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Emphasis on the short term. Look at Apple's top team. The people at the top are all incredible. I'd guess some of them are just as anal and headstrong as Jobs h
by unalone 18y ago
Emphasis on the short term. Look at Apple's top team. The people at the top are all incredible. I'd guess some of them are just as anal and headstrong as Jobs himself is. If Jobs dies, Apple goes on, probably more-or-less the same as it did before. It'll just find a new evangelist, and Apple absolutely has them to offer.
This wasn't about sacrifice for the company. This isn't Jobs working a week without sleeping to get a product launched, or his leaving his own company because he thought it was going downhill. This was rumormongering. Jobs had a history of cancer, so people thought the worst; while that's partly understandable, the people who accused him needed to assume that Jobs was enough of a dick to just not tell people about a life-threatening disease for short-term growth. This continued after Jobs called that one reporter, insulted him, and then promised to tell him about his health condition off the book.
As such, it's pretty shameful that Jobs had to come out and tell everybody about the state of his health. Media types, even tech media types, care more about a dramatic narrative than they do about accurate reporting, and that showed itself here.
- mixmax 18y agoI'm not so sure. Last time he was ousted from the company it dodn't go well at all...
- unalone 18y agoNot well for him or for Apple? Jobs will go to extremes for his sense of justice. He could have stayed at Apple the first time, but he quit instead to make a new company that did what he felt he ought to do.
- mixmax 18y agofor apple
- chollida1 18y ago> He could have stayed at Apple the first time Really? In John Scully's biography he made it clear that Steve was told he would have to leave in no uncertain terms, by both the board and John Scully. They wouldn't even allow him to stay as the janitor because John couldn't trust that Steve wouldn't go around undermining him.
- sutro 18y agoFor an Apple fanboy you're not very well-versed in Apple history.
- unalone 18y agoNo, I'm not. I got a Mac about 6 months ago, and while I read things I find interesting about the company, I don't go out of my way to read biographies and the like. So from what I'd read, Jobs was demoted and he chose to quit rather than stay at his position.
- sutro 18y agoYou don't have to go out of your way to read biographies. In Jobs' Stanford commencement speech, discussed and linked many times here on HN, he talks about being "fired" from Apple. He also discusses it in Cringely's "Triumph of the Nerds" documentary. Given that Jobs himself publicly acknowledges that he was fired, I'd be interested to know what it is you read that claims otherwise.
- unalone 18y agoBut then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. That I always assumed meant he left for something else, but rereading I can see that he does specifically say fired. Huh! I don't know where I got the impression that he left voluntarily, though it's one that I've had for a while now.