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Joe Nocera writes in The New York Times that a forthcoming biography “Becoming Steve Jobs,” is leading readers to re-evaluate the “stagnant stereotypes” of Jobs that have only grown stronger after his death. According to the stereotypes, “Steve was a genius with a flair for design,” whose powers of persuasion were such that he could convince people that the sun rose in the west and set in the east. On the other hand, he was also “a pompous jerk,” who humiliated employees and “disregarded everyone else in his single-minded pursuit of perfection.”
It is Schlender’s and Tetzeli’s contention that Jobs was a far more complex and interesting man than the stereotype, and a good part of their book is an attempt to craft a more rounded portrait. According to Nocera the callow, impetuous, arrogant youth who co-founded Apple was very different from the mature and thoughtful man who returned to his struggling creation and turned it into a company that made breathtaking products while becoming the dominant technology company of our time.
How did a young man so reckless and arrogant that he was exiled from the company he founded become the most effective visionary business leader of our time, ultimately transforming the daily life of billions of people? For Schlender and Tetzeli, the crucial period was the most overlooked part of Jobs’s career: The years from 1985 to 1997, when he was in exile from Apple and running NeXT. Equally important, Jobs also owned Pixar, the animation studio he bought from George Lucas. It took years before Pixar came out with its first full-length movie, “Toy Story.” During that time, Jobs saw how Ed Catmull, Pixar’s president, managed the company’s creative talent. Catmull taught Jobs how to manage employees.
"When Jobs returned to Apple, he was more patient — with people and with products. His charisma still drew people to him, but he no longer drove them away with his abrasive behavior and impossible demands. He had also learned that his ideas weren’t always the right ones, and he needed to listen to others." Perhaps the most important example of this was the App Store. Jobs had initially opposed allowing outside developers to build apps for the iPhone, but he did a quick about-face once he realized he was wrong. "Jobs has long been hailed as one of the great creative minds of modern business," concludes Nocera. "He was [also] a great manager. You can’t build a great company if you aren’t one."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by gman003 on Friday March 20 2015, @04:22AM
The first biography of Steve Jobs I read was "Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing". It was written when NeXT seemed to be at the end of its existence (having shut down hardware production) and Steve Job's career seemed likely to be dead, and it chronicled his absolute failures.
"Creative" is absolutely the wrong word for Steve Jobs. Most of his original ideas were horrible, and all of his good ideas were derivative. He didn't come up with new, inventive solutions - but he brought a focus on purity and quality that made for good products. NeXT failed mostly because Steve Jobs had nobody to rein him in, to tell him when good enough was good enough. For example, the original NeXT Computer was a perfect cube - without the normal draft of even half a degree normally used to remove it from the mold, there was only a single company in the entire US that could produce those cases, and thus they were incredibly expensive. You cannot deny that making the case 0.5 degrees off from perfectly cubical would not have affected the performance or aesthetics in any way - it was perfectionism for the sake of perfectionism, to the cost of the actual product, and that was but one example.
Perhaps Jobs learned moderation, particularly when NeXT was such a disaster. Perhaps Catmull taught him. Perhaps Apple assigned someone to keep him in check after he returned. Perhaps something else. But his failures deserve to be recognized just as much as his successes.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Adamsjas on Friday March 20 2015, @05:49AM
Not to mention his out of wedlock daughter who lived in a car with her homeless mother because Jobs denied patronage for years, until DNA evidence proved he was the father. He knew all along that he was, but DNA evidence was just on the horizon and he new a homeless woman would never be able to afford it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 20 2015, @06:38AM
Steve gave Lisa a free Lisa but she had nowhere to plug it in except the cigarette lighter?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 20 2015, @08:04AM
He perjured himself in court, swearing that he was sterile.
(He went on to have 3 more children.)
In summary: Jobs was an asshole.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday March 20 2015, @09:31AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 20 2015, @10:49AM
"Creative" is absolutely the wrong word for Steve Jobs. Most of his original ideas were horrible, and all of his good ideas were derivative.
So how does that actually different from people you would label with the term, "creative"? I bet most of their original ideas were horrible too and all their good ideas were derivative.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 20 2015, @01:19PM
When someone deliberately parks in handicap spots just because he can. Not because he is 'sticking it to the system'. You may think he is a jerk. I guess I am wrong he is a visionary. I am thinking the CEO could say 'I want a reserved spot by the door'. Just because you have money and a following does not mean it gives you license to be a jerk. There is no license to be a jerk. When I read about how he actually went out of his way to deliberately spend money to do this...
(Score: 2) by tibman on Friday March 20 2015, @01:45PM
I have heard that NeXT was extremely expensive too, 5k 1990 dollars for a workstation. Steve wanted to control both the hardware and software. They had to write a new OS from scratch. So much of what happened at NeXT is what happened/happens at Apple. Apple is considered a success for it and NeXT is considered a failure. The actual NeXT computers are not considered a failure, however. They were pretty awesome.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by Nuke on Friday March 20 2015, @01:57PM
They had to write a new OS from scratch.
I assume you are talking about Next. In fact Next was a Unix system, a customised version of BSD I believe, using the Mach kernel. Not from scratch.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tibman on Friday March 20 2015, @05:45PM
I looked it up, it was called NeXTSTEP and actually preceded OS X which is interesting. You are right that they didn't create the kernel. At best they created the desktop environment and supporting userland tools. The picture reminds me of Enlightenment, which is funny: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1d/NeXTSTEP_desktop.png [wikimedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP [wikipedia.org]
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