Steve Jobs: a legacy of faults?

(Sources of information index on the last page)

Now, Steve was a marketing genius. He knew what the consumers wanted, and by the time
all the good stuff (iPad, iPod, iPhone) were coming out, he also had the technical experience to know
what technologies and programming languages were escalating in convenience and popularity, as
well as the ones that weren’t. In one letter (titled ‘Thoughts about Flash), addressed to Adobe Flash,
he savagely ended this common software and listed out rational reasons with proof to back his data
up. And he was right, the use of Adobe Flash deteriorated drastically from then on. Adobe Flash was
officially discontinued in 2020, 12 or so years later.

Anyone who reads between the lines will also understand, that a team is required to collect
all of this data, and after watching 2, hour long interviews, which took place after the 2010 decision
was made to not use Adobe Flash anymore, I have noticed that not once in each of these interviews
has Steve Jobs mentioned anyone regarding this. It seemed as if he wanted all the credit for himself.
To further my claim, at the end of his letter about Adobe Flash, he signed off as ‘Steve Jobs 2010’,
with no mention of anyone else. You can tell me I’m reading too much into this, but many people
like me have observed this same phenomenon of Steve not giving credit where it’s due.

In fact, not giving credit seems to have been his main leadership fault. Steve Wozniak (Woz
by short), is actually a highly underrated figure. Especially since he is the main reason Apple even
started as a company in the first place. (And yes, two Steve’s started Apple together, just a day in the
life, nothing new…) Woz made a computer called Apple-1. Steve saw it and saw it as a business
opportunity, a venture per say. And while the product did fail tremendously, it did create more talk
about the company. Not enough talk, but still… talk. Woz created the next few products too and
they all failed. But my point being, not enough attention, not enough credit was given to him and its
Steve Jobs never addressed this. Perhaps because Steve enjoyed 100% of the credit...

All of this given, I don’t think he was necessarily terrible at his job. He put forward so many
revolutionary decisions for Apple that they practically cancel out all his bad traits. Except for one
problem, now I feel worried that some of his revolutionary decisions weren’t exactly his. For
example, Jonathan Ive frequently got door matted by Steve and didn’t get credit for his designs. And
while Steve Jobs is the CEO and obviously most of the credit goes to him, the problem here is that he
says absolutely nothing about him in many a times. So even if legally the credit goes to Jonathan Ive
and it’s all there for the public to view, Steve still said nothing which tricked the masses into
believing he created the design for the iPod, iPhone and iMac G8 etc.

The list goes on and it’s much too much to talk about in one sitting. But as a summary, two
truths have come out of this collection. One, Steve Jobs loved credit and honestly seemed like an
arrogant person. Two, he was a genius and could give people exactly what they wanted before they
even knew they wanted it. From what I’ve gathered I’d say that rather than being a genius about
what gadgets the public wanted, I think he knew what the public wanted to do and what kind of
features they were missing from their lives. I respect that. Many modern-day technologies evolved
from that brain of his and although I don’t exactly enjoy his bully side, I’ll never discredit that
marketing genius of his.

-Mrittika Bandyopadhyay
8a caie
SOURCES INDEX *not in order of information given

https://www.creativebloq.com/features/jony-ive-design-best-worst

https://www.quora.com/Is-Steve-Jobs-the-greatest-CEO-of-all-time-Why-or-why-not

https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-would-annoy-jony-ive-by-taking-credit-for-his-design-work-2011-10

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dangerous-legacy-steve-jobs-what-you-must-do-leader-vivek-singh

https://bgr.com/tech/steve-jobs-iphone-adobe-flash-testing/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5f8bqYYwps&t=389s (video link: 2010 ‘All things digital’ D8 conference)

https://www.scoopwhoop.com/other-steve-cofounder-apple/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85PMSYAguZ8 (video link: 2007 ‘All things digital’ D8 conference featuring Bill Gates)