not out to extinguish Android. Google's not
out to extinguish the iPhone. We're talking about a market of how many people,
half a billion?, a billion?, billions?, and that many people means that
everybody's going to want something different.

Me? I love my iPhone 4. I'm not a code hacker, see. My iPhone is the tool I
use to hack the world around me. It gives me a camera (photo/HD video) that I
can whip out at any moment. It lets me access my bank on the fly. It's got all
the cutting-edge casual games I'm researching as part of my study on games. It
lets me write on the fly (poetry, thoughts, essays) and have my writing
waiting on my computer when I get back. It's an ambient music generator and a
PDF reader that plays public radio and Pandora and, with the new GarageBand,
is also my ideal recording device, since I prefer convenience of location to
anything else. Now I can put a microphone in a backpack and walk to a park
with some friends and record tracks with incredible ease. That, to me, is a
hack.

I'm pretty much a huge Apple fan, but I understand people who aren't. Which is
why I find lines like

> If android dominate and crush iphone and apple tomorrow, that is fine with
> me. Somebody can alway polish their own android version and make it like the
> magical apple products that I hear so much about.

disquieting. You have your Android phone! Why must you wish misfortune on my
choice? I know far more Android fans who wish for Apple's demise than I know
Apple fans who want Google to go under. Choice is good! And part of that
choice is choosing what the focus of your "hacks" are. For me it's not
computers, so I can benefit from a closed computer. For you it is computers,
and we have open source.

The other disquieting thing about your comment, to me, is that you think
Apple's "magic" is simply a matter of polish. As if you just wipe it with a
rag for a few months and suddenly it gleams. This shows a fundamental
misunderstanding of UI/UX design. Achieving the level of elegance that Apple
products frequently (not always) possess requires tremendous focus and talent.
What's more, Apple's product polish doesn't just extend to their own software:
they have a great history of encouraging top-notch developers to design for
them. My favorite applications aren't Apple's apps; things like Notational
Velocity, Coda, Sparrow, and Reeder have all made my life significantly
simpler, and it's no coincidence that they were all designed by Mac-users for
a Mac environment. Which is why even though Microsoft's new mobile OS is
itself elegant and beautiful, I still much prefer the iPhone to Windows. It's
where all the apps are. Not because Apple was the first to launch an App Store
(though that helps), but because Apple encourages the perfectionism and user
focus that makes its top applications great.

We can argue the semantics of what counts as hacker within your personal
taxonomy all day, but that's useless. Jobs did great things that benefitted a
lot of people, myself included.

~~~
ahoyhere
> You have your Android phone! Why must you wish misfortune on my choice?

Because people like this are hypocrites… they want to take your choice away,
and scream and fight and claw madly if they don't get _their_ choice.

Mentally, these people are still children. They look at everything (e.g. alll
of business) as it if it is a zero-sum game. They take everything personally.

It's hard not to be offended when you think a phone OS is tied intimately to
who you are. Sad, but true.

~~~
dman
Its childish to label other people as children unless they happen to be
children.

~~~
Fliko
In that case it's bad to call someone childish because some of the best
features of humans are only apparent for most people when they are children
and not adults, but that isn't the point of what was said.

The point was that it is short-sighted of someone to say it would be evil if
(say) Apple won the mobile war, but would be good if Google won the mobile
war. Competition is a win-win situation for consumers, and a lack of
competition only encourages stagnancy, which is one of the greatest evils of
the creative world.

------
billpatrianakos
I'm impressed with this post for a few reasons. Usually we see people either
wanting to tarnish Jobs' image because they're just not in his "camp" or
because they're RMS lovers or some such nonsense. Then there are those who go
out of their way to justify and excuse all of Jobs' shortcomings.

I'm a Jobs fanboy but I appreciated this so much. I'm not too far into the
book but I do see the OP's point about Jobs acting like a spoiled brat at
times and really being a misanthrope. That said, I see a lot of redeeming
qualities in him as well.

The great thing a out this post was that I felt it approached the topic from a
really fair and grounded perspective. I would agree that others shouldn't try
to emulate Jobs because his behavior just isn't acceptable in a lot of cases.
Jobs could get away with it because he was Jobs. He was just one of those
people who were one of a kind. There can only be one Jobs and to emulate him
would most likely doom your prospects for success. There are qualities and
anecdotes that can inspire us, teach us, and that can be safely emulated in
our own style but speaking to what the OP is talking about I'd agree that what
he talks about are not the things to be emulating.

I'm just really impressed. It's rare to see such a grounded perspective when
talking about someone like Steve Jobs. That name can really stir up a debate
and cause some heated discussions and, to repeat myself, this post comes at it
from a great, grounded perspective.

------
schraeds
You kind of have to be an asshole to get things done. The best coaches and
mentors in my life caused me displeasure in their relentless efforts to push
me further than I thought I could go.

~~~
jarcoal
Exactly right. Companies do not get ahead by having mellow pushovers at the
top.

People having been talking a lot about how he stole all of the design credit
from Ives. This might be the case, but I'm willing to bet you that Ives would
be the first to admit that Jobs helped him unlock his true potential.

~~~
atdt
Taking credit for other people's creative work is a shit thing to do. Whatever
benefits Ive may have drawn from the relationship aren't relevant. Daddy
doesn't get to beat the kids just because daddy puts food on the table.

~~~
jonhendry
I'm inclined to take Ives' complaint with a grain of salt.

After all, as the face of Apple design, Ives might be getting some amount of
credit for designs that _his_ underlings have made. He might not be seeking
it, but that's how it's working out.

Ives is pretty much the only designer at Apple who gets any credit at all, at
least in the media. And that's been the case for years now. He hasn't exactly
been laboring in obscurity while Jobs sucked up all the credit and adulation.

~~~
philwelch
Apple has always been circumspect about identifying any of their employees
below the Senior VP level because they don't want any of them poached. And
even their senior VPs get poached.

------
Olih
Did u know the man personally? NO. But you're happy to denounce him, based on
others comments. Do u honestly feel qualified to denounce a man you've never
met? Never worked for? Who has contributed more than u ever will, to the world
& to individuals quality of life? I'll point u to another quote from the book,
where Steve asks a blog editor who is likewise trying to attack him: what have
you ever made? I'll leave it at that, friend

~~~
andrewfelix
Steve Jobs aside, that's a pretty weak argument. I never knew Idi Amin or Moa
Tse Tung personally (I'm not comparing them to Steve Jobs), and while they
made some contributions, it's no reason not to make criticisms of them.

------
spacefungus
I'm a fan of Steve Jobs for his vision and ability to see things we all
blatantly are unaware of. He changed technology, but also advertising, movies,
music, etc.

But I'm glad to see _someone_ holding him accountable for his life and the
consequences of his actions.

The iPhone rocks, but the Foxconn factory it was made in is so fucking hard to
work in that they have suicide nets on the roof; almost a dozen have killed
themselves to escape the 14+ hour days.

The MacBook is beautiful, the iMacs are amazing, the software (before Lion)
had a simplicity and aesthetic that were unmatched.

But to ignore the fact that many people were screwed over by Steve, that many
people were payed a few cents an hour to make his products, and that he was a
cold, arrogant man is just ignorant.

Thomas Edison was a shrewd, competitive, harsh man. Does this mean we should
ignore his contributions to science? Absolutely not. Nikola Tesla , Leonardo
Da Vinci, Howard Hughes, etc. etc. all had negative qualities like every other
human. They contributed a lot to the world, though.

So some of the comments that are accusing this post of being over-dramatic or
don't want any criticisms of Lord Jobs are foolish. He did a lot of good and a
hell of a lot of bad. Acknowledging and accepting both, and then learning from
both, is fair and rational. Facts are facts.

~~~
ceejayoz
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn>

920,000+ employees, "almost a dozen" suicides

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate),
China 13.85 per 100,000.

Foxconn should have 127.42 suicides per year. "Almost a dozen" means they have
one tenth the per-capita suicide rate of the rest of the country.

~~~
skore
Different dataset - For starters: "all of china" includes a lot of unemployed
people. "All of Foxconn" includes only employed people.

~~~
ceejayoz
Unemployment rate in Chinese urban areas: 14%
[http://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/members/albert.park/papers/une...](http://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/members/albert.park/papers/unemployment.pdf)

Study indicating double suicide risk in unemployed:
[http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessio...](http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=DA81C3E319F7073C8E386BEBCEB9A86B.journals?fromPage=online&aid=64005)

Even if you posit that _100%_ of China is unemployed and thus causes double
the normal suicide rate, you'd still expect ~60 suicides at Foxconn in an
average year.

