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Comment by matasar | Hacker News Reader

While it's nice to build a cool narrative around Steve Jobs and a long time "tragic flaw," this doesn't hold up. Steve Jobs was not at Apple when they sued Microsoft. It was filed in 1988[1], and Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985 [2].

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microso.... [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs

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You're right that the lawsuit itself was not Jobs's personal doing, but the acrimonious personal dispute between Jobs and Gates certainly was about 'look and feel' and the perception that Gates knocked off Jobs's innovation. Gates was brought in by Jobs and shown his project in order to get Microsoft on board for Mac software. Then Gates came out with what Jobs thought was an imitation of the Mac UI, an imitation he believed that Gates could only have done by copying what Jobs had shown him.

Jobs's perceptions in that case or in the current case with Schmidt may not be accurate or just, but that doesn't mean they don't play an important psychological role in Apple's current strategy toward HTC, Google, and Microsoft.

while Pirates of Silicon valley was a cool movie, it wasn't exactly a good recount of the whole affair. In fact, Microsoft really mostly took their idea from the same exact place Apple did, Xerox. They even hired many Xerox employees to work on Windows.

Jobs seems incapable of believing that two companies can come up with similar products at the same time. The iPhone did not include any technology not already available elsewhere. It was the package as a whole that made it innovative.

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