“Steve Jobs Comes Across as a Jerk” in Daughter’s New Memoir

tetris42 said:
Okay, wow, so people here think Bill Gates achieved Microsoft's success being a "nice guy." I guess I'll see myself out.
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Paul Allen talked about this in his memoir, Idea Man. At one point, he and Gates were not speaking, as he felt Gates was a bit too cut throat, and cheated him out of his share of the company. Later on though, near the end of his tenure, Gates started doing a lot of philanthropic work to try to change his public persona, which, near the end of the millennium, wasn't exactly great. To an extent, it looks like it worked.
 
I never knew Bill Gates abandoned one of his kids and treated his family like shit ?
 
Nobody here on this forum knew either one of them. So all we can do is make assumptions based on what we read and hear about them.
 
Nytegard said:
Paul Allen talked about this in his memoir, Idea Man. At one point, he and Gates were not speaking, as he felt Gates was a bit too cut throat, and cheated him out of his share of the company. Later on though, near the end of his tenure, Gates started doing a lot of philanthropic work to try to change his public persona, which, near the end of the millennium, wasn't exactly great. To an extent, it looks like it worked.
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I read He was really a business-minded person as well, He usually backs down when sufficient evidence is presented to him. I think the philanthropic work is more of a "as you get older you get wiser" theme. It's usually how it works for most. Well maybe there is a different definition for "nice" guys here in the world. With the written memoirs of Paul Allen I only see a very competitive Man rather than an abusive person compared to that of Steve Jobs. To each his own I guess.
 
Wait, Jobs was a temperamental asshat? Who knew...

He was good at marketing things other people designed and built.

I read the times article about this book, no interest. Disavowing parentage of a child even after tests prove it... I mean what did he have to lose by not hating his kid? Money?

Oh well, it all matters not in the grand scheme of things. He's gone.
 
Burticus said:
I read the times article about this book, no interest. Disavowing parentage of a child even after tests prove it... I mean what did he have to lose by not hating his kid? Money?
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He needed to find and buy his soul back first, takes effort.
 
How does this surprise anyone?

He is one of the biggest jerks to ever have run a company.

IMHO Apple succeeded in spite of Jobs, not because of him.
 
The surprise is in the first-hand telling of how he was a jerk, not the fact that he was one.

He wasn't nearly one of the biggest jerks to run a company, but certainly a popular semi-transparent company.

He definitely pushed certain people to perform better, but I agree it wasn't necessary in most cases. Just look back at the greatest artists/inventors in our world and how well they were treated by their teachers/mentors...
 
"...comes across as a jerk..."

Strange. Because he WAS a jerk. Ask most of the people who had the misfortune to work under him...
Sure, he could be brilliant and exacting and could shit out good ideas at the drop of a hat.
But ask them to be HONEST about how they felt at the time he was abusing them...
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
How does this surprise anyone?

He is one of the biggest jerks to ever have run a company.

IMHO Apple succeeded in spite of Jobs, not because of him.
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I disagree. Look at what happened under Scully and Amelio and it becomes obvious that success went hand in hand with that jerk. Frankly, the enormous jerk that was Jobs was the heart and soul of Apple the jerk of a company that made the iPhone, iMac, and iPod. Apple today is something else, but it was wholly the physical manifestation of all the petty vices that was Steven Paul Jobs.
 
Steve Jobs was interesting because he was a unrelenting tyrannical asshole in service of a beautiful goal - to make computers and technology as easy and natural to use as possible. People don't realize how much our technology has been shaped because Steve Jobs decided it would be that way.
 
tetris42 said:
Okay, wow, so people here think Bill Gates achieved Microsoft's success being a "nice guy" I guess I'll see myself out.
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Bill Gates was/is a "normal businessman" if such a thing exists. you don't get as successful as he is without being utterly ruthless, but Jobs? Jobs was a borderline psychopath rolled up into a big dose of Narcissistic personality disorder.
 
Krenum said:
Nobody here on this forum knew either one of them. So all we can do is make assumptions based on what we read and hear about them.
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But we can infer a lot about them from second hand accounts.

By all accounts, Ghandi was a fairly nice guy. I hear Hitler was a bit hard to work with. That Jesus guy has a lot of fans, but I hear he was hell on moneylenders

See how this goes?

Sure, all these second hand accounts could be wrong, but history forms opinions about people for a reason.
 
Is she more sorry he didn't read her books in bed or that he didn't leave her a fat check and she has to cash in via memoirs about a famous person?
 
Paul_Johnson said:
Well for most first hand accounts I have heard or read about him over the years he was a terrible person. So, not really surprised to hear it again.
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Exactly right. The man was a scumbag. He got his girlfriend pregnant and then broke up with her. He refused to acknowledge it was his kid and wouldn't support her or the child.
People that had to work under him described him a cruel, narcissistic, self absorbed first rate A-hole. He was so disliked he was fired from Apple by the board of directors at one point. It is astounding he is held up as a genius and a innovator. All total BS. Much of the tech that Apple claims as their own they stole from other companies.
 
Generally only A-holes and mavericks are what makes companies succeed . Gee survival of the meanest, Thanks Darwin...........
 
zalazin said:
If you mix it with other drugs it can. Years ago I was in a hospital with a morphine drip, They gave me Ambien and I thought I was Spiderman ripped my IVs out and I climbed on top of furniture etc...and I didn't remember any of it.........
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Well ya, I didn't say Ambien couldn't... in fact, Ambien is quite well known for it. You didn't even need the morphine for that to happen. Ambien causes a friend of mine to see flat square floor tiles in 3 dimensions... I've also had Ambien and had all kinds of crazy problems. I wouldn't recommend Ambien to anyone... bad, bad, BAD things can happen... really bad.

Also, mixing medications, like you said, is never a good idea.
 
seanreisk said:
People don't realize how much our technology has been shaped because Steve Jobs decided it would be that way.
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Yes, us mere mortals will never realize it... only those in higher planes of existence (aliens, kittens, etc...)
 
But... but... I thought he was Jesus?!?!?
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:troll:
 
Youn said:
Yes, us mere mortals will never realize it... only those in higher planes of existence (aliens, kittens, etc...)
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Most people don't realize it. You might be one of them, I can't be sure what you're being sarcastic about, but the fact is, Steve Jobs did a lot more shaping than anyone else in technology.

I'm not saying Apple invented, I'm saying they shaped - what they decided to do is what everyone else copied.

* Take a look at cell phones before the iPhone came out, then come back and tell me what all expensive cell phones look like now.

* Take a look at Windows 1.0, released in November of 1985, almost 2 years after the Apple Macintosh. Steve Jobs needed applications for the Macintosh, and he struck a devil's bargain with Gates - if Gates would make Microsoft applications available for the Macintosh, Gates could use all patents on the Macintosh interface, provided that apps for Windows and apps for Macintosh used identical menus.

* Someone previously said that Apple stole its technology from Xerox. That's not true, Xerox had attempted to market its technology but wasn't succeeding with its investments, and they wound up in bed with Apple on the bet of Apple's IPO.

* The same goes for PostScript and the laser printer - Apple didn't invent them either, but Apple was the one that pushed Adobe to make PostScript the engine for rendering fonts on laser printers. Apple was the first to include PostScript in their computers and laser printers, and from this WYSIWYG was born. Adobe would go on to create 10 or so system fonts that would be available to computer owners and Apple's licensees. These became Times, New York, Geneva, Monaco, etc., and they remain with us today (even after Gates and Jobs got in bed together to make TrueType fonts and screw Adobe out of their PostScript royalties.)

I'm gonna stop here, I'm not gonna bother with the history of icons or trashcans or plug-and-play or NeXT or iPod (or iTunes) or Newton or the eMac and the iMac or Siri. Apple is a big company now, but I really don't see a lot in their future because Jobs is gone. He didn't invent anything, but he looked at everyone's ideas and decided which ones Apple was going to implement, and how. And now he is gone. I get it, people hate him, so people have to discredit everything that he did and he represented. That's been a problem with America for quite awhile, fake news, folks, fake news. The truth can be whatever you want to believe.
 
Oh I thought you meant he literally did something we'd never figure out, like encoding the answer to humanity within the anti-aliasing algorithm used on the header fonts to the terms and conditions.
 
Youn said:
Oh I thought you meant he literally did something we'd never figure out, like encoding the answer to humanity within the anti-aliasing algorithm used on the header fonts to the terms and conditions.
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ROFL, that would be good. We should start a rumor.

It's funny, I don't use an Apple phone, or an Apple computer, or any Apple service (I've owned a few Apple computers in the past, but that was mostly when my university tasked me to support them - I like to buy computers.) But I go nuts when people say things that are unsupported by history or facts, and when this topic comes up people usually label me a Mac lover.

Steve Jobs is like soy sauce. He was nasty and vile, but he made a lot of things taste better (provided you like soy sauce.)
 
Paul_Johnson said:
Well for most first hand accounts I have heard or read about him over the years he was a terrible person. So, not really surprised to hear it again.
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What she says in this book takes him to an entirely new level of asshole. The idea that neighbors paid for her college education.. the guy is just a cock of epic order.
 
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