It sounds more likely that this is the real story. Jobs, from everything I’ve read, was the ultimate needler, and quoting over a whiteboard sounds like the very last action of a series of bullying actions. The fact that there is so much mythology around Jobs and Pixar that necessitates these clarifications really makes me believe that this is the case.
Alvy Ray Smith gives his version of the story in the "Valley of Genius" [1]:
> "Life with Steve was awful. There was this famous board meeting at NeXT. Steve comes in and he’s busting Ed and me for being late on a circuit board for the image computer, which we were. And I said, “But Steve, you’re late on one of your boards.” Which was true. Now normally that would have just been okay. Not this time. He starts insulting me, making fun of my accent, playground bully stuff. This was not two intelligent people having a conversation or even a healthy debate. This was just sheer bullying. And what did I do? I just stood up and went right into him. Now I’m very proud of that, but it probably was an insane thing to do. I went right up into his face, screaming in rage. I still can’t believe it happened. Just weird, just screaming at each other. And at that point I forced my way past him and wrote on the whiteboard. I wished I had written something clever. I was too insane. I just made a mark. It was a forbidden act, so he said, “You can’t do that.” And I said, “What? Write on the whiteboard?!” That was it. He stormed out of the room."
And later:
> "It was when I looked at the prospectus for the IPO when I first realized that Steve lies. He claimed to be the cofounder of Pixar and the CEO since its founding. In the prospectus! Cofounder and CEO forever! Bullshit. Both of those are wrong: lies. I don’t like this “reality distortion field” idea. He lies. But you know his genius was to take the company public on nothing. The movie wasn’t even a hit yet, and there was essentially no cash at all. But he saw his chance to make his $50 million back. And he did."
