Steve Jobs
The book “Steve Jobs” was written by Walter Isaacson and published by Simon & Schuster in 2011. In spite of the presence of a large number of pages, i.e. 630 pages, the book tells the entire story of Steve Jobs, one of the most popular technological figures in history, at a torrid pace. Walter Isaacson is an American journalist and writer. He is working as CEO of the Aspen Institute, a Washington D. C. based organization related to nonpartisan education and policy. He has also worked as the Managing Editor of Time (magazine). He is also the author of biographies of some of the most famous people such as Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and Henry Kissinger. With an experience of biographies of famous personalities, Isaacson showed an intelligent and explicate way of writing about Steve Jobs.
Initially in 2004, Jobs approached Isaacson to write a biography on his life. Isaacson was busy at that time. He also thought that Jobs could work for another decade or two. However, in the year 2009, Isaacson started working with Steve Jobs as his authorized biographer after knowing that the health of Jobs was in decline.
The book “Steve Jobs” is based on a number of interviews, i.e. over 40 interviews with Jobs as well as with more than a hundred people in close association with him such as family members, friends, competitors, adversaries, and colleagues. All of them gave straightforward views of the passions, obsessions, perfectionism, devilry, artistry, and compulsion for control. Those interviews were helpful for the author to write about Jobs from his birth and adoption to the final days. For the reader, those interviews helped in creating a complex and vast, yet consistent, portrait of the subject of the book and his innovations. After reading the book, one can imagine the life of Jobs as he is looking at Jobs’s life.
Isaacson visited the house of Steve Jobs in Mountain View, Calif., in which he passed his boyhood. He showed the “awesome little features” as well as “clean design” of the house, while praising Joseph Eichler, the developer of the house and also developed over 11,000 houses in California and made them more affordable (Isaacson 7). He also showed the stockade fence constructed by Paul Jobs, father of Steve Jobs, about 50 years ago. Steve Jobs told that his father loved doing things in an appropriate manner. He also told that his father also cared about the parts that were not apparent (Isaacson 6). Those things of the childhood of Steve Jobs were also shown in his later professional life. With these and other such stories, Isaacson has presented the biography of Steve Jobs in an elegant, clear, and concise manner.
This book shows that Jobs didn’t change. In the early parts of the book representing Jobs of the early years of 1980s, he was represented as an impetuous, courageous, and feisty man and the same characteristics were present in Jobs till the end of the book. However, the book shows that Jobs changed the life of a lot of people around him with the help of his innovations. Isaacson masterfully mentioned all the changes in the book and skillfully represented the consistent life of Jobs.
Isaacson presented the life of Jobs in three different acts in a sequential manner. During the first act, Jobs struggled with Steve Wozniak, his high school friend, in the foundation of Apple. It also tells about the competition with Microsoft in the 1980s, and huge success of Pixar in the 1990s. The second act deals with the successful return of Jobs to Apple and revitalization of the company. Jobs interaction with the products of the company has been presented in a meticulous detail. Throughout the biography, it is clear that Jobs believed that integrated systems can produce the most acceptable consumer products. In the third act, an era of smart technologies such as iPod, iPhone, iPad, and cloud computing has been presented. It shows that the innovations made the company, one of the most valuable companies in the world. In the book, the author showed that Steve Jobs revolutionized six industries:
personal computers,
phones,
tablet computing,
animated movies,
music, and
digital publishing.
The book has presented several well-known issues. One of them is the issue of antenna problems in iPhone 4. Several pages of the book focus on this issue. According to the book, the issue and its related accounts were significant for some important reasons. The book shows that the band of steel around the edges of the phone was not compatible with the reception as told by engineers in Apple. However, Jonathan Ive, Apple’s vice president of Industrial Design, and Steve Jobs insisted that the engineers could work on the problem and resolve it without changing the design.
Another thing that the book mentions a lot is that Steve Jobs personally consider the problems of the company. The book has presented the account of the launch of iPad in a grabbing manner. The author of the book was with Jobs, the evening before the launch of iPad. Steve Jobs was checking emails on his iPhone. Jobs told that he got about eight hundred emails, mostly complaining about the device, in the last 24 hours. He told Isaacson that he was a little depressed that day (Isaacson, 495). This account was important as it was showing that Jobs took everything personally. During every stage of the development of product, i.e. from its launch to advertisements, he was a kind of dictator. Jobs was exhaustively involved in the products even during his extreme illness. The book has presented many accounts of those personal involvements of Jobs in the products and innovations.
However, the book is silent in some of the instances as, for example, it is not clearly showing the life of Steve Jobs, when both Next and Pixar were failing. The book has given slight hints about anything dramatic happened during those years. Moreover, the book has not discussed the work of Tony Fadell, who was the Senior Vice President of the iPod Division at Apple, and his association with Steve Jobs. The book has also not discussed most of the important incidents related to the Jackling House in which Steve Jobs spent a large part of his life as, for example, the book is mute about why he purchased the house and why did he demolish it through neglect? These things are showing that the book is not discussing some of the failures of Steve Jobs.
After looking at the biography in more detail, it becomes clear that it is a sort of encyclopedic survey of the accomplishments of Steve Jobs. It looks like the book has been written from the mind of Jobs. Although Jobs proposed that he would not interfere with any part of the book but the book appears to come from his point of view. However, the book has also presented the life of Steve Jobs in a critical way.
People were of opinion that Jobs could be an “asshole” and the book has not completely denies this description. The book shows the childish behavior and erratic thoughts of Jobs in some of the creations and achievements. It also shows that the fantastic career of Jobs developed as a result of harsh and demanding attitude. Jobs told that he used to tell people on their face “if something sucks” and in this way, he was trying to be honest (Isaacson, 568). The book has presented Jobs as a person, who was not able to appear misleading, even if such appearance could improve his appearance in the eyes of others.
The book showed that Steve Jobs cried a lot even from the earliest days of his career. For example, once he cried at Jerry, father of Steve Wozniak, about the full time working of Wozniak at Apple. During the times of frustrations, anger, and happiness, Jobs often broke down in tears. Although, the return of Jobs back to Apple improved some consistency and temperance in the management efforts, Jobs still had the habit of openly cry during overwhelming emotional states. Jonathan Ive told Isaacson that Jobs was a very sensitive guy, and that was the reason for his rudeness and antisocial behavior (Isaacson, 462).
The book has also presented the relations of Jobs with other people in an amusing detail. For example, most of the sections dealing with the presence of Bill Gates are very interesting and showing that there was a great level of difference between the two tech icons. Steve Jobs was amusingly and incredibly cutting several friends, business associates, former colleagues, and sometimes celebrities. His relation with Google was not a good one as shown by the belief of Jobs, i.e. he believed that Androids was a stolen product, and his constant fight with Google over patent infringement. Isaacson noted that Steve Jobs was angriest at the time when Apple filed a lawsuit against Google. Jobs told that Google tried to rip off the iPhone and stealing the idea. He said that he could spend his whole life and the entire Apple’s money to “right this wrong”, and tell the world that Android was a stolen product (Isaacson, 512). On the other hand, Jonathan Ive was among those people, who were very close to Steve Jobs. Almost half of the book and most of the “phase two” at Apple, shows that health was among the important and constant concerns for people close to Steve Jobs, and Ive was among those people.
Near the end of the book, it becomes clear that the career of Jobs is coming to an end. Jobs remains consistent throughout the book showing little regret and/or dissatisfaction with himself. Indeed, Jobs told Isaacson on the last meeting that he had done all that he could do (Isaacson, 559). He has accomplished a lot that he can fit in the lives of over five ordinarily famous men. Steve Jobs lived such a life that was full of different circumstances and probably it is difficult for any biography to cover all the aspects of his life even if it has more than 600 pages.
Works Cited
Isaacson, W. Steve Jobs. Simon & Schuster, 2011. Print.
