Michael's Reviews > Steve Jobs

I have mixed feelings about this book.

For one thing, it was biased because the biographer actually knew him. That's supposed to seriously taint a biography if the subject and the biographer have an established relationship like a friendship etc..

There was a lot of honest portrayal of Steve Jobs. He wasn't boasted about in an unrealistic way like in that Ashton Kutcher movie. He was a work-a-holic asshole a lot of times and working for him was no picnic. So I liked that it was less biased in that way.

There were times when the book verged between being about Apple the company and Steve Jobs the man. So I was confused what to make of that. It delved very deeply into the contributions he made to NeXT after he was kicked out of his own company, Apple. The problems came with talking so much about the company after moments where it talked more about Steve Jobs the man. Was it a biography about the company Apple or a biography about Steve Jobs? Maybe Isaacson could have divided it into two books and made one an oral biography about Steve Jobs the person and the "sequel" a biography about the public face of the company Apple.

Either way it's a whopping 600+ page book and I couldn't put it down so on those terms it was a good book. I just felt like it veered a lot between being "Apple: The Biography" and "Steve Jobs: The Biography". There are a lot of things left out or placed in a different context when the focus is shifted away from being about the person in charge of a company and more towards the details about how a commercial operation operates as a public entity with a more public face.

Overall, I recommend it. It doesn't sugarcoat Steve Jobs as much as many other portrayals of him.