Back in 2011 I posted about Steve Jobs’ car without license plates.
At the risk of appearing obsessed about Jobs’ car, I recently ran across a bit more information that I found interesting, worth another post.
Having read several Jobs biographies, and notwithstanding that I think he was a creative and innovative genius, I believe he was also a total dick. He wronged a lot of people who were close to him. The world was all about him. Perhaps that’s what the genius was all about.
He was famous for parking in the handicapped spaces in front of the buildings were he worked. And he never had a license plate on his car. People questioned how he got away with it. Did he just pay the fines? Did he pay off the local law enforcement?
As it turns out, there is a loophole in the California code that he exploited. If you get a new car, you are allowed to drive for six months without a plate. The idea seems to be to give you enough time to obtain plates and place them. Jobs had an arrangement with his car leasing company to get a brand-new car every six months, minus a few days. He’d get the same make, model and colors every time, so it looked like the same car. And he was never illegal if he got stopped.
Who’d think of that?
Steve Jobs.
Ghandhi apparently had similar personality issues like this. I’m guessing there are a lot of others. Isaac Newton, Pablo Picasso, Ben Franklin, FDR and many others were found to be indifferent in some ways. Either to people close to them or society in general.
I agree with your premise that he was an innovative genius and at the same time a total dick. That really came across in his biography. I think Apple has a dim future without him though.
“The world was all about him.” — so true. I have often compared him with Bill Gates. And the contrast could not be greater.