Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

4/5 rating. 571 pages.

Book #82 of 2020. Read November 21, 2020.

This is Walter’s epic biography about one of the absolute geniuses of our time.

Steve Jobs is an absolute enigma. He could be caring or manipulative, completely eviscerate his employees or bring out the absolute best in them. He epitomizes the marriage of technology and liberal arts that he set out to accomplish. Steve was always focused on the customer experience, ensuring his products were top of the line, easy to use, aesthetically beautiful, and just about as close to perfect as he could muster. He put everything he had into Apple and its products, and Pixar and their movies (yes, Pixar was another one of Steve’s incredible companies).

I don’t know if there is any other person in the last century to have influenced so much of what we use today. Technology has truly been shaped by Steve. His companies were not always the first to make a new technology, but they often were the first to make it accessible and user-friendly. Just in case you hadn’t realized how much you owe to Steve Jobs, these are the most major areas that he impacted:

– PC’s (integration of hardware and software, graphical user interface)

– Animation (Pixar – sold Disney the software for computer animation and co-made Toy Story)

– Advertising, specifically the idea of “Think Differently” and choosing a brand not because of what the product does, but what it says about you

– High-quality packaging that meets the standards of the expensive products

– High-end tech stores (Apple stores)

– Easier video and photo editing, and first DVD burning technology

– iTunes – legal digital music store

– iPod

– iPhone, smart phones in general

– touchscreen technology

– apps

– iPad, tablets

– the cloud

If you have any fascination in technology, this would be a great book to read to get to know Steve and his ideas. It’s certainly an undertaking at nearly 600 pages, but well worth the read!

Quotes:

“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

“If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things – that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It’s a discipline; you have to practice it.” – Jobs

“He had the attitude that he could do anything, and therefore so can you.”

“Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are.”

“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” – Whole Earth Catalog

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo da Vinci

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” – Alan Kay

“Because I didn’t know it couldn’t be done, I was enabled to do it.” – Bill Atkinson

“At the root of the reality distortion was Jobs’s belief that the rules didn’t apply to him.”

“The goal was never to beat the competition, or to make a lot of money. It was to do the greatest thing possible, or even a little greater.” – Andy Hertzfeld

“We all have a short period of time on this earth…We probably only have the opportunity to doa few things really great and do them well.” – Jobs

“If we didn’t have the discipline to keep that place spotless, then we weren’t going to have the discipline to keep all these machines running.”

“I am a reflection of what I do.”

“‘I keep thinking about all the time away from my family this will cause, and the time away from the other family at Pixar,’ Jobs said. ‘But the only reason I want to do it is that the world will be a better place with Apple in it.’”

“You brought me here to fix this thing, and people are the key.”

“One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are.”

“Deciding what +not+ to do is as important as deciding what to do.”

“‘I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking,’ Jobs later recalled. ‘People would confront a problem by creating a presentation. I wanted them to engage, to hash things out at the table, rather than show a bunch of slides. People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.’”

“Less but better.” – Dieter Rams

“Design was not just about what a product looked like on the surface. It had to reflect the product’s essence.”

“Much of the design process is a conversation, a back-and-forth as we walk around the tables and play with the models.” – Jony Ive

“‘I make 50 cents for showing up,’ [Jobs] liked to joke, ‘and the other 50 cents is based on performance.’”

“‘If something isn’t right, you can’t just ignore it and say you’ll fix it later,’ [Jobs] said. ‘That’s what other companies do.’”

“If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will,”

“Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘Wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.” – Jobs

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

“At one point the pulmonologist tried to put a mask over his face when he was deeply sedated. Jobs ripped it off and mumbled that he hated the design and refused to wear it.”

“We didn’t know much about each other twenty years ago. We were guided by our intuition; you swept me off my feet. It was snowing when we got married at the Ahwahnee. Years passed, kids came, good times, hard times, but never bad times. Our love and respect has endured and grown. We’ve been through so much together and here we are right back where we started 20 years ago – older, wiser – with wrinkles on our faces and hearts. We now know many of life’s joys, sufferings, secrets and wonders and we’re still here together. My feet have never returned to the ground.” – Jobs to his wife for 20 year anniversary

“The journey is the reward.” – Jobs

“He didn’t invent many things outright, but he was a master at putting together ideas, art, and technology in ways that invented the future.”

“But the products, not the profits, were the motivation.” – Jobs

“Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”

“We try to use the talents we do have to express our deep feelings, to show our appreciation of all the contributions that came before us, and to add something to that flow.”

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