Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs is an important study into one of the pioneering minds of the Internet Age and what made the man behind the biggest technology company, as it stands today, tick.
It is also, in parts, a look at the history of the personal computer and a zeitgeist of the “rock-drug-rebel” counter culture of Bay Area of the 1960s and 1970s that gave birth to thinking that impacted the decades that followed. Even though the book has at its epicentre Steve Jobs, the narrative includes the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak and John Lasseter (of Pixar) in fair measure.
Isaacson wears his journalist hat with aplomb. The biography may have been initiated by Jobs. But the former chairman of CNN and managing editor of Time magazine, presents a balanced, non-judgemental view. One that even Jobs concedes that he might not like. “It is your book,” he tells him in one of their earliest interviews. "I won't even read it."
The book is constructed out of 40 interviews the author had with Steve Jobs, in the last two years of his life, and also 100 other interviews with friends, family, colleagues and even competitors. Outright unmanageable when angry, eccentric, borderline narcissistic, obnoxious to people around him and yet intensely passionate, emotionally child-like and thoroughly charming when he wants to be … Steve Jobs' personal profile is more complicated than his professional profile.
Wunderkind
The book is divided, though not literally, into three acts: the rise of the wunderkind, founding of Apple, right up to the launch of the Mac; his ouster from Apple in 1985 and his years of exile, failing with NeXT but later succeeding with Pixar; and his return to Apple in 1997 and leading it to make it the biggest technology company in the world.
The most important aspect of his personal life goes with his intense feelings about being abandoned as a baby and put up for adoption. The sense of ‘abandoned … chosen … special' is one of the recurring themes that his family and friends infer. But Jobs himself is unable to spell it out clearly if that is one of the things that drove him hard for creating an identity for himself, one that kept forcing him and others in his company to “create a dent in the universe”.
In one of the dramatic passages on his personal life, Isaacson uncovers how Steve Jobs tracked down his biological sister, gets to like her immensely, and even make peace with his biological mother. He however stays absolutely detached from finding out anything about his biological father. This theme accounts for the most stunning episode in the book, when Mona Simpson tracks down their biological father. A restaurateur, he recounts his life and in passing refers to a previous job with a restaurant in San Jose. "All successful people used to come there," he tells her. “Even Steve Jobs. He was a sweet guy, and a big tipper … ”
Passionate visionary
The interludes to his personal life provide relief from a narrative that touches on his relentless pursuit in creating the best consumer products company with Apple. The book touches upon several moments that became definitive in both the personal computer and the ‘post-PC' era. The author allows Steve Wozniak, the technical brain of Apple, to hog the limelight that is so rightfully his. It was Wonzniak's circuit boards that heralded the personal computer era. He was the omega to Steve Job's alpha in the early stages of the Apple story. The ‘Homebrew Club' where Jobs, Wozniak and even Bill Gates meet to launch the personal computer revolution, but with varying visions, is a nice peek into the history.
Coming back and taking reins of Apple, which was floundering close to bankruptcy, and helping it re-imagine and put out some of the most successful consumer electronic products ever — iPod, iPhone and iPad — the last act of the Steve Jobs story is a riveting page-turner of a man fighting cancer, knowing that his time is limited, and egging on his team to create history.
In appreciating Jobs going against his nature and handing over control with the biography, Isaacson gifts Steve Jobs the final say in the book in the last chapter. Jobs, in perhaps his last burst of thoughts on business, explains what drove him and Apple to create the products they did. And in an uncharacteristic tone, Jobs is also generous in praising competition.
