Book Review: Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Title: Steve Jobs
Author: Walter Isaacson
Paperback: 630 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (Oct. 24th 2011)
Genre: Biography
Read: eBook
Stars: *****/5
Summary: (GoodReads)
Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years--as well as interviews with more than a hundred 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.

Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. 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.

My Review:

I’ve just finished reading Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson and I’m blown away by Jobs genius.

I have always been a staunch supporter of the open system. I’ve been a Windows used most of my life and when not Windows I was using Linux and Suse. I’ve been against Apple’s proprietary principle always but the book got me to see things from a different angle.

Before I had read the book I had seen and used some Apple products. A friend owned a Mac, hubby owns an iPad 2 which I enjoy using and the ease of use on it blows me away. I hardly have to ask for help. And now, I own a Mac Book Air and I’m unlearning Windows and finding that it’s not so difficult to learn to use a Mac.

Until I read the book I looked at Apple’s products as “products”. But Jobs doesn’t see Apple or its products that way. To him, each of them is a work of art, an ode to perfection. He saw that not everyone likes to tinker, some of us like it clean and simple.

Issacson has done a good job of showing us what Steve Jobs was like. A man with a lot of quirks that were painful but also a sheer genius who saw what no one else did. It amazes me how he knew what we wanted before we did so intuitively.

The book says so much about Jobs and Apple but it also walks you down the history of computers and gives a deeper understanding of where we came from and where we at today.

I haven’t switched to the closed camp after the book but I definitely take more pride in the Mac I have. After all its not just a computer, it’s a work of art!