alt Hacker NewsThey were both brilliant, but from everything that I've read, Jobs was an ass****, and Woz was the opposite, and that is a huge, huge difference.
The mythologizing of Jobs is the canonical example of people condoning terrible behavior because they think that a person is smart/valuable/talented/etc.
To me this is completely backwards and sets a terrible precedent - that you can act however you want if you get results - especially given how many people idolize and look up to Jobs.
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Jobs dealt with people and respected the machines. Woz dealt with machines and respected the people.
The other huge, huge difference is that one of the Steves has demonstrated he was able to build a successful product without the other's assistance.
I'm not sure what to believe. I know he was incredibly demanding, and I've heard the stories, but he also inspired a lot of loyalty and commitment from plenty of very talented engineers who were not short of other options.
And still, when it comes to built-in accessibility, Jobs is pretty much famous for his "fuck ROI" statement. He set precedence around 2007, which eventually forced other players like Google and Microsoft to follow. These days, Talkback and Narrator are builtin for both OSes, which is mostly because Apple went there first. This move changed the lifes of a a few million people.
You need both though. You have to accept there are a certain amount of psychopaths in the world, and learn how to manage them
I do wonder if it's possible to be a brilliant marketer, and reach the levels Jobs did, without being an asshole. The core of the profession is learning how to manipulate and use people better than anyone else.