- Having been an avid follower of Mr. Jobs for quite some time, and knowing quite a bit about him, there were not that many surprises in the book for me. Customers have come into the store quite shocked at the personality that is revealed in the book. Not this dude. I have often said Steve Jobs is best admired from a distance, not close up. Also, I have dealt with this type of personality before, so very few things surprised me in his antics.
- It was fascinating reading about his childhood, and the environment that he grew up in. His formative years were spent in what would become Silicon Valley, and you can see him thriving in that atmosphere.
- What did surprise me is what a dick he was to his parents in his youth. He realized that as he got older, but man…
- He also wasn't the greatest dad either. He seems to have really favoured his son Reed over his girls, which is unacceptable.
- Another surprise was the amount of pain he was in - he certainly never showed it publicly. That makes the accomplishments of the last few years of his life (iPhone, iPad, new Apple HQ) even more amazing. If you have ever suffered from any sort of chronic pain, you realize how debilitating it is, and how it messes up your brain and your ability to think. That he was able to overcome this is simply insanely awe-inspiring.
- As a biographer, however, Walter Isaacson gets at best, a passing grade from this Dude. After finishing this book, I started the biography of Sir John A. MacDonald, written by Richard Gwyn. Gwyn is 10 times the writer Isaacson is, and it is startling to read them back to back, and how much better Gwyn is.
- The biggest omissions seem to be lack of detail. Isaacson at times gives too many insignificant details, other times not enough. Strangely, the death of Steve Job's dad is never mentioned, and I find it hard to believe that didn't affect him in some way. Also chronically missing is how Steve felt about things. How did he feel about the sales failure of the original Mac? About how it didn't change the world like he thought? The failure of Next? The success of the iPod? We never find out how Steve felt inside on these monumental occurrences in his life. Jobs often said being fired from Apple was the best thing that happened to him, and his time forming Next and Pixar, and the failure of Next, allowed him to succeed at Apple - but one doesn't get that sense in the book, and we never learn what Jobs learned in his failures.
Two final thoughts. Like any successful venture, there is always a team, and while the world may have given Jobs the lion share of the credit, it becomes apparent that he was the conductor of a very talented orchestra. Which is how any successful venture is done, be it a corporation, or a record, or a movie.
Finally, I was surprised at how important personal relationships are at the highest levels - I would have thought at the CEO level interaction, personalities wouldn't matter so much (who likes who, who gets along), as strategic interests would be more important, but they are - a number of potential deals didn't get done, or did get done, based on two people liking each other. Who would have thought that?
