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Steve Jobs
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Steve Jobs (2011) (edit title/settings)

by Walter Isaacson (Author) (edit contributors)

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From bestselling author Walter Isaacson comes the landmark biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Isaacson provides an extraordinary account of Jobs’ professional and personal life. Drawn from three years of exclusive and unprecedented interviews Isaacson has conducted with Jobs as well as... read more

Summary edit see section history

At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, gates stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, gates stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.

Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.

Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “You need to force yourself to plan as if you will live for many years.”
    Steve Jobs
  • “In the first 30 years of your life, you make your habits. For the last 30 years of your life, your habits make you."”
    An old Hindu saying Jobs used on the invitations to his 30th birthday bash
  • ““Picasso had a saying—‘good artists copy, great artists steal’—and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.””
    Steve Jobs
  • “"Nothing kills humor like a general and boring truth."”
    Scott Adams
  • “"I'm going to be in meetings 24/7 for probably two days and i want you to be in every single one because you'll learn more in those two days than you would in two years at business school." <Note: Wouldn't that work out to be 24/2?>”
    Steve Jobs
  • “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
    Leonardo da Vinci
  • “I want to believe in an afterlife. That when you die, it doesn't just all disappear. The wisdom you've accumulated. Somehow it lives on. The he paused for a second and he said 'yeah, but sometimes I think it's just like an on-off switch. Click and you're gone.' He said—and paused again, and he said, "And that's why I don't like putting on-off switches on Apple devices.”
    Steve Jobs
  • “Jobs grilled him (Ron Wayne): “When you see a beautiful woman, what do you feel?” Wayne replied, “It’s like when you look at a beautiful horse. You can appreciate it, but you don’t want to sleep with it. You appreciate beauty for what it is.” Wayne said that it is a testament to Jobs that he felt like revealing this to him.”
    Steve Jobs & Ron Wayne
  • “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.”
    Steve Jobs
  • ““People DO judge a book by its cover. We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software etc.; if we present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired qualities.””
    Mike Markkula
  • “"There falls a shadow, as T. S. Eliot noted, between the conception and the creation. In the annals of innovation, new ideas are only part of the equation. Execution is just as important."”
    Walter Isaacson
  • “The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is constructive-destructive.”
    Steve Jobs
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • ‘Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are.’”
    Highlighted by 2112 Kindle customers
  • “The best way to predict the future is to invent it” and “People who are serious about software should make their own hardware.”
    Highlighted by 1678 Kindle customers
  • Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
    Highlighted by 1554 Kindle customers
  • People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.”
    Highlighted by 1438 Kindle customers
  • He emphasized that you should never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Your goal should be making something you believe in and making a company that will last.”
    Highlighted by 1286 Kindle customers
  • “The juice goes out of Christianity when it becomes too based on faith rather than on living like Jesus or seeing the world as Jesus saw it,” he told me. “I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don’t. It’s the great mystery.”
    Highlighted by 1153 Kindle customers
  • 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.”
    Highlighted by 1074 Kindle customers
  • There falls a shadow, as T. S. Eliot noted, between the conception and the creation. In the annals of innovation, new ideas are only part of the equation. Execution is just as important.
    Highlighted by 995 Kindle customers
  • Apple’s design mantra would remain the one featured on its first brochure: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
    Highlighted by 633 Kindle customers
  • Atop the brochure McKenna put a maxim, often attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, that would become the defining precept of Jobs’s design philosophy: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
    Highlighted by 568 Kindle customers
Show all 22 quotes from this book

Setting & Locations edit see section history

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Organizations edit see section history

  • Apple Inc.: The company Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak started in 1976.
  • Pixar: The computer graphic design business that Jobs purchased, which became famous for movies such as: Toy Story, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo. Jobs owned part of Pixar in its early days.
  • Atari: Atari, Inc. was founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney.
  • Microsoft Corporation: Started out writing software for Apple and IBM. Became a competitor of Apple Inc. using the software written for IBM.
  • Xerox Corporation: Had a research center in Palo Alto, CA known as Xerox-PARC. Wanted to create a small computer with a graphic user interface (GUI) rather than DOS prompts. Bitmap system used to create gorgeous display. Xerox venture capital wanted to be part of Apple in 1979. Apple got to see technology at Xerox in exchange for Xerox buying 1 million shares. Apple used many of these ideas in their MacIntosh design.
  • Intel: Integrated Technology Corp. one of the early makers of semiconductors. Also one of the first companies to make a microprocessor.
  • Walt Disney Company: Disney struck up a production deal with Pixar because wanted John Lasseter back. John Lasseter was trained by Disney and went to work for Lucasfilm/Pixar after Disney's workplace didn't prove a good fit for him.
  • Pepsi-Cola Bottling: Company Scully worked for when Jobs recruited him to Apple Inc.
  • Oracle: Engineers hardware and software that work together.
  • NeXT Computer: Company Jobs started after leaving Apple Inc. Company was later purchased by Apple Inc. to bring Jobs back to Apple.
  • IBM (International Business Machines): Marketed an early personal computer (PC). Often called "Big Blue".
  • TBWA\Chiat\Day: Lee Clow's Advertising firm primarily responsible for Apple's success from late 90's into the 21st century.
  • Power Computing: One of the companies to which Apple licensed the Mac OS for producing non-branded hardware in the late 1990's.
  • Dream Works: Add a description of this organization.
Show all 14 organizations

First Sentence edit see section history

In the early summer of 2004, I got a phone call from Steve Jobs.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Characters
Introduction: How this book came to be

Chapter One
Childhood

Chapter Two
Odd Couple

Chapter Three
The Dropout

Chapter Four
Atari and India

Chapter Five
The Apple I

Chapter Six
The Apple II

Chapter Seven
Chrisann and Lisa

Chapter Eight
Xerox and Lisa

Chapter Nine
Going Public

Chapter Ten
The Mac is Born

Chapter Eleven
The Reality Distortion Field

Chapter Twelve
The Design

Chapter Thirteen
Building the Mac

Chapter Fourteen
Enter Sculley

Chapter Fifteen
The Launch

Chapter Sixteen
Gates and Jobs

Chapter Seventeen
Icarus

Chapter Eighteen
NeXT

Chapter Nineteen
Pixar

Chapter Twenty
A Regular Guy

Chapter Twenty-One
Family Man

Chapter Twenty-Two
Toy Story

Chapter Twenty-Three
The Second Coming

Chapter Twenty-Four
The Restoration

Chapter Twenty-Five
Think Different

Chapter Twenty-Six
Design Principles

Chapter Twenty-Seven
The iMac

Chapter Twenty-Eight
CEO

Chapter Twenty-Nine
Apple Stores

Chapter Thirty
The Digital Hub

Chapter Thirty-One
The iTunes Store

Chapter Thirty-Two
Music Man

Chapter Thirty-Three
Pixar's Friends

Chapter Thirty-Four
Twenty-first-century Macs

Chapter Thirty-Five
Round One

Chapter Thirty-Six
The iPhone

Chapter Thirty-Seven
Round Two

Chapter Thirty-Eight
The iPad

Chapter Thirty-Nine
New Battles

Chapter Forty
To Infinity

Chapter Forty-One
Round Three

Chapter Forty-Two
Legacy

Glossary edit see section history

  • lapidary: characterized by an exactitude and extreme refinement
  • memento mori: An object serving as a warning or reminder of death.
  • zeitgeist: The defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time.

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 1 of 16 in New York Times Bestsellers - Hardcover Nonfiction (Current). (authoritative list)
This is book 1 of 10 in Amazon.com Best Books of November (2011). (authoritative list)
This is book 2 of 12 in Biography / Autobiography / Memoir. (community list)
This book is in Amazon.com Best Books of 2011. (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Walter Isaacson (Author)

Other Contributors:

  1. Rob de Ridder (Translator)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Country: United States
Publication Date: October, 24 2011
ISBN: 1451648537
Page Count: 656

Classification edit see section history

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Adults

A no holds barred look at Jobs life. Includes Jobs's abandonment as a baby, and Jobs year(s)-long denial of parentage of his daughter Lisa who was born out of wedlock.

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history

   
  • All About Steve
  • Revolution in the Valley
  • Inside Steve's Brain
  • Apple's Cores: Steve Jobs and the Power of Passion
  • iWoz
  • iCon
  • Anywhere but Here
  • Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
  • Be Here Now
  • Autobiography of a Yogi
  • Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
  • The MacIntosh Way
  • Appledesign: The Work of the Apple Industrial Design Group
  • Steve Jobs & the Next Big Thing
  • The Pixar Touch

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