In roughly 600 pages, this book is all about the wayward perfectionist revolutionizing our digital world, the one person who penetrated and astonished the computer industry by launching the graphical interface during the middle of the 80’s including his magnificent creations later on, such as iPhone or iPad, it’s the one who planted our most famous Apple, namely Steve Jobs.
After the launching of his biography I perceived that it would possess peculiar elements I wouldn’t anywhere and alter my perception of Jobs completely but as well provide me with particular experiences and a considerable amount of useful knowledge I definitely wouldn’t find elsewhere.
Steve jobs was a very humble and private person, he rarely leaked his privacies and knowing that Walter Isaacson would forge an autobiography of the founder of Apple, I began wondering if it even was possible. Sure, the quite old and sage scribe Isaacson was very proficient and experienced in his fields, he certainly earned bachelor degrees in history and literature from Harvard University and served as a chairman and editor at Time magazine. He also wrote biographies of other significant people such as Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein and Jobs was surely among them but could he become more open and tell everybody the truth?
 |
| Walter Isaacson, he sure looks like a nice guy! Source |
Indeed, he really became open minded, considerably and told the author almost everything he could imagine. As a matter of fact, the biography was based on forty interviews with Jobs over a two year period right up until shortly upon his death. Isaacson also drew on conversations with friends, family members or even business rivals. Steve finally could reveal and expose his secrets, his life to everybody just in time!
The public usually beheld Jobs as a creative pioneer and the breathtaking presenter during during events related to a launch of a new product, the “perfect” CEO in some extent but that didn’t reveal his inner truth. He usually twisted the actuality and made it seem much better, which indeed is very common in Apple inc. The phenomenon is adressed in the chapter “The real distortion field” providing numerous samples of circumstances in which he distorts the reality. Steve frequently would relate himself as the cutting point between aesthetics and technology and perhaps some events that really changed the world probably wouldn’t require as much attention as they really deserved.
Even though many people perceive Steve as quite, kind hearted and had a great ability of persuasion in public, it was apparent that he had low social- and emotional abilities, brutality and mental instability but still, the individuality of Steve Jobs has appealed to me since a long time ago and after reading his autobiography, I see him as a completely different person nowadays. Something I really appreciate about Steve Jobs is that regardless of his difficulties and obstacles, he still continued making efforts for perfection. Somehow, it seems that he always had been driven by some kind of a positive attitude, a strong motivation and of course the willigness of working and intrests. Jobs was a very creative person and always introduced something new, something different to the world, from the beginning to the end. Steve was also a very independent person he always could come back after a failure, as when he was forced to leave Apple in 1985 but still become even more succesful during the coming years. A typical trait of Jobs was percetionism, he just wanted to develop perfect products that were aesthetically designed and pursued all of the technical expectations. Steve would treat you as crap of you did poorly but despite his stubbornness, he still began changing and mature gradually during the years and at the end if his lifespan, he turned into a humble and caring father and a very prominent businessman.
 |
| After being kicked out from his own company, Steve started a new one, called NeXT, he also worked at the animation studio called Pixar, which was bought by Disney Source |
The biography is structured in 40 chapters with a fairly chronological buildup starting from his childhood, the formation of Apple, his education to the more present. What I really like is that it is possible to not read the biography in a chronological order and every chapter is completely differnt from each other with reference to various significant or particular period during his life. For instance, the chapter “iPhone” with a time span of two years and is all about Steve’s opinions, his ideas and development of the product and also other section referring to the notice of his cancer or the foundation of Apple. Generally speaking, this biography is very realistic and comprehensively written, the major portion of it is only about Jobs opinions and personal perceptions of certain events or phenomenas, unlike other biographies I’ve read. As a narrative, the book is very fascintating and explains the incentives required to ahcieve the degree of innovation that allowed Steve to be as succesful. Someful very noticable during my read was the changes of the author’s writing style and the perspective in a quite short section or piece of the book. Sometimes, it could switch between a ”lyrical” or “distorted linguistic presentation and I really admire the when the author describes different people, sometimes, it just sounds like poetry with some traces of irony and humor, I really like Isaacson’s writing style, I couldn’t resist while describing some person because then, Isaacson uses very idiomic, old, "professional" and "strange" words which made me very attentive and as an assurance, I just grabbed a dictionary while reading the biography, these kind of books are what I appreciate! But, sometimes it could be quite infuriating that the author uses too many different linguistic presentations and changes the perspctivs constantly so it gets a little bit confusing to decipher the words in some extent. Sometimes I needed to read the pages at least twice to merely comprehend a basic understanding and of course, this worsens my opinion of it a little bit.
On the cover, Steve Jobs gazes to the readers’ eyes. The intenze gaze of Steve jobs was a very
charachteristic of him which seems practised to some extent. Seeing the older Jobs in the front cover and his younger self at the back gave me a special sensation, it told me one of his personalities. Steve was really a person of contrasts, black and white was the world he lived in: People, ideas or things were either superb or crap.
 |
| It was interesting observing Steve in different ages, side by side Source |
Wether you like Apple or not, I really recommend this biography for everyone and after reading it, I got a much broader view of this genius and the same time, obtaining tons of new knowledge. Because, how couldn’t anyone disapprove this incredible and well written biography and how would a world without this very tasty Apple Steve planted in during the 70's look like?
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Stay hungry, stay foolish
-Steve Jobs
Inga kommentarer:
Skicka en kommentar