“Steve has forever been the sort of countercultural guy,” said David Wertheimer, who worked at Apple and NeXT and is now CEO at the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California.
“Apple from the earliest days made a decision to court the creative community,” he said. “There’s something really powerful about talking to creative people in a creative language. You capture a group of people who have a great way to express themselves, and an active imagination. … That helped create this whole mystique. Steve embodied that.”
Jobs is “hugely opinionated, which helps him create big ideas,” Wertheimer said.
“He’s not quick to let go of ideas that he creates. If you disagree with him, you have to work very hard to get him to come around to your point of view. He can be very difficult. Incredibly smart and keen sense of what consumers want and will respond to.”
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