Violet Blue: Steve Jobs snubbed me
If you want to look at how the personalities of Apple's two co-founders, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, differ, perhaps one way would be to measure their responses when asked to pose for pictures.
Let's start with Woz. Though he claims to have been acutely shy in his early life, these days Woz is a social butterfly. He shows up at tech event after tech event in Silicon Valley, such as the 30th anniversary of Apple, or the 25th anniversary of the Commodore 64, and is almost eager to glad-hand anyone who comes by. Want a picture of you and Woz? Get in line.
Now, let's examine Jobs. Everyone knows he is one of the greatest business and technology visionaries in history. Onstage, say, at Macworld, he has a bright smile and an extremely charismatic and engaging manner. He looks like he'd be fun to talk to. Yet his reputation is for managing by fear and for having little patience for the public.
At Macworld Wednesday, popular technology and sex columnist Violet Blue wrote that she saw Jobs on the show floor and decided to go talk to him.
"I saw that Steve Jobs was just hanging out on the Macworld Expo floor, not in conversation, not talking to anyone, and poking at his iPhone in the middle of the wandering public, so I walked over," Blue wrote on her SFGate.com Open Source Sex blog Thursday. "Thinking a girl--in this case, a fangirl, me--will never get anything if she doesn't ask for it, I lightly touched his arm and said, 'Hi.' He looked at me, and I blushingly asked if it would be OK for me to take a picture with him. I didn't say my name or give credentials or anything else, I was just any girl. He told me curtly, flatly, that I was rude. And turned his back to me."
Moments later, Robert Scoble caught up with Blue and filmed her reaction to the snubbing.
Blue, of course, does not fill in the contextual blanks that might explain whether Jobs was having a bad day, was in the middle of an IM conversation with someone, or anything else. But is anyone really surprised that Jobs would so abruptly snub a fan, even at Macworld? I'm not.
In fact, Jobs is able to maintain his so-called "reality distortion field" in part because he is above us all. We can't engage him in conversation the way we can with Woz. Want to talk to Woz about his favorite video game? Go ask him. Want to ask Jobs a question about, well, anything? Good luck getting through his phalanx of PR people.
You might think that I love to bash Jobs and Apple since I'm writing this. In fact, between my wife and me, we personally have four Macs, two iPods, a couple of AirPorts and, oh, I'm sure there must be more. I had my religious conversion from Windows to Mac nearly four years ago. And I'll be the first to grant that Jobs towers above anyone else in tech when it comes to imagination and understanding what his customers want.
But boy, is the man cold-hearted. What does he expect to happen if he walks the floor at Macworld? He's surrounded by the most fan-boy of the fan-boys. He's going to get approached, swarmed even. If he doesn't want to be, then he shouldn't be on the floor.
Daniel Terdiman is a staff writer at CNET News covering games, Net culture, and everything in between. E-mail Daniel. 
out of the mainstream when it comes to appearance.
Like a lot of very focussed people I know here in the valley, he
was probably trying to solve three problems at once when he
'snubbed' her.
Still, if Blue were to walk up and ask to have her picture taken
with me, I'd practically fall over my feet to say yes!
Besides, personally, I would consider such an approach as rude. I
met Mr. Jobs on several occasions (albeit the last time around
1996) and he always responded very nicely and politely. In fact, for
the person of such celebrity status he is very approachable.
related issues. And Steve Jobs snubbing Violet Blue on the floor of
Macworld is something I thought the blog's readers would be
interested in. Perhaps not. But Jobs' behavior at his own trade show
is noteworthy, in my mind.
So take your condescension elsewhere. You are ruing the internet for the rest of us.
someone who likes attention.
Did anyone else witness the incident? I would think that he
would attract quite a number of attendees if he was just
wandering around without Myrmidons to keep the hoi poli at
bay. Also can anyone verify that Steve Jobs actually was on the
floor at MacWorld? Enquiring minds want to know.
Have you all checked out her website <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.tinynibbles.com/violetblue.html" target="_newWindow">http://www.tinynibbles.com/violetblue.html</a>
was/is in two separate buildings.) I never saw, nor heard talk of,
Steve Jobs putting in an appearance on the floor. Given that half
the men there were dressed in Steve Jobs drag, I wonder if Violet
simply mistook someone for Uncle Steve.
discernment about who he has his photo taken with. I mean,
c'mon, Violet Blue is a freak of nature who gains recognition for
the perversion of sexuality. Maybe, just maybe, Steve doesn't
want to be associated with that. Maybe he already knew who
Violet Blue was and what she represented. Maybe he's a closet
fan of her site but realizes any association with her - especially a
photo- would be detrimental to everything he has created and
built with Apple's market share to date. Who knows?
So don't take it personally Ms. Blue. Just remember- everybody
has a right not to like someone or be associated with them-
even you.
not hitting any cylinders, and is polluting even baseline of CNets
stories.
LMAO ... just to give a few of you a clue, I decided to google
Violet Blue, and travelled to her official website.
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.tinynibbles.com/" target="_newWindow">http://www.tinynibbles.com/</a>
After linking to that site, you tell me how NOT having your
picture taken with Violet Blue, can not be considered
discretionary. Given Steve Jobs position, and visibility, his
responsibilities dictate such discretion.
situation will never come out. So lets get on with some common
sense. If the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company is in a
personal (albeit iPhone) conversation, interrupting him is indeed
rude, even if one of his people did it. He's on the show floor to
evaluate the effectiveness of the presentation, not mingle with
the fans. (And I did indeed see him standing more or less alone
using his iPhone) And MacWorld is not his, or Apple's, show, but
IDG's show. Of course, without Steve/Apple there'd probably be
no MacWorld to speak of by now considering the course Apple
was taking before Steve went back. There's more to life than
this...
family was also in attendance because my son also competed in
the athletic event, but not against Jobs' son. Because my son
took place for his event and was so happy, I walked up to Jobs,
told him my son (age 11) had won his event and asked him if I
could take a picture. Jobs smiled and immediately agreed. Out
came the camera along came my four year old who ran into the
picture at just the right moment for me to catch a great photo of
Jobs and my two kids. I thanked him and that was it. Never met
him before and never spoke to him again.
I gotta a laugh from this. Was Jobs supposed to be impressed if you had given your credentials? Who do you think you are -- Angela Jolie??
Violet Blue? Never heard of you before today. And I suspect I won't hear from you in the future either.
hear from you in the future either."
I never heard of her either, but she is probably getting a lot of
traffic to her website.
Oh please. In History? Not even in this generation! Is he a smart guy and good business man? Definitely. A visionary? Maybe amongst thousands of other visionaries. The greatest? absolutely not!
But what would expect a mac fanboi to write?
But the level of defense for this guy, who is widely known to be an introverted, egomaniacal jerk, is quite disturbing.
This guy really is a pied piper, and could lead all of you lemmings right off of a cliff, couldn't he?
Drink the Kool-aid.
I was photographing for a magazine Sonny Liston in Los Vegas prior to his championship fight with Ali. A group of us, including his wife, were having dinner in the dining room of his hotel. We were being continually interrupted by autograph seekers walking up to our table. Liston, would silently glare at them, reach into his back pocket, remove a pad of pre-printed autographs, tear one off and without comment hand it to the person--then resume eating his dinner.
And Mac-fanboys and fannies are stupider still.
They are like those Christian/Islamic-fundies - Jobs is their Jesus and Allah. Every Macworld time Jobs promises a seat besides him and 72 virgins too! All that airhead comes up with is... "AIR" - and mac-fanboys go jihadi on everyone.
Mac-fanboys and fannies should go drown themselves - lemmings et al.
just went up and shook his hand and told him congrats on
returning to Apple. He was very gracious and polite.
Lucas Roebuck
I think this encounter was blown out of proportion for media attention.
- Any other photos of Jobs at the Expo?
- by Lee in San Diego January 17, 2008 3:06 PM PST
- If Jobs was actually walking the floor at MacWorld Expo then I
- Like this Reply to this comment
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Showing 1 of 3 pages (90 Comments)would expect to see more photos of him on the various Mac blogs.
Isn't c|net's Tom Krazit at MacWorld, maybe we should ask him.