Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

In case you couldn’t guess by the title, this is the biography of Steve Jobs. He was a co-founder of Apple, created the first truly personal computer (with graphical interfaces, the mouse, fonts, and colors), started Pixar (Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc.), and more recently worked on the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone, and the iPad. Steve Jobs died at the young age of 56 this past October, and the biography was released a few weeks after.

It’s best to know a little background on Walter Isaacson. He has written the biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein. I actually read half of the Einstein biography but it was too burdensome for me to finish. Steve Jobs is just as detailed and lengthy (571 pages). Every aspect of his life is covered – work, family, religion, diets, relationships. The smallest details and conversations are included. Given all of this, it took me over two weeks to finish this book.

What Steve jobs accomplished is unfathomable. Besides being one of the first to bring computers to the world, he has revolutionized so many industries: animated movies, music, phones, books, newspapers, retail stores. (Yes, retail stores. Consider this: on average, each of the 326 Apple stores earned $34 million in 2010. The store in New York earned more money per square foot than any store in the world, and it earns more money than any store in New York City - Saks, Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, all of them.) His philosophy was people didn't know what they wanted: if Henry Ford asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse, not a car. Often quoted in the book is Wayne Gretzky, who said "skate where the puck was going, not where it’s been." It’s easy to describe him as a genius after reading the book, and history will place him with Thomas Edison and Henry Ford for all the he has contributed.

Steve Jobs can apply to many people. It’s not very technical, but it will certainly entertain those amused by computers and technology. There are a lot of management lessons, some that should be followed, some that should never be repeated. There are deep questions posed, such as open-sourced or closed-sourced, whether it’s good or bad to have end-to-end control. Younger readers who are energized to begin their own company will enjoy hearing the initial struggles that were overcome.

My rating for Steve Jobs: 4 stars out of 5. Get it here!

Bonus Segment: I finally watch The Help this weekend, and I wanted to leave a few comments. I thought the beginning of the movie was exaggerated and over the top, but eventually it simmered down. It did follow the book very closely. The emotions from the actresses were as real as they are in the book, although some of the dialects were tough to understand. The movie was also very long, but I still enjoyed watching it (even though it seemed really sad). Final opinion: the book was better than the movie.