Profiling the good, the bad, the secretive Steve Jobs

It’s more than a bit fitting that a company would seek to block publication of a profile of its founder and chief executive seeking, among other things, to explore the culture of secrecy that shrouds both company and leader and ask the question if the former can exist without the latter.

In the tech industry, there is only a short list of companies that would qualify as the subject for such a profile. A list of approximately one.

And so, writing in England’s Sunday Times, Bryan Appleyard offers 4,300 words about Steve Jobs, genius and tyrant, the company he co-founded, was expelled from and then resuscitated as a conquering hero and its future without him.

Apple, apparently, was not on board with the project.

Appleyard writes: “The secrecy is all about preserving the magic of each new product. Apple hates personality stuff and press intrusion. ‘We want to discourage profiles,’ an Apple PR tells me stiffly, apparently unaware she is waving a sackful of red rags at a herd of bulls. Another PR rings the editor of this magazine to try to halt publication of this piece.”