Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson - Book Report/Review Example

Lecturer: Book review: Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson Introduction The book “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson is about the life andintense personality of a creative entrepreneur with passion for perfection, which drove ferocious revolution in various industries like personal computers, music, phones, animated movies, tablet computing and digital publishing. Steve Jobs opened the way for new market in digital content based on apps instead of mere websites; hence, Steve transformed products as well as creative designs and engineering. The book is also about innovation at the time when societies across the globe try to develop creative digital-age economies with Steve jobs being the crucial icon of ingenuity, constant innovation and imagination. In the book, Isaacson shows that Steve was not a model boss tidily packaged for emulation because he was capable of driving those around him to despair and fury. However, Steve’s personality and passion as well as products are linked in the book similar to the way Apple hardware and software tends to be part of an incorporated system. Thus, Steve Job’s tale is both enlightening and reproving with lessons regarding innovation, personality, leadership and principles as Isaacson presents. Based on more than forty interviews that were conducted in a period of two years, Isaacson manages to write a riveting story of the life and intense personality of Steve Jobs. Isaacson’s well-written book is worth commenting considering the magnitude of research and interviews carried out, although it was hard reading anecdotes regarding the other side of Steve Jobs. This has been depressing considering the way his passion and genius pump a huge amount of admiration through in people. The book offers the chronicle of Job’s life, personality together with his passion for perfection since the interviews had a hefty cast of characters like his family members, friends, adversaries, colleagues and competitors. The picture Isaacson paints regarding Steve Jobs, the man who initiated revolution of personal computing, tablet computing and phones is not pretty. However, the impact of Steve Jobs in people’s lives and his ability to inspire those around him brought out the best in people and the exceptional people in his team managed to develop the most innovative products by merging technology and art. The most interesting part of the book is the history of origin of the various Apple products and seeing the symbiotic relation between Jobs and Wozniak in creating the first personal computer; moreover, being a design-enthusiast, Apple’s design guru Jonathon was also fascinating. It is impossible to lack appreciation for the depth of thought Jonathon and Jobs invested in detail of all Apple products from handles and button to even the colours and curves. It seems Jonathon and Jobs were corresponding in pursuing exquisite design since neither of them settled and had genuine respect for each other (Isaacson 491). The only criticism of the book is that, the book felt lopsided toward the dark side of Steve Jobs although it is a riveting story of explosive boardroom drama, quirky personalities and scorned business partners. Steve Jobs’ hiring was as vicious as his firing; however, colleagues at Apple considered the abrasive behaviour together with Steve’s inflexible refusal to accept no as an answer to have been the force behind the best work they have done in Apple. Isaacson manages is material properly and writes with demotic style; although there are moments of poor discrimination like when he offers the title for the account of when Steve Jobs returned to Apple. However taken in its entirety, the book makes a riveting read with much on alteration of modern life from the perspective of information technology driven by the supernaturally gifted Steve jobs. Reading page after page of the book, Isaacson manages to show that Jobs was not particularly a talented electronic engineer but rather a businessperson with astonishing flair and focus and marketing genius. Moreover, Isaacson makes it clear that Jobs had an intuitive sense of what consumers wanted before even the customer had any idea; hence, Steve jobs was obsessed with products instead of money because Jobs believed getting the products right would bring the money. In the book, Isaacson is all over Steve’s personal shortcomings, the occasional business bungles, and by the sheer bulk of the book, it is clear that whatever Jobs did was vital to Isaacson historical record. The book has chapter on cheesy advertisement “think different” and half a page on how Steve went about in choosing a washing machine. Moreover, the empty vocabulary of cooperate public relations sometimes seep into Isaacson’s prose as indicated by use of term passion in the book. Isaacson in his book manages to indicate that Jobs had “passion for perfection”, “passion for awesome products” and “passion for industrial design” among others (Isaacson 94). Apart from being a genius, Jobs was a weird man; for instance, as a young man he was once offered to work on a night shift so that his co-workers would not have to endure his behaviour (Isaacson 43). Although Steve’s personal life in the book is sketchy, the details that are not sketchy are not charming because he at one point cheated friends out of money bullied waiters, insulted interviewees for job and insulted business contacts. Nevertheless, Steve jobs the brilliant developer whose innovations utterly altered the appeal of technology turned his lessons to a theory of gifted design. The book starts with an account of the young Steve as being defiant to parents who took care of him and scornful of those who offered him for adoption (Isaacson 1). Although Isaacson does not analyse his subject’s volatile personality, he raises concern regarding abandonment which could have made Steve fanatically domineering and manipulative as adult. Jobs the founder of Apple together with his colleagues in 1976, initiated his career as a clashing blend of truth seeker as well as a tech-savvy individual. However, Isaacson manages to point out that Jobs awareness was not accompanied by too much calm, peace of mind or even interpersonal mellowness because Steve would stun unsuspecting victim with an emotional snap. Nevertheless, Isaacson shows that Jobs valued simplicity, utility and beauty in a manner that shaped his creative imagination and Isaacson goes on to maintain that goals would not have been achievable in Apple without the mean streak. In his book, Isaacson takes readers back to the time when computers were metaphors and ticks off how the various Apple innovations often taken for granted by people first occurred to Steve Jobs and his creative team. The book is about the achievements, personality, career and afflictions of Steve Jobs and follows him through the various stages in his career with avid interest in corporate intrigues. The book also tracks Jobs’ illness with a section that suggests that the cancer was treatable if he had not declined early surgery (Isaacson 455). The book greatly admires its subject and offers a combination of tech criticism and promotional hype since Isaacson point out that the arrival of new product to Steve’s theatrical introductions as well as marketing campaigns. In conclusion, the subject and lessons offered by Isaacson in this book about Steve Job the founder and visionary of the planet’s most famous and valued cooperation is an instant captivation. The most striking thing about the book is that the company is deeply rooted in the way its founder thought and his doctrine as well as Apple’s development. Isaacson clearly shows that Jobs appreciated that the hallmark of great craftsmanship involves ensuring that those aspects that are always hidden are beautifully made. Moreover, the book clearly shows that in all the products Steve jobs combined technology to great design, elegance and human touch. In addition, although the way the personality of Steve Jobs is presented by is not charming, Jobs remains a huge inspiration in the computing world because of his great innovation in the industry and other industries. Works cited Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. Print. Read More