On “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson
My first introduction to Steve Jobs was after his death. I saw a newspaper headline that read Apple’s Founder, Steve Jobs, who was behind the profound digital revolution, died of complications from cancer. Around the same time, one of my cousins, a fan of Apple products, praised the iPhone and mentioned the man behind it, Steve Jobs. In these two instances, I have heard of him only as the CEO of a company that made iPhones. Growing up, I learned a few things about him and the company, but not as much as many loyal fans of Apple.
Soon after the first wave of COVID-19 (~2020), I ordered a list of non-fiction English books, such as The Lean Startup, Zero to One, Steve Jobs, and Sapiens. I started with Lean Startup but left it midway. The same story continued with Zero to One and Sapiens. Last November, I looked at the shelf and found these abandoned books waiting for a pair of hands that could hold them, eyes that could read them, a couple of fingers that could turn their pages, and a brain that could interpret what these books contain. They were dissatisfied that it was me again, and not to make it worse, I took Steve Jobs’ biography and carried it to all the places I traveled to in November and December.
This book is written by Walter Isaacson, a prominent author and journalist who has written biographies on Newton, Leonardo Da Vinci, Einstein, and Elon Musk, among others.
I started reading this book in November 2023 and completed it in January 2024. The book is structured linearly from birth to death, covering almost all major events throughout his life. Many traits of Steve Jobs surprised me while reading the book, be it his obsession with simplicity and perfection or his response consisting of either sucks or great on everything, or his reality distortion field that he became a victim of towards the end.
The author kept this book unfiltered, not glorifying Steve’s culture of berating employees in public and claiming others’ ideas as his own, among other traits. The book also narrates Steve’s contribution to the digital revolution and his empowerment of artists with the iPod.
Walter Isaacson occasionally adds his conversations with Jobs about a few incidents, like his thought process during his exit from Apple in the 1980s, Disney acquiring Pixar, his dirty feud with John Sculley and Micheal Eisner, and keeping everything secret about his health to the public until his final days. Also, Walter added the truth on a few occasions after speaking to a few people. However, Steve Jobs had a different version of the same incidents that supported his arguments. I liked the honesty that went into the book, making Steve Jobs as humane as possible and coming out with all the gray shades he has had.
His approach to solving problems at the intersection of art and technology made him build iPods and iPhones and venture into Pixar Studios. His collaboration with the artists at Pixar in operational stuff while giving them complete creative control is a testament to how effective he was as an executive who provided the right platform for talent to blossom. I was surprised to find out that after his return to Apple, he was so focused on bringing back the company’s glory that his salary for three consecutive years was only one dollar every year in cash!
Also, his obsession with the diet that caused problems for his family and friends, even when he was sick, was weird. He was stubborn about everything. While I was expecting this quality at work, I wasn’t expecting that to be the case when he was critically ill, too! The book also covers the perspectives of his family, friends, and colleagues who were not heaping praise for him but were sharing experiences of interactions with him, working with him, and their arguments with him.
People remember his reality distortion field from this book, and yeah, he was a victim of that field when he fell sick, unfortunately. His comeback to Apple as a CEO reminded me of many Indian films where the protagonist makes a comeback to save his family’s reputation and takes control for good.
His obsession with making things simple got me into my head, and I started thinking along the same lines about several things I’ve been doing, whether related to work or otherwise. For example, I was working on a project for which I was looking to add content that our users would see on the app. Instead of following the existing terminology, I wondered if that was making sense, and after observing the feedback from our users, I thought it was time to make it simple. Why should the terms be different for our customers in our app from the ones they use outside our app? Thus, I incorporated the learnings and changed the phrasing. I also followed his way of soliciting feedback from our colleagues on the projects, which resulted in good collaboration and brought the best versions of things.
On the personal front, I started paying more attention to things, listening to conversations with more focus by avoiding distractions and questioning the status quo. If my memory is not wrong, this has been the biggest book I’ve read so far in my life, and that, too, is a biography. Before reading this book, I was reluctant to read biographies, but this book made me rethink my choices and read a few more biographies afterward.
Learning about his way of holding meetings and making critical decisions while walking with the people was interesting. There were anecdotes of him convincing the other people to sign the deal over a long walk, and people who were to walk with Steve at that time were convinced that he’d make them agree on the points he’d bring during the discussion. I remember reading about a person (I forgot the name) who declined the offer to walk because he was confident that Steve would persuade that person! Such was his influence. The products that he launched solved real problems. He respected the artists more, and to tackle the issue of music piracy and illegal downloads and get them their deserving credit, he collaborated with Music Companies/labels and artists to bring the iPod. He did everything he could to bring most of the music labels on board, making it one of the most loved products. For customers, this made the music more accessible, allowing them to store many songs and play as per their choice, whenever they wanted, in any order.
After I finished around 90% of the book, I knew what was coming, and I didn’t want to read or complete it. When you travel with a character for more than two months, reading about him, watching his videos, and discussing with your friends, it’s emotionally challenging for you to read about his death. This always happens for me. I had to limit reading the book to about ten pages a day, compared to around 30 pages a day while reading the book’s initial chapters, only to prolong the death of Steve Jobs in my head.
While I knew Jobs as a creator and an Entrepreneur before, reading this book made me empathize with him, love him more, hate him a little, and ultimately admire him a lot!
Coming to the book, the language was easy to understand, although I had to open a dictionary at times to understand the meaning of a few words like bozo. The narrative flowed, and I found it difficult to turn a page throughout the book. I’d recommend reading this book to everyone, regardless of their interest in Business or Entrepreneurship.
I thought I’d watch the film (Steve Jobs) soon after finishing the book and write about them together in one blog. It has been over two months since I’ve completed reading the book, and I’ve not watched the film yet. I finished reading five more books after this one to give you perspective. The delay is too much, in my opinion, and I wanted to publish this blog post before it’s too late.
