What Did Time's Steve Jobs Profile Cost Michael Moritz?

Michael Moritz says a Time profile of Steve Jobs severed their relationship, and he never repaired it. Three years after he joined Time he was on leave from the San Francisco bureau to write a book about Apple's private days, because the magazine did not have room for that story. Time called and asked him to contribute to a profile for the edition that became the computer of the year. He thinks that was the only time Time picked an inanimate object for the big annual issue. Steve Jobs was convinced he would be named man of the year, even though nobody had confirmed it.

The piece went through what Moritz calls an editorial combine harvester. What came out was malicious, nasty, and underhanded. Steve Jobs hated it, for reasons Moritz defends, and Moritz was appalled for different reasons. The profile was one reason he left Time. He felt disenchanted by the treatment.

He still respected Steve Jobs and admired him, including later achievements Moritz says he could not have matched. He had also seen darker shades, which made it hard to hold Jobs up as an object of unalloyed admiration. He calls Jobs a heroic figure anyway.