The biography by Walter
Isaacson is an interesting read and kept me engrossed. I liked the
second half of the book more where the author has described the turn of
events after Steve Jobs' return to Apple in 1997. The book takes the
readers through the life experiences of Steve Jobs showing both the
genius in him as well as some of his negative characteristics. Product
designers, Product Managers hail him as genius and professionals from
Organization Behaviour domain lament the way he treated the people
around. The book takes the readers through his thought processes behind
the creation of some of the great products of the time, his pursuit of
perfectionism and his vision of the future about how computers will
change the lives of people. The book also takes the readers through his
negative traits like his mercurial nature and his famous "reality
distortion field".
The 570 pages book captures in detail his childhood, his starting of Apple Computers with his childhood friend Wozniak, the start of NeXT, his success at Pixar and then his return to Apple where he brought revolutionary products to market like iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad in turn making Apple the most valuable company. All these products were the outcome of disruptive innovation that was made possible by his vision, his sense of design and his belief in making a great user experience. The book also talks about his colleagues who were with him in success and failures in detail. The book gives a detailed description of the turn of events of what was the start of a computing era to the recent times of Smart Phones and tablet computers. The events written in the book unfolds like a drama having prominent characters like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, John Sculley, Michael Lasseter, Tim Cook, John Ivey to name a few. His belief in simplicity, minimalism, providing a great user experience (right from packaging of the product to even the parts that are not visible outside) were the ideologies that could be seen in the products that he and his team brought to the world.
The book also takes its readers through the Steve Jobs' belief in closed integration of hardware and software versus the open system followed by Bill Gates of Microsoft in the PC era in early 1980s. Jobs' desire of end-to-end user experience made him the proponent of closed system where the MAC OS could only be run on Apple hardware. On the other hand, Gates' thinking of making the PC mass-market device was possible only when the Windows could be allowed to run on hardware manufactured by any vendors. Microsoft won the PC battle in terms of market share. The book gives a good description of the above difference in their stands by two of the big companies of the PC era. The same battle was then seen almost three decades later in the smart phone market, but this time with Google. Jobs still continued with his desire of controlling the user experience by making the iOS run only on Apple devices versus the Android operating system that could be run on any device of any vendor (smartphone, tablet computers). Android is catching up fast, but it will be still premature to talk about the result of it.
The book brings out different facets of the personality of Steve Jobs to the world. His perfectionism for products (sometimes it went extreme as written at multiple instances in the book), his vision of the industry and user experience made him bring revolution to industries like music (through iPod and iTunes Store), digital publishing, personal computing, smartphone, animated movies (at his days in Pixar) and tablet computing.
The 570 pages book captures in detail his childhood, his starting of Apple Computers with his childhood friend Wozniak, the start of NeXT, his success at Pixar and then his return to Apple where he brought revolutionary products to market like iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad in turn making Apple the most valuable company. All these products were the outcome of disruptive innovation that was made possible by his vision, his sense of design and his belief in making a great user experience. The book also talks about his colleagues who were with him in success and failures in detail. The book gives a detailed description of the turn of events of what was the start of a computing era to the recent times of Smart Phones and tablet computers. The events written in the book unfolds like a drama having prominent characters like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, John Sculley, Michael Lasseter, Tim Cook, John Ivey to name a few. His belief in simplicity, minimalism, providing a great user experience (right from packaging of the product to even the parts that are not visible outside) were the ideologies that could be seen in the products that he and his team brought to the world.
The book also takes its readers through the Steve Jobs' belief in closed integration of hardware and software versus the open system followed by Bill Gates of Microsoft in the PC era in early 1980s. Jobs' desire of end-to-end user experience made him the proponent of closed system where the MAC OS could only be run on Apple hardware. On the other hand, Gates' thinking of making the PC mass-market device was possible only when the Windows could be allowed to run on hardware manufactured by any vendors. Microsoft won the PC battle in terms of market share. The book gives a good description of the above difference in their stands by two of the big companies of the PC era. The same battle was then seen almost three decades later in the smart phone market, but this time with Google. Jobs still continued with his desire of controlling the user experience by making the iOS run only on Apple devices versus the Android operating system that could be run on any device of any vendor (smartphone, tablet computers). Android is catching up fast, but it will be still premature to talk about the result of it.
The book brings out different facets of the personality of Steve Jobs to the world. His perfectionism for products (sometimes it went extreme as written at multiple instances in the book), his vision of the industry and user experience made him bring revolution to industries like music (through iPod and iTunes Store), digital publishing, personal computing, smartphone, animated movies (at his days in Pixar) and tablet computing.
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