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by lionhearted 5857 days ago
This might be unpopular, this might get me downvoted, but I have comment on this:

> But he cautioned Jobs never to forget that the money was just a vehicle for creating things. "But he forgot," Wayne says now. "He probably won't like me for saying this, but I think he got caught up in the business of business. He became so enamored with succeeding at this stuff that he began doing it for the sake of itself. He began making money for the sake of making money. What can somebody do with $200 million that they can't do with $100 million?"

That's loser talk. That's fully not getting it. Jobs isn't in it for the money at this point, he is doing things that matter to him, he's got a team of crazy-bright designers and engineers and he's pushing the world forwards. I'm actually much less of an Apple fan than most people, I think the Apple's got a lot more hype and sizzle than steak, but you do have to hand it to them for what they've done.

And Jobs himself? Forced out of Apple. Builds up Pixar. I mean, Pixar! There's a happiness-spreading company right there, maybe even more than Apple. Then Apple gets into trouble, and Jobs goes and digs through the ruins and builds this amazing company.

So typical loser thinking goes, "Oh yeah, well, maybe he's got hundreds of millions, but he lost focus! Yeah, that's it, he's not doing things that really matter!" Like playing penny slot machines?

Never fall into that trap. If you catch yourself making a loser statement about how much someone else has, stop yourself and be gracious. Not for the builder's sake, but for your own.

4 comments

I totally agree with you. I'm the farthest thing from an Apple fan boy and have a lot of problems with their policies but it's obvious that Jobs has a vision. Instead of this guy admitting that he messed up, he's making it look like Jobs is the one that made the wrong choices in life.

Money is not the only measure of success but it is one of the measures. It allows you the freedom to see your visions through. If your vision is to have a nice house and family then you can be truly successful with little money, just enough to fulfill your needs. If you have a vision to change the world of computing then yes, there are things that you can do with 200 million that you can't do with 100 million.

> And Jobs himself? Forced out of Apple. Builds up Pixar. I mean, Pixar!

Also, before Pixar he founded NeXT, absolutely breakthrough stuff, though not a big commercial success:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT

I actually consider NeXT a commercial success since the company was bought by Apple, and NeXT OS was essentially the basis for OSX.
Yeah, NeXT got acquired for $427 million, and that was in 1997 dollars. Jobs personally pocketed $100 million in that transaction, plus 1.5 million Apple shares (and remember the stock has split several times since then).
He sold all that stock later in 1997 as a gambit, though.
Very doubtful that anyone ever made any money from NeXT, and that includes Steve Jobs.
I've never looked at a comment and then a username and thought to myself "wow, there is so much consistency in what you wrote and what your HN name is"... well said my friend.
Upvoted. That be wisdom, lionhearted.