I saw the Woz speak just a couple of months ago and he spent probably half an hour (total, not consecutively) of the talk bashing Jobs in various ways, talking about how Jobs would take credit for his work, etc. He portrayed Jobs as a slick marketer who wasn't ashamed of making use of others' successes for his own gain.
I was on the scene in those times (I wrote Apple Writer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Writer) and I have to agree -- I think Steve's role at Apple resulted from a combination of his narcissism, his bullying tactics and his evangelism for the person computer, in equal measure. He ended up with an insanely great career. :)
I was on the scene at the time too, hired by the author of AppleWorks. The only reason AppleWorks became Microsoft Works for the Mac, a computer which desperately needed software at the time, was because the author of AppleWorks (Lissner) couldn't deal with Jobs despite being very willing. I'm not knocking Jobs, but Wozniak has every right to complain if that's what he chooses to do.
I have a personal revelation about that. Until Apple Works got under way, Apple was paying me a lot of royalty income for Apple Writer because I had negotiated a rather high percentage in the early days, before either Apple or I understood what a normal royalty rate might be. After seeing me refuse to accept a reduction in the rate, Apple got fed up and started the Apple Works project with a much more favorable arrangement with Lissner (I think he might even have been employed as a programmer). In principle that should have produced a good outcome, because Apple Works was a much more ambitious program that did a lot more than mine.
But after the Apple Works initial release, Lissner left and refused to work on the code base any more. So Apple asked me to take Apple Works over with the same arrangement Lissner had had, but by then, spoiled by the royalty arrangement and having heard too many stories about Steve's behavior, I refused.
In retrospect, I had no difficulties upgrading Apple Writer and accommodating user suggestions, because I was hundreds of miles away and I wasn't an employee. By the time Apple asked me to take over Apple Works, I understood that fully -- Lissner's circumstances were unbearable -- as a result of which there was no imaginable incentive that could have gotten me into a closer working relationship with Steve.
I remember some shouting on the phone between Lissner and Jobs but I was just a young pup at the time and didn't understand what was going on. I think all Lissner wanted was a little respect since AppleWorks was a major seller for the Apple II line, but Jobs being Jobs he probably came across like, so what, the Apple II is dead and the Mac killed it (he was right of course.) Lissner got rich anyway and lost he drive to work on the Mac version. Our small team in Santa Cruz continued to build it, then Gates came down to meet us and bought it. Works ended up being the first really useful program on the Mac, followed a little later by Excel. I remember hearing a lot of good things about Apple Writer, but of course I used AppleWorks. Those were heady times.
You're most welcome. At the time there was a rather stupid magazine article titled, "Will Success Spoil Paul Lutus?" When I saw it I laughed and said, "I hope so."
> If you think you can just be successful by working hard you are living in a perennial state of delusion.
That sentiment divides the stories of the well-known and the truly great. Einstein prevailed by working hard, not by stealing the work of others. The careers of many scientists follow the same pattern -- a conscientious attribution of credit where due, followed by an important personal breakthrough. Darwin is another notable example.
If you work independently and the outcomes of your results are judged by an impartial authority you will succeed by working hard. The best example I can come up with is are exams. In an exam if you study well and appear for the examination you will win.
Same applies to scientists. They work individually, and pretty much do work and are judged in isolation.
If you work with a group of people. Politics is a inevitable consequence due to human nature and you will see how that will effect hard working people.
Quote: "Two articles by the teams are each about 30 pages long. The combined author list takes up 19 pages of single-spaced text and appears to have roughly 6,000 names. Wouldn't that be fun to cite as a footnote in full?"
> However, modern scientists seem to work predominantly in groups, and are subject to the same petty intrigues and political nonsense as the rest of us.
All true. The movie portrayal of a 19th century scientist working alone toward a basic discovery is now a popular myth.
>That sentiment divides the stories of the well-known and the truly great. Einstein prevailed by working hard, not by stealing the work of others.
Well, Poincaré might want to disagree. Well, it's not like he "stole the work of others", it's about gaining from their successes. And Einstein did that too, as any scientist did: he "stood on the shoulders of giants" (Maxwell, for one).
> And Einstein did that too, as any scientist did: he "stood on the shoulders of giants" (Maxwell, for one).
Yes, certainly true, but not by stealing or failing to attribute prior work. And I agree with your suggestion that Maxwell might be a more important figure in the shaping of modern physics than most people realize.
There is actually quite a bit of historical controversy regarding Einstein's work on relativity and whether he deliberately avoided crediting the work of Poincare, Lorentz, Minkowski, and others. His initial paper on special relativity had no citations, despite the existence of a lot of relevant work by others.
> His initial paper on special relativity had no citations, despite the existence of a lot of relevant work by others.
It's important to remember that what we now understand to be special relativity, with its spacetime interpretation, was crafted by others (primarily Minkowski) after the original paper. This is important to remember when reading the original paper -- we might be suffering from perfect hindsight.
But I might have chosen a bad example, because it's true that Einstein tended not to attribute the work of others as much as he should have. Compare to Newton's "standing on the shoulders of giants" remark.
Engineers, of which I am one, tend to see the world in pure dialectics, so they often have very difficult time understanding why accomplishment is not purely evaluated by some rational universal force and recognition made manifest commensurately.
Self promotion is a skill that we all need, and do not think for a moment that people like Einstein were not well skilled in it.
As for claiming credit in higher proportion to one's contribution, that is evil in proportion to the exaggeration. However, perception being limited as it is, no one, not even the other contributors are in a good position to judge.
As for outright lies, they are, well, outright lies.
