Steve could be pretty thin-skinned when someone prominent criticized the aesthetics of his products. He took great umbrage that Neil would, as Steve put it, “pop off in public like that without coming to talk to us about his technical concerns first.” From that point on he had rebuffed all of Neil’s attempts to smoke the peace pipe. 有趣 He had blind spots, grating behavioral habits, and a tendency to give in to emotional impulse that persisted his entire life. These characteristics are often used to make the case that Steve was an “asshole” or a “jerk,” or perhaps simply “binary”—that odd adjective often used to convey the sense that he was half asshole/half genius from birth to death. These aren’t useful, interesting, or enlightening descriptions. What’s more illuminating is to take a look at the specific ways in which Steve failed to do an effective job of tempering some of his weaknesses and antisocial traits, and to consider how, when, and why some of them continued to flare up even...
Live in the future and make something insanely great.