The Steve Jobs Book

I bought the book in Hilo, Hawaii, on October 31, 2011.

It was a monster of a book to carry around, Roughly 534 pages, hardbound and bulky.

I just finished reading it. It was worth my time since I grew up in all the phases of Apple. It is pretty interesting to hear the "behind the scenes" battle that raged over the introduction of new products. It was great in documenting how some things progressed and the rationale for the various products and when they were introduced.

The author is a superb biographer. He has published biographies on Albert Einstein and Ben Franklin. They are detailed and interesting from a sociological and historical viewpoint. This book has a different flavor since the people that are described and interviewed are contemporary with the exception of Steve Jobs. It seems that there was nothing held back int his book.

The comments from Bill Gates, founder and CEO of Microsoft are not totally complimentary. The family life and his beginnings are interesting and provide an interesting annotation to his life. I could remember many of the moves that Apple made in the 80's and 90's. This book is pretty square regarding Steve Job's involvement in each of these phases. I thought much of the rivalry that came out of competitors philosophies were hyped at the time. It appears that they weren't. Apple thought that containing the closed system allowed for a better product. The others thought that an open product would lead to more acceptance. In a way both ideas were right. At the end of the book, Steve Jobs admitted as much to Bill Gates.

The personality of Steve Jobs is laid out for all to see. The take over by the board and the leadership under Scully were interesting chapters. I was supporting many Apple computers as a mentor teacher at the time. There seemed to be a myriad of macs that were coming out of Apple at the time. Some models came out with keyboards that completely messed up the memory. So we were all the time rebuilding the desktop so that the computer would not completely self destruct.

There was interesting mention of the "cube" macintosh that I once had. It was interesting how they got to the classic Moons over Miami mac that I bought one of my daughters.

Overall I found that this was a good read. I am willing to give it up to anyone in the family that would like to take it on.

: ) Pat