
Steve Jobs threatened Palm’s CEO, court documents reveal - kome
http://pando.com/2014/02/19/court-documents-reveal-steve-jobs-blistering-threat-to-ceo-who-wouldnt-join-wage-fixing-cartel/
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dmazin
Every month "admiring Steve Jobs" becomes a stronger heuristic for me on whom
to ignore and/or avoid.

Not only was he a sociopath who hurt others (read his biography) but he was
clearly also a deeply unethical business leader not to be emulated (read this
fiasco and also the latter parts of his biography).

He held some great humane design principles (read about them from Jef Raskin
and Larry Tesler etc who came up with and heralded them) and was able to get
tough projects through (like many leaders) of course. But I am afraid that is
not what people admire in him.

~~~
jmduke
It is possible to admire someone without thinking they're flawless; or,
perhaps, to admire certain traits/aspects of someone without admiring them
altogether.

Michael Jordan was the greatest athlete of his time but an absolute asshole.

Martin Luther King had an affair (multiple? I forget.)

Musicians in general seem like pretty terrible people, with many notable
exceptions.

~~~
vacri
You need to get to know more musicians. 'Musician' in this context is
synonymous with 'person'. There isn't a 'musician' personality.

~~~
6cxs2hd6
Incredibly even in 2014 "musician" still has a negative connotation among some
socially conservative people.

The US music-products trade organization doesn't even use the phrase
"musician" \-- it uses "music makers". Try to find the word "musician" on
[http://www.namm.org/about](http://www.namm.org/about)

~~~
dredmorbius
What an amazingly awful website.

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fidotron
While this is just more detail on old news, I can't help feeling Colligan
needs to get as much credit for his statements made here as the others should
receive in punishment in forming the cartel to start with. His only failing
appears to be not reporting it.

~~~
soperj
Still don't understand how so many in this business can admire someone like
Jobs. It's refreshing to hear about someone who stood up to his "charm".

~~~
MBCook
He lead the design of tons of groundbreaking products.

He was also a world class grudge bearing short tempered vindictive jerk.

~~~
dmazin
I just want to clear up the falsehood here that he was the lead design of any
product - read the biography. He was lead designer on no product that went to
market.

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CamperBob2
I hope every developer at Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other companies that
are supposedly just "building a defensive bulwark of patents" sees this.

You're not building fences or walls for your company. You're building land
mines.

~~~
zmmmmm
> You're building land mines

I prefer to think of it as stockpiling toxic nuclear waste. A land mine
explodes causing isolated damage to a single unlucky individual one time.
Toxic nuclear waste on the other hand poisons an entire city (ie. area of
technology) and is pretty much indestructible until its half life (or several
of them) expires.

~~~
Crito
Like nuclear weapons, but without the MAD.

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RexRollman
I'm sure John Gruber will find a way to spin this in a pro-Apple light.

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jcampbell1
This is old news. You can see his spin here:
[http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/01/23/asymmetry](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/01/23/asymmetry)

~~~
acqq
Only he doesn't spin it as far as I see it:

"Could be legal trouble for Apple (and a bunch of other companies), though"

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jcampbell1
I don't have a dog in the fight, but "The man did not beat around the bush",
is soft praise for his frankness. If you believe it was immoral and illegal,
this is definitely spin.

My take: "Steve Jobs likely broke the law, and engaged in an activity that
denied thousands of engineers full market wages. I suspect his motivations
were to enrich Apple to stroke his own ego."

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mrtksn
I am pretty sure that I've seen these. I have to say, I admire Steve Jobs in a
sense that I admire Frank Underwood character in House of Cards serial.

~~~
djyaz1200
Agreed, it's a cold world and sometimes you gotta get your hands dirty.

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dmazin
Uh, no. It's more like "what he did was interesting, in the way that a lot
admonishing things you should never do are interesting."

~~~
djyaz1200
Yeah, just discouraging to see so many successful people using shady tactics.
I think it's a lot more rewarding to succeed without being shady, and maybe a
lot of people agree and that's just not newsworthy?

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bruceb
Too bad Palm can't sue Apple for this:
[http://www.everythingicafe.com/ios-7-multitasking-brings-
bac...](http://www.everythingicafe.com/ios-7-multitasking-brings-back-fond-
memories-of-webos/)

~~~
Steko
Yes it's too bad Palm can't sue Apple for using the "swipable card tabbing" UI
that Palm took directly from Safari on the original iPhone.

[http://origin.arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/iphone-
review...](http://origin.arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/iphone-
review.media/250/safaritab1.jpg)

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djyaz1200
If tech had a truly free market for talent it would be wild! You'd have top
tier coders signing pro athlete sized contracts regularly. I can see why they
use patent litigation as a weapon to prevent this, clever and sinister.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
if there was ever a reason for hackers to work out a way to measure the affect
good coding has on the bottom line - this is it

~~~
spacehome
Or good spelling!

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dribnet
tl;dr:

    
    
      jobs: let's not hire each other's employees anymore, m-kay?
      colligan (Palm CEO): thanks steve, but no thanks.
      jobs: have you seen our patents and pile of cash, ed?
            you're entering a world of pain.

~~~
Fasebook
So Apple believes that they have eternal rights to their employees once they
paid for their time once... Not a good sign for their customers.

~~~
madeofpalk
To be fair, it was found that the rest of Silicon Valley (Google, Adobe,
Microsoft etc) were doing the same thing.

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adamio
Couldn't Apple have asked employees to sign a non-compete agreement, before
starting work on critical company projects, ?

If your goal is to protect the company it seems easier to enforce than a
makeshift cartel agreement with other CEOs

Also, wasn't the agreement about recruiting being taboo, but its ok to hire
cold applicants?

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tristan_juricek
Non-compete clauses are void in California

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-
compete_clause#California](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-
compete_clause#California)

~~~
mcv
Which should be a strong hint that accomplishing the exact same thing through
another route is just as wrong.

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taopao
What a dick.

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ycmike
I think most people who read the book know that this is far alarming news and
frankly surprised more stories have not come out. A couple weeks ago, the
stories came out about holding wages down for engineers with Jobs at the
center.

Steve Jobs is incredible and arguably the greatest entrepreneur of all time.
But he is an extreme outlier and anomaly to say the least. He got away with so
much being the best. Although one could argue with the way he changed the
world we live in, we're not terribly unhappy with news like this.

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krick
Everybody is talking about Jobs' personality and behavior and if Palm suffered
because of that, but for me it's just another example of how wrong the whole
legal system is. Instead of saying "we have more guns than you do, so shut up"
somebody can just say "we have more money and lawyers than you do, so shut
up". So if the system built to control bullying is used for bullying then what
it's worth?

Ah, thinking of it just depresses me.

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briantakita
"Wage theft" goes beyond the large tech companies. It it institutionalized by
the investors as well. Investors won't invest if employees are paid market
value. That's a reason why it's better to be a consultant than an employee.

Everybody is trying to manipulate the game to their benefit. C'est la vie.

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cratermoon
Christ, what an asshole.

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alexeisadeski3
I can't be the only one who disapproves of the misuse if the term, "an offer
he can't refuse."

Its used incorrectly everywhere.

~~~
jusben1369
well, you could be. Not sure people take the expression that seriously.

~~~
alexeisadeski3
Boo.

At least this author uses it to describe a threat.

Most writers deploy the term to describe a really good offer, which grates
upon my soul enormously.

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elwell
Interesting fake highlighting.

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Fasebook
It's clear in my eyes that Palm did not fail due to market forces. They had
the best smart phone at the time, and I purchased one and enjoyed it
immensely.

I now have an iPhone and I hate it but I have to tolerate it. Take my account
for what it's worth, but PalmOS was clearly superior from a productivity
standpoint. This is cemented in my mind further by the integration of Palm or
Palm-like features into iOS since iOS7.

If these threats had any basis, then Palm would be able to sue Apple since now
Apple feels entitled to rip off Palm's design decisions, sadly, 'that train
has sailed', but now we're left with an uberpowerful Apple who only answers to
God.

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lifeisstillgood
I don't get the (mostly posthumous) Jobs bashing that seems to be swelling up.
It's seemingly a reaction to the fete'ing he got whilst alive, and I do ended
if it is the same people?

He was human - and unsurprisingly a mass of contradictions - venal and
spiritual, visionary and vicious, successful and a failure.

Lets not act surprised he used strong arm tactics to get his way - and let's
not get too happy accepting Palms CEO as hero in a story he is telling.

~~~
gcb0
I did bash him while he was alive too. What is your point? he was human. A
criminal human. So what? How committing crimes is spiritual?

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codelap
I'm sorry, I honestly don't see the problem here. Is it illegal or somehow
immoral to identify the consequence of a business decision?

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joe_the_user
Well, as matter of fact Jobs was engaged in intimidation aimed to maintain an
arrangement that has been found to be illegal (the "anti-poaching"
'agreement').

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codelap
Really good point. I really really should have read the full article, not just
the title, and the highlighted section. I thought I saw this text almost
verbatim before having to do with a licensing dispute.

