631 pages
English language
Published April 29, 2015
Draws on more than forty interviews with Steve Jobs, as well as interviews with family members, friends, competitors, and colleagues, to offer a look at the co-founder and leading creative force behind the Apple computer company.
This biography shares the life and personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.
The author's style is frustrating, and he repeats catchphrases and mantras throughout. It definitely feels like it had been rushed, which press reports indicate was the case.
That said, I've always found Steve Jobs fascinating, and so it kept me engaged. If the subject were a less interesting person than Jobs, one of the stars would have been erased by Isaacson's writing.
I should really write a longer review. BUt overall so much about this opportunity was an abject failure. I actually think I'm being generous giving it 3 stars. Probably really only deserves 2.1
I’d heard some stories about Steve Jobs, but the stories I’d heard were nothing to what is in this book.
There’s no easy way to say this: Jobs comes across as a detestable human being. Devoid of any kind of feelings towards anyone else, he shouts, screams, cries and sulks his way through his petulant life.
There are plenty of unpleasant examples of how he uses people up and spits them out: from Steve Wozniak, the co-creator of the original Apple II, to Jony Ive, the design genius responsible for much of the look/feel of Apple’s products since the original iPod. And let’s not start on the way he treats his parents, his first wife and his daughter, the staff at restaurants and hotels, and his Apple board.
In an admirable departure from the normal authorised biography genre, this book leaves me with the feeling that there is almost nothing …
I’d heard some stories about Steve Jobs, but the stories I’d heard were nothing to what is in this book.
There’s no easy way to say this: Jobs comes across as a detestable human being. Devoid of any kind of feelings towards anyone else, he shouts, screams, cries and sulks his way through his petulant life.
There are plenty of unpleasant examples of how he uses people up and spits them out: from Steve Wozniak, the co-creator of the original Apple II, to Jony Ive, the design genius responsible for much of the look/feel of Apple’s products since the original iPod. And let’s not start on the way he treats his parents, his first wife and his daughter, the staff at restaurants and hotels, and his Apple board.
In an admirable departure from the normal authorised biography genre, this book leaves me with the feeling that there is almost nothing to like about Jobs: even though Isaacson seems to treat him as a visionary and a genius in almost every part of the book. Jobs’s decisions go unchallenged, and scorn is poured on anyone else who dares to challenge Jobs’s decisions. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to make people who didn’t agree with his ideas to appear stupid. Platitudes to the dying Jobs from people like Bill Gates are treated as admissions that Microsoft got things wrong, and that Apple was the One True Way. This is probably playing to the book’s intended audience; but it’s not necessarily the right conclusion.
There are a few things to admire Jobs for. First, his almost single-handed devotion to “focus” – focusing in on a small amount of products and use-cases, rather than spreading yourself too thinly. Google could learn from this (and arguable has done over the past six months). The BBC could also learn from this, and probably is doing as part of Delivering Quality First.
Jobs’s self-belief (the “reality distortion field”) is interesting in a business context: almost none of Apple’s products appear to have been researched in the same way that most things are these days. Jobs’s gut feel and passion is evident; and his unwillingness to ever accept second-best, even if this made him a decidedly second-best human being.
I rather liked an offchance comment he made to Rupert Murdoch, while (typically) berating him for the editorial angle of Fox News, which he believed “was destructive, harmful to the nation, and a blot on Murdoch’s reputation”. His comment was interesting: “The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is constructive-destructive, and you’ve cast your lot with the destructive people”, he said. An interesting view on the editorial stance of news media.
The irony that I’m typing this review on a MacBook Air isn’t altogether lost on me. Apple produces tremendous products; but the biography has actually made me think twice about buying anything Apple-branded again.
There is irony, too, that I read his biography on an Amazon Kindle. Jobs pours scorn on Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, saying that they screwed up their ebooks business, and also helps screw up the Amazon pricing model, too, forcing publishers to change their contracts with Amazon to sell their books with Apple. (Incidentally, my Kindle crashed three times while reading this book.)
But what worries me is the amount of stupid businessmen who’ll be copying Jobs’s behaviour. (I say “businessmen” on purpose, since I’ve yet to encounter a businesswoman, on any level, who treats people in an unpleasant way). The arrogance of the man, the dreadful way he treated every genius and A-level player around him, the rudeness and unpleasant behaviour even after nearly dying three years before the end of his life – in part, because he refused to let doctors drain his stomach, and consequently caught pneumonia – is behaviour that is already too common in offices across the world.
The worst thing to happen would be for more people to emulate the cold, unpleasant behaviour of Jobs. He might have helped make what was, earlier this year, the world’s most valuable company: but this is in spite of, not because of, the way he behaved.
A far more complex man than we were led to believe over the years. The closing pages of his own words tell a lot.
This is a great book, very timely and obviously one of Steve Jobs last works with him commissioning it so that his story would be told, warts and all. I couldn't put it down.
It so sad to think that we hoped Steve Jobs would show up for the announcement of the iPhone 4S when he was in fact so close to death. The book details the back story behind the releases of the iPhone and iPad and you get the impression that Jobs put all of his strength into them once he knew that his time was limited. The impending tragedy of his early death in some way contributed to some of his greatest achievements.
Only being a recent Mac convert, much of the early history was new to me. I probably disliked Steve Jobs and Bill Gates equally throughout the 90s but my impressions of them changed throughout …
This is a great book, very timely and obviously one of Steve Jobs last works with him commissioning it so that his story would be told, warts and all. I couldn't put it down.
It so sad to think that we hoped Steve Jobs would show up for the announcement of the iPhone 4S when he was in fact so close to death. The book details the back story behind the releases of the iPhone and iPad and you get the impression that Jobs put all of his strength into them once he knew that his time was limited. The impending tragedy of his early death in some way contributed to some of his greatest achievements.
Only being a recent Mac convert, much of the early history was new to me. I probably disliked Steve Jobs and Bill Gates equally throughout the 90s but my impressions of them changed throughout the book. I really have a much greater respect for Bill Gates as a result of the character that is revealed in the book. I feel I have understood what Steve Jobs was about and what he was trying to achieve. Steve Wozniak comes across as the wonderful Tom Bombadill character that we know and love.
It' s hard to summarize what I feel about Steve Jobs. So much to admire, but such a flawed character. Very thought provoking story.
