One of the best summations of Apple's unpredictable and inscrutable interim chief executive officer, Mr Steve Jobs, is contained in Accidental Empires, Robert X. Cringely's acerbic history of Silicon Valley's computing industry (which in turn became the lauded television series Triumph of the Nerds).
"Steve Jobs sees the personal computer as his tool for changing the world," writes Mr Cringely. "[Microsoft CEO Bill] Gates sees the personal computer as a tool for transferring every stray dollar, deutschmark, and kopeck in the world into his pocket. Gates doesn't really give a damn how people interact with their computers as long as they pay up. Jobs gives a damn. He wants to tell the world how to compute, to set the style for computing.
"Bill Gates has no style; Steve Jobs has nothing but style." Of course, style will not assuage the anger of the 450 Irish Apple employees who are losing their jobs following the company's decision to outsource the manufacture of its enormously popular iMac computer from its Cork facility to an as yet unconfirmed location. But the decision, following a promise by Apple last summer that Ireland would become the European centre for the creation of the iMac, is pure Jobs - ruthless, abrupt, and, from the cold perspective of the bottom line, probably inspired.
Perhaps no individual in technology is as admired and feared as Mr Jobs. His extraordinary charisma spearheaded the early, glittering success of Apple Computer, which he co-founded with Steve Wozniak in 1976. At Apple, Mr Jobs and Mr Wozniak created the first mass-marketed home computer, and quickly had the leading home and business computer in the young industry.
While other computer users had to enter typed, complicated commands into text-based machines, Apple's computers used a graphical interface, and eventually incorporated the first mass-marketed mouse. With 700 per cent growth in sales in their first three years, Apple was wildly successful, and software developers quickly created more than 16,000 programs for the early machines. The Macintosh computer, launched in 1984, turned userfriendliness as well as computer design, into an art. The Mac remains Apple's sole line of computer, and, in an industry known for industrial-style blandness, the new iMac and G3 desktop systems continue to redefine computer design.
But Mr Jobs's difficult personality soon caused problems for the company, and he was eventually ousted in an acrimonious boardroom showdown in 1985.
Shortly thereafter he established another computer company, NeXT, which first created hardware, then focused entirely on software. In particular, NeXT pioneered object-oriented programming, a technique which vastly simplifies the software development process by allowing programmers to assemble, then modify, prefabricated chunks of software, each dedicated to a particular task.
Mr Jobs also bought a majority stake in Pixar in 1986, the computer animation company which produced the hit film Toy Story in 1995. In a move that stunned the industry in 1996, Apple purchased NeXT and Mr Jobs returned to a deeply troubled Apple Computer as a consultant to then-CEO, Mr Gil Amelio. A year later, Mr Jobs was understood to have driven Mr Amelio into resigning, and now reigns as self-styled "interim" CEO. In that role, he has spun the company around, tightening product lines, cutting excesses, creating the best-selling iMac, and introducing five straight profitable quarters to the once-beleaguered company.
In person, Mr Jobs can be riveting, so much so that he is known for spellbinding all listeners who fall into what is widely referred to as his "reality distortion field". He's the single best show in the tech industry, capable of inspiring intense devotion in employees. For his utter dedication to creating a computer for people rather than tech-heads, but with a technological elegance which remains unmatched, he is one of the true heroes in the industry.
But his ruthlessness is equally legendary. Not even Bill Gates, whose nerdishness will always provide fuel for sniggers, can strike as much terror into competitors, partners and employees. Mr Gates, who for all his brilliance has never been a technological innovator, acts with a calculated, market-driven predictability. But Mr Jobs is a loose cannon, a man who is most often described in the press as "mercurial". It's difficult to know his mind or, except on very simplistic levels, his motivations.
Capable of ruthless treatment of his own workforce, in the past he has hounded even his lowest-level employees - in front of others - for perceived flaws. But recent reports out of Apple suggest he has mellowed and embraced a kinder, gentler method of management. Nonetheless, analysts believe Mr Jobs's hammerheadedness and need for iron-fisted control has kept any decent candidates from seeking the CEO-ship, extending - clearly to Apple's benefit - Mr Jobs's tenure as corporate top dog.
Making more money clearly means nothing to him at this point (secure in a personal fortune, he receives no salary for his role at Apple and owns a solitary share of Apple stock). Changing the world does, but his methods for achieving this goal fluctuate and shift. At present, they seem to require the salvation of the computer he was midwife to, the Macintosh. That, in turn, requires saving Apple Computer, and for a man intent not just on saving a company, but the company he founded, left, and returned to at its moment of deepest crisis, people are entirely expendable.
And thus, the current situation in Cork illuminates all the contradictions and conflicts resident in Mr Jobs. On the one hand he is a humanitarian, an avid reader of philosophy who wanted to design a friendly computer which people would not simply use, but love. But he seems coolly indifferent at times to the feelings or fates of individuals - as the Cork workforce has found, to its cost.
