I enjoyed this book on two fronts – I thought it did a good job of capturing both Steve Jobs' achievements and the makeup of his character. His achievements are well known: building innovative products (the Apple II, the Macintosh, the iPod, the iPhone, the App Store etc) and building lasting companies (Apple and Pixar). With regards to his character, a number of traits were mentioned throughout the book but the most repeated and salient I thought were his charisma & magnetism, his sense of focus, his passion for perfection/simplicity/minimalism, his craving for control, his indomitable/stubborn will, and the intensity/relentlessness with which he pursued his work. Overall an inspiring read and one of the best biographies that I've read.
Below are some quotes from the book.
Isaacson: "… taking a long walk was his preferred way to have a serious conversation."
Isaacson: "He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology, so he built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering. He and his colleagues at Apple were able to think differently: They developed not merely modest product advances based on focus groups, but whole new devices and services that consumers did not yet know they needed."
Isaacson: "It was important, his father said, to craft the backs of cabinets and fences properly, even though they were hidden. 'He loved doing things right. He even cared about the look of the parts you couldn't see.'"
Isaacson: "Wozniak would be the gentle wizard coming up with a neat invention that he would have been happy just to give away, and Jobs would figure out how to make it user-friendly, put it together in a package, market it, and make a few bucks."
Kottke: "Steve is very much Zen. It was a deep influence. You see it in his whole approach of stark, minimalist aesthetics, intense focus."
Friedland: "The thing that struck me was his intensity. Whatever he was interested in he would generally carry to an irrational extreme."
Jobs: "When you open the box of an iPhone or iPad, we want that tactile experience to set the tone for how you perceive the product."
Jobs: "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."
Atkinson: "He can deceive himself. It allowed him to con people into believing his vision, because he has personally embraced and internalised it."
Wozniak: "His reality distortion is when he has an illogical vision of the future, such as telling me hat I could design the Breakout game in just a few days. You realise that it can't be true, but he somehow makes it true."
Jobs: "Products are everything."
Isaacson: "The lesson Jobs learned from his Buddhist days was that material possessions often cluttered life rather than enriched it."
Ellison: "I can't tell you the number of versions of Toy Story I saw before it came out. It eventually became a form of torture. I'd go over there and see the latest 10% improvement. Steve is obsessed with getting it right – both the story and the technology – and isn't satisfied with anything less than perfection."
Jobs: "There's no yacht in my future. I've never done this for the money."
Ellison: "Steve created the only lifestyle brand in the tech industry. There are cars people are proud to have – Porsche, Ferrari, Prius – because what I drive says something about me. People feel the same way about an Apple product."
Jobs: "What we're trying to do is not highfalutin. W're trying to get back to the basics of great products, great marketing, and great distribution."
Isaacson: "One of his core principles was that hardware and software should be tightly integrated. He loved to control all aspects of his life, and the only way to do that with computers was to take responsibility for the user experience from end to end."
Jobs: "Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do. That's true for companies, and it's true for products."
Jobs: "It takes a lot of hard work to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions."
Isaacson: "Putting on a great show piqued his passions in the same way as putting out a great product."
Jobs: "If something isn't right, you can't just ignore it and say you'll fix it later. That's what other companies do."
Isaacson: "… the iPod became the essence of everything Apple was destined to be: poetry connected to engineering, arts and creativity intersecting with technology, design that's bold and simple."
Isaacson: "Some leaders push innovation by being good at the big picture. Others do so by mastering details. Jobs did both, relentlessly."
Isaacson: "Like a pathfinder, he could absorb information, sniff the winds, and sense what lay ahead."
Jobs: "… the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do."
