If Sun Tzu (Art of War) were alive today – he would add a chapter to his treatise on war & business – do not go out of your way to annoy Steve Jobs.

Sure, on stage Steve Jobs seems like a pleasant man dressed in jeans and a mock turtleneck and you figure someone who’s all vegan would be accommodating and forgiving … well, maybe he might let you have the last piece of tofu at dinner but when it comes to business matters, you might as well be dressed in a wife-beater, using the new aluminum keyboard to butcher a pig in his house and then asking him where his phone is so you can activate Vista.

In other words, not the smartest move you can make.

Like the old saying goes, “Don’t bluff if you’re not prepared to back it up.”

Some people seem to be soft in the head – thinking the business world is like being in pre-school, share and share alike. I hate to break it to you but the real world is just a bit harsher. You might have to accept these three facts:

Steve Jobs is smarter than you;
He is 4 moves ahead of you and;
If you are partnered with Apple, they need you a lot less than you need them.

This wasn’t always the case but it is now. You want to shuttle off Apple products into a small section of the store, we’ll just open up a chain of stores that’s the highest grossing stores in the country – by far (as measured by sales per square foot). That’s not to say everyone should partner with Apple but if you want in on the Apple’s eco-system, you are subject to Apple’s rules … it’s that simple. My solar system, my rules.

And never annoy your source of light and life … Steve Jobs … you may be cast adrift into the cold dark bleakness of empty space … alive, sure but always branded as unworthy and foolhardy … some of those deciding to annoy Steve Jobs?

Jeff Raskin – Steve took over his Macintosh project and later when Raskin had a computing project at Canon, who won the funding fight between him and Job’s NeXT?

John Sculley – Sculley looked like he won after a year but now 20 years later, just known as the CEO who got in over his head and never got another mainstream CEO gig.

Bill Gates – Of course, his rival had his decade of glory but already he is receding into the background of tech history while Steve Jobs is now well known to a new generation that wasn’t even born before personal computers. Of course, BG will hopefully be remembered for his philanthropy work but already his other legacy is fading.

Gil Amelio – Say whatever happened to that tussle over the direction of Apple?

Michael Dell – Not only groveling to sell OSX (yea, right after we grant a license to Gil Amelio, Dell is next) but now furiously paddling not to be remembered only as an entry in Wikipedia. Funny, no one calls him a ‘genius’ anymore.

Michael Eisner – Not only forced out at Disney where the board looked at him and then looked at Pixar and then at him and then at Pixar and then at him and surprise, Steve Jobs is now the LARGEST shareholder. No CEO jobs out there but his CNBC show set some sort of record for lowest viewership of a cable series … DEAL OR NO DEAL aired just before with 500,000 viewers – how many stayed around to watch his show? 95,000 … there are 300 MILLION Americans.

Doug Morris/Universal Music Group – My sheer presence and smartness in switching all our tracks to walmart.com & Rhapsody will make Steve Jobs rue the day! Or will his shareholders wonder why he is walking away from $750 million a year from Apple to do business with two companies with about 1.5% of the business … companies that had failed to make any headway against Apple for 4 years will suddenly garner a huge switch because of DRM “free” tracks from Lil Scrappy or Crime Mob? But first you have to download a Windows-only app and register. Or maybe you can just buy some CD’s and rip all the tracks you want that really, really DRM free? Or just go online and find one of 50 billion plus illegal tracks? Doug Morris came armed to a street fight with a puffy shirt. Good luck to ya Doug.

Ed Zander Motorola – You guys at Apple couldn’t design a cell phone, we’ve been at it for 15 years and look how far we’ve come! It’s in color now! Just give us iTunes, we’ll shoehorn it in there somehow. We will show you how it’s done in the cell phone industry! Result?