Despite being a long time Apple investor I was caught completely off gaurd that Jobs only owns 5,500,000 shares out of well over 900,000,000 outstanding.
Makes the perks like the private jet look like peanuts vs. value he's brought to the table.
The Apple board has consistently granted him options, but he never exercises them (except for a couple grants in 1998-1999 that brought his company ownership to SEC-required levels for the CEO position). He has given up billions of dollars by simply letting his options expire.
Apple's SEC filings are generally interesting, if you're ever incredibly bored.
This is why I always find the Apple hate from Google fan boys amusing. If Jobs is evil, what are his goals? It can't be money because he's literally throwing away billions. He wont live long enough to take over the world. I think he just wants to go down in history as providing the best user experiences so he's doing what he thinks will make that most likely. You may disagree with how he's trying (I do myself on some things) but I think he believes in it.
Compared to that, how benevolent is Google actually? Not that they need to be. They don't owe that to anyone anymore than Jobs does. So I wish conversations about Apple/Google could drop the good/evil nonsense. It's about trade offs and results. Why they do what they do is their own business.
EDIT: Removed unnecessary sentence (made an irrelevant call on Google's benevolence).
Every company gives to charity. It's tax deductible and great PR. Think of the most evil fortune 100 company you can come up with and then go look how much they're giving in charity. Did Google's founders join Warren Buffett and co. on donating half their wealth to charity?
My point is that people should stop looking for motivations in these companies and see them for what they are: companies who provide us some service or product. Especially since if you force the issue and make us compare who is more benevolent I think a strong argument can be made for Jobs being more benevolent than Larry and/or Sergey (and again, it doesn't matter).
Why not take the options and just give to money to charity rather than let it lapse? I don't believe taking the options would impact Apple much, just add a (minor) dilution to existing shareholders who would never begrudge this being done for Jobs. Even if he doesn't care for the money I'd have thought he'd see the positives of becoming a large philanthropist.
Zuckerberg obviously still retains a large portion of his founding shares (whatever he hasn't sold for FU money and hasn't been diluted). I imagine Steve Jobs lost and/or sold a good majority of his Apple stock after he was ousted and now only has what has been awarded to him since his return.
Jobs actually sold himself down to 1 share of Apple soon after NeXT was acquired, which triggered the ouster of Gil Amelio and the appointment of Jobs as interim CEO. The stock that he sold was all given to him by Apple as part of the Next acquisition--he had no stock (aside from perhaps one share, again for sentimental reasons) between when he left Apple and when Next was acquired, and after coming back he only got stock in later years when the board gave him stock and options.
IIRC Steve Jobs sold all his Apple shares when he was ousted by John Sculley. All Steve Jobs has right now are options granted during last 14 years plus what he received from acquisition of Next Inc.
Makes the perks like the private jet look like peanuts vs. value he's brought to the table.