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Sneha Latha

A must read!!

Reviewed in India on 23 September 2017

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I am not a fan of Apple products. I also dont own one of them. Many of my friends despised Steve Jobs and used to tell me stories about his part in the development of Apple being negligible. I wanted to know the truth. Trust me this book is a jewel. Not just for those who admire him but also for all tech nerds. There is so much described about the times of early inventions in electronic industry to present day iphone. All of this is beautifully wound around Jobs' story and he fist perfectly into that world. I wish i were alive during that time to witness all that he achieved. I surely believe he put a dent to the universe!

I recommend to read this, to those who love apple and Jobs but I insist to those who hate him. You will love him by the time you reach the end and wish there was more to read.

170 people found this helpful

William Cohen

Inspiring and insightful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 July 2019

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I sat on the plane reading this book. The chap next to me had an iPhone, the lady on the opposite aisle had an iPad, and the lady by the opposite window had an iPhone. It brought home the impact this man had on the world.

Steve Jobs was one crazy guy. He was into spirituality, but he didn't seem to be spiritual at all really. In a weird way he spiritualised products while denigrating fellow human beings. He served humanity by making elegant technology, not by maintaining healthy relationships with those around him.

From a business perspective, it was inspiring to read about his commitment to the vision: the passion for simplicity. The founding of the Apple store, the drive and courage to produce the iPod, iPad and iPhone, the stories are powerful and uplifting . Indeed the story is a big part of his business success - Ross Perot paraphrased it and got a lot of it wrong, but people wanted to retell it because it inspired people.

His genius for selling manifested at his product launches. He was at ease making multi-million dollar deals. He didn't try and play God - there were loads of people who felt cheated by him, but he wasn't bothered. The Pixar subplot was astonishing. To have played such a role in animation, on top of everything else, was just incredible.

But as a human being, he was an untreated compulsive. He was insanely fussy in his demands of Apple technologists, but he showed the same attitude to the people who cooked for him, or treated him for his illness.

I loved the book and read it in a week. I feel I need to have a bigger vision for my life and business for the next 10 years - so I'm grateful for that.

22 people found this helpful

Bruno

Great content but cheap paperback

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 October 2020

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The content is great, I'm really enjoying it and getting through quite quickly even though it's a long book. But the gutter is really small so it's hard to read close to the edges and the binding is very hard to it's quite uncomfortable to read. They could easily have made the gutter 5 mm bigger and it'd be much easier to read.

Please vote up if you agree so that publishers don't keep doing this with books to save and give us better quality but still inexpensive paperbacks.

7 people found this helpful

SnippetMaster

A real biography

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 September 2015

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Quality from start to finish. How a biography should be and even turned me into an Apple convert. The story of a driven man who probably did manage to put a dent in the universe (time will tell).

Snippets:
Believed first and foremost in making great things before making money. Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are. The goal of starting a company is to make something you believe in and that will last, not to get rich. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication - "less but better". To be truly simple, you have to go really deep. Design must reflect a product's essence. Good execution is as important as a great idea. A-players like to work together, not tolerate B-players. You can't afford to tolerate the B-players. Even the aspects that remain hidden should be done beautifully - a great carpenter isn't going to use lousy wood for the back of a cabinet just because it isn't seen (how many CEO's behave like that as opposed to finding cost-cuts?). Don't accept "no" for an answer, even if it means adopting a "reality distortion field". Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do. People who know what they're talking about don't need PowerPoint. If something isn't right, you can't just ignore it and say "we'll fix it later" - that's what other companies do! Motivations really matter - if you don't love music, don't create a music product. The best way to begin a speech is to say "let me tell you a story", because nobody wants a lecture. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way to avoid the trap of thinking that you have something to lose: memento mori. "Here's to the crazy ones".

41 people found this helpful

Sheba

WEll written book about a remarkable man

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 December 2018

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Walter Isaacson has done an incredible job writing this book. It seems accurate and candid. This is no sycophantic tribute. However, it is still a tribute the the genius and vision of a remarkable man and what he created by sheer determination, obstinacy and self belief. It is people like Steve Jobs who change the world and make our lives so much better. I did not really know much about him, and my only Apple product at the time of reading this biography, was my trusty old ipod.
After reading this book, I am full of admiration for the genius of this man and the incredible legacy he has left behind for us all. I was fortunate, in that we chose it for our Self Development bookclub, and were therefore able to stretch it over 5 sessions. It allowed us to do justice to the book.

10 people found this helpful

Sally Walker

Well written and commendable

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 July 2014

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This is a very readable account of Steve Job’s life. Whilst it does go into some detail as to how each Apple product was produced this is not overly technical and so for me, as a non-techy, I did not find it boring. Rather I found that I developed a real appreciation for their products and to view them in a whole new light.

What shines through is Jobs’ unique personality which enabled him to achieve great things, namely ground breaking digital products combined with ground breaking designs with an emphasis on purity and simplicity. Uniquely Jobs worked at the interface of art and technology.

Oh, and did I fail to mention that he also, and at the same time! developed a world-class animation film company that slapped Disney around the face.

Now of course Jobs did not achieve all of these single-handedly he made great partnerships and then selected A players to be on his team. Jobs’ uniqueness is the way that he brought out the best of people’s abilities; he regularly made them go further than they thought they as people could go and that it was possible to go period. How he did this is not particularly pretty with a combination of staring, timed silences and simply telling somebody that what they had produced what s**t and that they could do a whole load better. Jobs’ world was black or white, something was either great or s**t and his opinion on a person or their work could vacillate between the two within the space of one working day! He said it like it was and regarded it as his job to do this.

He must have been a boss from hell but yet so great was his enthusiasm and so great was the product that was being developed that people stepped up to the plate to deliver. Their job satisfaction was in the delivery and getting that final ounce of praise, even if on occasion Jobs’ took all of the credit.

He was also a charismatic and fearless negotiator who would charm and bully the necessary people to get the best deal.

By him not shilly-shallying around and taking people’s feelings into account and being fearless he was able to achieve greatness.

Jobs’ attention to finite detail and laser-like focus was such that he would not baulk from going to a major re-design, just weeks away from the launch of a product. Design meant everything to him.

His laser-like focus enabled him to block out of his life things that he did not want to deal with. Most notably this occurred in his personal life when he was deciding whether to marry Laurenne Powel, or, most dramatically his own health. We’ll never know whether if Jobs had had the surgery on his pancreas when his doctors first advised him to have it, he would still be here continuing to develop great products.

The last one hundred pages left me with a heavy heart. It is within these pages that Jobs’ battle with cancer is recounted. I found myself willing him to beat the cancer, whilst knowing that he was already dead. His passing is a great loss because of the uniqueness that I have described above, namely the dove-tailing of art and technology.

So even if you’re a non-techy you will still enjoy this book. I highly commend it to you.

7 people found this helpful

PyrrosAle

Fascinating and motivational

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 July 2021

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Mr Isaacson did an amazing job with writing this biography. It gives you both a view of how people in Steve Jobs' life saw him and an insight on his mindset and what his thought process and beliefs were. He started from his father's garage and managed to create one of, if not the most, recognised companies in the history of humanity while also creating amazing products that had huge impact on our daily life, something truly inspiring. My favourite quote was when Steve Jobs replied to a journalist who asked him what kind of market search he had done when he unveiled the macintosh, to which Jobs replied: "Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?", a reply that shows the essence and the legacy of Steve Jobs, creating things that customers don't know they want yet.

Gurminder

Fascinating, but skewed in Jobs' favour

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 May 2013

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This is a fascinating and well-written biography of one of the most famed business leaders of all time. Isaacson has done a lot of research and, more importantly, had a lot of access to Jobs, his family, friends and colleagues while writing this book. I'm not quite sure how some people have managed to read this book in a day or two - it's long. I ended up buying the Kindle version too because I was struggling to read the hard back format.

The books provides an intriguing and fascinating insight into Jobs' life, from birth right through to the terminal cancer that riddled his body. At first, the book seems well-balanced and impartial, but the more I read, the more I felt Isaacson was at the mercy of Jobs' reality distortion field. And by this I mean that while the book was meant to be balanced, it's ended up skewed strongly in favour of Jobs. The people Isaacson interviewed were happy to discuss the times when they were in direct conflict with Jobs, but it was always followed by "but, he was a genius" or "but, that's Steve" - as if they were absolving Jobs of any blame. I'm not sure when they were interviewed, but towards the end of the book, I felt that they knew Jobs' condition was terminal and that it would be wrong to say anything negative about him.

I was hoping Jony Ive and the Apple board would have had more exposure in the book (more quotes and interviews), but that's not been the case - it was almost a family and they wouldn't have said anything. It would also have helped if there were interviews with people who didn't get along with Jobs. Hence, I feel the book is heavily skewed in Jobs' favour - despite the promise of being impartial. It also felt like the book was rushed at the end. Jobs' death isn't covered, rather the final chapter provides a summary of all the great things he did - which I didn't really need to go over again. There's no sense of what will happen at Apple with his death, and the impact it's had on family, friends etc. Indeed, the last third of the book glosses over many details and doesn't seem as well-researched as first two thirds - and I say this in the sense that the quotes and interviews got few and far between, and there was more filler text than new material. Isaacson must be praised for exploring Jobs' relationship with his family and colleagues, and in particular his children, those closest to him at Apple, and the Pixar team, but I think the book is let down towards the end.

If you're into technology, business, or biographies, then this should be in your collection. If you're a business leader looking for management tips and how to lead a company, then you won't find them in here. For me, when I've read biographies, I've come away feeling inspired - in this instance I came away feeling admiration for what Jobs achieved rather than inspiration.

3 people found this helpful

Melvin

Fascinating insight into Steve Jobs!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 August 2012

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This readable book gives a good impression of who Steve Jobs was. For me it provides the reader with an insight into five aspects of the man: himself as a person and as a professional, his philosophy and the inventions he created with Apple and his other companies.
1) I was slightly surprised to learn about him as a person. Sharp contrasts, slightly eccentric and quite difficult for his co-workers and family. A stubborn man, lots of energy and sharp as a knife
2) I would have liked to read a little bit more about his professional style. The storyteller puts emphasis on what he did, and where he did it, but not so much how he worked and pushed himself to great highs. Interesting is him Monday morning meeting and his approach to some of the big deals he made.
3) His philosophy is well laid-out: Integrated hardware and software, the importance of design and his obsession with the quality, even on parts hidden from the public eye.
4) The companies he created (Apple, Next, Pixar). Quite an impressive track record.
5) And of course the inventions Apple made. Not only through its devices but also the impact it had on whole industries such as the music business and the online book business. The Mac home computer, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. Four insanely beautiful and successful inventions. Some companies would die to have one miracle hit like that. Steve and his people created four!
Makes one wonder where he would have gone had he not died. Overall a pretty good overview of his career although I might have appreciated more attention to the business side of Jobs instead of his obsession with food and Zen.

Nick

What a Guy!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 December 2013

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What did I like/dislike about the product?
This book is very insightful about the person who has been an enigma of sorts throughout his life. It has great details about his life both from his perspective and from people who knew him at various stages of his life. I like this book as this is the only book that Steve himself contributed to. I mean there are personal questions asked and answers given by Steve. Now, whether those answers are 100% genuine or not is not a point of discussion here. Who is to know. We can only form an image based on what other contributors had to say about questions that were put to both Steve and them. I have read this book once and listened to it in audiobook format couple of times and for some reason the book keeps be hooked. A great book about a great guy who changed the world

Why did I choose the rating?
A Great book about a great guy who genuinely made a difference to the world.

Who would I recommend the product to?
Anyone who cares to know about the real Steve Jobs

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5 star		78%
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2 star		1%
1 star		2%

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