He was great at portraying the public image of an ambitious hippy and a visionary who seeked innovation. But in reality he was a bad tempered and egotistical attention seeker with a narrow mind and thus had to do everything his own way.
None of his innovations were invented by him. Not even in the early days (Wozniak deserves the real praise there). His hippy attitudes only extended as far as was convenient for him (he claimed that money was never a motive, yet he was one of the most ruthless CEOs who added the highest mark ups on their products than any other company in the technology sector). He didn't even extend his hippy attitudes to his own work force as he was a complete bastard to anyone who wasn't working themselves to death. And then there's the way he treated his own family - absolutely disgraceful.
What Jobs had going for him was his ability to switch on his charisma when he needed to. This is what lead him to recruiting some of the brightest minds; this is what helped inspire them to create the products they did; and this is what helped convince the millions of devoted followers that Apple were anything more than just another 'megacorp'.
I think you're right that I'm being unbalanced. I just get so sick of reading about people crediting him personally for all the great technological breakthroughs that I was probably over compensating with the aforementioned rant.
He was great at portraying the public image of an ambitious hippy and a visionary who seeked innovation. But in reality he was a bad tempered and egotistical attention seeker with a narrow mind and thus had to do everything his own way.
None of his innovations were invented by him. Not even in the early days (Wozniak deserves the real praise there). His hippy attitudes only extended as far as was convenient for him (he claimed that money was never a motive, yet he was one of the most ruthless CEOs who added the highest mark ups on their products than any other company in the technology sector). He didn't even extend his hippy attitudes to his own work force as he was a complete bastard to anyone who wasn't working themselves to death. And then there's the way he treated his own family - absolutely disgraceful.
What Jobs had going for him was his ability to switch on his charisma when he needed to. This is what lead him to recruiting some of the brightest minds; this is what helped inspire them to create the products they did; and this is what helped convince the millions of devoted followers that Apple were anything more than just another 'megacorp'.