As to a leader-board of awfulness - we may be missing the point there. Sure, yes, lots of powerful people are awful, but one doesn't excuse the other.
I suspect for a lot of free software advocates, idealists if you will, it's hard (and more importantly, pointless) to try to measure who was the most awful person in terms of compromising people's freedoms.
not sure if I understand you here - you're not suggesting he annexed the credit - he quite clearly shared it or in that quote almost gave it entirely away.
>Sure, yes, lots of powerful people are awful, but one doesn't excuse the other.
yeah I don't know if most people, given the power, won't be awful some times. Also I'm not sure if almost all people are not awful sometimes, if given the right pressure.
So when someone is complaining about the awfulness of any one person I guess I actually want more than anecdotes of how rude they were, considering how awful people can be. (That money thing is one but well, I've also noticed people when they don't have money will sometimes be untrustworthy about it)
"Alvy Ray Smith helped invent computer animation as we know it—then got royally shafted by Steve Jobs"
The article paints Jobs, in much more detail than the byline above, as an extremely toxic personality.
The absence of any technical brilliance is fairly well documented, and Woz was the first, possibly most famous, person he leveraged / misled (depending how charitable you want to be).
So, yes, I am saying he annexed the credit. The quote that we're talking about - musing on how there wouldn't have been an Apple without Woz - was from a 2011 book, where he looks back, from his multi-billionaire perspective, at someone he shafted repeatedly some decades earlier. Who knows the tone of this comment - to me it doesn't feel like a '...and I feel bad about it' type comment, just a casual aside.
Mind, Woz was just one of many casualties along the way, too.
> So when someone is complaining about the awfulness of any one person I guess I actually want more than anecdotes of how rude they were, considering how awful people can be.
The stories of Jobs' awfulness are many and manifest. Start with a web search on 'stories of steve jobs being awful', or go straight to Lisa Brennan-Jobs' book. Arguably every story about someone is by definition an anecdote, so perhaps this won't be enough for you.
In any case, the guy certainly did NOT 'completely transform modern life and changed the human trajectory for everyone on the planet, multiple times', seemed to have no notable skills beyond showmanship, and was awful.
>Steve Jobs was persistently awful.
I don't think the first statement supports the second, he did give some credit there. I think often awful.
although where awful is concerned, was he worse than a lot of powerful people. We have a lot of awful people to look at, where does Jobs fall on the scale, because when I look at Jobs he doesn't look anywhere as bad as Harvey Weinstein. Lots of people who frequent HN probably went around thinking Bill Gates was much worse than Steve Jobs, is he still or is Jobs the worse one now?