Steve did not like this pic either
The following is a letter “written” by Apple CEO Steve Jobs to a slew of writers as well as John Heilemann regarding the Heilemann hit piece in the recent New York Magazine. It’s quite humorous. I’m calling it the Steve Jobs Manifesto. The problem is it was posted on the Fake Steve Jobs site.
Is the letter legitimate? I am convinced it is. This article had to get under Jobs’ skin to an extreme. The backstory according to the gossips in the business is that Heilemann was refused an interview with Jobs and decided to do the New York Magazine article to get back at him. I have not confirmed this assertion.
Here is the Jobs memo in its unedited entirety:
The backlash begins
I warned you about the backlash. Here it is. Hold your noses and put on your spatter smocks, kids, because this one is a full-on hatchet job, and even goes so far as to lead in with an unflattering physical description of me, which is always the mark of the total pitbull attack piece. Nice touch right up top is where the writer, John Heilemann, uses the phrases “enfant terrible” and “eminence grise” in his first paragraph, just to let you know he took some Latin in high school. You see, this is New York magazine, whose motto is, “No, um, we’re not The New Yorker, but we’d like to be,” and where everyone has a tiny dick complex because they really want to be working at the New Yorker and they would be, maybe, if they didn’t suck so bad. But they do. So what do you get? Pages and pages of overblown, puffed-up prose, mostly rehashing old info (Steve Jobs is an asshole) but done in this breathless, long-sentence style that’s meant to make you think you’re reading a really smart Malcolm Gladwell-style piece of business journalism. Executive summary for those of you too lazy to read the entire awful eight pages: Everyone in the phone business is scared about the iPhone, and they’re hoping it will be a flop, but nobody (including John Heilemann) can say yet whether it will sink or swim; Steve Jobs is a dick and everyone hates him and if the iPhone fails his career is over.
Sorry, John Heilemann, but when you set us up with a big cover calling me iGod and making me look like shit, and when you get half the magazine for your story, we expect you to deliver something new, something interesting, something jarring, something smart. In short, something we didn’t know before. We’d also expect you to maybe find out something bad, or to at least have the balls to say you think the iPhone is going to flop, instead of saying “maybe it will, maybe it won’t.” For that matter you might do your readers the courtesy of admitting that you hate me for arousing such feelings of man-lust in your tiny heart, and that your obsession with El Jobso is a way of masking (and, paradoxically, indulging) the hard-on you have for me. You might also just admit that New York magazine is just trying to cash in on the hype around the iPhone and looking for any excuse to put my face on your cover so you can sell more copies; but you think you can look cool if you dress it up as some kind of cynical, pseudo-psychological deep-think business piece.
Instead, John, you just come off looking like some guy who wishes he still worked at the New Yorker.
Right. As if. Friend, you’re getting an Azzie award.
the Fake Steve Jobs
Now, does anyone think this was actually written by the Fake Steve Jobs or the real Steve Jobs? Would it be sheer genius to use the Fake Steve Jobs as a mechanism to blow off steam? I’m sold.
…uses the phrases “enfant terrible” and “eminence grise” in his first paragraph, just to let you know he took some Latin in high school.
Jobs obviously didn’t take any French (or Latin) in high school.
Are you sure that Steve Jobs wrote this?
Whatever your feelings about an article, there’s just no percentages in it for such a public figure to respond to it (which I read in its entirety). And certainly not using the term “dick complex”.
Come on Steve, what were you thinking? (If you wrote the memo).
I believe you linked the wrong article “Steve Job’s Halo”, the correct article is “Steve Jobs in a Box”:
http://nymag.com/news/features/33524/
The first paragraph ends with “éminence grise” as referenced in Steve’s post.
Next thing you know Mr Cool Apple guy will make PC Guy look good.
God forbid.
Oh that’s right we don’t believe in God on this forum.
Well then just fordid.
Dvorak,
The FAKE STEVE JOBS wrote this, not the REAL one.
Did John C. Dvorak.org/blog really get duped by the Fake Steve Jobs?
Oh, and the piece is absolutely hilarious when you read it thinking that the REAL “El Jobso” wrote it.
Who ever wrote it destroyed the guy from New York Magazine, who’s writings make him just another member of the Cult of Jobs.
oops..sorry..i forgot to put the “fake” steve jobs at the end
fixed
So Steve, answer the question, did you back date options or not? Al Gore says you did, and that your innocent, whatever the ef that means. Fess up and take your medicine.
I bet Steve Jobs WISHED he wrote that. 🙂
#6 – All hail the Destroyer!
oops..sorry..i forgot to put the “fake” steve jobs at the end
fixed
Yeah, that’s where that belongs — at the very end of the post. Looks like Dvorak WAS duped…again… 🙂
John: I figured you weren’t that gullible. I thought you were falling for the same trick that caught Dan Rather back the 2004 “memo-gate” scandal.
Of course, after the Real Steve admitted to reading the Fake Steve’s blog, I wonder what he thought about this laugh-out-loud rant.
I wasn’t duped..I was careless. I think the post is NOW ready for prime time. And when was I ever duped before?
Nice piece of ghostinsulting I did for FSJ, eh?
#13 – John C
“…And when was I ever duped before?”
Hoo boy. I’m not going near that one with a 4-meter pole.
If this wasn’t Steve Jobs, then there’s nothing interesting here. I don’t get it.
Lauren, that should be a 3.048 meter pole.
And that was one great letter regardless of who wrote it.
#1, you are right. Whoever wrote that letter certainly didn’t take any French or Latin in high school. Jeez, those phrases don’t even SOUND latin. The writer should be embarrassed.
It seems fake, done by a fanboy, probably. They could be crazy with worry about the iPhone. The word in Singapore is Samsung is going to release 53 phones this week.
#10 – “…and buy an iPhone!”
Thought I’d wait for a while to see if anyone had noticed that Helleman wasn’t even original about stealing the term “iGod” – which just happens to be part of a reasonably humorous sketch in the current Prairie Home Companion Podcast.
So what is so great about an iPhone other than it has a lower case ‘i’ front of word ‘phone’? Can it work with a one button mouse? (LOL)
Reads like much of Fake Steve Jobs’ output. This is basically a continuation of his ‘the backlash is coming’ piece the other day.
If you want to read some real anti-Jobs invective, the place to go is the Wall Street Journal. Those people would break into Apple and prepare a memo saying to backdate options and not take charges signed by Jobs themselves if they could.
I think of Jobs pretty much the same as Gates, both are people that one can say about: “Oh well, at least you’ve got to give them credit for being successful guys, if not much else.” That they would also be labeled “infants terrible” (sorry ’bout the french), or which one has more “taste” etc. is kind of ho-hum to me.
I admire very much the industrial design prowess of Apple and am sure it’s a main reason for their success. When it comes to computers and devices, though, it’s what it can do, and what I can do with it that matters most, and open architecture is far more important in that sense than the prettiness of the box or clever interface anims.
(example: A friend with an Imac dutifully pulled the power plug when a lightning storm threatened, but they didn’t disconnect the dial-up phone line. The same thing happened to me once, and I had to replace a $30 modem card. The entire Imac had to be tossed, replaced with a new one).