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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 scenar

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 13y 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 13y ago
  Agreed.
- jballanc 13y 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 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - kaoD 13y 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 13y 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 13y 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 13y 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 13y ago
  Congratulations on being oblivious to user experience twenty years after even Microsoft got it.
  - Dewie 13y ago
    I am a user. Am I oblivious to my own experience? :)
    - ceejayoz 13y ago
      A HN user's idea of "user friendly" likely varies from the average.
      - Dewie 13y 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 13y 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 13y 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 13y ago
Not everyone is going to have regrets about stealing from friends. Wozniak is just being generous.

throwaway7548 13y 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 13y ago
Agreed.
jballanc 13y 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 13y ago
  [deleted]
- kaoD 13y 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 13y 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 13y 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 13y 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 13y ago
Congratulations on being oblivious to user experience twenty years after even Microsoft got it.
- Dewie 13y ago
  I am a user. Am I oblivious to my own experience? :)
  - ceejayoz 13y ago
    A HN user's idea of "user friendly" likely varies from the average.
    - Dewie 13y 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 13y 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 13y 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 13y ago

Not everyone is going to have regrets about stealing from friends. Wozniak is just being generous.