That's an oversimplification. He was a marketer, true, but he also was fanatically pushing people towards standards higher than anyone else in the industry.
If there was nothing special about Jobs, how can it be Apple came up with the Mac (a somewhat just-right version of the Lisa ideas), with the iPod, the iPhone, computers that actually look good (starting with the bondi-blue iMac, which he had little to do with)? To say he only could sell other people's ideas ignore how many of these people voluntarily worked for someone with the reputation of being an insufferable asshole and pull off miracle after miracle.
If I invent a fantastic new algorithm in a space people are hamfistedly competing in, does my manager get the credit for inventing the algorithm because he pushed me, or do I?
This type of thinking makes great engineers move into other non-engineering ventures.
If your manager drove you through several iterations, pointing where your previous attempts were flawed and guiding you to the One True Implementation, then yes, your manager deserves some credit for making you implement their idea. The implementation may be yours, as well as the flawed ones, but it's the manager's idea in the end. You deserve credit for making it possible, but so does your manager.
A good manager isn't a person who tells you what to do. A good manager will help you do the best you can do. A really good one will make you do what you didn't think you could.
Let's pretend this is a journal article, if he pointed out flaws but didn't really do much else, does he end up in the list of authors at the beginning of the paper or does he end up as a thank you at the end?
It seems in this case people like Jobs end up as first author.
Why didn't the people who were actually responsible form their own company then, but rather wait for Steve come along to assemble the team and take all the credit? I also assume he made more money than them, how did so many people stand for that?
Everybody deserves credit. Your manager could have told you to work on a different problem. Are you really a better engineer than me - working for a different company in a different problem space where that algorithm isn't needed? Is it something special about you that nobody else could develop it, or is it just the circumstances put you in a place where you couldn't help but develop it? So you developed a new algorithm, are you sure that if I had tried I wouldn't have developed a better one?
Let's pretend this is a journal article, if he pointed out flaws but didn't really do much else, does he end up in the list of authors at the beginning of the paper or does he end up as a thank you at the end?
It seems in this case people like Jobs end up as first author.
The rest is irrelevant. There might be several scientists far better than me, all that matters is that I got there first. My manager could also be irrelevant as I've had technically capable managers that didn't truly do anything except put me on a project, that they hadn't known beforehand if it was even possible to do, and tell me to do it with next to zero feedback throughout the entire process.
I believe Jobs was an "editor" too. He would direct talents into improvements and pick choices. He didn't just sell something made, he was the guy who asked for it. There was many ways to design a mp3 player, some good that amazing people could have made, but only a few that became iconic like the ipod.
ps: think about Next too, that's again a Jobs only venture. He assembled the team, designed the goals, drove the people. He's not "just a salesman", he brings value into the formula. Not to say that people like Tesla weren't screwed though.
No one is trying to diminish them. The thing is, brilliant marketeers already know how to be celebrated. But finding the scientists and engineers take extra effort to notice, because they aren't naturally "loud" about it.
That's an oversimplification. He was a marketer, true, but he also was fanatically pushing people towards standards higher than anyone else in the industry.
If there was nothing special about Jobs, how can it be Apple came up with the Mac (a somewhat just-right version of the Lisa ideas), with the iPod, the iPhone, computers that actually look good (starting with the bondi-blue iMac, which he had little to do with)? To say he only could sell other people's ideas ignore how many of these people voluntarily worked for someone with the reputation of being an insufferable asshole and pull off miracle after miracle.