'Auteur theory' is neither Kao's nor Gruber's; they're both referring back to a concept from film criticism:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auteur_theory" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auteur_theory</a><p>It's a fairly obvious analogy to draw when dealing with other team creative efforts which are orchestrated by strong central personality.<p>I suspect you could find other people applying the label to Jobs as early as the 1980s; after a quick search here's one from Scott Rosenberg of Salon in 1999: <a href="http://www.salon.com/people/bc/1999/01/05/jobs/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.salon.com/people/bc/1999/01/05/jobs/index.html</a>