Steve Jobs : Book Review

STEVE JOBS BY WALTER ISAACSON Dear alone dignitaries and peers present here, find to this hall, where we be all presented with the r arst opportunity on hearing roughly various(a) respected and popular members of this world. On given an opportunity, I wondered what should be the physical composition of my speech. Should I go for the Nobel laureates or the approximately popular figurines or large number who changed this world? Nobel laureates are historic, and popular muckle as noned are al hirey quite popular. So, lets hear cozyly a person who changed the expressive flare we look at engineering science now. The substance he drove a multibillion dollar company, the way he became a symbolisation of y stunnedh GODYes, Im here to talk ab issue the generatorised biography, the i-bio of the master, STEVE JOBS by Walter Isaacson. Steve Jobs The Exclusive Biography was one of the most eagerly expect watchwords of the social class 2011. The apply is a journey into the f lavor of a myth who revolutionized the way population saw technology. Walter Issacson brings to life, the innovator, the dreamer and the devil within Steve Jobs. An dead must read In my mind the sole purpose of reading material non-fiction is to claim, and if you learn slightlything, by definition you go forth be changed. So, what did I learn from this record? 1.I have a better come acrossing of orchard apple tree convergences and understand why they enjoy premium pricing. 2. Jobs ability to focus on altogether 2-3 things at once with absolute intensity. I, like many a nonher(prenominal), have too many interests and hobbies and could benefit from a tighter focus on just a few. 3. Jobs was equal to(p) to get the most from his employees, but some meters with tactics that I wouldnt be comfortable using, including intimidation and tearing down of others. 4. His goal was to meet himself withGrade A minds. Surrounding yourself with the best is non a problematical motto. 5 . Life is short-treat time with your family as if you are aware of your short time on earth.So, How does the author portray the champion Was he unbiased? Well, to the authors credit, Walter Issacsonis a biographer and a writer. He is excessively the director of Aspen bring in and has been the Managing Editor of TIME. Issacson has previously written the biographies of Henry Kissinger and Albert mentality. As abiographer of Albert Einsteinand Benjamin Franklin, Mr. Isaacson get alongs how to explicate and celebrate genius revered, big-dead genius. But he wrote Steve Jobs as its subject was mortally ill, and that is a more painful and delicate challenge. He had access to members of the Jobs family at a difficult time.Mr. Isaacson treats Steve Jobs as the biography of record, which way of life that it is a strange book to read so soon later on its subjects death. Some of it is an essential Silicon Valley chronicle, store stories well cognize to tech aficionados but interesting to a coarse audience. Some of it is already quaint. Mr. Jobss start-off job was at Atari, and it abstruse the game Pong. (If youre under 30, ask your parents, Mr. Isaacson writes. ) Some, like an account of the go forth of theiPad2, is so recent that it is hard to appreciate yet, even if Mr. Isaacson says the device comes to life like the face of a tickled baby. And some is definitely intended for early generations. Indeed, Mr. Isaacson writes, its success came non just from the beauty of the hardware but from the applications, known as apps, that allowed you to indulge in all sorts of delightful activities. One that he mentions, which will be as quaint as Pong some day, features the use of a slingshot to launch angry birds to destroy pigs and their fortresses. So Steve Jobs, an account of its subjects 56 years (he died on Oct. 5), must reach across time in more shipway than one. And it does, in a well-ordered, if not streamlined, fashion.It begins with a portrait of the y oung Mr. Jobs, rebellious toward the parents who embossed him and scornful of the ones who gave him up for adoption. (They were my sperm and egg bank, he says. ) Although Mr. Isaacson is not analytical about his subjects volatile personality (the word obnoxious figures in the book frequently), he raises the head teacher of whether feelings of abandonment in puerility do him fanatically controlling and manipulative as an adult. Fortunately, that glib question stays unanswered. As far as the making of the book, that in itself is a wondrous story.During the summer of 2009, Walter Isaacson got a phone call from Steve Jobs. It so false out that Jobs wanted Isaacson to write a biography of him. AfterSteve JobsanointedWalter Isaacsonas his authorized biographer in 2009, he took Mr. Isaacson to see the Mountain View, calcium, house in which he had lived as a boy. He pointed out its clean envision and awesome little features. He praised the developer, Joseph Eichler, who strengthened more than 11,000 homes in California subdivisions, for making an affordable product on a mass-market scale. And he sayed Mr.Isaacson the concentration camp fence built 50 years earlier by his father, capital of Minnesota Jobs. He loved doing things right, Mr. Jobs said. He even cared about the look of the part you couldnt see. Mr. Jobs, the brilliant and protean creator whose inventions so utterly change the allure of technology, turned those childhood lessons into an all-purpose theory of intelligent introduction. He gave Mr. Isaacson a chance to play by the same rules. His story calls for a book that is clear, elegant and concise enough to qualify as an iBio. Mr. Isaacsons Steve Jobs does its solid best to hit that target.Mr. Jobs promised not to look all over Mr. Isaacsons shoulder, and not to meddle with anything but the books cover. (Boy, does it look great. ) Steve Jobs asked for no right to read it before it was published and had no control over what was being written before it was published. He also encouraged people to speak honestly. In the book Jobs sometimes speaks brutally and candidly about the people he deformed along with and also his competitors. And he expressed benediction that the book would not be entirely flattering. But his legacy was at s bring in. And there were awkward questions to be asked.At the end of the volume, Mr. Jobs answers the question What drove me? by discussing himself in the departed tense. His friends, colleagues and foes offer an unparalleled view of the perfectionism, hotness, artistry, obsessions, compulsions and devilry that regulate his approach to the innovative products and business that resulted. Within hours of Steve Jobss death in October, unpremeditated shrines began to appear outside orchard apple tree Stores flowers, half-eaten apples and iPhones and iPads with images of flickering candles. The man whose company had continuously attracted a cult following was fast becoming a canonise.But, n o more than a day later, the backlash began. Jobs was not a saint or even a genius, just, in the words of AN Wilson, a gifted backroom boy who got lucky. What Walter Isaacsons masterful biography reveals is that both the true reckonrs and the cynics got Jobs wrong. In a warts-and-all portrait that continually had this reader recoiling in disgust at the wayward pioneers behaviour, he shows that Apples co-founder was very far from being a saint. As a teenager, he browbeats his kindly parents into sending him to a college they cannot afford then drops out by and by a year. After teaming up with the rilliant but naive steer Steve Wozniak he cheats him out of his share of a bonus they get for shrewd a game. Ethics matter to me, the incessantly tolerant Wozniak tells the author, but, you know, people are different. And as a tyrannical leader, he is either screaming at Apple staff about their appalling inadequacies or stealing their ideas and taking the credit for them before an adoring public. Throughout, we see the cranky food habits, the direct belief that a fruit diet means you only subscribe to shower stall once a week and an almost wilful bring down for the feelings of others, including those of his family.But, hey, Henry Ford was not the worlds nicest man and Thomas Edison was apparently a ruthless egomaniac. Those who aspire to change the world are almost ever difficult people, and Isaacson, while obeying the instructions of Jobss wife not to whitewash his life, presents a compelling case for his genius. Yes, he was a magpie, snatching the idea for the graphical exploiter interface from Xerox Parc, the iPod concept from other MP3 players, the iPad from Microsofts tablet computer. But, as he said Picasso had a saying good artists copy, great artists steal and weve ever been shameless about stealing great ideas. It was what he did with those ideas that proved his genius for spotting where technology might head next and shaping it to his will. The perfectionism meant campaign his executives to distraction with constant demands for exact adjustments a different font, a paler stand in of green before anything could be shipped. Jobs was not a quarter the railroad engineer that Wozniak was or as gifted artistically as Jony Ive, the designer whose close but somewhat tortured consanguinity with his boss is an interesting subplot in the latter half of the book.But his creative imagination changed a series of industries computers, planetary phones, medicine and, with Pixar, the movie business. His greatest creation, though, was Apple itself, a company that always wanted to be about more than technology. It is in Apples DNA that technology alone is not enough, he said at the unveiling of the iPad 2. We believe that its technology married with the arts that sack ups our hearts sing. Cynics would say that it has been not the humanities or the arts but a ruthless attention to selling and margins that has enabled Apple to put more than $70bn in the bank.But the Jobs strategy of management remained slightly constant throughout his career, and it was always centred on product not profit. At its core was complete control over hardware and software and of either stage of the products life cycle, from conception through to the retailer. We see that strategy blessedness as early Apple products define home computing, then run short as Microsofts rival philosophy of licensing its software prevails. Then in 1996, with Apple on the ropes, its co-founder take backs.This amazing book takes you on a rollercoaster ride into the ferociously intense personality of a heating systemate and creative entrepreneur whose brawny drive and vision revolutionized six industries music, personal computers, phones, animated movies, digital publication and tablet computing. Steve Jobs also re-imagined and tried to revamp retail stores, but it did not turn out to be as revolutionary. Instead, he paved the way for an entire ly new market for app based digital content. This is a book thats mainly about innovation.Steve Jobs stands tall as the sole icon of imagination, keep up innovation and inventiveness. His vision was very clear if you want to create determine in the industry, connect technology with creativity. A company called Apple was built on this vision, which changed the entire face of technology with its imagination blended with scarce feats of engineering. Often driven by his demons, Jobs could make those around him lurch in despair and fury. His products and personality were interrelated and his life was cautionary and instructive at the same time.Apples rise to that position has been characterised by a management style that is now right out of fashion the egomaniac CEO, the obsessive secrecy, the total prune for market research, the suspicion of collaborative ventures. Walter Isaacson has written an enthralling history of the digest of our modern digital world and the company that may have through with(p) more than any other to shape it. And, in his obnoxious, smelly, ranting, impatient, intuitive, creative and sacred Steve Jobs, he has presented us with the greatest business genius of the past 30 years. Mr.Jobs, who foundedApplewith Stephen Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976, began his career as a seemingly impertinent blend of hippie truth seeker and tech-savvy hothead. His Zen awareness was not accompanied by an excess of calm, peace of mind or social mellowness, Mr. Isaacson says. He could stun an unsuspecting victim with an emotional towel-snap, perfectly aimed, he also writes. But Mr. Jobs valued simplicity, utility and beauty in ways that would shape his creative imagination. And the book maintains that those goals would not have been achievable in the great parade of Apple creations without that mean streak.Mr. Isaacson takes his readers back to the time when laptops, desktops and windows were metaphors, not everyday realities. His book ticks off how e ach of the Apple innovations that we now take for granted starting line occurred to Mr. Jobs or his creative team. Steve Jobs means to be the authorized book about those achievements, and it also follows Mr. Jobs into the wilderness (and to NeXT and Pixar) after his first stint at Apple, which ended in 1985. With an avid interest in corporate intrigue, it skewers Mr. Jobss rivals, like John Sculley, who was recruited in 1983 to be Apples chief executive and fell for Mr.Jobss deceptive show of friendship. They professed their fondness so effusively and often that they sounded like high tame sweethearts at a Hallmark card display, Mr. Isaacson writes. Of course the book also tracks Mr. Jobss long and combative rivalry with Bill Gates. The section wedded to Mr. Jobss illness, which suggests that his cancer might have been more treatablehad he not resisted early surgery,describes the relative tenderness of their last meeting. Steve Jobs greatly admires its subject. But its most adul atory passages are not about people. Offering a compounding of tech criticism and promotional hype, Mr.Isaacson describes the arrival of each new product right down to Mr. Jobss theatrical introductions and the advertising campaigns. But if the soul bits of hoopla seem excessive, their cumulative effect is staggering. Here is an encyclopedic flock of all that Mr. Jobs accomplished, replete with the passion and excitement that it de causes. Mr. Jobss virtual reinvention of the music business with iTunes and theiPod, for showcase, is made to seem all the more miraculous (Hes got a turn-key solution, the music executive Jimmy Iovine said. ) Mr. Isaacsons long view basically puts Mr.Jobs up there with Franklin and Einstein, even if a tiny MP3 player is not quite the theory of relativity. The book emphasizes how deceptively free-and- flourishing Mr. Jobss ideas now seem because of their extreme intuitiveness and foresight. When Mr. Jobs, who personally persuaded musician after music ian to accept the iTunes model, approached Wynton Marsalis, Mr. Marsalis was rightly more impressed with Mr. Jobs than with the device he was being shown. Mr. Jobss love of music plays a big persona in Steve Jobs, like his extreme obsession with Bob Dylan. (Like Mr. Dylan, he had a romance with Joan Baez.Her version of Mr. Dylans Love Is Just a Four-Letter record was on Mr. Jobss own iPod. ) So does his extra general way of perceiving ordinary things, like well-made knives and kitchen appliances. That he admired the Cuisinart food processor he saw at Macys may sound trivial, but his subsequent idea that a molded plastic covering might work well on a computer does not. Years from now, the research elusion to a jelly bean factory to study potential colourise for theiMaccase will not seem as silly as it might now. Skeptic after skeptic made the mistake of misjudge Steve Jobs, and Mr.Isaacson records the howlers who misjudged an unrivaled career. Sorry Steve, Heres Why Apple Stores wint Work, Business Week wrote in a 2001 headline. The iPod will likely become a niche product, a Harvard Business School prof said. High tech could not be designed and sold as a consumer product, Mr. Sculley said in 1987. Mr. Jobs got the last laugh every time. Steve Jobs makes it all the sadder that his last laugh is over. Perhaps the funniest passage in Walter Isaacsons monumental book aboutSteve Jobscomes three quarters of the way through.It is 2009 and Jobs is recovering from a liver transplant and pneumonia. At one point the pulmonologist tries to put a act over his face when he is deeply sedated. Jobs rips it off and mumbles that he hates the design and refuses to wear it. Though barely able to speak, he orders them to bring quin different options for the mask so that he can pick a design he likes. Even in the depths of his hallucinations, Jobs was a control-freak and a ill-bred sod to boot. Imagine what he was like in the pink of health. As it happens, you dont need t o every discoverable fact about how Jobs, ahem, coaxed excellence from his co-workers is here.As Isaacson makes clear, Jobs wasnt a visionary or even a particularly talented electronic engineer. But he was a businessman of astonishing flair and focus, a marketing genius, and when he was getting it right, which wasnt always had an intuitive sense of what the customer would want before the customer had any idea. He was obsessed with the products, kind of than with the money happily, as he discovered, if you get the products right, the money will come. Isaacsons book is studded with moments that make you go wow. Theres theAppleflotation, which made the 25-year-old Jobs $256m in the days when that was a lot of money.Theres his turnaround of the company after he returned as CEO in 1997 in the previous fiscal year the company lost $1. 04bn, but he returned it to profit in his first quarter. Theres thelaunch of the iTunes store expected to sell a million songs in six months, it sold a million songs in six days. WhenJobs died, iShrines popped up all over the place, personal tributes filled Facebook and his quotable wisdom management-consultant banalities, for the most part was passed from inbox to inbox. Thisbiography commissioned by Jobs and informed by hours and hours of interviews with him is designed to serve the cult.Thats by no means to say that its a snow-job Isaacson is all over Jobss personal shortcomings and occasional business bungles, and Jobs sought no copy applause (though, typically, he got worked up over the cover design). But its sheer good deal bespeaks a sort of reverence, and its clear from the way its put together that theres not much Jobs did that Isaacson doesnt regard as vital to the historical record. We get a whole chapter on one cheesy ad (Think polar). We get half a page on how Jobs went about choosing a washing machine itself lifted from an interview Jobs, bizarrely, gave on the subject toWired.Want to know the patent number for the box an iPod Nano comes in? Its right there on page 347. Similarly, the empty vocabulary of corporate PR sometimes seeps into Isaacsons prose, as exemplified by the recurrence of the word passion. Theres a lot of passion in this book. Steves passion for perfection, passion for industrial design, passion for awesome products and so on. If Id been reading this on aniPad, the temptation to search-and-replace passion to turnip or erection would have been overwhelming.Isaacson writes dutiful, lumbering American news-mag journalese and suffers as did Jobs himself from a lack of sense of proportion. Chapter headings evoke Icarus and Prometheus. The one on the Apple II is subtitled Dawn of a New Age, the one on Jobss return to Apple is called The Second Coming, and when writing about the origins of Apples graphical drug user interface (Jobs pinched the idea from Xerox), Isaacson writes with splendid bathos There travel a sic shadow, as TS Eliot noted, between the conception and the creation. But get past all that pomp and theres much to enjoy.Did you know that the Apple Macintosh was around called the Apple Bicycle? Or that so obsessed was Jobs with designing swanky-looking factories (white walls, brilliantly coloured machines) that he kept breaking the machines by painting them for recitation bright blue? As well as being a sort-of-genius, Jobs was a truly weird man. As a young man, he was once put on the night-shift so co-workers wouldnt have to endure his BO. Jobs was positive(p) his vegan diet meant he didnt need to wear deodorant or shower more than once a week. His on-off veganism was allied to cranky theories about health.When he rebuked the chairman of Lotus Software for spreading butter on his wrinkle Have you ever heard of serum cholesterol? , the man responded Ill make you a deal. You stay away from commenting on my dietary habits, and I will stay away from the subject of your personality. That personality. An ex-girlfriend and one, it shoul d be said, who was very fond of him told Isaacson that she aspect Jobs suffered from narcissistic personality disorder. Jobss personal life is sketchily covered, but what detail there are dont charm.When he got an on/off girlfriend with child(predicate) in his early 20s, he cut her off and aggressively denied penning though he later, uncharacteristically, admitted regretting his behaviour and sought to build a relationship with his daughter. Jobs himself was adopted, and seems to have had what Americans call issues around abandonment. He cheated his friends out of money. He cut old colleagues out of stock options. He fired people with peremptoriness. He bullied waiters, insulted business contacts and humiliated interviewees for jobs.He lied his pants off whenever it suitable him reality distortion field is Isaacsons preferred phrase. Like many bullies, he was also a cry-baby. Whenever he was thwarted not being made Man of the Year by Time magazine when he was 27, for instanc e he burst into tears. Nowadays we are taught that being nice is the way to get on. Steve Jobs isafine counter-example. In 2008, whenFortune magazinewas on the point of running a damaging article about him, Jobs summoned their managing editor in chief to Cupertino to demand he spike the piece He leaned into Serwers face and asked, So, youve exposed the fact that Im bad.Why is that news? Well.. thats the story. Sorry if I had given out a few spoilers on the book.. but they were essential to bring out the nature of an awesome personality The book is well written and an easy read. To tell the story of Jobs complete life, the cast of characters is large. Mr Isaacson identifies the importance of those he include and what influence they had on Jobs. So, in a nut shell, this book, to use a few words from Jobs dictionary, is a Must read