Wait a minute, you might be thinking, isn't Ellison saying that Steve Jobs was the reason Apple

was successful? Isn't he elevating the performance of Jobs and implying that Jobs was so very amazing? Yes, but it's a backhanded compliment.

Jobs' Most Important Legacy

For starters, there's no guarantee that keeping Steve Jobs around in 1985 -- assuming that the sugar-water CEO John Sculley who demoted/ousted him had not been on the scene -- would have resulted in an amazingly great Apple. In fact, Apple might never have risen to greatness. Maybe Steve Jobs needed a fall in order to become the man -- and leader -- that let him transform so many industries and change the world with the iPhone. I believe that his fall from grace, so to speak, was a direct catalyst that enabled him to turn Pixar into a totally new movie-making company that churned out an astounding number of blockbuster movies. Long after Jobs exited Pixar, it is still doing amazing work -- and that's because of Jobs' vision for the business and creative environment of Pixar. The same goes for Apple. While Jobs had an astounding number of amazing product introductions, his most important legacy is the creation of today's current Apple culture and defining vision -- to elevate the product above all things, to build and create with maniacal passion. Along the way, there's a fierce culture of secrecy and rigorous understanding of supply chain, cost, pricing and profit. There's also a consumer-facing culture expressed through the industryleading retail Apple Stores. Steve Jobs' greatest creation may very well turn out to be the company itself. Ellison dismisses this, utterly dismisses the idea that Jobs could have produced something that has the potential to build the next generation of the world's greatest consumer electronic products: Apple. Of course, when your ego is far larger than your head, it's hard to imagine that anyone can do anything without you -- so yeah, maybe Ellison is just projecting what he imagines would happen if he were not running Oracle.

MacNewsWorld columnist Chris Maxcer has been writing about the tech industry since the birth of the email newsletter, and he still remembers the clacking Mac keyboards from high school -- Apple's seed-planting strategy at work. While he

enjoys elegant gear and sublime tech, there's something to be said for turning it all off -- or most of it -- to go outside. To catch him, take a "firstnamelastname" guess at WickedCoolBite.com.

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Talkback: Join the Discussion. Re: With a Friend Like Ellison, Steve Jobs Didn't Need Enemies
geedeezy Posted 2013-11-27

Over the course of my 20 year tech career, I worked for both Ellison and Jobs at different times. They were both arrogant in their own unique ways. The difference is that Jobs did have some insight to design as applied to human behavior. Ellison was just a glorified sales hound. Just my personal opinion. - See more at: http://www.macnewsworld.com/story/79522.html#sthash.rO2tCVuf.dpuf