During the tenure of Steve Jobs, which was memorable as much for his

This one is tricky! (And apologies to anybody who saw a version with some discrepancies between the original underlined portion and answer choice (A). The problem has been fixed.) If you get too mechanical with the word "which", you can get yourself into trouble here, especially if you're not paying obsessively close attention to the meaning of each of the answer choices.


“Which” can’t modify a person, so you might automatically think that this one is wrong, since “which” seems to be modifying “Steve Jobs.” But as we discussed in our long-winded article about the many uses of “that” on the GMAT, it can be perfectly OK for a noun modifier (“that” or “which”, for example) to “reach behind” a prepositional phrase. So (A) is saying that “the tenure of Steve Jobs” was memorable for a couple of different reasons. That seems fine.

But there’s a different problem: “the growth of Apple exceeded any large technology company.” Nope. We can’t really compare the growth of Apple to “any large technology company.” (A) is out.


There’s a nice, clear parallelism error here: “both for his dictatorial management style and his groundbreaking product innovations.” “Both” is followed by a prepositional phrase, and “and” is followed by a noun, and that’s not OK. (B) is gone.


I guess I’m OK with the modifier beginning with “who”, though I think it would make more sense if we modify the entire phrase “tenure of Steve Jobs”, instead of just Steve Jobs. But I guess it’s not DEFINITELY wrong to use “who” here.

The bigger problem is that the comparison at the end is just a tiny bit off. "That" is a singular pronoun referring back to "the growth", so then we have: “…the growth of Apple exceeded {the growth of} any technology company in the world.” This is subtle as hell, but Apple’s growth didn’t exceed the growth of any technology company – it exceeded the growth of any other technology company. Nasty! (And here’s an official question that has a similar issue, in case you think we’re inventing weird stuff.) So (C) is out.


As mentioned in (C), I’m not crazy about the use of “who” here, but again, I’m not sure that it’s wrong. The comparison at the end of the underlined portion is definitely wrong, though: it’s literally saying that Apple itself exceeded every other tech company, and that doesn’t make sense. (D) is gone.

Crap, I hope we like (E).


Not bad! The phrase beginning with “which” correctly modifies “the tenure of Steve Jobs”, and that makes sense. And the comparison is finally better: “the growth of Apple exceeded {the growth of} any other large tech company…” That works. (E) is the answer.
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There seems to be a typo error between and original question and option A.


Here, the growth of apple is compared with every large tech company so on the basis of an incorrect comparison. A is out!



I'm really not sure what this phrase 'memorable.....innovations' is modifying. I hope it's tenure, because if it's modifying the entire previous clause, it makes little sense. Plus, its in passive voice for no apparent reason. I'm going to knock this one OUT, as I think it's modification is ambiguous!



We're talking about Steve Job's tenure, and not Steve Jobs himself so this modifier does not make any sense with the subordinate clause 'During the tenure of Steve Jobs'. I'll still keep this one, but I'm pretty sure, we need to modify tenure.



Apple exceeded every other company in what sense? It's not clear in this sentence. This one is OUT!



",which" modifier is correctly modifying tenure as 'of Steve Jobs' is an essential modifier, and there is a correct comparison between the growth of apple and the growth of any other large tech company.
This seems like a good contender.


Battle of C and E.
In C, we're modifying Steve Jobs with a relative modifier starting with 'who'
The original sentence is giving us more information about what his tenure was known for.

E is the answer for me
This SC made me sweat a little!
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During the tenure of Steve Jobs, which was known for his dictatorial management style and for his innovative ventures, the growth of Apple Inc. exceeded any large technology company in the world.

Solution:

(A) which was memorable as much for his dictatorial management style as for his groundbreaking product innovations, the growth of Apple exceeded any- Comparison is wrong

(B) memorable both for his dictatorial management style and his groundbreaking product innovations, the growth of Apple was exceeded by that of no other- Both X..and Y not ||;any other is the right idiom used in comparision

(C) who was memorable for his dictatorial management style and his groundbreaking product innovations, the growth of Apple exceeded that of any- Any other is the right idiom used in comparision; modifier seems to modify Steve Jobs instead of tenure

(D) who was memorable as much for his dictatorial management style as for his groundbreaking product innovations, Apple exceeded every other- Growth of apple must be compared with growth of other companies

(E) which was memorable as much for his dictatorial management style as for his groundbreaking product innovations, the growth of Apple exceeded that of any other- Correct

Hence E.

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During the tenure of Steve Jobs, which was known for his dictatorial management style and for his innovative ventures, the growth of Apple Inc. exceeded any large technology company in the world.

(A) which was memorable as much for his dictatorial management style as for his groundbreaking product innovations, the growth of Apple exceeded any - Incorrect comparison -

(B) memorable both for his dictatorial management style and his groundbreaking product innovations, the growth of Apple was exceeded by that of no other - Both X and Y -- X and Y should be parallel

(C) who was memorable for his dictatorial management style and his groundbreaking product innovations, the growth of Apple exceeded that of any - The growth of Apple can't exceed its own growth since any will include Apple too.

(D) who was memorable as much for his dictatorial management style as for his groundbreaking product innovations, Apple exceeded every other - unclear meaning - what of Apple exceeded every other

(E) which was memorable as much for his dictatorial management style as for his groundbreaking product innovations, the growth of Apple exceeded that of any other - Correct

Answer E
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For everyone confused between C and E:
(C) who was memorable for his dictatorial management style and his groundbreaking product innovations, the growth of Apple exceeded that of any
(E) which was memorable as much for his dictatorial management style as for his groundbreaking product innovations, the growth of Apple exceeded that of any other

C uses "...that of any" and E uses "...that of any other".

We have to use "Any other" (as in E) because if we use "any" (as in C), then we are comparing growth of apple to that of all the large technological companies-including Apple. And this is absurd. Apple's growth cannot exceed that of Apple.

Simple example:
The population of Tokyo exceeds that of any city in the world. We may say: any city's? really? even Tokyo's? Although this is normally correct in colloquial english, this is wrong sentence
The population of Tokyo exceeds that of any other city in the world. Oh, now by adding "other" we exclude Tokyo from the list of cities Tokyo is compared to.

This is why E is correct

During the tenure of Steve Jobs, which was known for his dictatorial management style and for his innovative ventures, the growth of Apple Inc. exceeded any large technology company in the world.

(A) which was memorable as much for his dictatorial management style as for his groundbreaking product innovations, the growth of Apple exceeded any-- on first glance one would be tempted to eliminate this in a rush. but attention needs to be paid that the restrictive modifier here is modifying the tenure of Steve jobs- NOT STEVE JOBS HIMSELF. Hold onto this option.

(B) memorable both for his dictatorial management style and his groundbreaking product innovations, the growth of Apple was exceeded by that of no other - issues in second clause the growth of Apple was exceeded by that of no other company in the world.

(C) who was memorable for his dictatorial management style and his groundbreaking product innovations, the growth of Apple exceeded that of any - DELETE, who cannot be employed for describing "tenure"

(D) who was memorable as much for his dictatorial management style as for his groundbreaking product innovations, Apple exceeded every other- delete same reason as C

(E) which was memorable as much for his dictatorial management style as for his groundbreaking product innovations, the growth of Apple exceeded that of any other- seems alright.

Comparing A and E
A) growth of apple exceeded any large technology company in the world. Comparison error - comparison between growth of a company and company is WRONG. Delete.

E) the growth of Apple exceeded that of any other- No comparision error as comparison is between growth of apple and "that" of any other company.

CORRECT ANSWER IS E

Hi Neha, his is clearly used for Steve Jobs and not for tenure.

Thankfully, this is not a split that you need to deal with in this sentence, because all five answer choices use his.

The intent of the original sentence is to expound the characteristics of Steve Jobs (his management style and his product innovations).

In fact, its groundbreaking product innovations (which would obviously mean tenure's groundbreaking product innovations) sounds slightly off to me, but even if that were the intent, then at the very least you would agree that its dictatorial management style is completely incorrect (since tenure cannot have dictatorial management style; tenure can be known for someone's dictatorial management style, but the tenure itself cannot have dictatorial management style).

So then, what you are looking at, is this structure:

..which was memorable as much for his dictatorial management style as for its groundbreaking product innovations..

That's a very clumsy statement.
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This is a great question. Lots of stuff going on you have to spot.

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mykrasovski generis

Taking our discussion further on blah of blah, which.

In this question which rightly refers to During the tenure.

akash7gupta11 have a look at the post by GMATNinja. He did a fantastic job (as always) explaining the problem. He also has a link to the video that will hopefully help you deal with "which" and "that".

For what it is worth, this is a hard problem. I knew what is tested, but made a mistake.

I get the fact that which modifies the tenure of Steve Jobs.
My issue is how can a tenure be associated with a dictatorial management style/groundbreaking product dev? Isn’t it the person who would have a dictatorial mgmt style?

Thanks!

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Hello!
(C) who was memorable for his dictatorial management style and his groundbreaking product innovations, the growth of Apple exceeded that of any- This seems perfect because the word who is applied for Steve Jobs, which is correctly applicable for his dictatorial management style, as it is a human quality.

(E) which was memorable as much for his dictatorial management style as for his groundbreaking product innovations, the growth of Apple exceeded that of any other- Here, which cannot be related to the current scenario as tenure is not applicable.

Official Answer- C
Thank you!

Regards,
Raunak Damle.

The official answer is E and not C...

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The dictatorial management style of Steve Jobs was simply a characteristic of the tenure of Steve Jobs. We have something similar in this example:

"The dynasty of the Chicago Bulls during the 1990s was remembered for the dominance of Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen." - The dominance (of MJ and SP) is simply a characteristic of the dynasty (of the Bulls).

Similarly, it's perfectly reasonable to say that Steve Job's management style was a defining characteristic of Steve Job's tenure.

I hope that helps!
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GMATNinja

Is the parallelism in answer choice C and some of the other answer choices wrong because it says "(both) for his dictatorial management style and his groundbreaking product innovations" and not "(both) for his dictatorial management style and for his groundbreaking product innovations"?

In (C) we have, "... who was memorable for (1) his dictatorial management style and (2) his groundbreaking product innovations," so we actually have a perfectly parallel list of nouns (with some extra little modifiers that don't really affect the parallelism).

Repeating the "for" would probably be fine, but there's nothing wrong with the parallelism as is.

I hope that helps!
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During the tenure of Steve Jobs, which was memorable as much for his dictatorial management style as for his groundbreaking product innovations, the growth of Apple exceeded any large technology company in the world.
We can delete options A, B & D , immediately by having similar error in comparison for last modifier i.e Growth of Apple to be compared with growth of rest of company

(A) the growth of Apple exceeded any

(B) the growth of Apple was exceeded by that of no other- Changes meaning of original sentence.

(C) who was memorable for his dictatorial management style and his groundbreaking product innovations, the growth of Apple exceeded that of any - wrong usage of Relative pronoun Who .Tenure is subject.

(D) Apple exceeded every other

(E) which was memorable as much for his dictatorial management style as for his groundbreaking product innovations, the growth of Apple exceeded that of any other- correct

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Hi GMATGuruNY - Isn't the 'which' in E referring to the first singular noun [i.e. "steve jobs"] and not "Tenure"

Reason
-- the verb after 'which' is Was

Was is a singular verb and thus the 'which'' has to refer to a singular noun only

The closest singular noun is 'steve jobs' and not "tenure"

I got this rule from your comment below from another website (screenshot below)