My understanding is that Jobs didn't really have much practical knowledge about contemporary electronics, and that all the "work" he did at Atari was actually done by Wozniak, who came in during the night shift and played video games with Jobs.

Perhaps, like mosts things in life, the truth lies somewhere between the perceived overstatements of Jobs' achievements and qualities and your "understanding".

I guess you're responding to the fact that I put "work" in quotes, but your comment comes off as unnecessarily snarky. My comment was brief, but I wasn't trying to denigrate Jobs achievements. I used the word "understanding" because I try not to speak categorically about people I don't know and events I didn't witness. Yes, Steve Jobs built a frequency counter when he was 12. But here's how Al Alcorn describes the 19 year old Jobs:

"I figured, this guy's gotta be cheap, man. He really doesn't have much skills at all," Alcorn remembers. "So I figured I'd hire him."

"Jobs never did a lick of engineering in his life. He had me snowed," Alcorn later recalled. "It took years before I figured out that he was getting Woz to 'come in the back door' and do all the work while he got the credit."

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/37762/

I didn't intend to come off as snarky and apologise if you feel in anyway aggrieved (you clearly do). I mere intended to point aout that things are never that black and white and often the truth can be found somewhere in-between.

That does not jive with the story of how he had called Hewlett of HP as a teenager to ask for parts for a project he was working on and was offered a job.

Your understanding is built by folklore spun by people with an agenda, not reality.

When Steve Wozniak is your co-founder, its not very hard to decide to just leave the engineering up to him and focus on the other aspects of the business.

But that doesn't mean he lacked practical knowledge. He certainly has garnered a lot of patents over the years for his inventions, many of which are technological.