[kmonsen]

I think it is extremely unlikely that Jobs would have said well then we just shut down Apple if there is not a need for us anymore. From what I have read he was a business man first. He also very clearly had a very good sense of product quality and was good enough technically to understand not only what was possible, but what was going to be possible in 5 years. But that he was all about the users needs and not himself is not something I think the facts bear out.

[roundandround]

Seems like everyone was treating the non-founder Jobs as being typical of a founder to me. If he had stayed at Apple instead of going off to do Next he would have been more typical and probably have still been bad at quality and focused on slimy sales tricks.

He's really more an example of someone who was forced to correct some pretty massive defects and lack of vision in important areas where most lottery winning founding CEOs will never get corrections.

I would be kind of curious but I found it very funny if he wasn't a black mark against Next hardware back then given that workstation users were already going to see consumer as cheap even if he didn't have a reputation for cheapening his line further.

Really I think his behavior was much more inline with Cook than his earlier self once he was successful and founder envy was more an external benefit than related to some actual behavior he had.