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Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze
Clearly you're trying to convince someone of your POV or you wouldn't need to insist that you're right and I'm wrong.
You seem to be making the same technical (and apparently moral) argument as jazz buffs who insist that Billie Strayhorn didn't need Duke Ellington. Since Strayhorn was the better songwriter and arranger, they reason, it was Ellington who needed him and never the other way around.
If so, then it's strange that Strayhorn did so little on his own when given the tenth of a chance.
The symbiosis between the gifted specialists and goal-driven catalysts is often more jaded and codependent than it appears from the outside. Some people need to be motivated, pressured, goaded and/or galvanized; in the dawn of Silicon Valley, that frequently meant all-nighters with a pneumatic megalomaniac.
As a studio musician, I've encountered innumerable gifted players who seemed better than the bands they played in or production teams they supported until the bands and teams broke up and the members settled into doing what came too easily.
Some of the producers who drove me bonkers in the studio were the ones who badgered me into doing something unique. They were the ones I fought with most but inspired work that made me proudest.
I get the feeling that working with Jobs might have been like that: Exhilarating and/or infuriating and you didn't know which to expect.
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Well since Strayhorn in his role as an arranger would be Jobs in this analogy, him doing "so little on his own when given the tenth of a chance" would prove my point.