There is no question about it. Steve Jobs was THE tech icon of late 20th and early 21st century.
To say that he was versatile is an understatement. He excelled in creating customer needs and then delivering products that met these needs. He was a master at creating successful businesses. He started two highly successful product companies, Apple and Pixar. He oversaw the creation of several iconic products including Apple, iMac,iPhone,iPad and iPod, not to mention the terrific movies like Toy Story (1 and 2) that were created out of Pixar Studios.
Click here to buy the book Steve Jobs @Amazon
He had a ken for identifying the right people and getting the best out of them. He recruited great engineers, great designers, great technology developers and great marketing people. He was a master at creating a great support ecosystem. He Identified, developed and partnered with great advertisement, marketing and hardware manufacturing companies. He had the artistic vision to see how a perfect product will look like. He was as deeply involved in the design of the Apple Store as he was in the design of the latest iPad. He was the numero uno when it came to negotiations. He managed great people, negotiated, bullied and cajoled strong personalities from different interests to partner with him in his journey. Changed the music industry, the desktop publishing industry, the software industry, the hardware industry...
And enjoyed it all the way...
Even though I was in my prime years during the time Jobs was changing the world, by living life a day at a time, I missed all these awesome trends. All I knew then about Jobs was that he partnered with Steve Wozniac to assemble the first Apple computers, drove the development of these iconic products and his famous commencement speech at Stanford.
And that he had visited India in his youth. And that he was a follower of Eastern philosophy including Indian and Zen Buddhism.
Not much, I know. Minuscule, in fact. Yes, don't rub it in.
This book was lying in my bookshelf for more than a year. It is surprising that it took me such a long
time to read the book and write this review. I guess I had a couple of reasons for this delay. At 571 pages and hardbound, this book was intimidating. The prospect of committing time to read this book was discouraging.
The second reason was that I thought I knew anything that was there to know about Jobs. I knew about Apple and Pixar, I knew about his two stints in Apple, I knew about the pod, the pad and the mac. I was aware of the iCloud and the iOS.
Dammit, I even had my quintessential iPad. What more was there to know?
As it turned out, a lot.
This book was lying in my bookshelf for more than a year. It is surprising that it took me such a long
 |
| My Book Shelf |
The second reason was that I thought I knew anything that was there to know about Jobs. I knew about Apple and Pixar, I knew about his two stints in Apple, I knew about the pod, the pad and the mac. I was aware of the iCloud and the iOS.
Dammit, I even had my quintessential iPad. What more was there to know?
As it turned out, a lot.
There are two aspects to any biography. First is the chronicling of the person's achievements. That is pedestrian. The second and the more fascinating aspect is the person herself. How is she as a person? What drove her to do what she did? How did she interact with the world around her? How the world interacted with her? You want to what she did and how she did it. You want to know what lessons to take and what to discard.
Steve Jobs achievements are well chronicled. We have read ad-infinitum about the three phases of his career. In the phase 1, he set up Apple Computers as a company and delivered Apple 1 and Apple II followed by Mac PC, that revolutionized the desktop publishing in the world. Then he was booted out of Apple and started Pixar, the animation studio. Pixar delivered huge successes like the animation movies Toy Story 1 and 2. This was phase 2 of his career. Phase 3 involved his triumphant return to Apple as its CEO and this comprised of a golden period for Apple that released its iconic products including improved Mac PC, iPod, iPhone and culminating with the release of iPad. Each product better than the other.
Less is known about Steve Jobs as a person. This book fills that gap.
Isaacson says at the beginning of the book that he wrote this book on request from Jobs. He had previously written biographies of Einstein and Ben Franklin and Jobs called him to write his biography after reading those books. Isaacson had one condition. He will be factual. In the course of writing this biography, he will talk to people associated with Jobs and write what they tell him. He will not sugarcoat and did not expect Jobs to modify any of the facts with his perspectives. Jobs agreed. Considering Jobs ability to distort reality (Oops !!), this was a wise condition to insist on.
Jobs was a stickler for perfection. He will not accept a single blemish. He got this bend for perfection from his father, Paul Jobs. After being born to an unwed mother, who put him up for adoption, Jobs was adopted by Paul and Clara, a middle class couple who gave him a great home and childhood. Steve got his passion for excellence by watching his father, Paul, a mechanic, work in his garage. Paul was a stickler for perfection. He believed that the beauty of your work should not only reflect on the outside where others can see it, but also reflect on the inside where 'only you can see it'. In everything he did, Jobs demanded minute perfection and he ensured that his team delivered it.
His passion for perfection is manifested in the rounded design of Mac, the carefree design of iPad, in the perfect whiteness of his iPods...
Even in the staircase at the Apple HQ in Cupertino.
Even in the staircase at the Apple HQ in Cupertino.
Jobs had this uncanny ability to focus on what is important and relevant. For example, in his second stint as CEO, he found that Apple had lost focus and that the company was into a number of product groups. There was no strategy and there was no clear product direction. Due to this the company had become compartmentalised into teams of 'B' class players. Jobs quickly decided on four product groups and disbanded all other products and reduced the workforce.
He also had the ability to see the big picture. While the world was focusing on PCs for office and home, Jobs realized that the advent of PCs is going to revolutionize music industry. He also scanned the industry and found that the current models of selling music were very unfriendly to the customer. Jobs understood the deep personal relationship between the customer and his music. Customer wanted to own his music and the models available did not allow him to own them.
Walkman was the hardware of choice for music lovers. Jobs found it to be cumbersome. Customer wanted a music player that fitted his pocket. It should be able to hold a large number of songs and the customer should be able to download music into his player very easily.
Jobs delivered the iPod, the iTunes and the iTunes Store. From the store the customer could purchase the songs of his choice, download it on his iMac and sync and then listen to the same in his iPod.
The story of iTunes store is legendary. When it was started, the experts expected it to sell about a million songs in about 6 months. The million target was achieved in 6 weeks and in the first year iTunes sold about 9 million songs !!!
Jobs was also good at anticipating shifts in technology. When the mobile phones hit the market, Jobs understood that they were going to be threat to iPod. It was only a matter of time before mobile phones acquired the capability to play music. Once that happens, the customer had no incentive to have a separate music player. So he developed iPhone with its embedded music player.
When it came to his products, Jobs was a control freak. He wanted a complete product that customer can buy and use. The hardware, the software and the operating system came embedded in his proucts. He put tight control over the quality of applications that can be used in iPhone and iPad. He did not have a USB drive in his iPad for example. He conceived the idea of iCloud, with thin client machines and the fat data being stored in the cloud. When he found that some local shops were opening his iPhones, he replaced the metal screws in the design with plastic screws which could not be removed.
The control aspect also comes in how he integrated music (iPod), the Syncing Mechanism (iMac) and the music store (iTunes) to form one single unit.
Jobs was a very difficult person to live and work with. He developed a long stare, where he could stare at someone for a long time without blinking. He could be brutal if he did not like the quality of work done by someone. He had this bad habit of rejecting someone's new idea and after a few weeks claiming it as his own. He had the habit of ignoring someone for a long time even when they were close family.
He had a daughter, Lisa, from a relationship in his early 20s. While he occasionally visited her during her childhood years, he completely ignored her during her growing up years. However, they sort of reunited later and she was with Jobs while he was fighting his battle against Cancer. He married Laurene Powell when he was 36 and she was 28 and he had three children from that marriage. While he dotted on his son Reed, he was distant father to his daughters.
Jobs had this habit of ignoring reality if it did not suit him. For instance, he would expect a product to be rolled out in 6 months, when everyone around him knew that it will take about a year. Jobs will not accept this reality and the outcome was that the team delivered the product in 6 months !!. A classic example of this reality distortion was when he was negotiating for the Gorilla glass for his iPhone. The vendor told him that it will take 18 months to deliver the requisite number of glasses for his iPhone. Jobs demanded that they be delivered in 6 months!!
The vendor turned heaven and earth and managed to deliver the same in just 6 months....
The negative effect of this reality distortion effect was that after the first sighting of the tumor in his pancreas, doctors suggested a procedure to ensure that the tumor was localized. Without that there was a chance that the cancer could relapse. Jobs totally ignored this reality and did not take the necessary action which could, for all we know, would have extended his life significantly !!
The fascinating aspect of the book was the competing philosophies of Microsoft and Apple. While Microsoft believed in delivering software that could work with different hardware, Apple believed in embedding Software, Hardware and OS in the same machine. It is a tribute to the technology that these two competing philosophies could co-exist and even thrive.
The 30 years between 1980 and 2010 were golden years for technological innovation. In addition to Jobs and Gates, this period also created many more technological icons who co-existed, interfaced with each other, created products that met different business and personal requirements and helped the rapid advance of technology in all aspects of our lives.
It is a privilage to have shared ones life time with Titans such as Gates, Jobs, Larry Ellison and many others....
The style of this book is factual. Isaacson focus on presenting facts without trying to bring too much of his own perspectives. The reader do not feel any emotional connect to the characters in the book. They neither shed a tear for the pains of the characters nor exalt with them. That is a bit sad. This is a great book, no doubt, but this could have been a classic.
Isaacson is more of a narrator and less of a story teller...
No comments:
Post a Comment