WIRED:The Apple co-founder is a control freak whose real skill is understanding the illusion of total control

LIKE EVERYONE else in the Valley, I have my favourite Steve Jobs stories.

There’s the one about Steve Jobs’s car. It’s a Mercedes-Benz, and it’s easy to spot in the Apple car park because it has no number plates – and it’s often parked in the disabled spot.

Then there’s the one I was told, in shocked tones by an Apple tester, about the first release of iMovie, which had a tiny but persistent bug that meant it crashed if you disconnected the video camera at the wrong moment.

The obscure problem was buried deep in Apple’s bug-tracking system. During its first internal demo, at exactly the right (or wrong) moment, Jobs suddenly inquired of its coders, “and what happens if I DO THIS?!”, as he yanked out the camera and threw it across the room.

And then there’s the tale an ex-employee told me of the anguish at Apple just after the iPhone launch.

Awed by its novel design, an Apple fan had released software for websites so that their pages could look more like the iPhone’s interface if viewed on the device. Apple was horrified, and struggling to work out how to kill it.

Why, I asked, wasn’t it seen as a compliment to have other companies rework their sites to fit your aesthetic? “You don’t understand,” he said, “it’s not about the looks. It’s about control. Jobs never wants us to lose control.”

That last one isn’t quite as vivid as the other stories, I’ll admit. But it’s the one that stuck with me because it was so starkly at odds with the conventional wisdom of the moment.

During Silicon Valley’s interregnum, the time between 1985 and 1996 when Jobs was deposed as head of Apple, the credo in the Valley was increasingly one of gaining power by giving up control. Fast, cheap and out of control. Share and give away on the web, and you’ll succeed.

It is a testimony to Jobs that he was able to resist the most direct manifestations of that mantra, in a culture which so often succumbs to simplistic models, and continue to pursue his own vision.

Instead of ceding control, Jobs raised the barricades and, against almost every piece of punditry, exerted an even tighter grip. In an industry with many non-disclosure agreements and no real secrets, Apple suddenly became a black hole of secrecy. In a time of infinite choice, Apple decimated its product range.

It would be simplistic to conclude that Jobs won by assuming the diametrical opposite of everyone else in the Valley.

Jobs won – and he won absolutely, steering Apple to become one of the largest and most profitable companies on the planet – by finding a way to weave his power through that newly chaotic, powerless world.

He danced through it, happily contradicting his own edicts, yet somehow making it all seem consistent. A few months after I heard that story about the first iPhone, Apple ceded a little control. Instead of the phone being restricted to a few company-controlled applications, Apple launched the App Store, allowing independent developers to create software for the product.

Somehow, Jobs made it seem like that was the plan all along. Perhaps it was, but little clues, including my conversation with that former Apple employee, and the state of the operating system when the App Store was launched, hinted that perhaps it was a change.

But U-turn or not, it didn’t matter. In return for access, independent developers had to get a stamp of approval from Apple.

Somehow, the iPhone had opened up, yet Jobs maintained his power.

Jobs exudes absolute conviction, and engenders those convictions in others – right up until the moment he changes his mind. And when he does, he takes everyone with him, and somehow it all seems utterly consistent in retrospect.

These are the stories that are not told about Jobs, the ones that challenge that sense of consistency: how he changed his mind, or juggled with different prices the day before a launch, or dodged bullets and improvised his way through a thousand potential disasters. I remember the internal e-mail he sent to Pixar staff when he was chief executive of that company, denying the rumours and saying he was just helping Apple out for 90 days and Pixar was “stuck with [him]”.

These stories of Jobs changing his mind or wobbling mid-flight don’t sound right, and they don’t spread far. But they are the real secrets of his success.

Jobs’s genius is, and will continue to be, that he makes the incredibly complex seem simple – and that he applies that trick to himself. He is too flexible to be a tyrant, too demanding to be a humanist, to detailed-oriented to be a generalist, too all-encompassing to be replaced.

He is a control freak whose real skill is understanding the illusion of complete control.

Judging from his resignation letter this week, written to his company and the “Apple community”, it is clear that Jobs felt he was no longer healthy enough to continue working as chief executive of Apple. Many have assumed from that that he is close to death.

Jobs has dominated the computer industry for 35 years. If he lives for another 35, I can guarantee that we’ll look back on his letter and think he was planning that all along too.

I hope he is, and I hope we will.