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Steve Jobs Kindle Edition


Walter Isaacson’s “enthralling” (The New Yorker) worldwide bestselling biography of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs.

Based on more than forty interviews with Steve Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than 100 family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense 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.

At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in 21st century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.

Although Jobs cooperated with the author, he asked for no control over what was written. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.

Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.

Steve Jobs is the inspiration for the movie of the same name starring Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, and Jeff Daniels, directed by Danny Boyle with a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin.
Due to its large file size, this book may take longer to download

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From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, November 2011: It is difficult to read the opening pages of Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs without feeling melancholic. Jobs retired at the end of August and died about six weeks later. Now, just weeks after his death, you can open the book that bears his name and read about his youth, his promise, and his relentless press to succeed. But the initial sadness in starting the book is soon replaced by something else, which is the intensity of the read--mirroring the intensity of Jobs’s focus and vision for his products. Few in history have transformed their time like Steve Jobs, and one could argue that he stands with the Fords, Edisons, and Gutenbergs of the world. This is a timely and complete portrait that pulls no punches and gives insight into a man whose contradictions were in many ways his greatest strength. --Chris Schluep


Amazon Exclusive: A Q&A with Walter Isaacson

Q: It's becoming well known that Jobs was able to create his Reality Distortion Field when it served him. Was it difficult for you to cut through the RDF and get beneath the narrative that he created? How did you do it?

Isaacson: Andy Hertzfeld, who worked with Steve on the original Macintosh team, said that even if you were aware of his Reality Distortion Field, you still got caught up in it. But that is why Steve was so successful: He willfully bent reality so that you became convinced you could do the impossible, so you did. I never felt he was intentionally misleading me, but I did try to check every story. I did more than a hundred interviews. And he urged me not just to hear his version, but to interview as many people as possible. It was one of his many odd contradictions: He could distort reality, yet he was also brutally honest most of the time. He impressed upon me the value of honesty, rather than trying to whitewash things.

Q: How were the interviews with Jobs conducted? Did you ask lots of questions, or did he just talk?

Isaacson: I asked very few questions. We would take long walks or drives, or sit in his garden, and I would raise a topic and let him expound on it. Even during the more formal sessions in his living room, I would just sit quietly and listen. He loved to tell stories, and he would get very emotional, especially when talking about people in his life whom he admired or disdained.

Q: He was a powerful man who could hold a grudge. Was it easy to get others to talk about Jobs willingly? Were they afraid to talk?

Isaacson: Everyone was eager to talk about Steve. They all had stories to tell, and they loved to tell them. Even those who told me about his rough manner put it in the context of how inspiring he could be.

Q: Jobs embraced the counterculture and Buddhism. Yet he was a billionaire businessman with his own jet. In what way did Jobs' contradictions contribute to his success?

Isaacson: Steve was filled with contradictions. He was a counterculture rebel who became a billionaire. He eschewed material objects yet made objects of desire. He talked, at times, about how he wrestled with these contradictions. His counterculture background combined with his love of electronics and business was key to the products he created. They combined artistry and technology.

Q: Jobs could be notoriously difficult. Did you wind up liking him in the end?

Isaacson: Yes, I liked him and was inspired by him. But I knew he could be unkind and rough. These things can go together. When my book first came out, some people skimmed it quickly and cherry-picked the examples of his being rude to people. But that was only half the story. Fortunately, as people read the whole book, they saw the theme of the narrative: He could be petulant and rough, but this was driven by his passion and pursuit of perfection. He liked people to stand up to him, and he said that brutal honesty was required to be part of his team. And the teams he built became extremely loyal and inspired.

Q: Do you believe he was a genius?

Isaacson: He was a genius at connecting art to technology, of making leaps based on intuition and imagination. He knew how to make emotional connections with those around him and with his customers.

Q: Did he have regrets?

Isaacson: He had some regrets, which he expressed in his interviews. For example, he said that he did not handle well the pregnancy of his first girlfriend. But he was deeply satisfied by the creativity he ingrained at Apple and the loyalty of both his close colleagues and his family.

Q: What do you think is his legacy?

Isaacson: His legacy is transforming seven industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, digital publishing, and retail stores. His legacy is creating what became the most valuable company on earth, one that stood at the intersection of the humanities and technology, and is the company most likely still to be doing that a generation from now. His legacy, as he said in his "Think Different" ad, was reminding us that the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

Photo credit: Patrice Gilbert Photography

Review

“This biography is essential reading”—The New York Times, Holiday Gift Guide

“A superbly told story of a superbly lived life”—
The Wall Street Journal

“Enthralling”—
The New Yorker

“A frank, smart and wholly unsentimental biography…a remarkably sharp, hi-res portrait…
Steve Jobs is more than a good book; it’s an urgently necessary one.” —Time

“An encyclopedic survey of all that Mr. Jobs accomplished, replete with the passion and excitement that it deserves.”
—Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“If you haven’t read the bestselling, superb biography and inspiring business book,
Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson, do so. … [A] masterpiece.”—Steve Forbes, Forbes

“The ability of Isaacson to write books that capture an age as well as a man makes him one of our best and most important biographers. Steve Jobs shows Isaacson at his best.”—
Foreign Affairs

“The book should be required reading for future M.B.A.s”—
Time

“A nuanced portrait of the brilliant, mercurial, complicated genius. … Isaacson has taken the complete measure of the man. This is a biography as big as Steve Jobs.”—
Entertainment Weekly

“For the generation that's grown up in a world where computers are the norm, smartphones feel like fifth limbs and music comes from the Internet rather than record and CD stores,
Steve Jobs is must-read history…The intimate chapters, where Jobs' personal side shines through, with all his faults and craziness, leave a deep impression. There's humor, too… it's a rich portrait of one of the greatest minds of our generation.” —Associated Press

“Isaacson’s biography can be read in several ways. It is on the one hand a history of the most exciting time in the age of computers, when the machines first became personal and later, fashionable accessories. It is also a textbook study of the rise and fall and rise of Apple and the brutal clashes that destroyed friendships and careers. And it is a gadget lover’s dream, with fabulous, inside accounts of how the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone and iPad came into being. But more than anything, Isaacson has crafted a biography of a complicated, peculiar personality — Jobs was charming, loathsome, lovable, obsessive, maddening — and the author shows how Jobs’s character was instrumental in shaping some of the greatest technological innovations of our time.”—
Washington Post

“A wonderfully robust biography that not only tracks Jobs’ life but also serves as a history of digital technology. What makes the book come alive, though, is Isaacson’s ability to shape the story as a kind of archetypal fantasy: the flawed hero, the noble quest, the holy grail, the death of the king.”—
Booklist

“A nuanced, balanced portrait that is sure to become mandatory reading for anyone with an interest in big business and popular culture…Isaacson is to be commended for explaining the genius of Jobs in fascinating fashion, launching a discussion that could reach infinity and beyond.”—
Christian Science Monitor

“Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs comes as a breath of fresh air…a reliable and captivating guide to a man who reshaped the computing industry and more.” —
CNET.com

“It's a testament to Isaacson's skill as a biographer that readers can at last obtain the picture of Steve Jobs as a human being rather than a legend…anyone who's ever wondered how so very much about the technology landscape has changed so fundamentally in just 35 years, owes it to themselves to read this book.”—
TUAW.com

“Walter Isaacson’s book is an unflinching biography of a manifestly great man…Steve Jobs’s life was a great story with a near mythic arc, and Isaacson captures it well…the book moves at a fast pace with a great eye for detail…Isaacson is perceptive and original.”—
CultofMac.com

“Isaacson's biography lives up to the hype, showing readers the private turbulence that spurred Jobs to public greatness”—
ShelfAwareness.com (- )

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004W2UBYW
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster; Reissue edition (October 24, 2011)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 24, 2011
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 32208 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 656 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1451648545
  • Customer Reviews:

About the author

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Walter Isaacson
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Walter Isaacson is writing a biography of Elon Musk. He is the author of The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race; Leonardo da Vinci; Steve Jobs; Einstein: His Life and Universe; Benjamin Franklin: An American Life; The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution; and Kissinger: A Biography. He is also the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. He is a Professor of History at Tulane, has been CEO of the Aspen Institute, chairman of CNN, and editor of Time magazine.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
24,736 global ratings

Customers say

Customers find the storyline marvelously engrossing, insightful, and entertaining. They also describe the writing quality as riveting, fast, and easy to read. Readers praise the biography as rich and telling. They say the book will make you laugh and cry. Customers also praise the author for crafting a compelling, frank portrait of a man who was very complex. They find the content honest, refreshing, and exceptional. Opinions are mixed on the character, with some finding him fascinating and not biased, while others say he's irredeemable.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

2,450 customers mention "Storyline"2,393 positive57 negative

Customers find the storyline marvelously engrossing, with interesting anecdotes. They appreciate the real insight into why Apple systems are as closed as they are. Readers also love the way the book was written.

"...I Jove it when you can bring really great design and simple capability to something that doesn't cost much," he said as he pointed out the clean..." Read more

"...It's a story worth reading. If for nothing else, read it to understand what it took to create the device on which you're reading this very review." Read more

"...of it - until the last few chapters - was very well written and interesting...." Read more

"Book review by Richard L. Weaver II, Ph.D.This is a fascinating, if not riveting, story that is not only well-written and well-..." Read more

939 customers mention "Insightfulness"895 positive44 negative

Customers find the book enlightening, objective, and intelligent. They also say it offers a great case study of three companies. Customers also mention that it's the most heavily researched and exhaustive biography that is likely to emerge. They say it'll be a good starting point for learning about the creative process.

"...Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That's had a big impact on my work."..." Read more

"...The book offers a great case study of three companies: Apple, NeXT and Pixar...." Read more

"...more in the last few chapters, but most of the book seemed to be very objective, even critical...." Read more

"...bright, imaginative, creative, intelligent, educated, and knowledgeable, but the way he treated others, the way he thought about others who were not..." Read more

815 customers mention "Writing quality"701 positive114 negative

Customers find the writing quality riveting, fast, and easy to read. They also appreciate the carefully chosen and crafted words. Readers say the book isn't overtly technical in nature, and that it provides an unparalleled user experience. They mention that the portrait of a man is very complex, brilliant, and deeply flawed.

"...I Jove it when you can bring really great design and simple capability to something that doesn't cost much," he said as he pointed out the clean..." Read more

"...but even so, most of it - until the last few chapters - was very well written and interesting...." Read more

"...This is a fascinating, if not riveting, story that is not only well-written and well-constructed (organized in a chronological manner), but it is..." Read more

"...Steve Jobs" was a riveting, fast and easy read, utterly fascinating because Jobs' life, accomplishments and personality was so...." Read more

566 customers mention "Biography"548 positive18 negative

Customers find the biography rich, telling, and charismatic. They also say it's a vivid reminder of God's common grace.

"...Most importantly, this is a very personal book...." Read more

"...This biography was an excellent read and a must for anyone interested in Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs himself, or the creation of one of technologies..." Read more

"...The biography is filled with interesting tidbits and should be at the top of everyone's reading list...." Read more

"...She crafted what I consider to be the perfect, visceral, and emotional post-script to the Isaacson biography. It will bring you to tears...." Read more

483 customers mention "Entertainment value"431 positive52 negative

Customers find the book compelling, upbeat, and exciting. They also say the story of Steve Jobs is fabulous, gripping, and entertaining. Readers say the book makes them laugh and cry and experience various emotions intensely.

"...This book didn't disappoint. It was both captivating, and offered meaningful insight into Steve Jobs and the history of Apple...." Read more

"...had no control over the product (other than the cover design), it is a compelling, but not always flattering bio of a mercurial and important..." Read more

"...Steve Jobs" was a riveting, fast and easy read, utterly fascinating because Jobs' life, accomplishments and personality was so...." Read more

"...much for reading biographies, but this one is compelling, even exciting. As I write this review, it has been only 45 days since Steve Jobs died...." Read more

255 customers mention "Author"255 positive0 negative

Customers find the author compelling, frank, and remarkable. They also describe him as a creative genius, determined individual, and unique product creator.

"...Sure, he was incredibly bright, imaginative, creative, intelligent, educated, and knowledgeable, but the way he treated others, the way he thought..." Read more

"...Walter Issacson's biography is highly readable and very compelling...." Read more

"...(friends, foes, lovers, rivals, you name it), he has created a remarkably personal portrait -- one that brought me to tears on more occasions than I..." Read more

"...relentless intensity drove him furiously toward creating elegant, unique products that were simple to use and had the customer in mind...." Read more

151 customers mention "Content"141 positive10 negative

Customers find the book's content honest, real, and genuine. They also say the stories, reflections, and interviews are realistic. Readers describe the book as refreshing, amazing, and exceptional. They mention that the author is incredibly bright, imaginative, creative, intelligent, and educated.

"...Sure, he was incredibly bright, imaginative, creative, intelligent, educated, and knowledgeable, but the way he treated others, the way he thought..." Read more

"...I was impressed by the candidness of the interviews...." Read more

"...She crafted what I consider to be the perfect, visceral, and emotional post-script to the Isaacson biography. It will bring you to tears...." Read more

"...It is an incredible book, one that feels very honest overall. Of course there is a bias, but it is minimal...." Read more

132 customers mention "Character"90 positive42 negative

Customers are mixed about the character. Some find him fascinating, while others say he's irredeemable. They also say a sincere and honest effort was made to portray him.

"...Zen, simplicity, temperamental, cocky. Adjectives that are woven throughout the story of Jobs' life...." Read more

"...Steve Jobs is also the perfect antihero. Jobs was peerless in his cultivation and use of power. By Chuck Klosterman’s definition, Jobs was evil...." Read more

"...churning details how Steve Jobs was a disloyal, lying, backstabbing, vindictive, manipulative, vengeful, and all-around vile and damaged human being...." Read more

"...and failures, sweetness & bitterness, elegant products and complex personality...." Read more

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Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2014
Below are key excerpts from the book that I found particularly insightful:

1- "I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics," he said. "Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that's what I wanted to do." It was as if he were suggesting themes for his biography (and in this instance, at least, the theme turned out to be valid). The creativity that can occur where both the humanities and the sciences combine in one strong personality was the topic that most interested me in my biographies of Franklin and Einstein, and I believe that it will be a key to creating innovative economies in the twenty-first century."

2- "His wife also did not request restrictions or control, nor did she ask to see in advance what I would publish. In fact she strongly encouraged me to be honest about his failings as well as his strengths. She is one of the smartest and most grounded people I have ever met. "There are parts of his life and personality that are extremely messy. and that's the truth," she told me early on. "You shouldn't whitewash it. He's good at spin, but he also has a remarkable story, and I'd like to see that it's all told truthfully" I leave it to the reader to assess whether I have succeeded in this mission. I'm sure there are players in this drama who will remember some of the events differently or think that I sometimes got trapped in Jobs's distortion field."

3- "Jobs said that his appreciation for Eichler homes instilled in him a passion for making nicely designed products for the mass market. I Jove it when you can bring really great design and simple capability to something that doesn't cost much," he said as he pointed out the clean elegance of the houses. "It was the original vision for Apple. That's what we tried to do with the first Mac. That's what we did with the iPod.""

4- "The Blue Box adventure established a template for a partnership that would soon be born. Wozniak would be the gentle wizard coming up with a neat invention that he would have been happy just to give away. and Jobs would figure out how to make it user-friendly, put it together in a package, market it, and make a few bucks."

5- "Coming back to America was, for me, much more of a cultural shock than going to India. The people in the Indian countryside don't use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That's had a big impact on my work."

6- "Jobs is a complex person, he said, and being manipulative is just the darker facet of the traits that make him successful. Wozniak would never have been that way, but as he points out, he also could never have built Apple. "I would rather let it pass," he said when I pressed the point. "It's not something I want to judge Steve by.""

7- "Apple. It was a smart choice. The word instantly signaled friendliness and simplicity. It managed to be both slightly off-beat and as normal as a slice of pie. There was a whiff of counterculture, back-to-nature earthiness to it, yet nothing could be more American. And the two words together—Apple Computer—provided an amusing disjuncture. "

8- "Jobs's father had once taught him that a drive for perfection meant caring about the craftsmanship even of the parts unseen. Jobs applied that to the layout of the circuit board inside the Apple II. He rejected the initial design because the lines were not straight enough. This passion for perfection led him to indulge his instinct to control. Most hackers and hobbyists liked to customize, modify, and jack various things into their computers. To Jobs, this was a threat to a seamless end-to-end user experience."

9- "Markkula would become a father figure to Jobs. Like Jobs's adoptive father, he would indulge Jobs's strong will, and like his biological father, he would end up abandoning him. "Markkula was as much a father-son relationship as Steve ever had," said the venture capitalist Arthur Rock. He began to teach Jobs about marketing and sales. "Mike really took me under his wing," Jobs recalled. "His values were much aligned with mine. He emphasized that you should never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Your goal should be making something you believe in and making a company that will last.""

10- "Was Jobs's unfiltered behavior caused by a lack of emotional sensitivity? No. Almost the opposite. He was very emotionally attuned. able to read people and know their psychological strengths and vulnerabilities. He could stun an unsuspecting: victim with an emotional towel-snap, perfectly aimed. He intuitively knew when someone was faking it or truly knew something. This made him masterful at cajoling, stroking, persuading, flattering, and intimidating people."

11- "But even though Jobs's style could be demoralizing, it could also be oddly inspiring. It infused Apple employees with an abiding passion to create groundbreaking products and a belief that they could accomplish what seemed impossible."

12- "The best products, he believed, were "whole widgets" that were designed end-to-end, with the software closely tailored to the hardware and vice versa. This is what would distinguish the Macintosh, which had an operating system that worked only on its own hardware, from the environment that Microsoft was creating, in which its operating system could be used on hardware made by many different companies."

13- "Their differences in personality and character would lead them to opposite sides of what would become the fundamental divide in the digital age. Jobs was a perfectionist who craved control and indulged in the uncompromising temperament of an artist; he and Apple became the exemplars of a digital strategy that tightly integrated hardware. software, and content into a seamless package. Gates was a smart, calculating, and pragmatic analyst of business and technology; he was )pen to licensing Microsoft's operating system and software to a variety of manufacturers."

14- "I'll always stay connected with Apple. I hope that throughout my life I'll sort of have the thread of my life and the thread of Apple weave in and out of each other, like a tapestry. There may be a few years when I'm not there, but I'U always come back. If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you've done and whoever you were and throw them away. The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times. artists have to say. "Bye. I have to go now. I'm going crazy and I'm getting out of here." And they go and hibernate somewhere. Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently."

15- "Jobs sometimes avoided the truth. Helmut Sonnenfeldt once said of Henry Kissinger, "He lies not because it's in his interest. he lies because it's in his nature." It was in Jobs's nature to mislead or be secretive when he felt it was warranted. But he also indulged in being brutally honest at times, telling the truths that most of us sugarcoat or suppress. Both the dissembling and the truth-telling were simply different aspects of his Nietzschean attitude that ordinary rules didn't apply to him."

16- "For all of his willfulness and insatiable desire to control things. Jobs was indecisive and reticent when he felt unsure about something. He craved perfection, and he was not always good at figuring out how to settle for something less. He did not like to wrestle with complexity or make accommodations. This was true in products, design, and furnishings for the house. It was also true when it came to personal for the house. It was also true when it came to personal commitments. If he knew for sure a course of action was right. he was unstoppable. But if he had doubts, he sometimes withdrew, preferring not to think about things that did not perfectly suit him."

17- "Ever since he left the apple commune, Jobs had defined himself and by extension Apple, as a child of the counterculture. In ads such as "Think Different" and "1984," he positioned the Apple brand so that it reaffirmed his own rebel streak, even after he became a billionaire, and it allowed other baby boomers and their kids to do the same. "From when I first met him as a young guy, he's had the greatest of the impact he wants his brand to have on people," said Clow. Very few other companies or corporate leaders—perhaps none— could have gotten away with the brilliant audacity of associating their brand with Gandhi, Einstein, Picasso, and the Dalai Lama. Jobs was able to encourage people to define themselves as anti-corporate, creative. innovative rebels simply by the computer they used. "Steve created the only lifestyle brand in the tech industry," Larry Ellison said. "There are cars people are proud to have—Porsche, Ferrari, Prius—because what I drive says something about me. People feel the same way about an Apple product."

18- "One of his motivating passions was to build a lasting company. At age twelve, when he got a summer job at Hewlett-Packard, he learned that a properly run company could spawn innovation far more than any single creative individual. "I discovered that the best innovation is sometimes the company, the way you organize a company," he recalled. "The whole notion of how you build a company is fascinating. When I got the chance to come back to Apple, I realized that I would be useless without the company, and that's why I decided to stay and rebuild it."

19- "Why do we assume that simple is good? Because with physical products. we have to feel we can dominate them. As you bring order to complexity, you find a way to make the product defer to you. Simplicity isn't just a -visual style. It's not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. X involves digging through the depth of the complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep. For example, to have no screws on something, you can end up having a product that is so convoluted and so complex. The better way is to go deeper with the simplicity, to understand everything about it and how it's manufactured. You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential."

20- "Despite his autocratic nature—he never worshiped at the altar of consensus—Jobs worked hard to foster a culture of collaboration at Apple. Many companies pride themselves on having few meetings. Jobs had many."

21- ""From the earliest days at Apple, I realized that we thrived when we created intellectual property. If people copied or stole our software, we'd be out of business. If it weren't protected, there'd be no incentive for us to make new software or product designs. If protection of intellectual property begins to disappear, creative companies will disappear or never get Started. But there's a simpler reason: It's wrong to steal. It hurts other people. And it hurts your own character." He knew, however, that the best way to stop piracy—in fact the only way—was to offer an alternative that was more attractive than the brain-dead services that music companies were concocting."

22- "But Sony couldn't. It had pioneered portable music with the Walkman, it had a great record company, and it had a long history of making beautiful consumer devices. It had all of the assets to compete with Jobs's Strategy of integration of hardware, software, devices, and content sales. Why did it fail? Partly because it was a company, like AOL Time Warner that was organized into divisions (that word itself was ominous) with their own bottom lines; the goal of achieving synergy in such companies by prodding the divisions to work together was usually elusive. Jobs did not organize Apple into semi-autonomous divisions; he closely controlled all of his teams and pushed them to work as one cohesive and flexible company, with one profit-and-loss bottom fine. "We don't have 'divisions' with their own P&L," said Tim Cook. "We run one P&L for the company.""

23- "Despite being- a denizen of the digital world, or maybe because he knew all too well its isolating potential, Jobs was a strong believer in face-to-face meetings. "There's a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat," he said. "That's crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they're doing, you say 'Wow,' and soon you're cooking up all sorts of ideas." So he had the Pixar building- designed to promote encounters and unplanned collaborations. "If a building doesn't encourage that, you'll lose a lot of innovation and the magic that's sparked by serendipity," he said. "So we designed the building to make people get out of their offices and mingle in the central atrium with people they might not otherwise see.""

24- "Jobs insisted that Apple focus on just two or three priorities at a time. "There is no one better at turning off the noise that is going on around him," Cook said. "That allows him to focus on a few things and say no to many things. Few people are really good at that." In order to institutionalize the lessons that he and his team were learning. Jobs started an in-house center called Apple University. He hired Joel Podolny, who was dean of the Yale School of Management, to compile a series of case studies analyzing important decisions the company had made, including the switch to the Intel microprocessor and the decision to open the Apple Stores. Top executives spent time teaching the cases to new employees, so that the Apple style of decision making would be embedded in the culture."

25- ""Steve has a particular way that he wants to run Apple, and it's the same as it was twenty years ago, which is that Apple is a brilliant innovator of closed systems." Schmidt later told me. "They don't want people to be on their platform without permission. The benefits of a closed platform is control. But Google has a specific belief that open is the better approach, because it leads to more options and competition and consumer choice.""

26- "The nasty edge to his personality was not necessary. It hindered him more than it helped him. But it did, at times, serve a purpose. Polite and velvety leaders, who take care to avoid bruising others, are generally not as effective at forcing change. Dozens of the colleagues whom Jobs most abused ended their litany of horror stories by saying that he got them to do things they never dreamed possible. And he created a corporation crammed with A players."

27- "The saga of Steve Jobs is the Silicon Valley creation myth writ large: launching a start-up in his parents' garage and building it into the world's most valuable company. He didn't invent many things outright. but he was a master at putting together ideas, art, and technology in ways that invented the feature. He designed the Mac after appreciating the power of graphical interfaces in a way that Xerox was unable to do. and he created the iPod after grasping the joy of having a thousand in your pocket in a way that Sony, which had all the assets and heritage, never could accomplish. Some leaders push innovations by being good at the big picture. Others do so by mastering details. Jobs did both, relentlessly. As a result he launched a series of products over three decades that transformed whole industries..."

28- "Was he smart? No, not exceptionally. Instead, he was a genius. His imaginative leaps were instinctive, unexpected, and at times magical. He was, indeed, an example of what the mathematician Mark Kac called a magician genius, someone whose insights come out of the blue and require intuition more than mere mental processing power. Like a pathfinder, he could absorb information, sniff the winds, and sense what lay ahead. Steve Jobs thus became the greatest business executive of our era, the one most certain to be remembered a century from now. History will place him in the pantheon right next to Edison and Ford. More than anyone else of his time, he made products that were completely innovative, combining the power of poetry and processors. With a ferocity that could make working with him as unsettling as it was inspiring, he also built the world's most creative company. And he was able to infuse into its DNA the design sensibilities, perfectionism, and imagination that make it likely to be, even decades from now. the company that thrives best at the intersection of artistry and technology."
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Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2012
Many people might mistake this book for a mere biography of the man that made Apple a household name and its products coveted by millions around the world. It's not.

This book is actually three books in one. It's a business book on how to (and not to) run a company using Apple, NeXT and Pixar as case studies. It's also a history book on the ascent and the drama behind the consumer electronics evolution. And as its title suggests, it's the fascinating story of one of the most gifted people of our time.

As a business book, Isaacson writes about three distinct business practices. The first is how to really create a company from scratch. The passion exuded by Jobs and Wozniak is detailed with infectious enthusiasm in the first half of the book.

The second practice (and one often not talked about in business books) is how to drive a company to the ground. The book is rife with examples of internal politics, lack of leadership and the absence of focus that truly illustrate how companies fail.

The last practice is how to build and operate a creative company that endures. For me, this is the most fascinating narrative of all. But to fully appreciate it, one must truly understand the first two, which almost always precede this one.

The book offers a great case study of three companies: Apple, NeXT and Pixar. One fascinating vignette in the book draws a contrast between Apple and Sony and why Apple was successful in conquering the consumer-end of the music business while Sony, who was in a favorable position to do exactly that, failed to do so. This story draws attention to the importance of inter-departmental cohesion that Apple possessed and Sony didn't, to the success of innovation in a company.

Business leaders reading this book will learn a lot about the power of "focus" in business. Steve Jobs's most doled out advice was "focus." Throughout the book, we learn how Jobs followed his own advice to a deadly fault.

As a business book, it is amongst the best.

It's also an even better history book. It details the ascent of personal computing from the perspective of the very people that were (and still are) at its helm. The book doesn't only cover Apple's evolution, but that of the entire industry. Naturally, that involves drama, which Isaacson does a great job of covering. The philosophical divide between open and closed systems that dominated the personal computing evolution is discussed thoroughly in the book via anecdotal accounts on what really happened behind the scenes. It explains what it really took to bring us the products on which I read this book and now writing its review.

Most importantly, this is a very personal book. It is the story of man adored by millions of geeks, and when departed, mourned by hundreds of millions of Apple consumers around the world. Unfortunately, a devastating portrait that is guaranteed to put out any respect or admiration you've ever had for the man emerges early on in the book. If you have spent the last fifteen years romanticizing about Steve Jobs and his products, this book will leave you punch-drunk. You will learn through stomach-churning details how Steve Jobs was a disloyal, lying, backstabbing, vindictive, manipulative, vengeful, and all-around vile and damaged human being. He was, and surprisingly so, a coward, as clearly illustrated by how he treated people in his twenties and thirties.

And oh, he cried a lot. I mean, A LOT.

The book is rife with examples of his cruelty towards those who he seemed to have loved the most. His treatment of Steve Wozniak was unconscionable and disgusting. But the most disturbing example and the one that really shows his character was how he treated his "soul mate" from Reed College, Daniel Kottke. I could sum it up by quoting John Scully's wife when she told Jobs:

When I look into most people's eyes, I see a soul. When I look into your eye, I see a bottomless pit, an empty hole, a dead zone.

Even the amiable, most trusting co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak, who's been backstabbed by Jobs several times, have said about Jobs, "I look forward to a great product and I wish him success, but his integrity I cannot trust."

The irony in Steve Jobs story was that he loathed people that treated him the way he treated others. He had to deal with a few people that gave him a run for his money like Eisner of Disney and Katzenburg of DreamWorks. He claims throughout the book that he's "honest" and a "straightshooter" yet all the stories relayed by people that had to deal with him tell a completely different story.

For a control freak, it boggles me how he allowed such a book to be written about him. Now we all know that he might have been a visionary, but he was also a very disturbed man void of compassion, empathy and integrity.

As I got deeper into the book I started to wonder, "did Apple offer on-campus Al-Anon meetings to its employees?" Evidently, working for or with Steve Jobs was like being in a relationship with a recovering Cocaine addict who sees the world in black and white and throws frequent tantrums that are aimed at destroying those around them. It's what Mike Murray, Apple's Marketing Chief, called, "management by character assassination."

Jobs quotes Bob Dylan, whom we learn early in the book was one of his heroes, "if you're not busy being born, you're busy dying." It's ironic to quote those powerful words and not heed them. The book clearly shows that Steve Jobs was never really reborn or reinvented as a person. He never evolved and his base qualities were never tamed. Naturally, he spent his entire life dying from the inside out.

The book left me enriched, provoked and sad in equal measure. It is long but flows well and is a fast read. All business executives should read it for the insight it offers on what real successful companies are made of and what pitfalls to avoid along the way. Also, everyone in technology should read it to get a perspective on the evolution in the space of personal and consumer computing and to understand where we're headed and how to get there. Even if you're not an executive or a geek, you should read this book for its fascinating (and well told) story of a man from Northern California who dramatically changed how we live. A man as rich with creativity and intuition for what consumers want as he was bankrupt of decency and compassion for most of those he touched.

It's a story worth reading. If for nothing else, read it to understand what it took to create the device on which you're reading this very review.
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Top reviews from other countries

Gabriel Carvalho
5.0 out of 5 stars Ótima leitura sobre uma pessoa extraordinária.
Reviewed in Brazil on May 9, 2024
Walter Isaacson consegue realizar um trabalho incrível ao contar a história de um dos mais geniais CEOs que já passou pelo nosso planeta. Repleto de entrevistas e diferentes pontos de vistas acerca de um mesmo acontecimento, o livro consegue nos fazer entender o porquê de Steve Jobs ter tido tanto sucesso em sua trajetória. Único ponto negativo seria a falta de opiniões do próprio autor sobre as controvérsias de Jobs, e uma certa superficialidade em alguns temas mais polêmicos. Mesmo assim, é uma leitura excelente, bem fluida e tranquila.
Luis Catan
5.0 out of 5 stars Superb biography!
Reviewed in Canada on January 15, 2024
Walter Isaacson is excellent at telling the story of his life in a highly readable and pleasant experience. Knowing the life of Steve Jobs is a must!
Carlos Alberto Hurtado Sánchez
5.0 out of 5 stars You get to see the good and bad of Steve Jobs
Reviewed in Mexico on January 21, 2023
I really enjoyed that the biography didn't just focus on the bright colors to the life of Steve. As anyone's life, you make good and bad choices. Steve was no exception.
Kaan G.
5.0 out of 5 stars Good
Reviewed in Germany on May 22, 2024
Good
Himanshu
5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect book for me.
Reviewed in India on March 22, 2024
The biography is written so well, I have become a fan of the writer and also bought his biography of Elon Musk.

And what to say about Jobs. Imperfect guy, but perfect for me to learn from. Kinda have the same temperament and passion as him. His life's problems and his wrong and right decisions will teach one like me a lot.

Would've given this a 10 star if possible.
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