Steve Jobs

     This book continues to amaze me. I am absolutely fascinated at how strange Steve Jobs is, but how successful he was, as well as how normal he appeared to be onstage during keynote presentations. This portion of the book talks a lot about Jobs's "reality distortion field" as well as his need for perfection. Many of Jobs's employees/co-workers found that Jobs could distort reality. For example, if Jobs wanted something to be smaller, he would tell them it had to be smaller. He wouldn't take no for an answer, even from a genius engineer. Jobs could distort reality so that something could happen, even if it was impossible/nearly impossible. Although the size of what Jobs wanted to be smaller didn't satisfy his original requests, generally it improved in such a way that Jobs agreed that it was ok. Jobs, in addition to distorting reality, loved perfection. Not only did Jobs want the outside of the computer to look great, he wanted the inside of the computer to be beautiful. If parts of the computer weren't arranged "beautifully" inside the computer, Jobs didn't approve. Another example is the window design on the computers (windows as in digital windows floating above the desktop). Jobs didn't want the windows to be perfect rectangles, that is, windows that had 90˚angles. Instead, he wanted to have rectangular windows with curved edges. Jobs argued that many ordinary objects, such as tables, had round edges, but were rectangular. Although combining circular graphics patterns with rectangles would be a challenging task, Jobs had to have it done. With some brilliant engineers, the task was complete. Jobs had a third strange thing about him. That strange aspect about Jobs was that he liked to "borrow" ideas. If you told Jobs about an idea, he usually criticized it at first. Then, perhaps, a week later he would come up to you and tell you your exact idea as if it was his own. When you said it wasn't his idea, he totally denied it. As you can see, Jobs had many strange aspects about him, but perhaps some of these aspects led him to be such a successful business man.
     Walter Isaacson does a great job telling the story of Steve Jobs. He does a great job of getting everyone's side of the story, including employees that Jobs cherished, hated, and even those that Jobs fired. Walter Isaacson also talks very technically about the elements of a computer, and what Jobs wanted to change to make it better. I really appreciate that, because I have a strong interest in computer science. In all, Walter Isaacson does a great job combining social problems/tentions at Apple, as well as the computer science problems/elements, to create a wonderful and addicting story. As always, I would recommend this book to anyone that is interested in Steve Jobs, Apple computer company, and/or computer science.