STEVE JOBS By Karen Blumenthal
Author – Karen Blumenthal
Country – UK
Genre – Biography
Pages – 310
Publisher – Bloomsbury
Published in – 2012
Cost – Rs 200 INR
Illustrations – Inadequate but helpful, feeds inquisitiveness of the reader.
Who would benefit – Students, entrepreneurs & Kids
Strength of Book. Steve Jobs as a topic for book was thoughtful and citing short stories from his life was quite interesting and binding. The book not only brings out the bright side but also the dark side of his character. The parts of the book and the chapters divided are useful.
Weakness of Book. Bit lengthy for the age group targeted. Flow tends to drag on around figures a lot of times.
About the Author. Karen Blumenthal is an acclaimed writer cum journalist. Initially she was a financial writer and later she wrote competitive non fiction books articles. She has written over 11-12 books meant to be read by teens and adults. She was also the editor of ‘The Chronicle’ at Duke University. In this biography she wrote about Steve Jobs. His life events ranging from birth till death. The author breathed her last on 18 May 2020.
Summary of the Book.
1. The book starts off by citing the speech by Steve on the June 2005. The event was a college graduation. Steve Jobs was child of an unmarried woman named Joanne Schieble. After birth Steve was adopted by Clara & Paul Jobs. Joanne agreed for the adoption only after the couple agreed that Steve would be sent to college. As quoted in the book, Steve’s father used to spend lots of time with him. Usually motivating him to rip machines apart to make Steve join them back. His parents looked him after very well and usually worked hard to make sure his education goes well.
School Days of Steve Jobs
2. Steve was a naughty kid at school. Once he had switched the locks of the bicycles at school. Undoing it took the school almost entire day. He was lucky to grow us in Santa Clara Valley. His father realized that Steve was not interested in cars. So, he bought him electronic gizmos to take apart and study. One day while trying to make his own equipment to count frequency he was stuck in some step. He took the phone book and rang up HP founder Bill Hewlett. The latter took the call and chatted with Steve. This landed Jobs in a contract with HP for the summers.
3. As a child, Steve used to discuss range of topics with his friend Bill Fernandez. Topics like Vietnam, Religion, drugs, Cosmos, Girls and what not. At 13, he stopped going to church. Later in his teenage, he got indulged with marijuana & LSD. The duo of Steve and Bill was later joined in by Woznaik. He introduced Steve to music and powerful lyrics of Bob Dylan. He also introduced Steve to a TV Jammer which could fuzz up television pictures by interfering with the transmission.
4. Later, Steve bought a small car and could travel and explore. They also build small devices called the ‘Blue Boxes’. These could imitate the same sound as the telephone while making calls and could copy the frequency. They could now make calls anywhere for free. Later, they started selling those units and made huge profits.
5. Steve got admitted to Reeds College. Getting admission there was not easy as the fees there was too high for his parents. But they had to give their way in as Steve had put his foot down. However, Steve dropped out of college. Which he later recalls as a dot in series of connection in his life.
6. Steve became friends with Daniel Kottke. Both read books on spiritualism, Buddhism and consciousness raising. They practiced meditation and small diet. Steve also joined calligraphy class. He learnt about fonts, size and spacing etc. Steve used this mindset while designing Macintosh.
7. He joined for a job at Atari and later dropped out to explore India. Though he rejoined later. In 1976, Steve Woznaik and Steve Jobs founded Apple Computers. As for the reason of naming it apple, Steve says “He had just returned from an apple orchard and the name was ways to remember”. Naming Apple this way landed them in legal battle with Beatles Company’s Apple Corps. In 1976, Interface magazine wrote about the founders of Apple.
Start of Apple
8. As for the first logo, it was Newton sitting beneath an apple tree. One of the earlier investors in Apple was Mike Markkula. Apple go a guarantee credit line of $250,000. But the pre-requisite to this was that Woznaik quits HP and joins Apple full time. The author often explains as to how rude and strict Steve was for his team. He would demand out of the box ideas. Would linger on for long just to decide a particular font or color. So much so that one of his team members even created a little program named ‘the Steve Jobs Roll-Your-Own Calculator Construction Set’. This enabled Steve to adjust all the font and colors himself.
9. Author quotes Picaso saying “Good artists copy and great artists steal”. This to explain as to what did Steve Copy from the Xerox Company. The idea of a mouse. Steve literally shouted “You’re sitting on a gold mine”. Coming on to Steve’s creativity, he insisted on the mouse having just one button. So that users don’t have look down again and again. He insisted on the screen shape to be rectangular with rounded corners. Just for eyes.
10. For the project of Macintosh Jobs had build a team of ‘A’ players. He sweated every detail of the project. Obsessed with title bars, colors, pattern of loading and closing. All these were required to be according to him. He particularly made Macintosh quite difficult to open. Either as a philanthropist or to cut taxes, Steve put a proposal to congress to donate 100,000 computers to schools. In exchange for tax cut. Such was his vision and deliberation.
Steve Jobs – removed from Apple
11. Later in 1985, Steve was sidelined out of Apple. Partly for his rude behavior and partly for the losses of the company. These among many other reasons. After moving out from apple, he had enough money and founded NEXT. The company dealt with animations and program. NEXT rose up to deal with Pixar and had roles in famous animation movies. Soon Next also rose to prominence. Apple on the other hand was mounting losses after Jobs had left and later bought NEXT thus leading way for Steve to be on the board of Apple.
12. In a meeting soon after joining apple, he asked as to what was the problem and gave the answer himself that it was ‘The Products’. Saying that the need was to change them and not repeat. Some of the excellent steps that Steve Jobs took were – Bold advertisement campaign (Think Different) & pursuing Microsoft to buy Apple’s stock. The author brings out the fact that Jobs was working very hard for all these years, he would come back at 10 pm, sleep and go back at 6 am. He was a firm believer that while dealing with technology and commerce there was adequate bandwidth for beauty & art. He believed that ‘Design is the fundamental soul of manmade creation’.
Steve Jobs – Eye for Details
13. Steve even had the eye to the details of the packing material of products. He usually patented them. Even the apple store design was patented. So much so that the store at Tokyo had the lift programmed to stop at each floor so that the commuters didn’t have to worry of pressing the buttons. Once he met a person using a Walkman to listen music. He asked as to what problems he faced. Knowing the limit of songs and bulky design, Jobs visioned the idea of iTunes. He collaborated with various companies to share royalty.
14. Steve was later diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He was still following his stringent diet of salads only. It was supposedly not good for him. He put his work before himself. Took little care of himself even when diagnosed with cancer. Had his organ transplanted. But to little benefit. On 5th October 2011, Steve Jobs passed away.
Recommendations. The book is a must read for all those aspiring to be entrepreneurs and businessmen. A must have copy for all. To buy the book online Click Here. To follow Medhini for more book reviews & understanding of key topics keep visiting www.medhinienergies.com