Books I've Read: Steve Jobs

by Walter Isaacson

"Insanely great."

I am no Apple devotee; I have a PC laptop and don't really foresee that changing, and am very happy reading e-books on my second-generation Kindle.  But, then, I say all that, and I think: I do have and love an iPhone and an iPod, and our household also recently acquired an iPad, but a certain someone (guess who? One hint: it is neither of our cats) doesn't share well so I haven't been a heavy tablet user.

But, oh, man, do I ever love the iPod.  I have loved it ever since I saw those silhouette ads back in 2001.  If I had to choose, I think I could give up the iPhone (at least all of the functions other than the music player), but not the iPod.

"[T]he iPod became the essence of everything Apple was destined to be: poetry connected to engineering, arts and creativity intersecting with technology, design that's bold and simple."

When this book came out earlier this fall, I was curious and did want to read it, and then it was chosen for my book club.  First, if you do read it (and I do recommend it), don't be intimidated by its brevity.  It takes a while to get going, but the second half flew by for me.  Also, in the Kindle, it finished up at 78% - a lot of the back pages are devoted to notes.  In fact, I was really confused when I was about 3/4 of the way through the book, and Steve Jobs was very sick and probably going to pass away soon, but I thought I still had hundreds of pages to go - I kept thinking, "What else can possibly happen in this book once Steve Jobs is no longer alive?"  Based on the dips in stock prices every time Jobs made public appearances, near the end of his life when he looked unwell, I guess the market and all the Apple investors thought the same thing about the company.

"He craved perfection, and he was not always good at figuring out how to settle for something less." 

I didn't love Isaacson's voice at all at first; it seemed rather passionless, and he kept harping on Steve Jobs's lack of interpersonal skills, poor hygiene (apparently, for a while at least, he believed that eating a vegan diet meant that he didn't need to bathe himself), and "reality distortion" issues.  Boring and repetitive.  For the first 1/3 of the book, I was annoyed both with Jobs and Isaacson, but after Jobs was ousted from Apple and went on to Pixar, it radically improved.  The fact that Steve Jobs was kind of an asshole didn't bother me anymore; instead I started to see him as a visionary, and as a businessperson who will certainly be remembered as one of most important innovators in history.

I ended up being really glad that I read it, and am looking forward to hearing what other people's reactions at book club tonight.  I keep thinking about one quote from Laurene Powell, Jobs's wife:

"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, and putting the right tools in their hands."