"We couldn't believe that Jobs would attack a subordinate in front of outsiders."

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Microsoft and Apple were the first two out of the personal computing gate: while not exactly buddies, the two companies, and their founders, have more than a little history together.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen writes of one early run-in with Apple's Steve Jobs in his new memoir, Idea Man. In 1982, before Jobs ended up suing Microsoft for copyright infringement over their user interface, Bill Gates and Allen sat down to see an Apple trial run.

Jobs sat down a developer to show the Microsoft guys what the computer could do, when the system locked up a minute or so in. As Allen describes it:

Jobs was disgusted--you could see the contempt on his face. "What the f--k is going on?" he snarled at Hertzfeld, who'd probably been up all night getting things ready and was now trying to shrink under the table. "These guys came all the way down here to see this thing, and this is the best we can do? This is the best we can do? We get thirty seconds and a frozen screen? What the f--k is wrong with you?" He railed on as Bill and I traded glances and uncomfortably watched the performance. It seemed to me like an exercise in humiliation for its own sake. We couldn't believe that Jobs would attack a subordinate in front of outsiders.

Jobs, who was later portrayed by Noah Wyle as a cruel megalomaniac in The Pirates of Silicon Valley, apparently told Allen "I thought the guy who played me did a fantastic job."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/18/paul-allen-idea-man-steve-jobs_n_850731.html

[emulatorloo]

1. Jobs had Noah Wyle do part of a MacWorld Keynote in character

before the "real" Steve came out and tapped him on the shoulder. So he apparently has a sense of humor about himself.

ON EDIT: video clip here:

Macworld NY 1999-Noah Wyle imitating Steve Jobs
http://www.myapplespace.com/video/macworld-ny-1999noah-wyle

Anyway, Job's temper in the olden days is pretty much "old news" and well-known. I think he mellowed some as he got older and then had all that success with Pixar, before returning to Apple. People still didn't want to screw up in front of him though.

I bet the Paul Allen book is pretty interesting, Gonna get it when it is on the remainder table next year.