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In the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, the author puts Jobs in a class with Einstein and Leonardo Da Vinci because Issacson also wrote about those great men. Was Steve Jobs a great man? He was certainly complicated. He loved perfection in design, but he knew that he was not perfect. Some people in Jobs’ life believed that the fact that he was adopted may have been at the bottom of some aspects of his personality. The author uses the adjectives “abandoned – chosen – special” to sum up the emotional impacts Jobs experienced as he wrestled with being given away by his actual parents. In fact, Jobs refused to meet his birth father.
Steve had a daughter, Lisa, when he was very young, and he did not see her for years although he later tried to include her in his life. He also had a half-sister, Mona Simpson, a novelist. He did not have an easy-going personality, in fact he could be cutting and cruel, but he also had access to considerable charm. He raged at employees and suppliers, he sometimes cried when he was frustrated, and he had very bizarre eating habits (lots of fasting, mostly vegetarian or vegan). There were, however, saving graces.
He visited Japan and was very taken with the spareness and spirituality of Japanese design, and all things Japanese. He grew up with Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and many more rock stars, eventually meeting most of them. He had an interest in Eastern religion and philosophy, as many famous figures did in the 1960s and 70s.
Steve Jobs is the myth. Jobs did drop out of school to tinker with computers in his parent’s garage for a while (with friends). He envisioned a future for computers, a future where everyone had a computer of his/her own. The computers he wanted to design had to have that same spareness he loved in Japanese culture, but he wanted these computers to be proprietary machines, not sharing hardware or software with Microsoft computers or any of the other companies that were racing to produce popular computers. He was fired by his own company and went off unsuccessfully on his own to create other brands but when Apple was in trouble he went back to the company, and he stayed. Although Jobs eventually agreed to allow Apple computers to use Microsoft Office, it was a tough compromise for this purist.
Find out how Jobs named Apple. Find out how Jobs got involved with Disney and Pixar. Isaacson’s book is very readable and detailed. Find out how and when he met his wife Laurene Powell and about the family they made. Jobs loved to make deals during walks with suppliers and creators who interested him. Many deals were hammered out on these long walks. The weather in California colluded with him on this. Bill Gates, with his completely different personality, showed up in Jobs’ life from time to time. They were rivals, but Gates was not as mercurial as Jobs. They didn’t collaborate much, but they were contemporaries in a field that was exploding with innovation.
Find out how Jobs made his very seductive ads, how he imagined the iPod, iPad, iCloud, and iTunes. Jobs made each roll out of an Apple product into a ‘magical mystery tour.” He kept new products shrouded in mystery until the magical reveal. He was not only a great product designer; he was an expert at marketing.
It’s a very good book about a very interesting person and his too short life. It is a long book but spending all that time with Jobs and his A team, his family, his temperament, and his amazingly creative mind is time well spent. Unlike Einstein and Da Vinci, Steve Jobs lived in some of the same decades we have lived in. He is not a historical figure. He is a contemporary and we forgive him his bad behavior because his creative genius inspires us to believe that even flawed humans can accomplish great things.
Walter Isaacson is one of our quintessential biographers. He gives us the real Steve Jobs, if that is possible to do in a biography. Credit is due to Steve Jobs also for allowing Isaacson to depict him honestly.
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