“Steve Jobs” - iReview
Finally finished this one! Although it was only about 650 odd pages, it took me more than 3 weeks! To be honest, it wasn’t “unputdownable” in the realms of Harry Potter or Dan Brown novels. On the other hand, it is just a biography; how much more can you spice it up? Following are little nuggets that I could recollect at the end. The ones in quote are .. well quotes from the book :)
- “One topic they wrestled with was his belief, which came from his Buddhist studies, that it was important to avoid attachment to material objects. Our consumer desires are unhealthy, he told her, and to attain enlightenment you need to develop a life of non-attachment and non-materialism.” - From a guy who was responsible for creating so many gorgeous devices which people lust after!
- “As their hours together drew to a close, Gates complimented Jobs on “the incredible stuff” he had created and for being able to save Apple in the late 1990s from the bozos who were about to destroy it. He even made an interesting concession. Throughout their careers they had adhered to competing philosophies on one of the most fundamental of all digital issues: whether hardware and software should be tightly integrated or more open. “I used to believe that the open, horizontal model would prevail,” Gates told him. “But you proved that the integrated, vertical model could also be great.” Jobs responded with his own admission. “Your model worked too,” he said. But after recounting their discussion, Gates added a caveat: “The integrated approach works well when Steve is at the helm. But it doesn’t mean it will win many rounds in the future.” Jobs similarly felt compelled to add a caveat about Gates after describing their meeting: “Of course, his fragmented model worked, but it didn’t make really great products. It produced crappy products. That was the problem. The big problem. At least over time.”
- "Most people have a regulator between their mind and mouth that modulates their brutish sentiments and spikiest impulses. Not Jobs. He made a point of being brutally honest. “My job is to say when something sucks rather than sugarcoat it,” he said. This made him charismatic and inspiring, yet also, to use the technical term, an asshole at times. Andy Hertzfeld once told me, “The one question I’d truly love Steve to answer is, ‘Why are you sometimes so mean?’” Even his family members wondered whether he simply lacked the filter that restrains people from venting their wounding thoughts or willfully bypassed it. Jobs claimed it was the former. “This is who I am, and you can’t expect me to be someone I’m not,” he replied when I asked him the question. But I think he actually could have controlled himself, if he had wanted. When he hurt people, it was not because he was lacking in emotional awareness. Quite the contrary: He could size people up, understand their inner thoughts, and know how to relate to them, cajole them, or hurt them at will.”
- “She (Steve’s wife Laurene) wanted to make sure, she said, that both sides of his personality were reflected in this book and put into context."Like many great men whose gifts are extraordinary, he’s not extraordinary in every realm,” she said. “He doesn’t have social graces, such as putting himself in other people’s shoes, but he cares deeply about empowering humankind, the advancement of humankind, and putting the right tools in their hands.”
- I declare the book to be R rated :) Look at the swear word count! Most of them uttered by Steve when he’s being himself!
- shit 57
- reality distortion 32 (in a negative sense, to force people to do stuff which are humanely impossible)
- fuck 31
- screw 23
- suck 21
- bozo 12
- If you thought Flash was not allowed on iPhone & iPad because of performance issues, there’s another side to the story: Steve’s vengeance towards Adobe because they refused to develop products for Apple in 1997, citing Mac’s poor market share.
- To Obama: "You’re headed for a one-term presidency”
- Although I knew Steve was involved with Pixar, interesting to learn about how big is Pixar & his large contribution to its phenomenal growth. Pixar movies: Toy Story (series), A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars (series), Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up!
- He was such a perfectionist that he had trouble buying furniture. Most of the time, his houses were sparse or totally empty of furnitures!
- At Stanford talk in 1982: “How many of you are virgins? How many of you have taken LSD?”
- With Apple Lisa (named after his first daughter): “Picasso had a saying—‘good artists copy, great artists steal’—and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.” In fact, Steve was notorious for stealing ideas from his own colleagues and later presenting it as though they are his own.
- To John Sculley (CEO of Pepsi) in 1984: “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?”
- In 1982, asked if he wanted to do market research, he said, “No, because customers don’t know what they want until we’ve shown them.”
- At iPad 2 launch: “The reason Apple can create products like the iPad is that we’ve always tried to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts,“
- I’ve read about Microsoft’s partnership with Apple, especially early when they were pretty small companies, but the level and depth of their partnership, extended till about 2000 was surprising. In fact Microsoft was one of the saviour of Apple by investing in it, when the latter was close to bankruptcy in 1997.
- iPad is the forerunner of iPhone. It was conceived well before iPhone.
- About Tim Cook, Steve’s replacement: ”… but he’s not a product guy!“ Another notable person to earn this credit: Bill Gates :)
- He had a premonition even as early as in his 20’s that he’ll die soon.
- Ridiculous temper! Famous for publicly humiliating people time and again. Either they were heroes or zeroes! No middle ground. Sees everything as black & white. Nothing grey.
- He’s a true anti-hero - in a broader sense, his life & actions will appear as a common good for humanity, but his individual actions will defy all odds, break all social, legal & ethical rules! In fact, there’s so much of negativity in the book, that hardly a page goes by where he’s not portrayed negatively!
- I wasn’t aware that the iTunes Music store was such a big thing & a huge business!
- I would like to call him as a Manipulator - of people, laws of Physics (time and space)
- His advice to Google’s CEO Larry Page: "The main thing I stressed was focus. Figure out what Google wants to be when it grows up. It’s now all over the map. What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they’re dragging you down. They’re turning you into Microsoft.” Now you know why Google is shutting down so many of its services recently!
- I feel the book is rushed out a bit in the end. Looks like they want to cash the opportunity of his sudden death.
- I am not sure if I like the narration in the book. Many times, I felt it to be bland. Already quite a few criticism has cropped up, doubting if Steve chose the wrong person for the biography: http://scripting.com/stories/2011/11/21/whyJobsChoseIsaacson.html Same type of criticism that pops up for many of his products soon after its launch. Only the people have the final say!
- Was it a great book? I doubt it! Did it leave me with a huge feeling of emptiness at the end? Nope! But I would still recommend it, especially if you are a techie!