Started: 14th October 2023
Finished: 12th November 2023
Summary
Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, written with Jobs' cooperation during the final years of his life, covers the full arc from his adoption and early hacking days with Wozniak to the creation of Apple, his exile, and the extraordinary second act that reshaped computing, music, phones, and animated film. Isaacson doesn't soften the edges around Jobs' cruelty, reality distortion field, and obsessive control, but shows how these traits were entangled with a genuine, almost spiritual drive to make beautiful things.
My Thoughts
A must-read for anyone working in product or tech. It's Silicon Valley history told through the lens of one of its most important figures, covering not just Apple but the broader ecosystem of companies that defined the industry.
What surprised me most was how uniquely strange and intense Jobs was as a person: his spirituality and the extreme dietary obsessions, like living on nothing but carrots for weeks on end. The products are iconic, but the man behind them was far more eccentric than the polished image suggests.
Steve Jobs focused on getting the first iteration perfectly. Bill Gates shipped a lousy Windows 1.0 but was persistent at iteratively improving it until it dominated.
— Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (p. 164), Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates