Publisher’s
write-up:
‘The Exclusive Biography, Isaacson provides
an extraordinary account of Jobs' professional and personal life. Drawn from
three years of exclusive and unprecedented interviews Isaacson has conducted
with Jobs as well as extensive interviews with Jobs' family members and key
colleagues from Apple and its competitors, Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography
is the definitive portrait of the greatest innovator of his generation.’
We
all know about Steve Jobs and the company that he created. I’ve never been a
fan of the company that he created and in fact, till date, the only Apple
Product that I use is iTunes which is
free; nevertheless, I’ve been an admirer of Steve Jobs, for the enterprise that
he has created – considering its origin, his ouster and the marvellous
turnaround and I always wanted to know more regarding the same and hence, this
book was an obvious choice.
The
good thing about this biography is that I believe it is fairly accurate,
considering it is Jobs himself who has asked Isaacson to take up this project
and the latter claims to have come up with this book after a hundred interviews
with Jobs, his family and friends. But then, before I chose to read this book,
my respect for Steve Jobs was quite high but then, as I started reading this,
it was crumbling apart – he was a highly arrogant, self-opinionated who did not
accept anything other than his point of view (someone with whom I’d certainly
not like to work with). Another problem that I found was that he had this
nature to keep everything under his control and that attempt often leads to a
lot of problems (this attitude of his could be seen in his products too – where
Apple does everything – hardware, software, OS, and everything else). In a way,
I felt, Steve Jobs’ story could’ve very well been a case study in management
schools on how not to be if not for
his success.
However,
as I read on, especially after his ouster from Apple, I began to regain the
respect, considering his tenacity to stay on the top and creating a successful
enterprise in a considerably different field (animated films) not that his
personality ever underwent a change despite all that he has been through. The
eventual turnaround he achieved with Apple was also well narrated but then, in
the last part of the book, my admiration was falling apart yet again,
considering him hitting out at competitors for plagiarism, considering he
himself believes that great artists steal
thereby indulging in such blatant hypocrisy (regarding Google’s Android and
Microsoft in general). In a way, you could say that the respect I had for Steve
Jobs moved like a cosine graph as I was reading this book.
Coming
to the book as such, as aforementioned, I believe this would be the most
credible biography on Steve Jobs ever, and I believe Isaacson has done a good
job in presenting the same, in terms of language and also structure – where it
was fairly chronological rather than moving backwards and forth. But then, I
felt it was too long a description of events that occasionally puts you off,
especially, in cases where you know what was going to happen (regarding Steve
Jobs’ ouster or Apple taking over NeXT). Moreover, I found some of the facts to be repetitive during the course of the book, being Jobs not believing in the idea of products being customisable or the fact of Jobs being a perfectionist. I guess that is all I’ve got to say
about this book – it is a very good book for all those Apple fans, Steve Jobs
admirers or even for those interested in reading on influential people. I
choose to not comment on Jobs’ personal life for that is not why I admire him
and also, it is not my concern in anyway and as a result, I don’t comment on
the personal aspects of the book.
I’d
conclude saying that this is a good read, just too long (and I’m not a fan of
Apple but Jobs and I’m not sure of that either, now). I’d say that it is a good book to read and
hence, award a rating of six on ten.
Rating – 6/10
Have a nice day,
Andy
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