When Steve Jobs speaks at a Mac convention, the fans praise him with a level of enthusiasm that's generally reserved for rock stars or dynamic religious figures. But over the years, Jobs' business tactics have inspired his acquaintances to utter some fairly harsh things. Here are the top five, culled from various books and magazine articles.
5. "Hey, Steve, just because you broke into Xerox's house before I did and took the TV doesn't mean I can't go in later and take the stereo."
-- Bill Gates, responding to Jobs' complaint that the Windows GUI looks way too much like the Mac's (MacWeek, March 14, 1989). Gates was referencing Apple's theft of the computer GUI idea from Xerox PARC's ALTO computer.
4. "Jobs hated the idea [of the Mac]. He ran around saying, 'No! No! It'll never work.' He was one of the Macintosh's hardest critics and he was always putting it down at board meetings. When he became convinced that it would work, and that it would be an exciting new product, he started to take over...He was dead set against the Macintosh for the first two years. He said it was the dumbest thing on earth and that it would never sell. When he decided to take it over, he told everybody that he had invented it."
-- Jef Raskin, in "Accidental Millionaire." p.136-137. Raskin was the lead developer of the Mac. Raskin also noted: "[Jobs] would immediately poo-poo [your] idea, then a week later, he'd come back and say, 'Hey, I've got a great idea!' The idea that he gave back to you was your own. We called him the Reality Distortion Field." ("Accidental Millionaire," p. 138)
3. "I kept asking Steve about stock options and he would always put me off, saying that I had to talk to my supervisors. I found out a couple of years later that Jobs was the head of the Compensation Committee in charge of distributing options."
-- Dan Kotte, an Apple technician and employee #12. Kotte was Jobs' best friend at Reed College and traveled to India with him in search of enlightenment. Kottke would have been a millionaire if his best friend had given him any stock options.
2. "I was on a plane going to a user group club in Fort Lauderdale to promote the Mac...Andy Hertzfeld [another Apple developer] had just read "Zap!", a book about Atari which said that Steve Jobs designed Breakout. I explained to him that we both worked on it and got paid $700. Andy corrected me, 'No, it says here it was $5,000.' When I read in the book how Nolan Bushnell had actually paid Steve $5,000, I just cried."
1. "He was arrogant, outrageous, intense, demanding -- a perfectionist. He was also immature, fragile, sensitive, vulnerable. He was dynamic, visionary, charismatic, yet often stubborn, uncompromising, and downright impossible."
-- John Sculley, former Apple CEO, from Sculley's book 'Odyssey,' p. 157. Jobs resigned from Apple during Sculley's tenure.
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5. "Hey, Steve, just because you broke into Xerox's house before I did and took the TV doesn't mean I can't go in later and take the stereo."
-- Bill Gates, responding to Jobs' complaint that the Windows GUI looks way too much like the Mac's (MacWeek, March 14, 1989). Gates was referencing Apple's theft of the computer GUI idea from Xerox PARC's ALTO computer.
4. "Jobs hated the idea [of the Mac]. He ran around saying, 'No! No! It'll never work.' He was one of the Macintosh's hardest critics and he was always putting it down at board meetings. When he became convinced that it would work, and that it would be an exciting new product, he started to take over...He was dead set against the Macintosh for the first two years. He said it was the dumbest thing on earth and that it would never sell. When he decided to take it over, he told everybody that he had invented it."
-- Jef Raskin, in "Accidental Millionaire." p.136-137. Raskin was the lead developer of the Mac. Raskin also noted: "[Jobs] would immediately poo-poo [your] idea, then a week later, he'd come back and say, 'Hey, I've got a great idea!' The idea that he gave back to you was your own. We called him the Reality Distortion Field." ("Accidental Millionaire," p. 138)
3. "I kept asking Steve about stock options and he would always put me off, saying that I had to talk to my supervisors. I found out a couple of years later that Jobs was the head of the Compensation Committee in charge of distributing options."
-- Dan Kotte, an Apple technician and employee #12. Kotte was Jobs' best friend at Reed College and traveled to India with him in search of enlightenment. Kottke would have been a millionaire if his best friend had given him any stock options.
2. "I was on a plane going to a user group club in Fort Lauderdale to promote the Mac...Andy Hertzfeld [another Apple developer] had just read "Zap!", a book about Atari which said that Steve Jobs designed Breakout. I explained to him that we both worked on it and got paid $700. Andy corrected me, 'No, it says here it was $5,000.' When I read in the book how Nolan Bushnell had actually paid Steve $5,000, I just cried."
1. "He was arrogant, outrageous, intense, demanding -- a perfectionist. He was also immature, fragile, sensitive, vulnerable. He was dynamic, visionary, charismatic, yet often stubborn, uncompromising, and downright impossible."
-- John Sculley, former Apple CEO, from Sculley's book 'Odyssey,' p. 157. Jobs resigned from Apple during Sculley's tenure.
Experiences during a fair
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stox
