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According to Wozniak, Jobs told him that Atari gave them only $700 (instead of the offered $5,000), and that Wozniak's share was thus $350.[65] Wozniak did not

According to Wozniak, Jobs told him that Atari gave them only $700 (instead of the offered $5,000), and that Wozniak's share was thus $350.[65] Wozniak did not learn about the actual bonus until ten years later, but said that if Jobs had told him about it and had said he needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him.[66] --- End of story. Before continuing celebrating Jobs, ask yourself a question, do you want to promote that kind of behavior in the Valley?

lightyrs 12y ago
I agree with you on principle, however, the story does not end here. Woz himself said the following: "What Steve does on the good side — like the music scenario [in which] we didn't bring just a music device called the iPod, we brought a whole music system: a store that sells it, a computer that manages and organizes it. And an iPod is just a satellite to your computer. Plug it in and it works. You don't have to do anything. You've got to admire Steve for that kind of thinking. Nobody's perfect. [Everybody is] going to have cases where they did something bad to somebody, said something nasty to them and maybe regret it later." Specifically: "[Everybody is] going to have cases where they did something bad to somebody, said something nasty to them and maybe regret it later." I think that's a more enlightened point of view. Source: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/steve-wozniak-on-apple-steve-jobs-and-the-value-of-a-good-prank/ http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/steve-wozniak-on-...
- throwaway7548 12y ago
  I agree with you absolutely. If you are yourself encountering lies and nastiness from your partners, an enlightened way would be trying to understand them. And forgive. But my point was different. We just can't afford to celebrate lies. It is very very very harmful.
  - lightyrs 12y ago
    Agreed.
  - jballanc 12y ago
    If you think Steve is the only person in the Valley to have lied to a business partner...I have a bridge that might interest you. As for the specific event in question (the Atari money), do we know what Steve did with the extra money? Seems to me, maybe he really did need it (for rent/food/etc.) and was too ashamed to ask Woz for the extra. Maybe he figured he would re-invest it, and that it was easier to do behind Woz's back than to try and explain his plans. Steve was no saint, but in my experience he was generally a nice guy. He also thought he knew better than everyone else, and so it would not be unusual for him to leave out explanations, make snap judgements, and be rather brusque in general (when dealing with business decisions). Why should he have to explain himself when he was obviously right? I'm sure it didn't help that the world so often (especially toward the end) only reinforced the notion that he knew better than everyone else...
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - kaoD 12y ago
      > If you think Steve is the only person in the Valley to have lied to a business partner So, if someone else did it too, it's somehow not that bad? Great world to live in.
  - aaronem 12y ago
    I don't believe I have seen anyone, now or previously, saying anything like "Oh, and talk about business acumen -- look at the way Jobs soaked his old buddy Wozniak out of four and a half grand that one time!" There's a vast difference between what you call "celebrating lies", and celebrating the life and work of a man who, while every bit as human as anyone else and with feet of clay to match, was nevertheless possessed of the sort of visionary genius which comes along perhaps half a dozen times in a generation. Certainly Steve Jobs could be, and was, a real revolving bastard from time to time. But so can everyone; people are complicated and they don't always behave in ways which others regard as preferable, sensible, or nice. If you're going to require sainthood as a prerequisite for honoring the accomplishments of a historical figure, I suppose that's your prerogative, but I suspect you'll find it a lonely stance to take, and I think it's strange you should utter it in the same breath as a word like "enlightened". Have you heard the one about the blind men and the elephant?
- collyw 12y ago
  Fair point, but I generally seem to hear a lot of negative stuff about Steves personality. Sure give someone a second chance, but by the time they are on their tenth chance you have to start thinking differently.
- Dewie 12y ago
  I still don't see the big deal with iTunes and iPod's. ipod is a great product, but there is no real killer feature; "plug it in and it just works", yes, if you have iTunes. Meanwhile, plug in any decent mp3 player of that time\* and it Just Works, assuming you just have a file system - drog and drop the files you want into the mp3 player. Maybe you could say that ipods with itunes is simpler than dragging and dropping like that. Though I don't see much of a diffrerence; drag and drop is a common action in Windows and the like. In order to selectively add files to your ipod you'd need to learn to drag and drop... in iTunes. iTunes is an okay-to-annoying program, at least on Windows. I've bought music on itunes that I have to "enable" on every new PC I might use. The last time I tried it dodn't even work. I ve bought an audio book that I have never been allowed to even play! iTunes can't (or couldn't) even compete with pirated media, not by a long shot. \* let's say when mp3 players had a capacity that actually made them worthile, maybe as small a capacity as 256MB, or 512 and more.
  - Tloewald 12y ago
    Congratulations on being oblivious to user experience twenty years after even Microsoft got it.
    - Dewie 12y ago
      I am a user. Am I oblivious to my own experience? :)
      - ceejayoz 12y ago
        A HN user's idea of "user friendly" likely varies from the average.
        Dewie 12y ago
        If anything I'm less technical than most HN users. I certainly was back when the ipod was new-ish. I was probably more technical than the average user at the time, though. I gave concrete examples of the usability of the ipod. I would like it if people argued against those points, rather than some smartass, sarcastic response like the grandparent.
- Dewie 12y ago
  > "[Everybody is] going to have cases where they did something bad to somebody, said something nasty to them and maybe regret it later." > I think that's a more enlightened point of view. This kind of argument is weak. It's just a bland kind of truism that everyone can agree with that is unrelated to the original argument - when someone says that some one is a bad person, there is an implicit comparison to most people, ie the "badness" of a person is a relative one. Then bringing up some kind of absolute quality - perfection - is just trying to distract from the original argument.
  - arrrg 12y ago
    But you can’t just name one bad thing a person did and say they are a bad person, no more discussion about it. That just makes no sense at all. It’s such a minor thing, too. His wage fixing together with Google and other companies is much more recent, relevant and much worse. At the very least Steve Jobs was an intensely interesting person. I don’t think characterising him as a bad person makes much sense. This is such a simple-minded worldview.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  Not everyone is going to have regrets about stealing from friends. Wozniak is just being generous.
melling 12y ago
Hasn't this story been told on HN many times? https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Wozniak+jobs#!/all/forever/0/Wozniak%20jobs%20atari https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Wozniak+jobs#!/all/forever/0/Wozni... Maybe we can find a better way rather than create a throwaway account and rehashing the same thread?
nnq 12y ago
It's good to remember this story too, because it shows that he was also a ruthless businessman, no matter how much effort he put into convincing everyone that this part was not "the real him". And it's not a bad thing, it's part of the "whole truth" about someone and about how you need to be in order to succeed. And the fact that you need to be like that is not something that one should "sweep under the rug" or present as a "minor part of an otherwise great personality", because it does show you something: that at some level something is very wrong with the system and as much as we like to believe otherwise, fairness and success are a bit like having the cake and eating it too ...something that rarely happens.
- 72deluxe 12y ago
  Does "ruthless businessman" ===== "liar"? So to be a great businessman, I just have to lie to people that help me, right? I suppose it would revolve around what people think "success" is - if it means lying to others and abandonment of morals for personal gain, then that's a very sad definition of "success".
  - thecage411 12y ago
    He who dies with the most stuff wins.
    - 72deluxe 12y ago
      And can't take it with him Haha strange human race
    - nnq 12y ago
      The "stuff" is still there, in the company, allowing people to be employed for doing stuff they really like doing and to create more stuff... it's not as if he sold all his shares, converted it to gold and buried half of it in his tomb under a pyramid and left the other half of the gold to his children. At least in 2000+ years we got to the level of social/human evolution where "the stuff" keeps flowing :)
  - nnq 12y ago
marknutter 12y ago
The freaking Atari anecdote. If there ever is a thread about Jobs on Hacker News where someone doesn't mention it I will shit my pants.
rbanffy 12y ago
You can admire Jobs for the good things he did while acknowledging the bad things. We are all human, all fallible, even our heroes. Sometimes, it's our bad deeds of the past that propel us towards the good deeds of later. Does that moment fully describe Jobs' life? Does his initial denial of his daughter Lisa describe his later relationship with her? I am sure not. Humans are not simple creatures.

lightyrs 12y ago

I agree with you on principle, however, the story does not end here. Woz himself said the following: "What Steve does on the good side — like the music scenario [in which] we didn't bring just a music device called the iPod, we brought a whole music system: a store that sells it, a computer that manages and organizes it. And an iPod is just a satellite to your computer. Plug it in and it works. You don't have to do anything. You've got to admire Steve for that kind of thinking. Nobody's perfect. [Everybody is] going to have cases where they did something bad to somebody, said something nasty to them and maybe regret it later." Specifically: "[Everybody is] going to have cases where they did something bad to somebody, said something nasty to them and maybe regret it later." I think that's a more enlightened point of view. Source: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/steve-wozniak-on-apple-steve-jobs-and-the-value-of-a-good-prank/ http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/steve-wozniak-on-...

throwaway7548 12y ago
I agree with you absolutely. If you are yourself encountering lies and nastiness from your partners, an enlightened way would be trying to understand them. And forgive. But my point was different. We just can't afford to celebrate lies. It is very very very harmful.
- lightyrs 12y ago
  Agreed.
- jballanc 12y ago
  If you think Steve is the only person in the Valley to have lied to a business partner...I have a bridge that might interest you. As for the specific event in question (the Atari money), do we know what Steve did with the extra money? Seems to me, maybe he really did need it (for rent/food/etc.) and was too ashamed to ask Woz for the extra. Maybe he figured he would re-invest it, and that it was easier to do behind Woz's back than to try and explain his plans. Steve was no saint, but in my experience he was generally a nice guy. He also thought he knew better than everyone else, and so it would not be unusual for him to leave out explanations, make snap judgements, and be rather brusque in general (when dealing with business decisions). Why should he have to explain himself when he was obviously right? I'm sure it didn't help that the world so often (especially toward the end) only reinforced the notion that he knew better than everyone else...
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - kaoD 12y ago
    > If you think Steve is the only person in the Valley to have lied to a business partner So, if someone else did it too, it's somehow not that bad? Great world to live in.
- aaronem 12y ago
  I don't believe I have seen anyone, now or previously, saying anything like "Oh, and talk about business acumen -- look at the way Jobs soaked his old buddy Wozniak out of four and a half grand that one time!" There's a vast difference between what you call "celebrating lies", and celebrating the life and work of a man who, while every bit as human as anyone else and with feet of clay to match, was nevertheless possessed of the sort of visionary genius which comes along perhaps half a dozen times in a generation. Certainly Steve Jobs could be, and was, a real revolving bastard from time to time. But so can everyone; people are complicated and they don't always behave in ways which others regard as preferable, sensible, or nice. If you're going to require sainthood as a prerequisite for honoring the accomplishments of a historical figure, I suppose that's your prerogative, but I suspect you'll find it a lonely stance to take, and I think it's strange you should utter it in the same breath as a word like "enlightened". Have you heard the one about the blind men and the elephant?
collyw 12y ago
Fair point, but I generally seem to hear a lot of negative stuff about Steves personality. Sure give someone a second chance, but by the time they are on their tenth chance you have to start thinking differently.
Dewie 12y ago
I still don't see the big deal with iTunes and iPod's. ipod is a great product, but there is no real killer feature; "plug it in and it just works", yes, if you have iTunes. Meanwhile, plug in any decent mp3 player of that time\* and it Just Works, assuming you just have a file system - drog and drop the files you want into the mp3 player. Maybe you could say that ipods with itunes is simpler than dragging and dropping like that. Though I don't see much of a diffrerence; drag and drop is a common action in Windows and the like. In order to selectively add files to your ipod you'd need to learn to drag and drop... in iTunes. iTunes is an okay-to-annoying program, at least on Windows. I've bought music on itunes that I have to "enable" on every new PC I might use. The last time I tried it dodn't even work. I ve bought an audio book that I have never been allowed to even play! iTunes can't (or couldn't) even compete with pirated media, not by a long shot. \* let's say when mp3 players had a capacity that actually made them worthile, maybe as small a capacity as 256MB, or 512 and more.
- Tloewald 12y ago
  Congratulations on being oblivious to user experience twenty years after even Microsoft got it.
  - Dewie 12y ago
    I am a user. Am I oblivious to my own experience? :)
    - ceejayoz 12y ago
      A HN user's idea of "user friendly" likely varies from the average.
      - Dewie 12y ago
        If anything I'm less technical than most HN users. I certainly was back when the ipod was new-ish. I was probably more technical than the average user at the time, though. I gave concrete examples of the usability of the ipod. I would like it if people argued against those points, rather than some smartass, sarcastic response like the grandparent.
Dewie 12y ago
> "[Everybody is] going to have cases where they did something bad to somebody, said something nasty to them and maybe regret it later." > I think that's a more enlightened point of view. This kind of argument is weak. It's just a bland kind of truism that everyone can agree with that is unrelated to the original argument - when someone says that some one is a bad person, there is an implicit comparison to most people, ie the "badness" of a person is a relative one. Then bringing up some kind of absolute quality - perfection - is just trying to distract from the original argument.
- arrrg 12y ago
  But you can’t just name one bad thing a person did and say they are a bad person, no more discussion about it. That just makes no sense at all. It’s such a minor thing, too. His wage fixing together with Google and other companies is much more recent, relevant and much worse. At the very least Steve Jobs was an intensely interesting person. I don’t think characterising him as a bad person makes much sense. This is such a simple-minded worldview.
pessimizer 12y ago
Not everyone is going to have regrets about stealing from friends. Wozniak is just being generous.

melling 12y ago

Hasn't this story been told on HN many times? https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Wozniak+jobs#!/all/forever/0/Wozniak%20jobs%20atari https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Wozniak+jobs#!/all/forever/0/Wozni... Maybe we can find a better way rather than create a throwaway account and rehashing the same thread?

nnq 12y ago

It's good to remember this story too, because it shows that he was also a ruthless businessman, no matter how much effort he put into convincing everyone that this part was not "the real him". And it's not a bad thing, it's part of the "whole truth" about someone and about how you need to be in order to succeed. And the fact that you need to be like that is not something that one should "sweep under the rug" or present as a "minor part of an otherwise great personality", because it does show you something: that at some level something is very wrong with the system and as much as we like to believe otherwise, fairness and success are a bit like having the cake and eating it too ...something that rarely happens.

72deluxe 12y ago
Does "ruthless businessman" ===== "liar"? So to be a great businessman, I just have to lie to people that help me, right? I suppose it would revolve around what people think "success" is - if it means lying to others and abandonment of morals for personal gain, then that's a very sad definition of "success".
- thecage411 12y ago
  He who dies with the most stuff wins.
  - 72deluxe 12y ago
    And can't take it with him Haha strange human race
  - nnq 12y ago
    The "stuff" is still there, in the company, allowing people to be employed for doing stuff they really like doing and to create more stuff... it's not as if he sold all his shares, converted it to gold and buried half of it in his tomb under a pyramid and left the other half of the gold to his children. At least in 2000+ years we got to the level of social/human evolution where "the stuff" keeps flowing :)
- nnq 12y ago

marknutter 12y ago

The freaking Atari anecdote. If there ever is a thread about Jobs on Hacker News where someone doesn't mention it I will shit my pants.

rbanffy 12y ago

You can admire Jobs for the good things he did while acknowledging the bad things. We are all human, all fallible, even our heroes. Sometimes, it's our bad deeds of the past that propel us towards the good deeds of later. Does that moment fully describe Jobs' life? Does his initial denial of his daughter Lisa describe his later relationship with her? I am sure not. Humans are not simple creatures.