In the words of Kaiser Chiefs… I predict a riot

“…the biography has actually made me think twice about buying anything Apple-branded again.”

Not sure a man is enough to buy, or not to buy, any product. I’ve been fairly loyal to Apple since the late eighties myself, and will continue to be so until the products convince me otherwise.

On the other hans, I’ve heard more than once people curse the likes of Gates and other named big shots in the IT world without having any effect what-so-ever on people and what they want to buy.

I think the single most important thing Apple brought to me, as a user, was something different. I didn’t have to accept that my computer was a boring square box, it could have an appealing design – and I liked it. Still do.

I have yet to finish the biography. Not entirely in disagreement, but I’d be surprised if I come to the same conclusion as you. After all… he was just a man, although magazine covers and public reaction made him out to be some sort of God. In fact they used their iPads like religious idols when they cried and lit candles for him.

What I do like in many of your tech-blogs James is your commitment to what works and is practical to you, and you no-nonsense way of writing about it. A lesson to learn for many is that it isn’t the Apple-logo that makes anything great, but how the technology simplify your life – or complicate it. I think more people should choose technology based on that, rather than hype.

Have a great weekend

I blame the late hour for my typos… *sigh*

I do wonder if he would have been quite so successful if he hadn’t possessed some of the negative qualities you mention. For example, you yourself write: “…his unwillingness to ever accept second-best, even if this made him a decidedly second-best human being”. If he had not possessed that un-compromising attitude, would he have been able to launch so many game-changing products? Being un-compromising is one of those traits can be incredibly positive, but can also be equally destructive when it is aimed at the wrong target. No doubt it is possible to be extremely successful while also being a likeable person, but perhaps Jobs’ particular unique brand of success was only possible because of the unique mixture particular traits he possessed.

I have watched quite a few videos of Apple keynotes and product launches, most heavily featuring Jobs. The impression I always got was of someone who oozed charisma, with a flair for the dramatic, but also with an underlying current of dishonesty. You could tell by the way he worded certain statements that he had no qualms about bending the truth.

Perhaps we should count ourselves lucky that Jobs’ made his living in the relatively harmless world of consumer electronics? I dread to think what the world would look like today if Jobs’ had chosen a career politics.

He was clearly a flawed human being, but I don’t think he deserves all the scorn you’re heaping on him. He was not yet fully-formed, and still in the process of becoming so don’t judge him too harshly. His personality did evolve, he did learn over time that other things mattered, like operations in addition to design. And he learned that he needed a family to love in his life versus just go it alone. He knew a few things much better and deeply than the rest in the industry which is why he is so rightfully praised. And he made a good showing for the time he did have in this life.

I wonder how many other successful CEOs already act like this and don’t need to emulate Jobs to be asses?

A little bon mot from Mike Johnston for you, sometimes, a**holes do good work.

I disagree that this book is going to make acting like Steve Job, okay.

The smart “businessman” that reads this book take the characteristics from Steve that were admirable: conviction, attention to detail, product focus, charisma …and reflect on how he can better himself these ways.

I read the book and wonder how amazing Apple could have been with a little more balance coming from Steve. It’s scary to think but Apple could even be more dominant of a PC/Mobile manufacturer with a culture that has a little more balance.

I didn’t like the biography. I’ve seen a number of interviews with Jobs and read the folklore stories online about the early days at Apple, and the book doesn’t convey the spirit I saw there. Jobs lived for the magic of inspiration and invention. The book focuses on his eccentricities and failings, and makes it seem as if he was mostly dysfunctional. But dysfunctional people don’t make the best toys in the world, and put together the best companies in the world. Look at the wisdom in his commencement address at Stanford, and his humor and grace in the D5 interview with Bill Gates, and tell me he hadn’t grown and matured in his life. I don’t think that all of us who admire him are fools.

It’s interesting how the book changes our opinion about Jobs, because there are two sides of his personality in a same book (which is something i really appreciate about this book, it doesn’t try to make him look like some kind of tech hero, but more as a human being with defects, just like everyone else). I agree with your conclusion, he was a difficult person to work with.

Halfway through the book i remembered a lecture by HRB, called ‘The Great Intimidators’ (couldn’t find it right now, but there’s a presentation that illustrates very well that point here http://changethis.com/manifesto/32.01.UpsideAssholes/pdf/32.01.UpsideAssholes.pdf ). My point here is that even though you might find some detestable leaders, sometimes in that confrontational style is innovation, the ability for everyone to think harder and stand to what they believe is right, not only because you’re trying to not get smashed by your boss, but also because it wil get you to think harder, work harder, and that’s where great things come from.

Nice post. I haven’t read the book, but I’ve had the same reaction to many of the quotes I’ve seen, especially the terrible things he said about Bill Gates. Also, your reaction to this Jobs biography is very similar to the reaction I had when I read Miles Davis’ autobiography (co-written with Quincy Troupe). Miles’ contempt for bad music made him put his art above all other aspects of his life, including being an introspective person, a good husband, a loving father, and that’s why every time I hear the sublime ensemble performance ‘In Your Own Sweet Way’ it chokes me up a little bit.

Ive still considered Jobs his best friend in the world and would never have had the impact on the world with Jobs. Most on the Mac team felt it was the best work of their life and would do it again. Yes Jobs was an asshole. He also had many people loyal to him who loved him inspire of his faults.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnGI76__sSA

I’ve been debating whether to read this biography, and on the basis of your review (and other similar ones), I think I’ll pass. I’ve heard plenty of horrible stories about Jobs, and I don’t think I want his voice in my head for the duration of a book that long!

With regards to no longer buying Apple products, I wouldn’t let your disapproval of one man affect that decision, let the hardware and software tell their story. In many ways, Apple may become a better company now — I hear they have already improved their stance on charitable donations; something Jobs vetoed.

Perhaps though, as time passes the products themselves will suffer without the alleged genius of the man who used to be at the heart of the company. I’m fairly confident that they have a strong team who will keep producing top quality products for a many years to come, but I won’t be surprised if the next big gadget revolution originates from a different company.

So it goes.

> And let’s not start on the way he treats his parents, his first wife and his daughter (…)

Unless you know something I don’t, Steve only married once.

I assume you mean “his first daughter and her mother”. (Without naming names.)

Isaacson seemed to have a different approach in 60 minutes interview: http://trendguardian.blogspot.com/2011/10/walter-isaacson-steve-jobs-full.html
At least Steve Jobs let him have the liberty to publish the truth about his life, which wasn’t necessarily happy.

He was demanding, harsh, petulant, and rude. He was human in the most raw way possible almost always. The real difference between you and him is that he never bothered to lie about having those traits. I’ll take him over you any day.

Some time we should be harsh to get max efficiency from a person.That’s what Steve was thought. Every one appreciate the end result no matter how much effort you have put it. If you put a lot of effort but end result is not good then all effort will go to vain. To achieve his goal he made so many personal sacrifices in his life.Legend of the decade.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” – G. B. Shaw

For all his unreasonableness, he inspired people, made great products, built a great company.

Very interesting take. What i find very interesting is when you focus on your job, every single thing outside of it, becomes annoying (picture a software developer 100% focused looking at his screen and someone asks him something)…

Then, when you turn your whole life into your job, every other thing becomes trivial, time wasting activities become intolerable, and you have very little patience to something that takes you away from your work, anytime a day, any day a week.

People who haven’t experienced that state of mind, find it obnoxious, rightly so. But as an entrepreneur, I do feel sympathetic to that. “Spitting people out”, that too. You don’t spit them out, they become obsolete, and you move on. Nothing personal (but it is very personal indeed). A car manufacturer, refers to its employees as units, others call them “human resources”, I wonder why we don’t find that weird.

It is the way it is because, Jobs knew, if his products weren’t great, he couldn’t have said ‘sorry I was being nice to Wozniak, and my wife wanted to have a month vacation, other person on the board wanted such and such”. Then he couldn’t have become the Steve Jobs that he is. It’s a choice and he made it, like a lot of others entrepreneurs did.

Society demands entrepreneurs to leave all behind and do everything to achieve the “best”, let’s not judge them when they act accordingly, let’s not compare them to a regular salaried worker who hasn’t risked being known as “loser” or “failure” for the rest of his life.. One will have more patience and be better father than the other which is very much subject to much longer discussion.

Have a good weekend.

David, to answer your question take a look at Jony Yve behavior (the real genious behind Apple) and then compare to Jobs.

You mention Woz and Jony Ive as examples of people he took advantage of, but as far as I can tell they considered him their friend.

Considering the bio harshness and the control Steve Jobs had, I think the message is pretty clear: “learn what I learnt, but don’t live like I lived”.

Jobs had an uncanny ability to tell that something was going to work well. The Mac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad were far from playing it safe: they reduced things to the critical components which would make people fall in love with the product. The iPad in particular was seen as a disaster – until people actually touched it. Few understood it as a concept. When Jobs got it wrong it was on timescale and cost – his art wrongly took precedence in an commercial product. Can someone can be so wholly obsessive about design yet function as a normal human being? I have my doubts.

Even if someone wanted to emulate Jobs they would fail, if only because Jobs was driven by his ego – something deep within him. I’m not sure why anyone would want to be Jobs anyway: his life seemed to be one of perpetual anger and frustration.

We can take some lessons. In radio it seems that the industry errs towards safe options and the outcomes of OFCOM focus groups. It’s ok, we can run a national non-stop music service because OFCOM says people only care about news.

Radio needs visionaries who know instinctively what the listener wants, even when the listeners don’t know themselves – working with a Tim Cook figure who can make the commercials work. We’ve all be surprised and delighted by some radio – but it doesn’t’ happen often enough. Commercial radio seems content to make cheap programming with decent enough ratings to make a profit and aim no higher.

Radio can learn from Apple simplification. The current radio interfaces are crude despite the technology to make them better having been around for years. It’s ludicrous that I find it easier to find programming on my phone than on a radio.

I’m surprised that you would think again about buying Apple products because Jobs was an unpleasant and bulling individual. Surely the deaths of Chinese workers making the things would be a better reason?

My two year old son is adopted and I was looking forward to reading the book as I amass a list of postive adoption role models for him as he grows up. After I read the book, Jobs went down on the list quite a bit. Although I want our son to know he is “special” and “chosen”, maybe not that special.

Although you are entitled to your opinion, I suggest that you have put forth a very subjective and unbalanced view of Steve Jobs as he is represented in the biography. My assessment was that Jobs was a true force of nature, and as such, how can you love or hate him? Like a thunderstorm, which brings howling winds, lightning, and destruction, but can also leave rainbows and green fields in his wake. I saw someone who had so conquered the limiting human emotion of fear, that he was able to wield awesome power, but also an fallible human who had difficulty in controlling this power, often to disastrous effect.

The fact that so many of the A-players you say he treated dreadfully would maintain relationships with him throughout his life, even after they had left Apple, indicates that they found some value in their relationship. I would imagine that he was able to drive good people to be great, although at the cost of great stress.

It’s one thing to pass judgement on an individual’s character, but I find it odd to transfer this judgement to the objects produced by the company. Then again, I’m a cold scientist, so it could be a deficiency of my objective nature. I guess that at the end of the book, I ended up appreciating the awesome nature of Steve Jobs, both empowering and fearsome. Regardless of the judgement one places on his life and actions, there is no doubt that he was a massive outlier in human history, and he definitely achieved his goal of making a mark in the universe, which I admire.

P.S. If you do a proper statistical analysis of the suicides in the factories in China producing Apple products, you will find that working at one of these factories actually *reduces* the odds of committing suicide, relative to the background suicide rate of the regional population.

None of the people that influenced the world had a stable, plain, simple and predictable personality. All of them had very negative sides and good ones. Instability, nonsense and contradiction were an important part of their lives. It was always like that, and probably it will always be.

Choosing not to purchase an apple product because their ex-CEO was a bit of a cunt seems rather childish to me.

@Tom – I’d agree. I’ve only said I’d think twice.

@Adam Posey – gosh, that’s a very personal comment, and I’ve never met you. Presumably, you think this kind of behaviour is acceptable? That says more about you than him.

@Nicholas – good point. Thanks.

@James

Who am I, or more importantly, you, to decide what is or is not acceptable? Jobs was his personality. I admire that. He didn’t have to keep track of hundreds of versions of his own identity, one for each person. Before you criticize him for being what he was maybe you should consider why you’re busy trying to not be what you are. You have the same greed, abusiveness, anger, and hostility in your genes because you are human. Before making snap reactions about others’ for the sake of page views perhaps you should examine yourself—you’re no angel. Jobs didn’t hide himself, you do. In the grand scheme of things I prefer his way to yours.

@Adam – I think I’m perfectly within my rights for criticising him for being a pretty unpleasant human being. He himself agreed he was.

I’m not passing any comment about what I’m like, and it’s sad that you feel you have to attack me in order to attack my point of view.

If I were attacking you it would be obvious. Every human being has what Jobs had, James. Some of us are just more honest about it. Just the same as you feel privileged to pass judgement on a man you didn’t know completely, I certainly feel I’m well within my rights to openly say I prefer his life style to yours. Would you honestly be able to say that what I’m doing with you is different or more harsh than what you’re doing with Jobs? Perhaps so, perhaps not, I’m not insulting the memory of the recently deceased.

I don’t have to know you to know you have the same qualities in you. You’re rejecting them, sure. You’ve put them in a category of things you don’t like and so you attempt to get by without showing them. What you don’t like is my assertion that you’re no better than the man you’re criticizing. I’m sure that does feel like an attack because it goes against the story you tell yourself about who you are.

I’m glad more people are publicising what an abhorrent person he was. I couldn’t believe it when Stephen Fry said Steve Jobs was the greatest man he had known.

Good article.

@Adam – I think this is a discussion about degrees of behaviour, not an absence of those human traits. At times, I’m sure I’m just as petulant and unpleasant as Jobs; as I’m sure you are. However, I’d like to think that both of us do not display these traits as often, or severely, as Jobs appears to have done.

The above blog post is a review of a detailed, well-researched biography of a very public person. You’ve never worked with me, met me, lived in my country, much less read a biography of me. You didn’t even need to make this attack on my views personal; instead, you could have simply pointed out that we all have these traits. But, you’re young, and you – like Jobs – will learn to be a better person one day, and learn to separate the argument from the person making it. I wish you all the luck with that.

@Mark: ‘Great’ is not synonymous with ‘nice’. He was undoubtedly great in terms of ability, drive, influence and impact.

@Adam: I disagree with your statements. While we all undoubtedly have some nastiness deep inside us, I do not think submitting to this can be considered ‘noble’. Indeed, I would say the ability to rise above our baser instincts and selfish nature is an admirable quality in most people. We do have a genetic predisposition to certain ‘nasty’ traits, but we have also developed the intellect with which we can rebel against our genes and thus enjoy a much more pleasant existence.

The point is that he was a genius. Maybe he treated people badly, but most of them kept working with him because of his talent. He just had that personality, and I saying you are not going to buy Apple products because of his personality, is just as ridiculous as saying you would’t buy Microsoft products because Steve Ballmer is fat… It’s just stupid.

David,
I don’t think we do enjoy a more pleasant experience. I think it’s just the opposite. I feel fairly certain that constantly filtering ourselves as we do stresses us out more than anything. Not only that our social ideas of what is acceptable are HIGHLY subject to change. The above post would offend my grandmother, because her generation thought it was the height of rude and unseemly to speak ill publicly of the dead. For us, it doesn’t matter. Read “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” and tell me that our versions of politeness are necessarily best.

We coddle people. We seek to offend no one and please everyone. That’s no way to live life authentically.

@James

I hope I’m not doomed to becoming a better person according to the standards you hold. That would be boring and inauthentic.

I praise Jobs’ authenticity and style.

Adam, perhaps a world where everyone expressed their unfiltered thoughts with brutal honesty would be more pleasant, but it would require everyone to also have a perfectly open and rational mind. Unfortunately it is a property of the human brain that certain ideas, habits and opinions can become immovably cemented in a person’s mind, especially as said person gets older. I do not believe it is possible to remove this tendency, at least not in the lifetime of the next dozen or so generations of humanity.

Therefore, because people can have their immovable beliefs offended and will often lack the ability or will to reassess every piece of knowledge rationally every time it is challenged, it is necessary for humanity to adopt certain filters in certain situations in order that we might actually achieve anything. If we were to adopt a policy of freely articulating every point of difference between us at all opportunities, I think the human world would quickly decent into a useless chaos. Perhaps this would chaos would be glorious for those of us who would enjoy a life of non-stop heated debate, but for the rest of us the occasional concession to courtesy and compassion is necessary to live a rewarding life.

The more I learn about Jobs the more I feel the way this article presents.

However, I will say that I’ve met a few detestable business women. Mean business men make me a bit nervous but mean business women scare me to death!

Let me just check I have understood Adam Posey’s argument (if it can be dignified with that term). Anyone who isn’t a miserable, arrogant twat like Posey or Jobs is just deceiving themselves about their true nature and should, instead, strive for the authenticity of being a tremendous douchebag. Is that right?

James – I love the troll you’ve found. Can we keep him? He’s hilarious.

If you’re approaching this like a fifth grader then, yes. Yes, that is what I meant.

Well I appreciate your well reasoned response. But, I disagree. Being open and honest does not require rational mind, it requires the opposite. We have to give up the ghost of thinking we have rational minds. We don’t. Even our most seemingly rational thoughts are colored by our reptilian brain. We are not rational, pretending we are is fraudulent.

In fact, behavioral economics is entirely based around studying our irrationality. In a rational world, where we kept POINTS, Steve Jobs couldn’t have been very popular. But, notice how many people, even the people who were supposedly run over by Steve, mourned his death emotionally. If, as James suggested, he were in some way a terrible person, that would never of happened. The book tries to give a balanced assessment of his character, and his temperament, but it would be a sad world if the reality of our existence could be printed on a page. He was loved, even if he was imperfect.

You wrote: “I’ve yet to encounter a businesswoman, on any level, who treats people in an unpleasant way”

Clearly you’ve worked in male-only businesses your whole career. I can assure you that unpleasantness is widespread in the business sector, regardless of gender.

Besides that, I basically agree with your perspective.

Adam, you seem to be making a link between certain biological/evolutionary ideas and certain moral ideas, which many people have made in the past, but which I think is an unwarranted one.

That link is using an objective fact about our evolutionary history to justify a moral outlook. Many people made the same mistake about the book ‘The Selfish Gene’ by Richard Dawkins. The book describes how our genes can be thought of as selfish, and that much altruistic behaviour seen in nature is actually in the selfish interests of the genes that result in said behaviour. However, many people made the leap from observing these facts about the natural world to using the ideas as a manifesto for individual human selfishness. In fact, in the book itself, Dawkins is at pains to point out that he believes the fact that genes act in a primarily selfish way is not a justification for selfish behaviour on the part of humanity. Genes are unthinking strings of organic molecules, their complex effected on their host organisms being merely the elaborate result of millions of years of brutal selection, and do not have any kind of moral outlook, and as such we should not view them as role models.

Another example of people misinterpreting Darwinism and genetics is the idea of eugenics. This abhorrent idea of unnaturally expedited selection was taking mere observations of the natural world and extrapolating them into a practical and ethical policy.

As such, using the two facts that our reptile ancestors were probably lacking in etiquette and that a few genes from those same ancestors are probably still swimming around the human gene pool is not a justification for emulating the behaviour of reptiles. And as for rationality, I would perhaps agree that all our ‘rational’ thought is actually the complex consequence of certain physical and chemical processes, in so far as everything is ultimately deterministic… however I believe as we are the authors of our own language we can fairly define rational behaviour by its effects rather than its true cause. As such, I believe this rationality allows us to overcome the raw, crude chemical and electrical messages we endure and engage with a higher abstract of the base processes that drive our thought, an ability which all our current and past relatives in the animal kingdom seemingly lack. It is this ability that has allowed us to understand the heightened levels of truth blessed to us by science and philosophy, and increasingly dispense with the un-truths we have grasped at in the past in the form of religion.

If we are to deny this rationality, we are also to deny many great and proofed truths in the universe, and I could hardly call this being honest… indeed we would be closing our minds.

Interesting to know the character of “Steve Jobs”.

Things to add:
- Contrary to Gates, Jobs never donated anything on his life.
- He didn’t donated anything after his death either.

This shows a predatory attitude. Take everything and give nothing in return, as long as is possible.

He also shows this attitude in the way he managed the company and his personal life.

In other words: He was a Narcissist.

This Dilbert comic shows my opinion on the passing of Jobs
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-10-25/

If because of Jobs way of operating, you have second thought about buying any Apple products in the future, be ready not buy anything anymore. Business is a hard world were people fight to be on top, at any means short of illegal (well, some do go that far).

WOW! Very nicely put and as balanced a treatise on Steve Jobs as I have ever read!

I must say I found the book and this review refreshing. It reminded me so much of how the handlers built and crafter the image of Tiger Woods. He was revered, Godlike in his game, holy in his person, but in reality none of this was true. Same goes for Jobs and the way he ran Apple. Apple often turned to litigation (not without some level of agility mind you) to line their coffers when the going was rough, they never seemed to mind palgerizing and outright pocketing others ideas and creations. All this being done by the carefully built and crafted Job’s God like inventiveness. It is interesting to watch the cat fights when the lid is lifted off and all get to see what reality actually is.

I would just like to add that Apple computers deliver inferior performance at a very high price. They appeal to people who don’t know much about computers and don’t want to. I guess they look nice, if that matters.

James I admire you for saying what everybody knows but dont want to speak loud about Steve Jobs, he was an ass, let the fanboys spread the hate, lol.

So Jobs was a typical hipster.
Now he’s a richest guy in the cemetary :]]]

I was very interested to read this, being a bit of a hater of everything Apple. I do think they made some good products, but my hatred stemmed from the way they tied in the less technically aware and then ripped them off for everything they could afford. I’m thinking of the initial iTunes model and their overpriced hardware compared to the competition. This certainly does tie in with Jobs being pretty ruthless.
Anyway, I think the world is catching up. The standard of Apple’s competitors’ products have certainly improved because of Apple. I’m very pleased to see that more Android phones are now shipped than iPhones, and that Samsung is shipping more phones and tablets than Apple. Hopefully this is because people are realising that the Apple price premium is not justified.

I admire Job as a presenter. His presentations are the bests.

But I never admired him for rest of his work. Why you may ask. As I read Jobs biography I surprisely noticed that Jobs happen to take the correct opportunity at correct time. Job used some geniuses to make great products and then throw them away. Some inventors have fallen into his hand (iPod) and some survived (dropbox).

I have no complain against apple or its great product line. But I can’t help myself for not admiring Jobs apart from his great presentations.

James, like many other folks here I think you’ve got a polarized view of the biography. It’s understandable that some events that are so shocking outweigh the normal everyday events in your impression, but maybe another read could balance things out for you. Also, I’d dare say that you’ve never had to live with difficult people in your life that you also came to love (or you have but you are rejecting them along with Jobs as you wrestle through this). It’s clear Jobs was imperfect, especially in relationships and even he knew that. He confesses this to people throughout his life and especially at the end. He wasn’t unrepentant or evil like other lives we’ve seen chronicled. He was just a man living with his struggles and flaws. To see that chronicled along with his successes, mischief, and laughs makes him human and gives me sympathy for him and those around him.

In revisiting the biography, perhaps you consider:

- his incredible energy and joy about an idea that inspired people at various moments (blue box, the movie exec who he almost flew to visit to get videos in iTunes, Andy hertz field and rounded rects). He cared about ideas and people too which is why he worked so hard and energetically to share his passion. Don’t let the tantrums (certainly the best part to read for a good drama) overshadow the everyday good and normal

- he ate lunch with Jony everyday at work. I don’t know many people who do that. Every day – discussing, sharing, laughing, creating. That is quality time that it is the basis of a solid relationship – one that Jony seems to have valued immensely. And no deep relationships go without conflicts. Jobs just had trouble throughout his life handling some of the conflict. But thats 1000s of reasonable lunches with a few tantrums or conflicts mixed in.

- mischief, pranks. He spent years of his early life just having fun with Woz. There are hours and days of good times there that get lost next to one story of having a fit about which room he should get in the house. And many good years before he threw himself into the stew of being an inexperienced and immature manager at a very young age. It seems they had more good times than bad. That changed at the height of the rise of apple, but it is a phase, a flaw, a chance to learn. And very rarely do friendships endure beyond 4 or 10 years, even with simpler conflicts like moving away from a friend. 10 years is a long time.

- most of the managers under jobs seem to love miss and respect him. I don’t think any of them want to advocate mimicking his flaws. Most of them seem to be able to look back at his fits with some bit of humor. For some maybe there were some unresolved conflicts still to work out. That’s human. But on the whole the people who spent the most time with him really respected and appreciated him. They voluntarily walked in his back door just to spend more time with him. So just as the commenters on your blog can’t judge you because they don’t know you, perhaps you consider more strongly the opinions of those who knew jobs well as you form your own opinion.

On the whole, I get the impression from the biography that Jobs tried to be a good person and wanted to help others and humanity. He seemed to genuinely like people and life and wanted to be helpful. It’s a stark contrast to say the executives of Enron or many financial institutions today. But Jobs had his demons and that was something that fortunately many of us cannot relate easily to. So we look at the good and the bad and the stories of those who loved and respected him and try to form some bit of understanding and sympathy for him while also learning a bit about ourselves from his mistakes.

Best.

The most important aspect of the inventions of Steve Jobs is the focus on self. It is extremely visible in the ‘iThis’ and ‘iThat’. In many circumstances it has blocked proper and much needed direct communication between people. Instead many are now staring somewhere but not looking, chatting or listening to others. Just staring in infinity.

The ‘i’ culture cultivated by Jobs is the most destructive invention I can imagine and now followed by so many companies in their strive to capture our minds.

The obsession for ‘i’ was probably reflected in his life style.

I have read 200+ books on my Kindle and not had a single crash. I don’t believe for a minute your kindle crashed 3 times reading one book. You need to get it fixed if that is the case. You sound like a destructive vs. constructive type.

I understand people felt the same way about Edison. But he did some damned fine things.

There sure are a lot of people who are saying good things about Jobs, including Woz and Bill Gates, who have no reason to lie.

Maybe, just maybe, the guy was good and bad. You know, human?

“(I say “businessmen” on purpose, since I’ve yet to encounter a businesswoman, on any level, who treats people in an unpleasant way).”

Unfortunately, I think that is the result of limited experience. I can think of many, starting with a former head of HP and a former head (she’d like to claim founder) of ebay.

Seems strange that you boycott Apple products now, after Jobs is no longer there (when you already have a Macbook Air). These types of polarised opinions about Jobs and public declarations of Apple boycotts are nothing new. You’ve said nothing that hasn’t been said before.
Ironic? Ironic that you criticise Jobs for criticising Murdoch and Fox News. Or even that he had something critical to say about Amazon. Why shouldn’t he? That was part of what was great about him. He was direct. You knew what you were dealing with. His opinion was definite.

You also say how badly he treated Jony Ive. Listen to Ive’s tribute on YouTube. I haven’t heard such a heartfelt speech in quite some time, if ever. Jony Ive counted him as his closest and best friend. What because Jobs was cold and heartless? I don’t think so.

I agree that there are many companies around the world run by idiots in management, or at the top level, that treat their staff horribly, and some of those companies are already successful. This biography, or Jobs are not going to make that situation worse. It appears to me at least the culture at Apple is at least no worse, and probably better, than any other tech company. IBM, Adobe, Oracle, Microsoft etc have all had major lay-offs in recent times. There are horror stories about all of those companies and their management. There are even more horror stories that don’t see the light of a high profile biography.

I agree with you James. I can’t think of anything else to say.

I made a decision a long time ago not to own Apple products because of their business practices. Just article makes me glad of that decision.

I too had the same feeling while reading the book. However towards the end there are excerpts from an interview with Jobs. There he says -

“I was hard on people sometimes, probably harder than I needed to be. I remember the time when
Reed was six years old, coming home, and I had just fired somebody that day, and I imagined what it
was like for that person to tell his family and his young son that he had lost his job. It was hard. But
somebody’s got to do it. I figured that it was always my job to make sure that the team was excellent,
and if I didn’t do it, nobody was going to do it.”

I think he had that sort of conviction. Jobs was a great businessman and I think future business people can learn a lot from his life. Saying that he was more successful than Gates or even Linus Torvalds will be wrong. Computing is not just about stylish products, it goes far beyond.

I met Steve Jobs at one of the Consumer Electronics Shows (CES) when it was held in Chicago shortly after the Apple Disk drive was announced as a peripheral in ’78. I had played with DOS 3.1 and had found it quite lacking for the business environment. I attempted to speak to him about this and suggest improvements that were necessary. It was at that time I encountered the infamous “reality distortion field”, although it was not called such at that time. To Jobs, there were no problems with the DOS on his horizon and he did not want to discuss any. I came away deciding he was a class A jerk and nothing I read about him and his “genius” ever dissuaded me from that opinion. I watched with wry amusement at all those that sung his praises. I met Steve Wozniak years later and found him to be a very decent person. If I had met him instead, I’m sure I would have encountered a more receptive ear or at least would have come away with a rationale for the DOS’s shortcomings instead of a flat dismissal. It was obvious that Woz was the real brains and Jobs was the marketeer.

Thanks for saying this.

What bothers me most is that Jobs is getting all the credit as the “inventor” of the smartphone. I recall that even Obama used that word. Clearly, Jobs pulled a lot resources together in a way that made an impact. But as an individual creative technical person myself I feel a bit dismayed; the technology that is common today is the work of thousands of creative people (I’d like to think I’m one of them) and I’m disheartened by this idea that if you’re not Jobs (or maybe Ive) you don’t deserve any of the creative credit. I suppose it wasn’t just Edison (or maybe Tesla) who deserves credit for “inventing” the electric light and grid (not to mention that most of my house is lit by CFL’s and increasingly LED’s now) either.

Offhand (falling back on my several years’ training in personality type theory) I’d say from your book review that Mr. Jobs was an INTP “living in his own Shadow” – and acting like The ENTP From Hell accordingly. Brilliant at business, tyrannical with people. Oy.

I knew a milder version of that kind of boss – used to work for him, in fact. I wish I knew then what I know now about the stumbling blocks such people face, because he saw I was more naturally diplomatic than he and asked me for help that I couldn’t give him then but could now.

Now I know nothing of Mr. Jobs, personally, and I won’t sit in judgment of him. And so long as Apple makes terrific products that I like to use, “Steve Jobs was used to change history despite himself, if necessary” is more than good enough an epitaph for me.

[...] Jobs: The Exclusive Biography” by Walter Isaacson, and I had planned on writing a review, but James Cridland wrote it for me: I’d heard some stories about Steve Jobs, but the stories I’d heard were [...]

ummm Jobs was a jerk…and I do not respect Apple because of his lack of compassion. I would rather see NO tech innovations and live with horse and buggy (better for the planet) than see another Steve Jobs on earth. The fragmented nature of the male world and business whereby “It’s not personal; it’s business” is the exact reason this world is going down environmentally…everything is connected….Why is this man emulated as a great man? He was a great intimidator, task master and relentless perfectionist. ewwwww I feel sorry for his kids and wife…they’ll be telling stories later perhaps…or in therapy for the rest of their lives…relationships are the most important things in life according to a lot of men who are on their deathbed regretting how much time they spent at the office…life is about love…not things. I hate Stever Jobs the narcissist. Compassion and love will transform humanity not technology cripes…values are so messed!