Interesting, will read up on these. There's ten years difference between early Apple and late Apple Jobs so maybe things were different for Carmack. In the end, Jobs must have been doing something right given his track record.
Even when you allow for the indisputable fact that, say, Herzfeld or Cringley or Isaacson and others are fallible human beings with imperfect recollection and intrinsic biases, the lockstep consistency of the narratives and characterizations is striking.