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and i hate to play mr. ceo defender but "a very good businessman who made a lot of money" is selling him rather short, i think. he developed several products that radically changed the paradigm of computing and consumer electronics. that deserves a certain degree of veneration, i think. he didn't get rich by jacking up the price of insulin or dumping chemical waste into rivers or selling petroleum products or developing a human psychology-hacking enterprise to sell ads.
For the pollution thing, the truth is that many of those who got rich polluting the rivers and such actually produced lots of innovation. Plastics fit your description, and I think few things have been more of a paradigm shift than plastics.
I get you with the ads business, but Google made a revolutionary search engine, Amazon disrupted e-commerce. I have a hard time defending Facebook/Meta but they have their fair share of innovation.
Almost all "very good businessman who made a lot of money" actually made great things, that's how you make a lot of money doing business. Though usually, there is a dark side, and Steve Jobs is no exception. You can also make a lot of money just being an asshole, think crime lords, or Martin Shkreli, but it often doesn't end well.
That's the justice system for you.
Humans are complex and when you already changed the course of history by 25 or whatever, you are going to be even more complex.
I don’t idolize Steve Jobs but I do find him to contrast positively against other similar figures like Gates and Ellison. Low bars, I know. But I guess I wanted to defend that people can have a soft spot for Jobs without ever making a dime from any of his endeavors.
And this particular anecdote is the poster child for it.
'Printing out and framing the response' as the daydream reaction to receiving that e-mail is wild, even with the caveats.
So is being asshole to a few thousand employees worse or better than improving life of tens of millions (at least) with great products that they use everyday? Not an easy question to answer. But it's certainly not just about money and shareholder value.
Steve Jobs was deeply loved and respected by his family, friends, and colleagues. People who knew him intimately, who lived and worked with him every day for decades in many cases.