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Always worth remembering that as well as being an innovator, Steve Jobs was often a cruel and petty man.
Always worth remembering that as well as being an innovator, Steve Jobs was often a cruel and petty man.
Is this not a common trait among most of the high-level tech CEOs? We hear of lack of humanity across much of the tech industry when you get up to that level. All the stuff that is said about Musk, and all the others.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> should have somehow known Apple's attitude towards secrecy I have to assume you and the author (at that time) aren't familiar enough with the corporate world to realize all discussions containing privileged information (contract details that would never get a press release) are confidential by default. Of course Apple would never think they'd have to explain this. It's a reasonable expectation for them to have.
I work in the corporate world, I have detailed confidential discussions about technical details of upcoming products and contract details. The first thing we do in those situations is we all sign NDAs. The idea that you'd do a presentation to a hundred people and expect that information to stay confidential without specifically informing them is just absurd. Which is part of the reason Jobs just screwed him around ra…
They're lucky Apple found a quick remediation. They delayed signing the contract because they had to wait and see if any damage was caused. Next steps would have been renegotiating or lawsuit.
After reading this story, I do think Apple is bad, but from a business perspective, it makes sense. (By 'business perspective,' I mean it's immoral but profitable.) Because if CD Baby was acting as a middleman and a gateway for indie music distribution, Apple's move to shut it out was about preventing power from becoming decentralized and keeping control concentrated in Apple's hands to position iTunes as a premium p…
> Sometimes I wonder why people don't get as angry at Apple as they do at Microsoft. Apple was the underdog at a point where Microsoft got its bad image by virtue of it's monopolistic practice. I can't help but think that a lot of it is a combination of inertia and MS pissing off a sufficient subset of geeks at a point where we made up a much larger proportion of the online discourse and so could set the tone. And fo…
At least Apple's destructiveness was mostly related to market realities and their own product (still waiting for a replacement for my Newton MessagePad --- my Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ sort of works (but not daylight viewable), my Kindle Scribe ColourSoft is quite nice, but way too limited and no 3rd party apps other than what can be done via PDFs or HTML)).
Always worth remembering that as well as being an innovator, Steve Jobs was often a cruel and petty man.
Always worth remembering that as well as being an innovator, Steve Jobs was often a cruel and petty man.
I remember when this happened. Apple’s corporate staff screwed up and didn’t have the contract done in time to have the music in by the keynote. And of course they are not going to move the keynote. So Jobs had to spin it: the small number of songs is a good thing, actually! He was one of the best at this. PowerPC is not keeping up with Intel? Spin it! (Then switch.) Everyone hates DRM? Spin it! (Then drop DRM.) Peop…
Ruthless.
1 of the 3 qualities one needs to be a successful entrepreneur.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work in the corporate world, I have detailed confidential discussions about technical details of upcoming products and contract details. The first thing we do in those situations is we all sign NDAs. The idea that you'd do a presentation to a hundred people and expect that information to stay confidential without specifically informing them is just absurd. Which is part of the reason Jobs just screwed him around ra…
Pricing details in contracts are trade secrets. You don't even need an NDA to sue someone for leaking that. They're lucky Apple found a quick remediation. They delayed signing the contract because they had to wait and see if any damage was caused. Next steps would have been renegotiating or lawsuit.