Decoding Steve Jobs, in Life and on Film

I'm sad that he died, eapecially so young and by delaying treatment that could have improved his prognosis. But one thing I'm beginning to appreciate is that the reality distortion field is sort of fading away. Wozniak has stepped up and talked more frankly about Jobs's real role inside Apple, especially during the early days. And increasingly though he is still regarded as a Leonardo among product managers, people are recognizing that Jobs was a control freak and that technical people do not want to live in his locked down, curated universe.

So we mourn, but we also feel free to acknowledge things after his death that we stifled while he was still alive for fear of our hero losing his glamour and being less of a guiding light.

> That's not a bad thing, by the way. I think there's something human and basically nourishing about thinking about strangers as people, and constructing even a fabricated, artificial form of empathy for what they and their loved ones are going through. That those emotions have no practical connection to the world we live in is irrelevant.

But the Steve Jobs persona, you describe how it was built in the previous paragraphs, was not a stranger to anyone. The whole Apple marketing team and Jobs built that. He's less a stranger than some people you meet everyday on a commute.

"We mourn people we feel a connection with, because of the pain we feel at losing the connection."

Large groups also mourn because (for lack of a better way to put it) a crowd effect. There are people who are impacted for sure but then there are people who will come along for the grief ride that really wouldn't care if their friends didn't drop the idea and the importance into their head. Or if there wasn't a great deal of media coverage which stokes the grief.

Steve Jobs was relatively young when he died. He had finally turned Apple around and probably would have led Apple for at least two more decades. Wonder where a guy who cared so much about product would have taken us?

If he were 90 years old, the loss would have felt a lot less impactful.

Also, this is the guy who really made a dent in the universe. While HP was founded in a garage, the Apple Garage is the story people know. He lead passionate and talented people for many years to create or fundamentally transform significant industries and inventions-- everything from the GUI, the Laser Printer to the phone were hugely impacted by teams he lead... not to mention NeXT and the first real object oriented operating system.

By the way, I worked at Microsoft on an object oriented operating system at the same time that Steve was leading NeXT. Microsofts effort was cancelled because it was a threat to windows, but I can say, having worked with both NeXT did it right, and microsoft totally missed the mark-- that's because of Steve inspiring innovation, as opposed to Bill Gates controlling engineering-- two very different styles of management.

I mourn Steve because he was a great guy, a nice guy, and a true leader. There hasn't been another on par with him in the tech industry... interestingly the closest possible people to reach this same stature are Tim Cook and Elon Musk. One was taught by Steve and the other is another very unique light.

"Steve Jobs never raised a hand against his wife. But, he did treat subordinates very callously."

Part of it might be simply that people don't recognize mental pain as being as bad as physical pain. [1] The truth is mental pain can last a great deal longer and have much greater impact than physical pain but that is often not the way the world sees things.

[1] Not that getting hit by a spouse doeesn't cause mental pain of course.

You might dismiss Sorkin but Wozniak's approval is significant: http://www.cnet.com/news/woz-aaron-sorkins-steve-jobs-movie-...

Update

I guess I'm guilty of not realizing there are two different people named Sorkin working on a Steve Jobs movie.

Too funny! Both Apple and Microsoft have huge PR teams. Apple's is relentlessly effective at creating product awe; Microsoft's not so much. Both Jobs and Gates lived the lives they wanted and talked to the media as they saw fit. The results speak for themselves.

If you look at billionaires' standing in the course of American history -- going back to John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford -- they always end up with a tangled blend of admiration and loathing. In the end, PR has surprisingly little impact. There's always plenty of achievement to satisfy the fans; plenty of villainy to justify the critics.

Bill Gates is also seen as a "good guy" because he's spent the last decade of his life eradicating Polio in developing nations.

Steve btw has "retarded" the ebook industry, built up "closed gardens" across the application universe, and has prevented the iOS from ever receiving 3rd party hardware upgrades by design.

Bill Gates may have been ruthless ruling the 90s with Word and Windows... but even he was significantly more open than Apple ever was with their iPhone.

Your perspective on this seems skewed. We have never stopped hearing about how "evil" Microsoft was. Microsoft is a company most people love to hate. There are not any movies painting Bill Gates as an inspired, messianic product visionary. Apple used monopolistic practices many times itself, but this is rarely discussed.

There would not be much backlash against Steve Jobs if he had not been beatified by a brand-loyalty cult as the Design Messiah Who Changed Everything. That story was written by Apple, and now nobody can get away from it. There are plenty of other execs who made piles of cash selling widgets that were slightly different from other widgets, but we don't develop strong opinions about those guys because we never have to hear about them.