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Comment by BLKNSLVR | Hacker News Reader

There's no question in my mind that having kids gets in the way of single-minded vision that's required of the kind of career success that Jobs had.

It's unfortunate, but the reality is that having kids and actually caring for them in a way that gives the best chance to turn them into good, undamaged human beings requires a massive amount of attention that would heavily distract from lofty career goals.

If the drive for career success is strong enough, kids will be resented and treated as such. It sucks, and they probably shouldn't have had kids in the first place, but the biological imperative is incredibly difficult to overcome.

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Being absent for work is different than being cruel.

As a counterpoint I would highlight Buffet, Branson, and others who have managed to fulfill their obligations to the next generation without failing to dominate their industries.

There is no excuse for cruelty to children, doubly so when they are your own. Jobs was an asshole because he was an asshole, not because he was driven.

Have you read the article? He didn't just ignore her. He combined periods where he ignored her with periods of caring only to hurt her in dark ways.

> Once, she says, as Jobs groped his wife and pretended to be having sex with her, he demanded that Brennan-Jobs stay in the room, calling it a "family moment." He repeatedly withheld money from her, told her that she would get "nothing" from his wealth — and even refused to install heat in her bedroom.

This isn't just a career driven person

It's all very nuanced, but to put it overly bluntly: career-orientation is about power and control and self image. My understanding is that it's all mental illness related behavior.

Happy to be disagreed with, it's just my experience of the world.

The guy had issues, and "driven to build a company" was not the cause.

Ironic that he blamed his biological father for abandoning him, and then tried really, really hard to do the same to his daughter.

She wasn't a product of "trying to have kids". It just happened, and he denied she was his daughter for years.

Jobs was an IT guy, perhaps a good one, but that didn't give him the right to treat anyone the way he did.

The worshipping is completely out of line.

To be clear, I'm no worshipper, nor Apple fanboi. In fact, I try to avoid that ecosystem entirely.

I'm a praiser of good parents and good people and Steve was definitively neither, it would seem.

> There's no question in my mind that having kids gets in the way of single-minded vision that's required of the kind of career success that Jobs had.

It's a common misconception because so many psychopaths become examples of "successful businessmen" but they're not successful PEOPLE. Steve's arrogance literally killed him, his insistence he knew better than everyone made him ignore his cancer until it was too late.

No one should try to be the next Steve Jobs. Be better than he was, better to your family, better to your employees, better to your friends. There's no one Steve didn't try to screw at some point. That's not success.

When Jobs was alive I could still play YouTube videos with my screen locked, I could listen to music with a set of conventional headphones, and iOS did not yet suffer from the storage bug.

So, the trains ran on time?

The implication being that Steve Jobs was the leader of a genocidal regime and I am his supporter?

> When Jobs was alive I could still play YouTube videos with my screen locked

I still can today. It's background mode, part of Youtube Premium.

> I could listen to music with a set of conventional headphones

You can still do that, too. USB-C to headphone adapters are easy to use and cheap. Lots of folks complain about the lack of headphone jacks, but if you have a cable from your headphones, 4 more inches for the adapter at the end is not a problem.

> and iOS did not yet suffer from the storage bug.

No but when he was alive it had lots of other bugs.

And Steve was still not a great person. So for all these allowances, we can't rewrite history.

> I still can today. It's background mode, part of Youtube Premium.

If you’re trying to make the case that things are just as good under Tim Cook as they were under Jobs, paywalling commonly-used features behind a monthly subscription is not an argument in your favor.

> You can still do that, too. USB-C to headphone adapters are easy to use and cheap.

Using an adapter means I can’t charge the device while I’m using headphones. It’s also pointlessly cumbersome.

> If you’re trying to make the case that things are just as good under Tim Cook as they were under Jobs,

I never made such an argument.

> paywalling commonly-used features behind a monthly subscription is not an argument in your favor.

Blame Paypal, not Apple. Apple's to blame for plenty anyway.

> Using an adapter means I can’t charge the device while I’m using headphones. It’s also pointlessly cumbersome.

It's not cumbersome AT ALL if you're already carrying headphones. Many phones charge wirelessly so you CAN charge them while using a USB-C headphone adapter.

Typo: Blame Youtube not Apple.

> It's not cumbersome AT ALL if you're already carrying headphones. Many phones charge wirelessly so you CAN charge them while using a USB-C headphone adapter.

You are being willfully obtuse.

I am never willfully obtuse. It's an asshole move.

In this case I GENUINELY do not see how it's cumbersome at all. I've done it. I used cell phones before they used the standard headphone jack, and tended to use the smaller trrs with a Y adapter to breakout mic from output, even that didn't bother me, I left it attached to the headset I sued with those devices. I find the wired part the most cumbersome, so the addition of 3 inches of cable for the adapter never made even the tiniest difference to me. I moved to Bluetooth very early.

Look at this: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/mw2q3am/a/usb-c-to-35-mm-...

It's 3 inches, 5 grams of weight, and it stays attached to the end of the headphone cord. It's a joke to say carrying this along with a wired headphone/earphone is cumbersome.

Excusing abusive parenting because he prioritize career over child rearing is pretty awful.

I'm in no way attempting to do that. I live my life in the opposite manner, I have two great kids (that are my lifetime greatest achievement) and a "career" that pays the bills that I could totally take or leave (pending the ability to pay the bills).

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