Steve Jobs bio points out the good and the bad
SAN FRANCISCO -- Steve Jobs was a brilliant and protean creator obsessed with elegant products bristling with clean design and, in his words, "awesome little features."
Beyond that, the late Apple CEO was an enigma to the public, by his own choosing.
What emerges in an authorized biography of Jobs is an egotistical, soulful, defiant, manipulative, uncompromising and, yes, obnoxious personality. The fully fleshed-out portrait in Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson, hit book stores on Monday. Advanced sales have topped best-seller lists since Jobs died Oct. 5 after a long battle with cancer at age 56.
"The thing that most surprised me about Steve was his emotional passion, especially for things he felt exhibited artistic purity," Isaacson said in a phone interview on Monday. Market-shifting products, not profits, were what motivated him.
Jobs had a powerful crystal ball for marketing, what some called his "reality-distortion field." His steadfast belief in his own compass might have contributed to his late decision to treat his cancer with surgery.
"If reality did not comport with his will, he would ignore it, as he had done with the birth of his daughter (Lisa) and would do years later, when first diagnosed with cancer," wrote Isaacson.
The book, originally titled iSteve, was scheduled for March 2012 but the release date was pushed up after Jobs' death. Isaacson, who interviewed Jobs more than 40 times, says Jobs regretted putting off cancer surgery and later resorted to exotic diets, accupuncture and other cutting-edge treatments. The book also draws from interviews with more than 100 family members, friends, foes, rivals and colleagues, according to Simon & Schuster. Jobs was one of 20 people to have the genes of his cancer tumor and his normal DNA sequenced, at a cost of $100,000.
The 630-page book details the Apple co-founder's relationships with Silicon Valley titans, Hollywood celebrities, artists and politicians in a sort of magical mystery tour of the rich and famous. Jobs was reportedly speechless when he met Bob Dylan. He thought Mick Jagger must have been "on drugs or brain-damaged" when they met. And, according to Isaacson, then-president Bill Clinton consulted Jobs on how to handle the Monica Lewinsky scandal that erupted in 1998.
"I don't know if you did it, but if so, you've got to tell the country," Jobs answered in a late-night phone conversation. His answer was met with silence.
The opinionated Jobs spared no words about his competitive rivals, offering these juicy tidbits:
•Google. Jobs had a major falling out with the Internet search giant. He had been friendly with Eric Schmidt and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin before the iPhone-Android rivalry. Schmidt, former Google CEO and now executive chairman, even served on Apple's board from 2006 to 2009. But the relationship quickly soured once Google launched its smartphone that aped many of the iPhones functions. Apple would eventually sue smartphone makers using Android. He called Google Android "grand theft" of the iPhone and vowed to "right this wrong." To underline his contempt, he likened Google products outside of search to manure (not his word).
Isaacson's book indicates that the rift cut deep. "Steve regarded Google in the way he regarded Microsoft in the 1980s: He thought Google had infringed on Apple patents for touch screens," Isaacson said in an interview. "He also thought that by allowing Android to be licensed to many devices makers, it created an inferior user experience. He got very angry about Google 'ripping off' Apple's designs."
"I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong," Jobs says in the book. "I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this." He told Schmidt, "I don't want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won't want it. I've got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that's all I want."
Jobs offered this advice to Page, Google's current CEO: "Figure out what Google wants to be when it grows up. It's now all over the map." Google produced so many "adequate" products, Job said, "they're turning you into Microsoft."
•Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. "Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything. … He just shamelessly ripped off other people's ideas." The two men spent more than three hours together at Jobs' home in the spring of this year — reminiscing. "We were like the old guys in the industry looking back," Jobs recalled. "He was happier than I've ever seen him, and I kept thinking how healthy he looked."
•Former Apple CEO John Sculley. He is skewered, as are other Apple board members who ousted Jobs in 1985. "He looked upon Arthur Rock, Mike Markkula and Sculley as father figures, and they abandoned him," Isaacson said in the phone interview.
After Jobs was ousted, he helplessly watched the company's gradual deterioration in the 1990s. He dismissed the new crop of people brought in to run Apple as "corrupt."
They cared only about making money "for themselves mainly, and also for Apple — rather than making great products," Jobs told Isaacson.
•Facebook. CEO Mark Zuckerberg earns plaudits for not trying to cash in and, instead, putting in the effort to build a solid company, according to Isaacson.
•Design. Jobs' eye for clean design came, in part, from discovering Cuisinart food processors while browsing at a department store, Isaacson writes. The Mountain View, Calif., home in which Jobs lived as a boy, designed by developer Joseph Eichler, appealed to Jobs' sensibilities for making an affordable product on a mass-market scale.
•Music. The Beatles were also an early influence. One of Jobs' wishes was to get the band's songs on iTunes before he died. Beatle songs became available on iTunes in late 2010.
Lifting the kimono
Probably no figure in Silicon Valley history inspired more curiosity or attained a greater mythical status than Steve Jobs.
Jobs famously remained tight-lipped and cloistered in secrecy, offering interviews to few reporters. And, on those rare occasions, yielding little or no insights into his personal thoughts. In many ways, he is tech's version of Charles Foster Kane, the mysterious protagonist in Citizen Kane.
There have been other book attempts. The best of the lot — Alan Deutschman's The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, snappily written and meticulously researched — got no closer to the inner Steve than anyone else.
According to Leander Kahney's provocative book Inside Steve's Brain, Jobs was an elitist who dismissed most people as "bozos" yet made devices so simple anyone can use them. He was an obsessive creature with a volcanic temper, but he forged deep partnerships with creative artists such as Academy Award-winning animator John Lasseter, design whiz Jonathan Ive and Steve Wozniak. A Buddhist, Jobs produced mass-market goods in Asian factories, yet promoted them with the zeal of P.T. Barnum.
Neither book, however insightful, had the cooperation of the fiercely private Jobs.
Isaacson, who has penned well-received biographies of Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin, was able to not only cajole Jobs but got him to agree to 40 interviews where no topic was off limits. The book says Jobs had no control over its contents.
The early years
The book begins with a portrait of the young Jobs, who was rebellious toward the parents who raised him and dismissive of the ones who gave him up for adoption. Such feelings of abandonment probably contributed to Jobs' controlling nature as an adult, Isaacson writes, but he mercifully does not psychoanalyze in the book.
Jobs fell out with Christianity early in life. "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 Isaacson. "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."
As he neared the end of his improbable journey, Jobs displayed an openess about his life and the intensity with which he lived, Isaacson said. Defiant to his last breath, Jobs convinced Isaacson in a late August meeting — their last — that he would beat the cancer that had so ravaged him. "I may not like what you wrote, but I like you," Jobs told Isaacson, the author said in an interview. "I probably won't read it for a year."
"He was convinced he would beat it (cancer), and so was I," Isaacson said.
"I was surprised how tight-knit and loving his family was, despite his occasional worry that he focused too much on work," Isaacson said in the phone interview. "At the end, his four children and wife and sister were all with him by his bed as he expressed his affection for them."
The only person missing, Isaacson said, was Jobs' biological father.