How to Apply Steve Jobs
The definitive biography of the man whose obsession with control and beauty reshaped six industries
About This Book
In 2004, Steve Jobs called historian Walter Isaacson and insisted, against Isaacson's better judgment, that he write his biography, only revealing months later that he was fighting a cancer he had kept secret from almost everyone. Built from more than forty personal interviews and over a hundred conversations with friends, rivals, and family, this account follows Jobs from a Silicon Valley garage to the birth of the Macintosh, showing how a college dropout who never learned to code, shaped by Zen Buddhism and by being given up for adoption, built products through sheer force of will. Expect a gun in a parking lot, a stolen Blue Box, and a rivalry with Bill Gates that still divides opinion.About the Author
Walter Isaacson is a biographer previously known for his books on Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein. Steve Jobs personally sought him out in 2004 to write this book, telling him, 'It's your book. I won't even read it,' and gave him unrestricted access, encouraging even former employees, exes, and rivals to speak candidly. Isaacson conducted more than forty interviews with Jobs over two years, on walks, in his living room, and by phone, and interviewed more than a hundred other people to check and complete the account, having previously written a book on Henry Kissinger that prepared him for conflicting versions of the same events.
Biggest Takeaway
Listen to this and you will start noticing the gap between confident vision and self-deception in your own plans, and know when to push a deadline instead of simply accepting it. You will learn to treat the parts of your work nobody will ever inspect, the back of the cabinet, as seriously as the parts everyone sees. You will get language for deciding, project by project, whether to keep tight control over quality or open things up for wider reach. And you will recognize, in your own team or family, the difference between a demanding standard that produces extraordinary work and one that only produces exhaustion.
Key Insights from This Book
Explore the most important ideas and learn how to apply them in your life.
The trick that let Steve Jobs bend deadlines everyone else called impossible
Why one adoption story shaped a Silicon Valley icon's need for control
What seven months in Indian villages taught him about how minds actually work
Why the messier operating system beat the more elegant one
The speech that told half a team they had failed, in one sentence
Why he demanded beauty in circuit boards no customer would ever open
How he got engineers to wear ninety-hour weeks like a badge of honor
The marketing memo that decided your first impression matters this much
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