[LINK] charity

[Frank O'Connor]

I'm guessing you're talking economic rather than emotional metrics.

Put yourself in Lisa's place ... denied by her father until she hit the age of 10 or 11, after which he grudgingly accepts responsibility. If that didn't scar her I don't know what would.

As for the others ... the list is long and legion of the people who departed Apple after having a spat with Steve. And he had many such spats ... especially in the early days. After the big comeback in 1997 he had reportedly mellowed a lot, but he still appropriated credit for others work (Ives even bitches about that in the book), he was still an abrasive and hyper character who rubbed many many others the wrong way, and he still had many of the same whacked out ideas that he originally left with. After those first few successes however (the iPod and 2nd Generation iMacs) his word became law.

His behaviour and actions with competitors and those he saw as stealing his (not very original) ideas probably set computing back by 10 years ... as is illustrated by his recent attitude to Android (built on top of LINUX), his initial attitude to Windows 95 (built on top of DOS), and Lotus, and a host of other developers and packages Apple has litigated into submission over the years. Apple even went after the developers of GEM (a really cool front end/GUI for DOS that Microsoft should have licensed) that was released prior to the Macintosh in 1982 or 1983. Microsoft was way to big to litigate with ...though Apple did issue writs ... but pretty well everyone else has felt the sting of Apple's lawyers.

Most could have argued 'prior use', 'fair use', 'common use', another copyright holder or whatever ... even before the 'look and feel' suits and stupid US patents on software came into force, and 99% had little or no common code - but they didn't have the money and resources to take it to court, and to risk defeat. Apple knew that most legal actions never make it to litigation ... all they usually had to do was issue writs and the whole damn thing cam crashing down around the defendants ears without ever making to to a judge.

The bottom line is that Steve and Apple have stultified ... with Apple's hyper aggressive legal eagles ...a lot of development and research being conducted by anybody they viewed as a competitor. How much of this was justified and how much wasn't is open for debate. The latest Samsung litigation for example seems to split people down the middle ...

As for charity ... there Steve and Apple are getting a bum wrap. In 1997 as a savings measure, Jobs did halt all Apple donations to charity ... hey, the company was close to collapse ... but these resumed again in 2000 with Apple becoming the largest single donator to Product Red (AIDs, Malaria and Tuberculosis programs around the world) and a couple of other international charities and sustainable development programs. Jobs himself is known to have donated to various causes ... perhaps not on the scale of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, but Jobs has never had the personal wealth of Gates (who was supposed to be worth about $50 billion dollars in 2010 vs Jobs $7 billion) but I don't think anyone has ever accused him of being mean spirited and miserly.

The Jobs story wasn't all fair winds and flowers ... at times he and Apple got down and dirty. Probably a lot more than the average. And a lot of that would have been driven by Job's combative and hyper assertive personality. (Remember four years back when Apple was introducing a new Mac with an ATI card in it. One of the guys at an ATI stand at a Mac show mentioned the fact that the new Mac had an ATI rather than Nvidea card in it, and thus stole some of Jobs thunder for the presentation in a few hours time. Apparently ATI went that close to losing Apple's business permanently as a result of the Apple CEO's childishly piqued rage that it wasn't funny. I wonder whether the ATI guy retained his job?)

Not to acknowledge Job's faults does the guy a disservice. They too were an extensive part of his make-up and probably a contributive reason for many of his successes.

								Regards,
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On 27/10/2011, at 7:22 AM, Ivan Trundle wrote:

> 
> On 26/10/2011, at 9:40 PM, Frank O'Connor wrote:
> 
>> He left a trail of ruined people on his way (even his own daughter)
> 
> Proof? And which one? Neither Eve Jobs or Lisa Brenna-Jobs appear to be 'ruined' by any metric that I can find.
> 
> iT