Rick Tetzeli, co-author of the upcoming book Becoming Steve Jobs, aptly dismantles the many myths surrounding Jobs’s public persona in a fantastic piece for Fast Company:

What emerged from these exclusive interviews—with Jony Ive and Tim Cook, Bill Gates and Bob Iger, and others, including Steve’s widow, Laurene Powell Jobs—was a very different picture of Jobs. Steve was someone with a deep hunger for learning, who breathed in an education wherever he could find it, from his youthful pilgrimage to India to his key mentors and his longtime colleagues at NeXT, Pixar, and Apple. Powell Jobs goes so far as to call him a “learning machine.” He learned from his many failures and relentlessly applied those lessons. This wasn’t an obvious process—Steve always preferred to talk about the future rather than the past, so there are very few examples of him reflecting on his triumphs and missteps, or acknowledging a lesson learned. But like most of us, he tried to use what he learned to take better advantage of his strengths and temper his weaknesses. It was a lifelong effort, and, like most of us, he succeeded in some ways and failed in others.

A fascinating read.