Wozniak: Aspects of Steve Jobs’ Personality Were ‘Very Trumpish’

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Late Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs had at least a couple things in common with U.S. President Trump, at least, according to another Apple co-founder.

Apple co-founder and original engineer Steve Wozniak gave a talk at Carnegie Music Hall on Tuesday Night, as part of the 10th Conference of the American Middle East Institute. There, Wozniak told the audience that aspects of Jobs’ personality were, in fact, “very Trumpish, according to BizJournals.

Wozniak expanded vaguely on those comments, stating that Jobs, although brilliant, had a reputation for refusing to listen to others and saying less-than-kind things to people. In one case, Jobs allegedly cheated Wozniak out of some money for a project when the two worked together at Atari.

The former Apple co-founder also said that the Steve Jobs biopic by Danny Boyle and Aaron Sorkin managed to nail Jobs’ personality, adding that the portrayal was “right on the mark.” During his talk Tuesday, he said that he learned to never argue with Jobs and to avoid conflict overall.

It’s not clear what Apple thinks about the recent comments, but it’s likely that they won’t be very well-received. The Cupertino-based company — and specifically, CEO Tim Cook — has often found itself at odds with aspects of the 45th president’s agenda. Wozniak, too, doesn’t seem to be a fan of the president. In 2016, Wozniak told Time that the then-Presidential candidate was a “very rude person.”

Similarly, there’s little information on how well Steve Jobs and Donald Trump knew each other over the years. But the President has expressed his admiration for the Apple CEO on many occasions via Twitter, as Motherboard points out.

Wozniak founded Apple in April 1976 alongside Jobs and Ronald Wayne. Notably, he invented and built many of Apple’s first computers himself. He worked alongside Jobs for years, before leaving the company he had co-founded on somewhat bad terms in 1985. He sold most of his stock in Apple, since he felt the company “had been going in the wrong direction.”

He also has a history of making somewhat-critical and attention-grabbing comments about Apple, once calling the Apple Watch a “luxury fitness band” and saying that Plus-model iPhones were “three years late.” In early 2014, Wozniak joked that Apple should make an Android device.

Despite some of his more critical comments, Wozniak said that Jobs achieved some great things at Apple once he returned to the company for the second time — he gave the world the iPad, iTunes and the iPhone. “Steve made the iPhone not for you and me; he made it for himself, … It had to be simple and elegant, which were design flaws,” Wozniak said.

Wozniak also expanded on other topics, including his support for net neutrality and internet freedom (Wozniak helped to form and fund the Electronic Frontier Foundation). On artificial intelligence, specifically whether it will eventually threaten humanity, Wozniak said that “if there is any danger, it’s decades off … I think, centuries off.”


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