There are going to be spoilers in this post, but I figure, since it’s a biography about a famous guy, it’s fair game to talk about it.
I recently finished the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson and I LOVED it. 🙂 I certainly didn’t know what to expect, besides a book about a guy who invented the macintosh, and then reinvented a company, followed by reinventing music distribution, and then reinventing cell phones and then inventing tablets. Ok, he didn’t invent the tablet, but he took a basic idea and made it great.
When I pictured Steve Jobs in my head, I always pictured him like his products. User friendly, basic, but a whole lot going on underneath. Well, I was wrong. He was intense, moody and could be insanely mean. I could go into detail about this guy, his life, his ideas and his ways, but I think I’ll just be brief. Some things I really found interesting were:
His “reality distortion field,” which was basically Steve telling lies to benefit a purpose, could be used for good or for bad. Telling outright lies is not good, but sometimes he would bend reality to get people to do things they never dreamed possible. They would say “I can’t do that, it’s not possible” and he would say, “it is possible, and we are going to do it” which is much less a lie, and more like a man on a mission.
He only worked with A+ people. They had to be A+ in his mind. Not B, and definitely not C. He only wanted the best, and from them, only the ones who suited his style and personality.
I have to say, I think Bill Gates isn’t so bad. I completely get the fude, but Steve Jobs seemed to use his reality distortion field to make Gates look worse than he really is.
The guy was more controlling about his stuff than I am. Although, only slightly. 🙂 You know why the Mac is off in a world by itself? Because Steve Jobs wanted the user to have a completely controlled experience. He wanted to control both the hardware and the software. This is the big difference between Jobs and Gates, Jobs wanted control, Gates wanted one company to make hardware, another to make software. I prefer the Apple version.
“A person was either a hero or a bozo, a product was either amazing or shit. The same was true of products, ideas, even food: Something was either “the best thing ever”, or it was shitty, brain-dead, inedible.”
He developed the iPad before the iPhone but once he thought of the iPhone, everything else had to go on the back-burner.
I really could write a blog post about each one of those things if I wanted to. I’ll leave you to read the book and come to your own conclusions though. I’d really recommend this book to anyone. I found Steve Jobs interesting, and my favorite part was learning the history of our devices. My iPhone is like an extra body part, I can’t go anywhere without it, and yet, how did it come to be in my hand? It’s fascinating. Plus, I liked reading about all the different people who wove in and out of his life, and how they played a part in Apple.
Walter Isaacson is a great writer, and the therefore the biography was compelling and easy to read. I just went to the library and checked out another biography by him because this one was so good.
Oh, and last thing, I think Apple will develop some kind of tv that changes the way we use tvs. I’m thinking some kind of all in one device. Like what if you called someone, and you video chatted through your tv? Maybe a bit to Nineteen Eighty Four? I think they have a tv in the works. 🙂
“People think focus means saying yes to the things you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.”
straightfromdehart 