And yet, I remember seeing an article here on Hacker News where one of pixar's first employees said Pixar was not great because of Jobs, but in spite of him
I remember reading that but if Jobs hadn't have taken a risk and continued ploughing nearly all of his money into Pixar it wouldn't be around today. I think I read that he put nearly all of his money into it, to the stage he didn't have much left, and at that point Toy Story came along.
I think the article you are referring to was about the actual movie making process. If Jobs had access to that side of things he would have exercised control over it and people like Lasseter wouldn't have been able to create the work they did.
Not just the investment, but he also negotiated the partnership with Disney in such a way that Pixar was able to retain creative control of the movies and their identity as a studio. If not for him, they would have been subsumed into Disney and the movies would have been focus-grouped into bland drivel.
Well, I was thinking of a specific anecdote about how one of the Disney execs kept insisting that Woody in Toy Story had to be "meaner" and "more edgy" to the point that the project was almost scrapped because it wasn't working.
But in general, the recent Disney animated movies haven't been all that great, and a lot of what they do is just straight-to-dvd stuff to make some quick money on their existing properties.
The early guys at apple have said the same thing.
Alot of the stories Andy Hertzfeld wrote on www.folklore.org describe pretty well how much of a "genius" Steve was.
I think the article you are referring to was about the actual movie making process. If Jobs had access to that side of things he would have exercised control over it and people like Lasseter wouldn't have been able to create the work they did.