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I, Woz
theodp writes "In a Q&A session, Steve Wozniak discusses his forthcoming autobiography, how HP not only passed on his Apple design but also nixed his pleas to work on an HP computer, and the perks of being an Apple co-founder - free 65W AC adapters!"
Even writing printer drivers can lead to great things. After all, it was a printer problem that spurred Richard Stallman towards development of GNU, which of course became the foundation for the later flourishing of Free Software and the open source development model. (Sam William's biography Free as in Freedom published by O'Reilly gives the whole story of the printer problem.) You don't need to hook up with a charismatic individual with a reality distortion field to change the world. If a controversial eccentric like Stallman can do great things from a hermit-like AI lab, then Woz would have had opportunities even without Jobs.
I used to do tech support for Apple (outsourced). The official policy (from Apple) was "If Woz calls, give him whatever he wants and don't ask any questions." And one day I got him on the phone, he read me a list of SNs for out-of-warranty PowerBooks he needed repaired (he does something with PBs and disabled kids--or at least did in 1995), and I sent him the appropriate number of Airborne Express boxes for them to be pulled into NY for repair. It was one of the coolest calls I handled, cooler than when Howard Stern called for his friend who couldn't speak English. Both guys, BTW, were really really nice.
Woz, was and is a brilliant engineer. But there are hundreds like him. But there aren't many like Steve Jobs.
... Also note in this is an industry where salesmanship has a pretty heavy influence.
... Of course Jobs differs from MacArthur in that Jobs is not a genius.
I'm sorry but you have that backwards. Exceptional engineers are far less common than exceptional saleman.
Steve Jobs IS Apple. Look what they did without him. 12 years of absolutely nothing. Steve Jobs launched the Macintosh.
Jobs is the PR face of Apple and the Mac. The brilliant innovation started at Xerox and continued with the very talented engineers at Apple. Jobs is merely a good saleman who recognized a good thing when he saw it at Xerox. Like Woz, the Xerox and Apple engineers who deserve the real credit are overshadows by the PR face.
Then he started NeXT which was a decade ahead of its time.
Actually in business school they study NeXT as an example of how to royally f' up.
Then he brought Apple back from near extinction. Can you think of another corporation that can yield such influence over an industry while having less than 10% market share?
Actually what saved Apple were the big developers say "NO" to Jobs and forcing Jobs to put backwards compatibility into Mac OS X. Jobs return and the surrounding PR machine was like the Microsoft cash investment, it was reassuring, it bought the Apple engineers some more time.
Oh, and somewhere in his spare time, he bought a little animation studio and turned it into a force.
Again salesmanship, again a PR face overshadowing the real talent,
Jobs is like World War II's General MacArthur. "I" rather than "We", camera crew filming his wading ashore and dominating the newsreels,