The interviews with Jobs are fascinating and revealing. We get a real sense for what it must have been like to be Steve, or to work with him. That earns the book five stars despite its flaws, in that it's definitely a must-read if you have any interest at all in the subject.
But there are places in the book where I have to say, "Huh?"
The book is written essentially as a series of stories about Steve. The book continuously held my interest, but some of the dramas of his life seem muted. For instance, he came close to going bust when both Next and Pixar were flailing. There was only the slightest hint that anything dramatic happened in those years. In one paragraph, Pixar is shown as nearly running him out of money. A few brief paragraphs later, Toy Story gets released and Jobs' finances are saved for good.
We hear a lot about Tony Fadell's role in the development of iPhone. Tony led the iPod group and was clearly a major source for the book. You may know from a recent Businessweek article that Tony was basically driven out of the company shortly after the final introduction of iPhone, due to personality conflicts between him and Scott Forestall, the person now in charge of iOS development. But the book doesn't say a word about it. Tony simply disappears from the rest of the book with no explanation, and Forestall is barely mentioned.
Another strange incident was the Jackling house, the house he spent a large part of his life in. A case could be made that the house is historic simply because Steve spent many of his formative years living in it. Preservationists were battling with him to save the house. Only a couple of months before his death, when he must have known he was not going to actually build a house to replace it, he had the house torn down. I would have loved to learn this story. Why did he buy it? Why did he destroy it through neglect? Why did he acquire such a blind loathing for it that he worked hard to get it torn down?
And why did Jobs keep almost all the Pixar options to himself? He doesn't seem to have needed the money, or even really wanted it that much. He could have cut his friends John Lasseter et al into their own huge fortunes. Lasseter only got about $25 million from Pixar, which seems like a shockingly low amount in view of his contributions. Now, it's not like they will starve or anything, and I think John can buy pretty much anything he wants, but it still seems surprising Jobs is so ungenerous.
There were a lot of things like this, incidents casually tossed away in a brief paragraph that should have merited an entire chapter.
I think this will always be the best account of the emotional aspects of Steve's life, which are fully covered. The chapters about his illness moved me to tears. But as an account of what really happened at Apple and how Steve fixed the company, it's insufficient. I guess that will have to await more distance from the subject.
Of course what's truly remarkable about Jobs is that he lived a life so full of incident that perhaps no biography has the space to cover the broad sweep of his life. He accomplished as much as 10 ordinarily famous men. Maybe the upshot is that you just can't fit a man like this in a book, even if that book's nearly 600 pages.
This is the story of the founder of Apple computers written by Walter Isaacson. This review is of the book - and NOT ruminations of Jobs, devices or pomes. I am unfamiliar with Walter Isaacson's other works but given his prose and the web he weaves I plan on reading his other biographies (think Tracy Kidder).
I am disappointed that Amazon couldn't ship the books (hard copies) to be delivered today. Downloaded it onto the kindle for the same price as the hardcopy - quite a premium but still worth it! I might even keep the preordered hard copy when it gets here.
Isaacson's work is a window into the life (and mind) of an intensely private man and despite his bouts of callousness - a sensitive man. The description of Silicon valley by Jobs, harks back to an era before outsourcing - a time of true American exceptionalism. In many ways looking back, Jobs and Isaacson do a masterful job of connecting the dots. The brief musings about iTVs and textbooks may form the bedrock for Apples future market cap and Jony Ives' genius. This is a book about more than Steve though - it reflects a time in America when we actually made things - great things were happening and there was an innocence about how even the very wealthy operated. Imagine being able to cold call the CEO of HP (get his home # from the phonebook) and have him actually talk to you for 20 minutes.
Let's begin with the cover - Steve Jobs saw the cover art proposed by Simon & Schuster and disliked it so much and asked the author to be allowed input in the design. The end result - a cover, testament to his impeccable sense of design - sans serif Helvetica. The cover picture is the one used by apple announcing his death taken by Albert Watson. The back has him cradling the Mac in a lotus position.
The story starts at the very beginning, as a very personal narrative - told by Steve and his childhood friends, through Isaacson's remarkable narrative - the schooling, upbringing - who his parents were - the sperm donors and the real ones are ok but the fascinating stuff - are the relationships that were so formative for Steve and all of computing really! Atari's CEO and his tutelage "Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are." The honesty of Woz and how all those years ago he felt Steve had been less than honest with him. Ever wonder how the cover of Popular Mechanics 1975 could possibly be part of this story?
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