Steve enjoyed myth making, part of the R&R experience. LSD became part of his myth. Steve was into theatrics, staging and so forth. Always keep that in mind when viewing "his own word" sometimes written well after the fact, and stretched. I have no doubt that even his last words "Wow, oh Wow" were well planned in his mind.
That wasn't a firing it was a coup d'etat. Steve held enough equities, controlled enough more for a proxy fight that could have reversed the coup in a matter of days. Larry Ellison convinced him it would be a better move for him to resign. Larry had an ulterior motive, he wanted Steve at Oracle. Steve was smart enough to know the two friends in one company would lead to murder.
Raskin and Smith didn't quit Steve because he was on the short end of the stick with the coup. They were already gone, along with many others, partly because of Steve's belief in creative tension as a management tool, but more because of their own aspirations. Neither left because of Steve, they enjoyed the matches. They had other aspirations, and the former military staffing at Apple intimidated them. They were inspired by Bill Atkinson's move toward founding General Magic, and intimidated by David Ramsey strolling around Apple with a .45 on each hip. Atkinson, leader of the Lisa graphics team, a neurophysicist, later creator of MacPaint, Hypercard (with Danny Wilkins early HTML used for Hypertalk adopted for Apple to Apple db communications enabling both Appletalk and Filemaker), numerous other packages. within 9 months of leaving Apple was creating more income for himself than Gates was pulling down at MS. The difference between him and Gates, once he accumulated enough money, more than he and his heirs could spend in a lifetime, he shifted his career to nature photography. Ramsey, a former Air Force fighter pilot, aka MOJO Paranoia, intimidated everyone, yet also when he left for his own aspirations made himself immense fortunes licensing his code packages. And he always did freelance work for Steve. David was my key to Apple. Everytime he came east, he'd call my people for security. He trusted few to protect him from little green meanies and purple people eaters from the planet Murlock. Can't make this stuff up. His major income sources were the first OCR, text to speech, and speech to text packages. He finally called it a day, moved from Las Vegas to a personally owned island in the Caribbean, where he flies his own flag. With David, went his mentor, Wonder Woman, Binky Melnick. The first real operations manager at Apple. She terrified Steve, and he personally didn't speak with her for 3 years. She left to work in the movie industry, tired of computers, loving the glamour, even in the production rooms.
Isaacson is a writer, engaged to tell as story as it wanted to be told. Follow the money, look to see who supplied his first advances, who owned that company. A nice guy, decent researcher, not a hack. But decent is a key.
Steve Wozniak, a superb technician in a permanent haze. Happy with new toys, built by him or others, a quality hardware executor when confronted with "that can't be done." "I know where we can get parts that will do that." He had no idea what was going on at Apple in the back rooms until years later. Far more concerned with "Is there chocolate pudding in the cafeteria today?" A loyal friend for Jobs, one of his few who never betrayed, worth more than lucre.
Now that my granddaughter sitting in my lap is finally finishing a cup of bug juice, her nightmares forgotten, we can both go back to sleep. Yup, her eyes are half closed. She's getting too big to carry, or I'm getting too old to carry her.
Later.
