Steve Jobs - the last interview.  Interesting interview.  I don't hate him quite as much after seeing that.  Still think he is not as complex as some folks makes him out to be, but not as evil.  It takes place in 1990 when he was at Next and having to "wing" it.  I think his "easy to use paradigm" (given his age and the computer tech at the time), I feel that he miss-judged ease of use with flexibility.  I think the Raspberry Pi is less forcing the end user in to a you have to wait for someone to write the application you need, and more of a you can just try out existing bits and glue together something you write to come up with something new.  He even mentions the innovations that came out of the home-brew computer club in the way of having some semi-common computer platform and leapfrogging ideas, but he did not see that fact.  He made the Apple and Apple II and saw the ecosystem and pooped on it while at Next.  even in the interview he wishes the schools would have adopted the Mac sooner.  I was a Sinclair guy at the time, but I envied the folks that could afford the Apple II's of the day and hack expansion boards that were sold.  I could hack the TS-1000 some (i.e. add a joystick port, blink an LED and some simple things), but things died for the TS-1000 / 2068 too soon and the PC market took off.

Just my retro thoughts from having watched that interview just now.

The technical genius of early Apple can be summed up in one word:

Woz.

Isn't that what executives/evangelists/CEOs are actually supposed to do?

Bill Gates had some breaks along the way

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/11/obituaries/mary-gates-64-helped-her-son-start-microsoft.html

It does not hurt to have well placed parents to help you along the way.

well, have some of them rotting in my cellar, but they're broken as well.