Title: Steve Jobs Biography
Author: Walter Isaacson
The second book in my ’12 books for 2012’ is the biography of Steve Jobs. I first saw this on my partners desk at work and he had received it as a present. It was one of those books that I started to flick through and just could not put down. I came to be a devotee of Apple’s products and therefore Steve Jobs design ideas abit late and only started using Apple products extensively around 4 years ago.
Since then I have embraced the simplicity and fantastic integration of the product range as a whole. I just seem to get the ideas that he was trying to put across. The book is a fantastic insight into this guys life. He was often a horrible man by the sound of things and the book has been written in an entirely balanced way, infact Isaacson would only have it that way and Jobs didn’t read the book before he died.
Isaacson was given unfettered access to anyone he wanted and infact people were encouraged by Jobs to speak to him to tell the truth about how things were.
The overriding theme of the book is the Steve Jobs “reality distortion field” where he was able to just create his own reality and chop and change decisions, moods or ideas whenever he felt like it. It is, though, a stunning story of how 1 indiviudal can form a huge (the biggest) company and bend it to his will by sheer belief and force of ideas.
It seems that he was a pretty horrible guy but there is no doubt that he was a genius and someone who completely changed how we interact, not only just with computers but also with each other socially. One of Job’s sayings was “ come with me and make a dent in the universe” infact when he as trying to employ Sculley the then marketing director at pepsi co, he said to him “do you want to make a dent in the universe or do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life?”
After reading the book, your overwhelming sense is sadness that he his gone and that he wont create anything else.
I, for one, think that Apple will never be the same now that he is gone. I don’t belive anybody else will be as maverick or as quite prepared to “bet the whole farm” on an idea or risk and I think they will be a lesser company because of that.
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