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Comment by smaili | Hacker News Reader

For those thinking "What about Jobs?", the article actually alludes to it at the end:

> On a historical note, Cook's predecessor Steve Jobs actually had a private jet all his own: Apple gifted it to him in 2000, a few years after he came back to the company in 1996, as a thank-you present for turning around the company. Apple actually reimbursed Jobs for any time he had to take the jet out for business purposes.

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When he's "gifted" a private jet. Are they literally giving him a plane or does that just mean they'll pay for the use of a chartered private jet?

Apparently it was literally gifting him an airplane.

> After Jobs' death, Apple's design chief, Jony Ive, purchased that jet, with Ive said to have quipped "at least I don't have to redesign anything."

Sounds like they actually gave him a jet. If they just chartered a private jet for him whenever, they wouldn't reimburse him every time he used it for business purposes.

Amazing to imagine that a non-personal use of the plane would require the company to reimburse me!

Rich people don't charter jets because it may not be available when you need it.

I've seen people who are not even nearly as rich as Jobs own two jets, and there are a lot of them in SJC.

Jobs had his own jet (now owned by Jony Ive https://www.cultofmac.com/296364/jony-ive-now-owns-steve-job... )

> Are they literally giving him a plane or does that just mean they'll pay for the use of a chartered private jet?

The former is in almost all cases cheaper than the latter. Fuel, pilots, landing charges, storage, maintenance, et cetera are the expensive parts of plane ownership.

Plus I imagine he has to pay tax on the gift. Sounds expensive. I'll stick to chartering quadrotors.

The mention of "reimbursement" would indicate that it was a real gift.

well I always thought that it was gifted to him, since he actually worked for 1 symbolic dollar over a certain period of time?

They "gifted" it? What's wrong with the word "gave"?

"Gave" misses the subtleties of "gifted". There's a reason that English has lots of words that almost mean the same thing.

Right. You could say that your employer "gave" you a cubicle or a parking spot, but that would not imply that the cube or the parking spot actually became your personal property.

It’s ambiguous: gave as in reserved a company asset for his use or gifted it to him personally?

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