[stupidbird]

He had some priorities that are atypical in CEOs which made him better at making the kind of top-down decisions a lot of companies delegate to committees.

It's not particularly rare to have a decent sense of design, but it's rare for someone with a decent sense of design to be in a position to have the final say on mass-produced tech products. Especially true of the 90s and early 00s when Apple was making huge waves.

He was also a dick to a lot of people and petulant if he didn't get his way.

None of this stuff is mutually exclusive.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Upvoted for "None of this stuff is mutually exclusive". I tend to see a lot of "Steve Jobs was a genius!" vs. "Steve Jobs was a complete asshole!" competing narratives, when I always thought it seemed pretty obvious both were true.

Also, not only is this stuff mutually exclusive, but I think it is also (mostly) orthogonal. I get aggravated when I see or hear folks trying to emulate Steve Jobs' management style and they seem to focus on the asshole part but don't necessarily realize they're missing the genius part (see Elizabeth Holmes).