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4.14 AVERAGE
4.14 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
fast-paced
This book took me a looong time to get through, but it was a good read. It was really interesting to read about how the popular Apple products came to be and how Apple and Jobs worked with other tech companies. As for Jobs himself, he was both brilliant and eccentric. Must have been an interesting man to work for!
Steve Jobs’s story is the classic silicon valley rags-to-riches story - starting a company in his parent’s garage and turning it into world’s most valuable company. This book focusses not only on his triumphs and achievements, but also on his many, many shortcomings. Truly inspiring and thought provoking read. Here’s to the crazy ones ..
read Jan 25 – Apr 27
My immediate response: A fascinating life. Jobs, strange and crazy as he was, affected everybody...again and again. The book up is well done - fast paced, easy to read, and pretty thorough.
review from July 10:
What was I thinking to read this and what was I thinking to read it the way I did? Anyway it all worked out. Steve Jobs was terribly arrogant, carelessly ruthless (sometimes intentionally so), and amazingly impressive all at the same time and in the same life. Walter Isaacson, editor of Time Magazine, is a master of the modern popular biography. What am I trying to say anyway? I had some kind of love/hate relationship with both the author and the subject, which just makes this hard to respond to.
Ok, first of all Jobs. You probably know the basics, the Apple II, Steve Wozniak's world-changing creation from his free time, and the company that came out of Steve Job's garage. Maybe you recall Pong, or the original Macintosh and the original GUI screens. Perhaps you know the story of Job's luring John Sully away from Pepsi, although you may not know Sully later kicked Jobs out of Apple. Maybe you know of Job's roll behind Pixar and surely you know his roll in reviving Apple and leading the way to the iPod, iPhone & iPad, and actually changing the world. And it might cross you mind, if your about my age, or maybe one or two decades older, on how much of this is actually THE story of our time - the creation of the personal computer through to the iPad...all this from a guy who couldn't code.
What Isaacson brings across all this is the striking mixture of traits that made Jobs Jobs. He was spoiled, selfish, pouty, brutal, motivating, inspiring, manipulative, cruel, conniving and two-faced, sharp. A showman and master salesman, a man who could lead and make his people make things, just with his words. His ups and downs are fascinating, and it all came together so perfectly when he returned to apple, it's really a tragedy he isn't still around to see it evolve...to make it evolve. But still, I just can't help thinking to myself of the time when Jobs was presented as retuning to Apple, and there was much cheering...how many of those people cheering were Apple employees, and how many were aware that they were cheering their own layoff?
As for the writing, Isaacson allowed me to read this book in four months without losing anything. You can pick it up, read for 20 minutes, and put it down with a story in your head, complete, and then you can pick it up again two weeks later without even noticing the lapse. He is an artist. I don't know why I kept trying to find something wrong with Isaacson, something I didn't like. Maybe it was the Time Magazine thing, or maybe it was the forward where he felt the need to mention the number of interviews he did for this book (which left me wanting to believe he was in some way insecure about the interviews he didn't do.) I don't know. Isaacson was pretty thorough and tells a great story. I think I just wanted him pining for depth. Surely it's there, but he just doesn't really seem to put any of that pining part in the final text. An artist of sorts, one of our time.
What to conclude on all that? This review is more of mixed rant. It's a great book and great story, even if part of me apparently didn't want it be.
My immediate response: A fascinating life. Jobs, strange and crazy as he was, affected everybody...again and again. The book up is well done - fast paced, easy to read, and pretty thorough.
review from July 10:
What was I thinking to read this and what was I thinking to read it the way I did? Anyway it all worked out. Steve Jobs was terribly arrogant, carelessly ruthless (sometimes intentionally so), and amazingly impressive all at the same time and in the same life. Walter Isaacson, editor of Time Magazine, is a master of the modern popular biography. What am I trying to say anyway? I had some kind of love/hate relationship with both the author and the subject, which just makes this hard to respond to.
Ok, first of all Jobs. You probably know the basics, the Apple II, Steve Wozniak's world-changing creation from his free time, and the company that came out of Steve Job's garage. Maybe you recall Pong, or the original Macintosh and the original GUI screens. Perhaps you know the story of Job's luring John Sully away from Pepsi, although you may not know Sully later kicked Jobs out of Apple. Maybe you know of Job's roll behind Pixar and surely you know his roll in reviving Apple and leading the way to the iPod, iPhone & iPad, and actually changing the world. And it might cross you mind, if your about my age, or maybe one or two decades older, on how much of this is actually THE story of our time - the creation of the personal computer through to the iPad...all this from a guy who couldn't code.
What Isaacson brings across all this is the striking mixture of traits that made Jobs Jobs. He was spoiled, selfish, pouty, brutal, motivating, inspiring, manipulative, cruel, conniving and two-faced, sharp. A showman and master salesman, a man who could lead and make his people make things, just with his words. His ups and downs are fascinating, and it all came together so perfectly when he returned to apple, it's really a tragedy he isn't still around to see it evolve...to make it evolve. But still, I just can't help thinking to myself of the time when Jobs was presented as retuning to Apple, and there was much cheering...how many of those people cheering were Apple employees, and how many were aware that they were cheering their own layoff?
As for the writing, Isaacson allowed me to read this book in four months without losing anything. You can pick it up, read for 20 minutes, and put it down with a story in your head, complete, and then you can pick it up again two weeks later without even noticing the lapse. He is an artist. I don't know why I kept trying to find something wrong with Isaacson, something I didn't like. Maybe it was the Time Magazine thing, or maybe it was the forward where he felt the need to mention the number of interviews he did for this book (which left me wanting to believe he was in some way insecure about the interviews he didn't do.) I don't know. Isaacson was pretty thorough and tells a great story. I think I just wanted him pining for depth. Surely it's there, but he just doesn't really seem to put any of that pining part in the final text. An artist of sorts, one of our time.
What to conclude on all that? This review is more of mixed rant. It's a great book and great story, even if part of me apparently didn't want it be.
Siento que a las biografías no puedo darles puntaje real, a menos que haya leído sobre la misma persona desde diferentes autores, pero este no es el caso.
Siento también que Isaacson supo transmitirnos la esencia de Jobs sin pintarlo como un genio, sino como un tipo visionario y ambicioso que supo sacar el máximo provecho de las oportunidades que se presentaron en su vida, y puedo ver más allá de lo que otros.
Tampoco trata de encubrir sus fallas como ser humano, ni su naturaleza fría.
No hay mucho que decir. Siempre que termino alguna biografía me siento muy cerca de la persona de la que trata; olvidando, a veces, que son escritas desde puntos de vista y subjetividades demasiado patentes para ser obviadas, por personajes que los admiraban o, por lo menos, los respetaban e interesaban. Y esto es un poco molesto, porque hace que la crítica del lector se vuelva un poco difícil.
Algunas historias siempre van a estar escritas por el ganador, y al final siempre se va a ver mejor que peor, a menos de que sea el enemigo común de un grupo.
Siento también que Isaacson supo transmitirnos la esencia de Jobs sin pintarlo como un genio, sino como un tipo visionario y ambicioso que supo sacar el máximo provecho de las oportunidades que se presentaron en su vida, y puedo ver más allá de lo que otros.
Tampoco trata de encubrir sus fallas como ser humano, ni su naturaleza fría.
No hay mucho que decir. Siempre que termino alguna biografía me siento muy cerca de la persona de la que trata; olvidando, a veces, que son escritas desde puntos de vista y subjetividades demasiado patentes para ser obviadas, por personajes que los admiraban o, por lo menos, los respetaban e interesaban. Y esto es un poco molesto, porque hace que la crítica del lector se vuelva un poco difícil.
Algunas historias siempre van a estar escritas por el ganador, y al final siempre se va a ver mejor que peor, a menos de que sea el enemigo común de un grupo.
Boek over het leven van Steve Jobs. Bijzonder om zijn verhaal en hem een beetje te leren kennen. Hij kon af en toe echt een klootzak zijn, maar dat heeft Apple uiteindelijk wel gebracht waar het nu is.
“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer,” Jobs told Fortune shortly after retaking the reins at Apple.” But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself it successive outer layers.”There is a lot to admire, and a much to despise about him. He had a lifelong commitment to his worldview. I respect his fanatic attention to detail: he truly cared about every aspect of a product’s design, and always intimately contributed to what the company was working on. Steve Jobs + Jony Ive were a legendary combination for industrial design, and I hope Ive still does well without him.
It is hilarious to read about Steve personally calling up CEO’s of giant corporations to tell them that their product sucks, and sometimes to give ideas on how to improve it. Well written, exciting, and seems to do justice to the legacy of a crazy bastard who inarguably left a permanent mark on our culture.
Interesting review of not only Jobs, but the rise of technology and standards we now take for granted.
So much in love with this book. Walter issacson has narrated the life of Steve in such a succinct timeline. Steve is a person you would love to hate. With his perpetual affinity towards attaining perfection in whatever product he designs, it is no wonder Apple turned out to be one of the richest brand in the world. The way he thinks, the way he designs, the way he creates“reality distortion” with his stare during the convo, the way he resiliences, the way he embraced a hippy culture, are some of the best in him that kept me in awe throughout the book.