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Comment by ghshephard | Hacker News Reader

One of the things Bill Gates commented about Steve Jobs, that he never really understood, is that when people turn around 35-40, they tend to chill out a bit, lose that intensity, and become "Management". For some reason, this didn't seem to happen to Steve, and he kept driving as hard as he did when he was 45 as was when he 25.

In comparison, Steve Ballmer, when he was on, was nuts (in the best way) - but, I get the sense he took his foot off the accelerator, particularly during the Vista years, and the Windows Phone response to iPhone years.

There is something to be said for "Youthful Intensity" - particularly if you can sustain it your entire working career without having a breakdown.

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Jobs probably had several big chips on his shoulder that Gates never had, from being forced out of Apple, seeing the Mac lose badly to Windows, and then seeing Apple on the brink of death. Meanwhile, Gates was the richest man in the world and his company absolutely dominated the personal computing space.

Also, it seemed like jobs became more intense once he knew he was going to die.

The hard part is when other people are put off by your intensity. I think it's subtly beaten out of people unless they get to higher positions, because they don't like your anger at them when they fuck up.

Does dying at 56 from cancer you tried to treat using pseudoscience until it was inoperable count as "breaking down"?

Hard to say. The guy lived more of an interesting life and had a bigger impact on the world than any of us will ever come remotely close to.

Would 80 years of mostly mediocrity beat 56 years with plenty of "best on earth"?

do people really think like this? it's just a phone at the end of the day

Fan is short for 'fanatic' after all.

I don't know what I'd choose since I can't tell you a meaning for life that is at all universal or that I buy into all that much.

I do, however, know that Jobs was responsible for a lot more than the iPhone.

No kidding - Steve Jobs made Pixar possible. He had such an impressive career that "also started Pixar" is an interesting bit of trivia. Think about that for a second.

It's impressive, to be sure, but Jobs didn't start Pixar—he essentially bought it from Lucasfilm. [1]

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixar#Early_history

Everyone knows that Jobs didn't start Pixar, and most of the people here are familiar with Steve's involvement, but even his stronger detractors would acknowledge that Pixar would not have accomplished all it had done in Movie Making had it not been for Steve's involvement.

Everyone knows that Jobs didn't start Pixar

Evidently at least one person didn't know that, because my comment was written in response to someone who wrote that Jobs "also started Pixar". If the commenter had written "also a main driving force behind Pixar", no correction would have been required.

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