But yeah, I like my iPhone.
How often is it necessary to bruise the feelings of others to be true to yourself? Just about never, in my experience. There are lots of occasions in The Fountainhead where others feelings are bruised, but this is their jealousy causing self-inflicted distress. You can often be true to yourself by discreetly keeping your own counsel, so long as you are not dissuaded from your own true desires.
If you are the boss of others, you should be able to do this honestly and without cruelty, even if you are a hard taskmaster and blunt in your opinions.
Everyone knows people who are their own people, but who do not impose on others. If asked, they will tell you. If pressed, they will stand up for themselves. But they sometimes show restraint where others might take the opportunity to "count coup."
It's also possible to be your own person and stand up for yourself while being abrasive, suffering no fools, and keeping everyone around you on edge. There's also a whole spectrum in between.
If my observations about certain subscribers to individualist philosophy bothers you, I suggest that might be salient data. You have far better access to additional data than I for evaluating that.
I find Objectivism, from what I know of it, to be remarkably self-consistent. It is an admirable product of its time. Some of what Ayn Rand said needs to be modified in the face of new evidence from evolutionary biology and neuroscience. (Humans clearly do have instincts.) A sign of a healthy philosophy is its ability to incorporate such new data.
(I also find, incidentally, that the more ambitious your goals the more likely you are to be an asshole. Jobs is certainly the archetype again. But on the other hand you've got great people like Jeff Bezos, so I don't agree with the folk that think assholery leads automatically to greatness.)
