Marketwatch recently selected Steve Jobs to be their CEO of their decade (joining Fortune Magazine which has also earlier voted Steve similar status). The Marketwatch article "the Rock Star of Corporate America' (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apples-jobs-rock-star-of-corporate-america-2010-12-08) generally gave a concise summary of Jobs' achievements and struggles. But unfortunately they also elected to quote Rob Enderle of the 'Enderle Group' who is well known (to put it mildly) as an Apple critic.
Enderle's website modesly touts "Rob Enderle is the King of Quotes". Of the several statements made by the King of Quotes used by Marketwatch one said about Jobs: " He is not somebody [who] any one of us would want watching our kids, but, in terms of running the company, he’s excellent.”
I suppose Marketwatch used Enderle as in journalese to give 'balance' to the article (i.e get a critic in) but I found it in poor taste (especially as there was nothing in the article to back up Enderle's conclusion) . Sharing my sentiments were several of the talkback commentators:
BC2009 said "The comment about Steve Jobs watching your kids was ridiculous. I wouldn't let a secret service agent watch my kids unless I personally knew and trusted the person. But Steve Jobs is no worse than any other person off the street, and better than most because he is at least a father and somebody who has run a company producing G-rated and PG-rated animated movies for children.
and ebernet: "What Steve Jobs may do as a tenacious businessman is one thing, and the way he may treat his employees. But attacking his parenting skills, his personal life, and how he interacts with his or anyone else's kids is slander, base, rude, and inexcusable."
I don't have any personal relationship with Steve Jobs and have little ideal how he treats his kids but I doubt Rob Enderle has much more of an idea either. What we do know is that Jobs is very private. We hardly see any press photos of his family. He doesn't trot them out as some celebrities are wont to do. Just checking basic web info we find that Steve Jobs has been married to Laureen Powell since 1991 and have 3 children. He also has a daughter from a previous relationship.
One hint of Steve Jobs current family attittude is his determination to limit porn on iOS as he wanted them to be family devices.
During the iPhone 4 (iOS) preview in apr 2010 he said
"“You know, there’s a porn store for Android….You can download nothing but porn. You can download porn, your kids can download porn. That’s a place we don’t want to go, so we’re not going to go there.”
His stand has serious consequences. Besides financial risk (many people said Porn was a big driver for example of VCRs and the internet) he suffered ferocious condemnation from certain segments/
For example a Gawker reporter sent this email to Jobs arguing that Apple was limiting freedom: " I don't think it's going to f*** up my kids if someone in my house looks at a porn clip"
Jobs stand on porn on iOS of course doesn't really tell us his ability to handle his children at home but it gives a more positive impression than a negative one.
Rob Enderle sometimes makes reasonable comments on tech, sometimes (especially about Apple) they are ludicrous, but this comment about we shouldn't trust steve Jobs with your kids surely slides over the limit of proprietary especially for a serious journal like Marketwatch.
This all leads to the bigger issue of how Apple is generally treated in the press. Often it seems that Apple and its CEO is treated to double standards i.e. the limits to what you won't write or use against another company or personality it's ok to use against Apple and it's staff. Look at how Apple was raked over 'Antennagate' the phone which amazingly enough is now the largest selling (by far!) smartphone in the world, getting the highest polled satisfaction ratings from users with a return rate of 1.6%. From the press reports you would think the satisfaction ratings would be the lowest etc. Perhaps in the future I would touch on further on the press' treatment of Apple.
