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June 19, 2007

people

Steve Jobs, box lunch

Posted Jun. 19, ’07, 7:31 AM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Apple » People

New York MagNew York Magazine has a rather lengthy article about the man, the legend, Steve Jobs. John Heilemann writes about the many aspects of the man that started and saved Apple on 8 individual web pages. As a side note, I’d like to request major news outlets to stop segmenting articles, or at the very least, offer a one page version. Clicking in the middle of a read is distracting and makes me unlikely to finish before I get disgusted.

I did find one paragraph particularly entertaining.

The consistent thread running through all three acts is Jobs’s singular persona. His messianism has been present from the start: “He always believed,” says Wozniak, “he was going to be a leader of mankind.” Yet the most common descriptor applied to him, by friends and foes and even Jobs himself, is “ass**.” (Running neck-and-neck for second are “genius” and “sociopath.”) His abrasiveness is legendary and omnidirectional. Asked by a writer from Wired, “If you could go back and give advice to your 25-year-old self, what would you say?,” Jobs erupted, “Not to deal with stupid interviews—I have no time for this philosophical bull****!” Given an early glimpse of the Segway high-tech people-mover, he bellowed, “I think it sucks,” then later called the company’s founder, trashed his CEO as a “butthead,” and said his marketing chief “should be selling Kleenex at a discount store in Idaho.” Implored by the government to take part in the federal antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, he snapped at the United States assistant attorney general, Joel Klein, “Are you going to do something serious? Or is it going to be dickless?”

Maybe FSJ isn’t so far off and the Steve Jobs we saw on stage with Billy G wasn’t the real man. Start the robot clone rumor mill up!


6 Comments

Andre Da Costa said:

Actually, he looks more like John Mcenroe these days, they could past for twins.

June 19, 2007 9:01 AM
Neil Desai said:

just press the print this button and you can view the entire article at once

June 19, 2007 9:04 AM
Dan Wesnor said:

I would like to nominate the first paragraph of the cited article as "Most Pretentious Paragraph ever".

June 19, 2007 9:46 AM
Dave-O said:

Wasn't Jobs the one who raved that the Segway would change the way cities are designed?

Other than that, I like all those quotes.

June 19, 2007 11:43 AM
Walt said:

@Dave-O: yeah, he was, but I think his slam was not towards the segway, but rather the way in which it was marketed. You can have the best thing in the world, but if you're lacking in the marketing department, it can make a huge differene. Maybe that would have made a difference. Who knows. Not I.

June 19, 2007 1:39 PM
Island in the Net Author Profile Page said:

Steve is right. The Segway is a stupid idea. What's wrong with two legs? And if I don't have two legs I can't use a Segway anyway.

June 20, 2007 6:44 AM

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