The Dark Side Of Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs has been lionized for the effects that Apple's technologies have had on modern life, but his sleek image as some kind of tech guru star child ushering the world into a new era conceals a rather shady past.

The most in-depth portrait of Jobs' dark side is the 2015 documentary Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine. In a review for CBS News, writer Erik Sherman explains how the film documents the egotistical and downright heartless behavior that the tech tycoon employed to get what he wanted.

When a videogame project on which he collaborated with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak awarded them a substantial bonus, Jobs lied to his friend and pocketed most of the dough himself. Jobs also claimed he wasn't the father of his first daughter in order to skirt the responsibility of being a dad. (Sure, his own parents abandoned him, but that's no excuse.) Former employees have claimed that he appeared to push subordinates to work past their breaking points simply because he enjoyed doing so. Former employees said he seemed to derive pleasure out of pushing subordinates way past their breaking points. He was also harshly criticized for how he handled the problem of high rates of suicides in the Chinese factories that produced iPhones in 2010.

In a fraud he later lied about to the SEC, Jobs backdated Apple stock in order to try and cheat his way to a payday. He then went to the company's board to request that they give him additional stock out of gratitude for his work of weaseling out of responsibility. When it came time to lay the blame somewhere, the chop came down, not on Jobs, but on the CFO who had advised Jobs to go after the consumer market (the obvious right economic choice, in hindsight) when he had been thinking of an industrial line of Apple computers.

To top of his status as a real lowlife, Jobs even re-leased his car in a scheme to allow him to not be required to have a license plate. The nerd-turned-celebrity said that it was to protect his privacy, but his obviously unmarked silver Mercedes was regularly seen parked in the handicapped spaces of the businesses where he lived.

Business Insider even made a list of 16 examples of Steve Jobs being a huge jerk, so why do we see the guy's face on books and painted on murals three stories tall? As more information about Jobs' life comes to light, consumers have to ask themselves if Steve Jobs' dark side overshadows the hip design of the products they love so much.