NEWS POST: Apple’s Steve Jobs Was Only Human As Two New Films Are About To Show

What a rotten apple: He's venerated as a genius. But two new films show Apple founder Steve Jobs was a heartless monster who trampled over friends and disowned his own daughter

• Films offer rather less reverential assessment of worshipped tech tycoon

• The first depicts Jobs as an egotistical monster who done over colleagues

• Also shows he abandoned a daughter on welfare despite growing fortune

• Second film claims colleagues were forced to copy his insane work hours - which even drove Chinese factory workers to suicide

The near-idolatry of Apple founder Steve Jobs is a symptom of our age in which many seem to treasure their mobile phone more than their family

By Tom Leonard (IN NEW YORK FOR THE DAILY MAIL)

Like modern-day pilgrims, devotees from around the world will next month mark their hero’s death by holding a vigil at his unmarked grave.

They will leave bouquets and hand-written notes — in countless languages — on the grass in Silicon Valley’s Alta Mesa cemetery in honour of a man they say changed their lives. The object of such worship? Not some pop star or religious guru, but the person behind a business making electronic devices which some people claim they can’t live without.

The near-idolatry of Apple founder Steve Jobs is a symptom of our age in which many seem to treasure their mobile phone more than their family.

Even four years after his death, from cancer at the age of 56, Jobs continues to inspire a god-like reverence among owners of iPhones, iPads, iPods and the rest. Only last week, there was a frenzied clamour for the latest products to be announced — including a larger iPad costing more than £700.

new iPhone 6. No wonder Apple earned US$182 billion (£117 billion) last year and is the highest valued corporation on Earth.

But two new films about Steve Jobs offer a rather less reverential assessment of the technology tycoon, and ought to make even the most besotted Apple fan think twice about their cult-like devotion.

The first, directed by Danny Boyle (who choreographed the London Olympics opening ceremony), stars Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet. It depicts Jobs as an egotistical, heartless monster who trampled over colleagues and even friends.

Worst of all, he is shown to be so devoid of human empathy that he disowned his young daughter. He denied paternity and abandoned the little girl and her mother to struggle on welfare, as he wallowed in a US$200 million fortune and told vicious lies in court about his ex-girlfriend’s ‘promiscuity’.

Winslet plays Apple’s marketing manager who tried to rein in his foul behaviour and arrogance as he worked to build the firm.

The makers of the film — which opens in the UK in November — were advised by Steve Wozniak, Apple’s far more amiable co-founder, and the principal victim of Jobs’ refusal to share credit for the firm’s global dominance.

Even more brutal is the second movie, Steve Jobs: The Man In The Machine, based on interviews with many of his closest ex-colleagues as well as with the long-time girlfriend he appallingly spurned.

Jobs was so much in denial that, despite having been abandoned as a baby himself, he wanted nothing to do with either his girlfriend or their child. Chrissann and her baby daughter Lisa (pictured now) had to live on benefits in a tiny flat

It depicts a man who, even in Apple’s early days in the late-Seventies when he wore long hair, beard and sandals, and liked to spout Bob Dylan lyrics, was a slave-driving monster who thought normal rules of behaviour were for life’s little people.

Colleagues’ marriages were destroyed as they were forced to copy his insane work hours and it is alleged that his ruthless demands drove Chinese factory workers to suicide.

The documentary even claims Jobs had become untouchable. If Apple hadn’t contributed so many millions to the economic success of America PLC, the authorities might have prosecuted him for accounting fraud which could have meant him spending the last years of his life in prison.

The iPhone king emerges as a phony — posing as a Sixties-style counter-culture rebel and Zen Buddhist aesthete when, in truth, he was as greedy the most amoral Wall Street banker.

According to the film, as a teenager, Jobs sold a ‘blue box’ device that used special tones that could hack into the U.S. phone system and illegally allow users to make unlimited free international calls.

His childhood friend Wozniak was the brains behind the company they started but Jobs ripped him off. Selling a computer game his friend had designed for US$7,000, Jobs claimed he had made only US$700.

Typical of the hypocrite he was, Jobs didn’t see himself as a buccaneering businessman. Suffocatingly self-righteous, he liked to think his mind was on a far higher plane.

Undoubtedly, his dysfunctional character was the result of a scarred childhood. He never got over being put up for adoption as a baby. (His father, a Syrian Muslim immigrant, met his mother at the University of Wisconsin, but her parents refused to let her marry an Arab. The baby was adopted by a blue-collar couple from the San Francisco suburbs.)

Repeatedly, as a young man, he tried to become a Buddhist monk.

Together with his friend Daniel Kottke, he travelled around India in search of enlightenment. As Kottke wrily admits, true enlightenment could have been achieved by emulating Mother Teresa — but ‘those weren’t Steve’s values’.

In Japan, Jobs failed to persuade monks to let him join them. It is hard to see how he would have taken to the rigours of monastic life. Whenever he later visited Japan for spiritual guidance, he stayed in expensive hotels rather than Zen temples.

Although Apple executives and Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell, refused to co-operate with the documentary, the rejected woman who bore his child was only too happy.

Chrisann Brennan was his high school sweetheart. During sex, she said, he would encourage her to let out her emotions, repeatedly shouting: ‘Mummy, Daddy’ in bizarre ‘primal scream’ sessions after they took the hallucinatory drug LSD together.

Although friends insist he truly loved her, he loved Apple more. In 1977, Chrisann eventually tired of his mood swings and resolved to leave him. But then she discovered she was pregnant.

Describing the moment she told him, she says: ‘Steve’s jaw clenched and there was this searing anger. He runs out the door . . . kind of like a teenager and slams it.’

His childhood friend Wozniak (pictured) was the brains behind the company they started but Jobs ripped him off. Selling a computer game his friend had designed for $7,000, Jobs claimed he had made only US$700

Jobs was so much in denial that, despite having been abandoned as a baby himself, he wanted nothing to do with either his girlfriend or their child. Chrissann and her baby daughter Lisa had to live on benefits in a tiny flat.

She took Jobs to court and he was forced to take a DNA test and was proven to be the girl’s father.

Chrissann won the case as a result. But this was after Jobs had given false testimony, claiming wrongly that she had many lovers and that he was sterile. Even after losing the case — and despite his wealth — he agreed to pay only US$500 a month child maintenance.

For a man who reputedly didn’t care about money, he was notoriously tight-fisted. Unlike Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who has given hundreds of millions to good causes, Jobs said charitable giving was a waste of time.

Chinese workers who slaved away in appalling conditions in Apple factories were poorly rewarded. Staff died in explosions caused by lax safety, others were made seriously ill by the powerful solvents used to clean touchscreens.

Safety nets had to be set up under the factory windows because so many workers were jumping out.

All the while, Jobs was cosying up with anti-poverty campaigners such as Bono, the U2 rock band singer. For all Apple’s high-minded sales pitch — saying ‘to make truly great products, we feel it’s crucial to build them in ways that are ethical and environmentally responsible’ — Jobs bent or ignored rules whenever he felt like it.

For a man who reputedly didn’t care about money, he was notoriously tight-fisted. Unlike Microsoft founder Bill Gates (pictured), who has given hundreds of millions to good causes, Jobs said charitable giving was a waste of time

Bizarrely so in some cases. For instance, he drove a silver Mercedes without number-plates because he had discovered a legal loophole which let motorists drive a new car for six months without plates. Jobs simply replaced his Mercedes every six months. And he became notorious for always using disabled parking spots around the Apple campus in Cupertino, California.

His flouting of the rules occasionally veered into illegality. Among these were so-called ‘back-dated share options’ by which senior staff were offered the chance to buy so many Apple shares that they would not wish to leave the company, for fear of jeopardizing its future.

The deals were sweetened by allowing the employees to buy the shares at dates in the past when the price was low, effectively allowing them to make thousands of dollars straight away. If it is not properly reported, such a perk is illegal — and a major scandal ensued when regulators discovered that this had been the case at Apple.

It also emerged that Jobs had received 7.5 million of these lucrative share options, but had failed to report some US$20 million in taxable income they had provided.

In footage not seen before, financial regulators grill an uncomfortable-looking Jobs about this deal in 2008. Asked why he wanted the Apple board to give him backdated share options, he squirms. He claims it was because they weren’t rewarding him enough.

While other Apple executives took the blame and were forced to resign, Jobs was exonerated. Insiders tell the documentary that Jobs was treated ‘as if he was immune’ from prosecution.

Why? Citing a financial analyst who estimates Apple’s value would have dropped by US$22 billion if Jobs had been jailed, the documentary-makers suggest he was too indispensable to Silicon Valley and the U.S. economy to be allowed to fall.

Not that Apple has repaid America. Under Jobs, it embarked on a massive tax avoidance operation, focusing its operation in Ireland where taxes are far lower. The company reportedly has US$137 billion in profits that have been diverted to a minuscule Irish Apple operation.

For many, Steve Jobs was the poster boy of a digital revolution that ushered in a benign new dawn for mankind. But his noble and selfless image, it seems, was little more than a sham.
Originally published in MAILONLINE