Raaid Masood's Reviews > Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
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it was amazing

Steve Jobs was not an intellectual powerhouse. He wasn't known for any unprecedented engineering feats nor was he a bookworm geek. As cofounder of Apple, he relied on Wozniak's technical expertise to build their first personal computer. Even in his private space, as Bill Gates would once describe him, Jobs was a deeply flawed man. From his initial uppity as a pretender against the behemoth IBM to his mercurial tantrums and a solid knack of isolating - even abandoning - people, Jobs was contradictory, beguiling and often acerbic who would hurl invective on a whim.

Yet, somehow, as coherently as the brand that he built, all his visceral flaws came together to produce one of the greatest geniuses we'll know in our lifetime. Steve Jobs was an ingenious inventor, a marketer extraordinaire, and his ability to 'will' his reality distortion field made him a born winner. His fundamental insistence on simplicity and his unhindered, inescapable attention to lapidary detail carved out a special role for him in the world of technology, and in all of our lives.

But as Steve would have it, he wasn't part of that industry. He was a rebel, posited at the crossroads of technological advancement and the liberal arts. Hippies were acid dropping outcasts who dreamed of a different world back in the 60s. Steve was a hippie who imagined and later invented that different world, revolutionizing six industries in the process.

Isaacson doesn't commit the mistake of 'introducing' Jobs to us. His later illness and work at Pixar are referenced early on and sporadically in between the book. Yet, what this volume does remarkably well is fill in the crucial, most telling gaps for us. This is an all-encompassing, exhaustive biography that leaves no facet undiscovered, no discussion incomplete and no fact, good or bad, tainted. The chapters are chronologically well structured and comprehensive, providing for a seamless reading experience. Though Jobs came up with the idea of this 'official' biography himself, he had absolutely no creative control over the content he provided - and didn't survive to read it.

With a cover as cleanly minimalist and slick as the next Apple product that would make Steve proud, Isaacson has penned one of the finest biographies I've read in recent months. I truly believe that despite his established prior credentials, his work with and on Steve Jobs will be the pinnacle of his career.
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Reading Progress

April 2, 2015 – Shelved
April 2, 2015 – Shelved as: to-read
May 6, 2015 – Started Reading
June 11, 2015 – Finished Reading

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