A great story really well written by the best biographer out there. A delight to read from cover to cover.
Steve Jobs was a master at thinking about the product, what defines and differentiates the product and most importantly what should not be a part of the product. Minimalism and ease of use where his mantra. He was such a perfectionist that he had trouble buying furniture, after two weeks of discussion with his wife they settled on Miele dish washer and he said that he enoyed that machine much better than any other piece of technology at that time.
Steve Jobs was greatily inspired by Bauhaus, and he was not ashamed to steal ideas, but was relentlesly blaming other companies when they would steal ideas from Apple. He was always insisting on a closed ecosystem: that a company controls both the hardware and software in order to provide a superior experience. This definetly proved a success story for mobile and tablets. Microsoft on the other hand was always backing a more open approach where different hardware producers would just integrate with software produced by Microsoft, leading to many different flavors of PC.
Steve Jobs intuition was just magical, and here are some of the things he insisted on:
- Apple 2 should not be a customisable machine for tech nerds, but a closed system for a wider audience
- Tight integration between hardware and software
- iPod customisations shuold be done on a computer, and iPod should be as simple as possible
- Apple stores with Italian marble, even though the whole industry doubted the need for a specialised store
- Tablets should not use a pencil, they have to use multi touch
- Design first, even when it lead to some engineering problems (iPhone 4 aluminum cage anthena problem)
Steve Jobs had a force that could bent reallity and he could suck other people into it, making them do things that were believed not possible, leading to numerous techincal breakthroughs.
When being kicked out of Apple he famously said: "I am just 30 years old and still want to achieve something with my life". He just turned a blank slate and started a new company NeXT and couple of years later Pixar.
Steve Jobs was a member of the counter culter during his youth and he always tried to nurture a different way of thinking.
A controversial genious that changed the world. Will be remembered down in history along other industrial greats like Henry Ford.