“One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are.”
— Steve Jobs
My first encounter with Apple came when I received an iPod mini for my birthday in 2003. I was mesmerized by the whole iPod concept; especially after Oprah Winfrey gave an Ipod away in her ‘My Favorite Things‘. The birthday gift was a slow but sturdy start to me becoming an ‘Apple Girl’, which reached its completion in 2012. I love the way Apple products look, feel and the way they work together. It really is technology meeting art. Even though I do consider myself an ‘Apple Girl’ I will never spend the night on the streets in a que for the next new Apple gadget. I am not THAT fruity for fruit… Chocolate, maybe.
Reading about how those products came to existence, how Jobs spend every waking hour and thought into EVERYTHING that made up the product and controlled everything from inception to the unboxing experience. He was a spiritual seeker, vegan, perfectionist and a jerk who had no problem with taking credit for other people ideas (and he was a cry baby!). He had a great eye for design and detail from the surface to the inside. He followed a course in calligraphy and that skill made him adamant to put cool and beautiful fonts in the Apple and it also made him send the samples of his wedding invitations back because they were ‘crap’. His black and white views of the world (or as quoted his ‘binairy’ look on the world) drove people nuts. He changed is mind now and then and his vision soared far beyond the horizon. He also knew how to push people, push them far beyond what they ever thought they were capable of . He used this ‘Reality Distortion Field’ to say things that were utterly unrealistic but the way he did inspired and motivated his team. He made them believe that anything was possible. It is like the quote:
‘“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” — Les Brown
Jobs commencement address for Stanford University 2005
And they did. I loved reading about his passion for design (rounded corners) and his enthusiasm for Pixar and music (especially Dylan and the Beatles). I did get a bit tired of the corporate meetings, the exchange of shares and who did what to who and when. Who ousted who and why, sucking up and stabbing backs. The corporate babble went a bit over my head. I really liked that the timeline was here and there a bit jumpy, it made it an interesting read and put the different subjects in the right contexts (love life, family, children, technical developments, health issues etc. etc.). There is no sad soppy story about cancer just a ‘this is how it is description’; Jobs knew early on that he wouldn’t grow old and he had an urgency to get the job done.
I loved that Jobs gave Isaacson complete reign, he got permission to write about the good, the bad and the ugly. Isaacson did a very eloquently and balanced job. This is an excellent read; it gives an insight how the most exciting times of technology became what it is today and how the man who basically sat in the eye of that storm had a lot to do with that development. Jobs was crazy enough to think he could change the world, and he did…
The Ellipsis 