I was there when Scully "took over", and can tell you from firsthand experience that Steve Jobs was the young, rebellious entrepreneur whose startup had grown far beyond his experience (or interest at the time). Scully may have been the only man in Silicon Valley with the guts to push Steve out, and Steve knew that it needed to happen. He couldn't, because Apple was his baby - he needed someone to give him that last shove.

You mean NeXT, the company he sold back to Apple for $400 million dollars?

I would argue that the majority of design flops from Apple in the past twenty years were more Jony Ive than Steve Jobs, based on history and design style. That said yeah not every idea the man had was rock solid, but comparing Steve Jobs to Elon Musk is laughable.

Elon was wealthier than 95% of the people in the United States, the second he was born. He's been playing with a stacked deck this whole time.

Whenever someone says "oh so-and-so is so successful" only two questions enter my mind:

1. where did they start? 2. how much help did they get along the way?

I would argue that in Elon's case he's been successful despite himself.