Steve Jobs’s career defined as much by missteps as triumphs - The Boston Globe

An excerpt from another perspective on what made Steve Jobs successful at Apple 2.0

Suddenly, Jobs was back at Apple. Within a year, he ousted the previous chief executive and regained total control, imposing his creative vision on every Apple product. The result was a long string of hits, and a fair number of misses. There was the overpriced, hard-to-upgrade Cube desktop computer. That was followed by the ROKR, an ill-fated partnership with Motorola Inc. to build a cellphone compatible with Apple’s iTunes music service. But those failures were overshadowed by the massive success of the iMac computer, the iPod music player, the iPhone, and the iPad.

From failure, Jobs had learned valuable lessons. “The old Steve would not have succeeded the way the new Steve did when he was back at Apple,’’ Metcalfe said. “He seemed to have learned about management.’’

Steve Jobs’s career defined as much by missteps as triumphs - The Boston Globe