After reading Steve Jobs, I feel as if I know the man so well that I’m just gonna call him Steve. I think he’d like that. And since Steve was all about telling people what they want, I’ll tell you, you want me to call him Steve.
But I’ll call the author Isaacson because, while I admire his work (which also includes biographies of Albert Einstein, Henry Kissinger, and Ben Franklin), I just don’t know him as well. That’s okay though. His literary objective is to familiarize us with his subjects, not himself.
Steve, in fact, specifically solicited Isaacson to write this biography. The choice makes sense. Isaacson handles the job according to Steve’s basic design philosophies - the product should be simple but elegant, easily understood by the consumer despite its technical nature, with acute attention to detail.
I won’t carry on about Steve. That’s Isaacson’s job, and he does it thoroughly, from Steve’s conception and adoption, his indulged childhood, his elementary school inquisitiveness and insolence, the high school mischief, college-age social rebellion, religious searching, troubled relationships, and business adventures and misadventures.
Isaacson manages to diplomatically present a divisive character, someone about whom lots of people had extremely unflattering things to say. There’s no denying the negative. It’s clear that Steve was an obnoxious spitfire. The ubiquitous first-person accounts of his outbursts, crying fits, and astonishing rudeness will keep you reading a text that might otherwise have all the charm of a technical journal.
However, there’s also no denying Steve’s formidable business success. Here’s what made him special: While most of us schlubs tend to be predominantly right brained or left brained, Steve was both. He loved design. He loved technology. And this resulted in products that worked great and looked great. Steve also loved control, and the book explains how he ultimately produced a simple, friendly user experience by tightly restricting access to the internal hardware and Apple’s software. By prioritizing quality over profit, and by narrowing Apple’s focus to just a handful of devices at a time, he created superior products that people were - and are - willing to pay for.
But I’ll call the author Isaacson because, while I admire his work (which also includes biographies of Albert Einstein, Henry Kissinger, and Ben Franklin), I just don’t know him as well. That’s okay though. His literary objective is to familiarize us with his subjects, not himself.
Steve, in fact, specifically solicited Isaacson to write this biography. The choice makes sense. Isaacson handles the job according to Steve’s basic design philosophies - the product should be simple but elegant, easily understood by the consumer despite its technical nature, with acute attention to detail.
I won’t carry on about Steve. That’s Isaacson’s job, and he does it thoroughly, from Steve’s conception and adoption, his indulged childhood, his elementary school inquisitiveness and insolence, the high school mischief, college-age social rebellion, religious searching, troubled relationships, and business adventures and misadventures.
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| Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in New York City |
However, there’s also no denying Steve’s formidable business success. Here’s what made him special: While most of us schlubs tend to be predominantly right brained or left brained, Steve was both. He loved design. He loved technology. And this resulted in products that worked great and looked great. Steve also loved control, and the book explains how he ultimately produced a simple, friendly user experience by tightly restricting access to the internal hardware and Apple’s software. By prioritizing quality over profit, and by narrowing Apple’s focus to just a handful of devices at a time, he created superior products that people were - and are - willing to pay for.
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| Walter Isaacson |
This chubby book (630 pages on paper, or 2,571 pages on my iPhone) is stuffed with goodies: end notes, an extensive index, an annotated list of characters (which is helpful since Isaacson drops hundreds of names), and most importantly, pictures! The content is approximately 80% business and 20% personal, which seems like a fair representation of his life. While I wish Steve’s familial relationships had been given more page space, I do love my Apple products, so I got through the business stuff with a fair degree of interest. But Steve’s tempestuous personality is what carries the story along, and after reading this, I hope-hope-hope that Apple can also carry along without him.
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