Technology and business smarts are useless when you’re dead

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

The tributes to Steve Jobs the tech guru are pouring in daily.

Jobs was a petty, immature human being who died prematurely at his own hand, according to a new biography Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

“In his last years, Steven Jobs veered from exotic diets to cutting-edge treatments as he fought the cancer that ultimately took his life, according to a new biography to be published on Monday.” New York Times.    

Other than the lazy herd mentality of the press and the slavish worship of Apple fan-boys, I’m not sure why Jobs is moving towards Saint-hood. I’ve always considered him a brilliant megalomaniac with a greedy streak.

In October 2003, Jobs’ cancer was detected by a CT scan. He delayed surgery for nine months while he explored alternative medicine, playing a game of Russian roulette with his life. Jobs’ friends and family pleaded but the genius took his own road.

Some people try to save their lives. Others are just too brilliant for their own good and don’t get proper medical attention. Although no one knows if he would still be alive today, the odds are getting the best medical attention will extend your life.

Living beats all other outcomes, including being a genius, business tycoon.

The books that are rolling out will make other people rich as they reveal tidbits of Jobs’ life and death.

Microsoft and Bill Gates as the enemy

According to Steve Jobs, he was openly disdainful of Microsoft’s Bill Gates, which self-serving and ungenerous to the extreme.

“In the biography, Jobs is scathing about Gates’ personality, calling him “fundamentally odd” and “weirdly flawed as a human being,” according to the Huffington Post. Jobs viewed Gates as a narrow-minded drone, and said:

“He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.”

Jobs viewed Gates as being a very sharp businessman but not a technological visionary, saying:

“He really never knew much about technology, but he had an amazing instinct for what works.”

And Jobs even discounts Gates devoting his life and billions of dollars to bettering the world through philanthropy, saying in the biography:

“Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas.” Huffington Post.

Google and Android

With Microsoft seemingly sidelined, Steve Jobs was willing to spend $40 billion to fight his new arch-enemy Google’s Android phone. Jobs conveniently forgot that he stole with windows interface from Xerox and almost everything else he claimed ownership of, including the smartphone.

Speaking about the biography quoted in the NYT, Slate reports “The book also recounts a major fallout with Jobs’ longtime friend, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, over Google’s decision to compete with Apple in the smartphone market, the AP reports. He called Google’s Android platform “grand theft” and vowed, “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

That makes sense from a man who bragged about stealing all his ideas from others.

No one in the computer, cell phone and consumer worlds is well served by Jobs maniacal vision of Apple ruling the world. The absurd idea that Apple who didn’t invent cell phones or smart phones for that matter can control what will be developed, sold and used defies logic. It does fit a man obsessed with world domination.