

In Praise of Bad Steve - dctoedt
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/10/in-praise-of-bad-steve/246242/

======
ScottBurson
I've never worked for Apple and never really aspired to, mostly because my
interests didn't overlap with what I thought I would probably be doing there,
but partly, I have to admit, because I had heard the stories of Steve the
tyrant and was put off by them.

Maybe my ego is sturdier now, because I wonder if I wouldn't have enjoyed the
challenges he set people. One thing is for sure, you could know that if you
did what he wanted, it wasn't going to be a me-too product.

~~~
jonnathanson
I've worked briefly at Apple, but had only one face-to-face encounter with
Steve. It was intensely scary. He was loved -- LOVED -- on the Apple campus.
But he was also feared. And I felt that fear when I saw him. He was, and
remains, the only person I've been genuinely "star struck" upon encountering.
A lot of that was born of admiration, but just as much was born of terror.

In retrospect, I realized that I wasn't really afraid of Steve. I was afraid
of myself: my limitations, my shortcomings, my relative talent (or lack
thereof), and my performance in life vis-a-vis my self-theorized potential.
When I saw Steve Jobs in the flesh, I saw an embodiment of everything I was
not, and probably never would be. Frankly, I felt like a fraud. I felt
unworthy.

A lot of that seems silly now, and will strike readers of this post as
childish, if not fawningly fanboyish. But it was a very intense feeling that
he inspired, even if unintentionally.

~~~
brettvallis
Not childish, on the contrary: quite mature, accurate, articulate and
insightful.

Mostly we fear ourselves, what we are, what we aren't, etc. Whether the
dialogue is accurate or not, well, that's up to us individually, and so is
what we do with it.

Situations and experiences can hold a mirror up to us - so to speak - wherein
we're forced to confront these fears of ourselves. It's interesting that the
Steve persona did that to you. I doubt it was intentional on his part, just
part of who he was, a part of the legacy he had created and you.

------
danso
The talk about "Bad Steve" reminds me about Gundotra telling the "Icon
Ambulance" story the day that Steve stepped down, in which Steve calls him up
on a Sunday because "we have an urgent issue" involving the color gradient on
the Google iphone icon.

[https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/gcSStkKx...](https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/gcSStkKxXTw)

For many people, that kind of anal attention to detail (and describing it as
an "urgent" matter) would be the key sign of a "bad" boss. I think it's
acceptable in Steve because if anyone has shown a good grasp of the cost-
benefit analysis of such perfection, it's him.

~~~
ajross
I don't think that's really justified. Jobs had a long career, and only two
real industry-dominating hits: the Apple II (most of which was Woz's work) and
the iPhone. A lot of the hyperbole we're seeing right now is because Jobs had
the mis/fortune to die at the very peak of his hit.

Had we all been doing the same analysis in the mid-90's when NeXT was failing
and Pixar a mostly academic curiosity, I doubt anyone would be talking about
how great a judge of the "cost-benefit analysis of perfection" he was.

~~~
alexsb92
I think it's more than the just the Apple II and the iPhone. The way I see it,
the man's main hobby was disruption. He disrupted the PC industry with the
Apple II and later the Mac line. He disrupted the music industry with the iPod
and iTunes, and the phone industry with the iPhone. He changed the animation
industry with Pixar one of the most successful, both financially, and
critically acclaimed movie company. He revived an industry which most
considered a dead horse with the iPad and where most companies are still
playing catch-up.

I agree if this was to happen back in the 90s, he wouldn't be as praised as he
is today, but what does that have to do with anything? If I was to judge
anyone before their greatest moments, they wouldn't pass the bar. And yeah, he
was kind of an ass in his early days, but by most accounts he became a lot
more mellow when returning to Apple.

~~~
ars
I don't think you know what disruption is.

The PC industry is working just fine, and a Mac and PC are more similar than
they are different.

The music industry has hardly changed due to the iPod, you sell one way you
sell another - that's not disruption.

And the phone industry most certainly did not change, it's just an incremental
improvement on the fancy phones that have been getting steadily better. The
iPhone may be great, but fundamentally it's just a better version of what was
already there.

His business was taking an idea and perfecting it so people liked and used it.
But it was not disruption.

~~~
Volpe
Partly what you say is true.

But I'd say iTunes (music store) was disruptive. It changed how the music
industry operated.

The iphone changed how we 'use' phones more than it changed the 'phone
industry'. In fact, on writing that, I think that captures what Apple does
best, it 'disrupts' how people perceive and use a product, that may in-turn
distrupt an industry, but that is a consequence, not the goal (for Apple).

~~~
_delirium
I see the iPhone as _popularizing_ the smartphone concept, but not
fundamentally disrupting the concept of phones and their usage. Palm I think
was the real disruptor there, but Apple perfected it.

------
Alex3917
This idea of people as heroes or villains strikes me as being myopic. The very
idea that people can be either good or bad shows that we're all just mushrooms
growing out of a much larger mycelium.

Ever notice that so many of the most popular American tourist destinations are
places like machu picchu, the great wall of china, the pyramids, etc? The fact
that these places exist says far less about their creators than it does about
the societies that produced them. (Although perhaps the fact that Americans
are obsessed with the monuments of slavery and fascism says something about
us.)

~~~
iand
Contrary to popular belief, the pyramids weren't built by slaves. They needed
precision and skill.

<http://www.nationalgeographic.com/pyramids/pyramids.html#who>

~~~
ars
I always thought that was a terrible argument. So they weren't slaves like
blacks in the US south, but they could have still been slaves.

Slaves can have skill, families and pride in their work. Historically some
slaves were trusted to go out on their own and do business for their owner,
and not run away!

Some slaves became so important to their master than they actually inherited
the estate when the master died.

So they may have been high level slaves, but slaves nonetheless.

~~~
Alex3917
"So they weren't slaves like blacks in the US south, but they could have still
been slaves."

Relationships are complicated, maybe its best not to put labels on things.

In all seriousness though, regardless of what their specific status was, most
societies where people are building things like pyramids tend to be pretty
messed up.

~~~
ars
A slave is someone who does not have permission to chose his own work, and
does not have permission to (or is prevented from) quiting. (Note that I said
permission, not ability.)

A slave can still be paid.

Based on my definition of slave I believe the pyramids were built by slaves.

~~~
iand
What evidence do you have that the pyramid builders did not have permission to
quit? Its just as likely that they saw it as a huge honour to work on a
pharoah's tomb. c.f. French cathedral builders

------
chaostheory
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man." Bernard Shaw

~~~
saturn
I have always thought that quote was ridiculous. What is unreasonable about
noticing an improvement can be made in your surroundings, and endeavouring to
make it?

There is a grain of truth I suppose, vis-a-vis humanity's general
restlessness, fixing what ain't broke, etc, but I think that this
generalisation that anyone who isn't perfectly happy and satisfied with the
exact present state of things is "unreasonable" is not true at all.

~~~
chaostheory
> What is unreasonable about noticing an improvement can be made in your
> surroundings, and endeavouring to make it?

I guess if the Steve Jobs aquarium urban legend didn't sound unreasonable, you
probably have the silicon valley mindset. It's really easy to think of the
current state of things and to feel that everything done up to now is
'reasonable'; especially if you live in a really progressive, techno-friendly
place like Silicon Valley. You need to know the historical context from the
perspective of an average non-technical person in places that aren't as open
minded and progressive. One example would be an average person wondering why
people wasted their time making unreliable experimental horseless carriages
when clearly horses were superior. I also can't help but think of the author
of Gulliver's Travels making fun of people experimenting with electricity.

------
the_grind
There is no doubt he left his mark on the world.

However, I'd bet that > 90% of people who are praising him now would never
have enjoyed working for him in any capacity.

~~~
nknight
I'll bet some of the people who willingly did so for years didn't really like
"working for Steve". If you get enough satisfaction out of the results,
though, that doesn't really matter as much.

People sometimes stay in otherwise intolerably boring jobs for years because
they really like their bosses and/or coworkers, and sometimes they stay in
incredibly exciting and fulfilling jobs for years despite loathing same.

~~~
gbsi
I've worked with dictators (kitchen chefs in very high end restaurants) since
I was 13.. First I hated it then it got to me.. If you're truly passionate
about something, and its your life mission, not much else matters.

<http://www.sagmeister.com/work/all#/node/207>

------
paul9290
History shows many luminaries to be like Jobs was or even worse; ruthless and
totally unethical.

Thomas Edison (<http://www.reformation.org/thomas-edison.html>) comes to mind.

~~~
_delirium
True, though there are plenty of very humble, friendly luminaries as well. Woz
and Bob Moog come to mind.

~~~
lurker19
Who is Bob Moog?

The class that includes Edison and Jobs is the class that wins the recognition
and respect of the general public, including my 80 year old aunt who has never
used an Apple product. I guess of doesn't really matter though, if the
luminaries and some of their fans choose not to care what the public thinks.
The nice thing about choosing your own definition of success is that we can
congratulate both Jobs and Woz for their success even though they reached
incredibly divergent outcomes and there is no way they could have ever both
reached the same point.

------
angelbob
I find myself hoping the iPod/aquarium story is true.

~~~
nikuda
It could be, but I've heard this same story told about a Sony exec. instead of
Steve, and that was before iPod's time. It was a camera that he dropped into a
body of water though. The rest is same.

~~~
martey
Doing as exhaustive of a search as I could, I found a couple of interesting
things. The Sony version of the parable seems to center on the Walkman (as
opposed to a camera), which was built in the late 1970s, and either Akio
Morita or Masaru Ibuka (co-founders of Sony). However, the earliest reference
on the Internet to it I can find is from September 2002 [^1], about a year
after the iPod was released, making its origins inconclusive. The fact that it
is linked to multiple founders of powerful technology companies suggests to me
that it is apocryphal.

[^1]:
[http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1000&me...](http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1000&message=3324664)

~~~
nikuda
Well, the story might well be completely made up, but the chances are higher
that it was made up about Sony not Apple. Probably around the time of when the
first Walkman was released.

Let's not forget that early Apple was modelled after Sony of the time. Also,
under the context of Japanese culture the kind of attitude displayed by the
'boss' in the story is less striking or unusual.

~~~
lurker19
It is certainly plausible that Jobs could have heard the Sony story and then
marched over to the iPod lab.

------
funkdobiest
He was a visionary. He foresaw his own death, and started wrapping things up
back in August.

------
podperson
This article along with the New Yorker's piece rank as the best I've read
since he died. He was an amazing man, and changed my life and many others',
but not perfect.

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m0wfo
Apparently he died of an extremely rare variant of pancreatic cancer called
node.js

