No, they always had legit California "temporary plates" for the allowable (at the time) 6 months. They were very ticketable; his motivation was to keep his car relatively anonymous when driving around. Source: Me, living near his house and walking by regularly.

This article has a picture of one of Steve Jobs' actual cars with no plates at all (temporary or otherwise). It explicitly talks about a "new" requirement for new cars to be issued temp plates. Before that, brand new cars from the dealer had a 6-month grace period.

> "From 2019, California joins most of the other states in the nation by requiring newly bought cars to be issued temporary license plates."

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/07/steve-jobs-loophole-clo...

Right, not a plate: the 6 month temporary operating permit was taped inside the windshield, not on the back of the car, but was still ticketable. On the other hand, the car pictured is from after his death; all of his were black.

Thank you for providing the sources this is probably the article I read and had a vague recollection of

oh ty ty that does make much more sense than my absurd simplification

(note that they owned the parking, so its moot if they parked on a reserved spot on private property of theirs)

I guess not being localizable by press/random people is a nice plus if you can afford.

but didnt he buy always the same model?

You were actually right. See sibling comment to yours.

Yes, I didnt remember but that's probably the article I had read years ago and was thinking about!

I guess we both where right at different points in time ;)

> note that they owned the parking, so its moot if they parked on a reserved spot on private property of theirs

Eh, pedantry, but you'll find that building and occupation codes dictate a certain number of disabled parking spots. You could argue that a spot that is ostensibly this, but "everyone knows" is Steve Jobs' spot, is not a disabled parking spot.

(But yes, odds of the City of Cupertino taking any issue with this whatsoever are entirely zero.)

There's a story where The Woz pulled a prank on Jobs. Turned out he couldn't even be ticketed, because that parking spot was marked incorrectly:

https://folklore.org/Handicapped.html

(Apple personnel @ the time probably unaware of that technicality. Story says it wasn't fixed)

Thank you i think i had read that blogpost to exactly from some hn comments months ago!

> he seemed to think that the blue wheelchair symbol meant that the spot was reserved for the chairman.

lol