What I meant was he made some really horrible _business_ decisions while at NeXT, things that would be considered obvious today, like constant opinion changing on whim, constant product delays, product decisions that for the most part seemed to make the product more expensive and less functional, skipping important business meetings because oh-I'm-so-important when they really needed the sales etc. Granted I got all this from a podcast and didn't dig into the details myself, but I think for the large part he did objectively make some pretty horrible decisions in the early days at NeXT, although in the end it seems that he did seem to learn from them and turn things around, and arguably made him the guy he is more known for today.

Again, my amazement mostly stems from how he even had the chance to turn things around given the way the company was going and how he clearly still had some pretty talented people stick through the whole ordeal and end up producing valuable products through all that was going on.

For all his warts and all, Jobs is starting to age well in comparison to the current crop of wankers.

Excuse my French.

IMO this is a disingenuous take on Steve Jobs. No, all of us are not as horrible to other people as Jobs, who was notorious for his abusiveness. This is like saying, we all tell lies, so how can we criticize Trump? There's a huge difference between normal human foibles and extreme antisocial behavior. Perhaps Jobs calmed down a bit as he got older, but the reports from his coworkers at NeXT for example were ugly. Some of them retained a lifetime of bitterness, and his death was a kind of catharsis for them, not that they wished him dead but rather they could finally let go of the old emotions.

Even good-natured Woz was pained when he finally learned years later that Jobs had cheated him on a pre-Apple business deal. The problem wasn't the money, which Woz was always happy to give away. It was the betrayal of trust and friendship. Jobs was not a normal dude. He was a deceitful narcissist; this is on the public record in an FBI background check: https://vault.fbi.gov/steve-jobs (credit to the book "Steve Jobs in Exile" for the link)