> Powell Jobs and Jobs' sister have said in a statement that the book "differs dramatically from our memories of those times."
I've learned from experience that people who aggressively denounce others publicly sometimes have stuff going on that isn't readily visible.
It's not that I want Jobs to be free of moral stain. I have no investment in it. But people should be cautious trusting a report of one person's disputed report.
Nor is it uncommon that "the stepmom doesn't like the estranged kids"
Nor is it uncommon that a deadbeat dad is an asshole.
Whether or not it's true, common sense and the available evidence certainly favor Lisa.
it's not crazy to think he was like at that home, too.
It's unfortunate, but the reality is that having kids and actually caring for them in a way that gives the best chance to turn them into good, undamaged human beings requires a massive amount of attention that would heavily distract from lofty career goals.
If the drive for career success is strong enough, kids will be resented and treated as such. It sucks, and they probably shouldn't have had kids in the first place, but the biological imperative is incredibly difficult to overcome.
As a counterpoint I would highlight Buffet, Branson, and others who have managed to fulfill their obligations to the next generation without failing to dominate their industries.
There is no excuse for cruelty to children, doubly so when they are your own. Jobs was an asshole because he was an asshole, not because he was driven.
> Once, she says, as Jobs groped his wife and pretended to be having sex with her, he demanded that Brennan-Jobs stay in the room, calling it a "family moment." He repeatedly withheld money from her, told her that she would get "nothing" from his wealth — and even refused to install heat in her bedroom.
This isn't just a career driven person
Happy to be disagreed with, it's just my experience of the world.
Ironic that he blamed his biological father for abandoning him, and then tried really, really hard to do the same to his daughter.
She wasn't a product of "trying to have kids". It just happened, and he denied she was his daughter for years.
The worshipping is completely out of line.
I'm a praiser of good parents and good people and Steve was definitively neither, it would seem.
It's a common misconception because so many psychopaths become examples of "successful businessmen" but they're not successful PEOPLE. Steve's arrogance literally killed him, his insistence he knew better than everyone made him ignore his cancer until it was too late.
No one should try to be the next Steve Jobs. Be better than he was, better to your family, better to your employees, better to your friends. There's no one Steve didn't try to screw at some point. That's not success.
Details reported today suggest to me he's more than just a billionaire edgelord:
https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/08/tech/elon-musk-xai-digital-un...
> Musk has pushed back against guardrails for Grok [...] Musk has “been unhappy about over-censoring” on Grok “for a long time.” [...] At one meeting in recent weeks before the latest controversy erupted, Musk held a meeting with xAI staffers from various teams where he “was really unhappy” over restrictions on Grok’s Imagine image and video generator
...how are the shareholders not in revolt over this?
I haven't read much about Tim Cook being anywhere near the level of sycophant, or raising the curtain to show the ugliness behind, as much as some of the others.
Musk is malevolent and Theal is a malevolent shit, but has the ability to be discrete about it.
But also a good example of someone’s accomplishments .. arguably being worth something even if that’s true. I made my whole existence off of Linus’s handiwork and owe him a debt of gratitude for it. I probably still get more in monthly residuals than 90% of the people who wrote anything I deployed. Who cares what I think of anyone personally?
I’d hate to be so deranged about anyone that I can’t see any good in their accomplishments. I’m not exactly Miss Manners in the professional or personal realm either, don’t let me cast the first stone.
Id even go as far as saying that Linus’s are way more important and that Steve’s destroyed society but that’s enough out of me. Even if that’s my opinion, I’m still saying that about a trillion dollar company and that’s still someone’s yardstick for success. Genius is genius, accomplishments are accomplishments
… and god what a grey and insecure and screwed up IT world this would be if neither of those people ever existed and Microsoft ruled the world. Either we wouldn’t even have functional cash registers let alone any other technical pillars or infrastructure… or we’d all be in our rightful BSD utopia right about now.
The denial of paternity of his first born being one of them.
(I think that was relatively well known well before he died)
I'm glad I never worked for Apple while he was there. Though I have unfortunately worked for someone with very similar traits.
Even though he is dead and can no longer improve himself, people will use him as a role model and idolize all the bad stuff too.
Hero worship is always pretty weird. I wish we would do less of it in general. But for Steve Jobs, I feel like negative reports about his character were pretty well known during his life and after his death. I don't feel like I've seen a lot of positive only content about him now that his death isn't so recent (maybe a little bit in the context of people hating on current Apple products), unlike some other celebrities where people seem to forget all of the misconduct (alleged or proven) during their lifetime.
This horse has been beat to death. Every reddit post that has Jobs name in it covers this. Same with John Lennon.
I came to believe that there was a bratty entitled personality from his 20s that gave rise to most the jerk stories people reference, and that he wised up after being ousted (probably for being that jerk). He was essentially exiled for the better part of a decade.
If we bury these stories, and always only talk about it when people are long dead or not at all, we as communities will not evolve out of those patterns. A culture that "honors the dead" by not talking about the bad stuff they've done is catering to its abusers.
Today, we should talk about Trump, Musk, etc, also in the light of how they treat their children. And what we can and should do to protect those that cannot protect themselves.
We all have responsibility - the ability to respond. If we look away from the stories, we will also look away when something happens near us. And it should encourage us to grow in how we treat other people (especially children) around us. Yes, this can bring up difficult feelings about our own acts, and our own childhood experiences. And it should.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_of_Alexandria
He is a canonized saint of Catholicism and revered as a virtuous defender of Christianity. More evidence based history instead indicates he was a narcissist primarily motivated to elevate himself politically in Alexandria which included wide spread murder and the destruction of the greatest intellectual institution the world had ever seen.
Jobs was idolised during his later life. (reality distortion field a-la the register) lots of founders and CEOs adopted his mannerisms, and cosplayed his stories, because they thought that was what made him _good_
Obviously there were dissenters, either people who were personally shat on by him, or didn't buy the "Jobs is better than jesus" stuff.
But, they made a fucking movie about him, thats how much he was idolised.
I’m not sure why it is being reposted in 2026, though.
If the truth destroys your culture, it says more about your culture than it does about the people destroying it.