
Official Steve Jobs biography set for November 21 release - kenjackson
http://9to5mac.com/2011/08/15/official-steve-jobs-biography-set-for-november-21-release-based-on-forty-interviews/
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goblgobl
Sounds amazing. Jobs is such a remarkable business figure, but I often wonder
if people like him are rare, or if people like him are rarely given positions
at the top of companies?

Depending on who you ask, people will tell you companies should be run by
either MBA types or engineers. Jobs doesn't seem to fit either of these
archetypes. Of all the big tech execs, he has to be the strongest systems
thinker.

I think outside of the business success and technological innovation at Apple,
one of Jobs largest contributions has been to bring the 'design process' to
the center of management. Engineering has great models for problem solving, as
does management theory, but design thinking is often the most overlooked. Its
not given enough credit. Often when people talk about design they are really
talking about aesthetics. When Jobs talks about design, he's talking about
process. Hope the book sheds light on this.

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zachcb
Check out Alan Mulally. I think he's an underrated CEO. While he is an
engineer, I still admire his business acumen. I would think (and I know I'm
going to get criticized for this) he might actually be better than Jobs. If
not, it's 1A and 1B. Steve is in Alan's class, not the other way around.

You must view Alan's body of work and what he's done to turn around a company
from the very bottom to where it is today. Totally different brand image. He's
done it twice.

~~~
rimantas
I had to google to find out who Mullaly is. And frankly, Jobs having his
vision for years (check out his 1997 WWDC video) and bringing it into fruition
looks much much more impressive to me than some cost cutting.

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zachcb
It's hard to argue that there's anyone better than Steve's vision. But Steve
also did some cost cutting when he took over Apple (when it was a few months
away from bankruptcy).

We all know what Steve would have done if he took over Ford:

1) Elminate all models with the exception of a few. Alan sold off Land Rover,
Aston Martin, Volvo and a few others. He also closed Mercury.

2) Take those models and offer one or two different versions of it and offer
it in two colors--black or white.

3) Put an emphasis on design. You'll notice that Ford's cars are now much more
diverse and much more attractive.

4) Focus on reliability. Again, Alan did the same thing with Ford. He took the
engineers to consumer reports and had them scrutinize their reliability right
in front of the engineers.

I hope I'm making a point. Steve would of likely did the same thing Alan's
done at Ford. Alan would have likely did the same thing Steve's done at Apple.
Maybe not quite as good as Steve's done it, but very similar.

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olivercameron
You can tell this is going to be an amazing read:

"I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, such as getting my girlfriend
pregnant when I was 23 and the way I handled that, he said. But I don’t have
any skeletons in my closet that can’t be allowed out." - Steve Jobs

~~~
damoncali
I look forward to comparing it to Woz's autobiography, which doesn't paint
Jobs in a very appealing light.

~~~
barista
There will always be two sides of a story just like Paul Allen's biography
didn't particularly describe Bill Gates in a very appealing light. But that
does not undermine the status of these two figures(Jobs, Gates) as the heros
of our era. Looking forward.

~~~
marcamillion
You mean 3 sides. Your side, my side and the truth.

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kristofferR
I'm really looking forward to this book, so much so that I just preordered it
(which I normally don't do for books).

Walter Isaacson is a great biographer. His Einstein and Benjamin Franklin
biographies are amazing, definitely worth a read.

Since this is Isaacson's first biography of a living person, I'm really
looking forward to reading the result. I guess it'll cover a lot of things we
didn't know about Jobs and go even more in depth than his previous biographies
have.

A lot of both positive and negative things can be said about Jobs, but no one
can dispute that he is an interesting character with an astonishing record.
November 21 can't come soon enough.

~~~
niels_olson
Isaacson's biography of Einstein changed how I think about the entire genre.
Pre-ordered Jobs.

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sebkomianos
Is it really that good?

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cma
I didn't think so =/

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rblion
"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..."

Respect.

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ary
Given that so many books have been written about Apple and Steve Jobs with
nothing but tea leaves for sources I'm interested to see where this goes.

It is stated that Jobs cooperated with the author, but requested no control
over the content (bravo). You can bet he had something to say about the
previous title and cover [1] though.

[1] [http://www.redmondpie.com/isteve-the-book-of-jobs-
official-b...](http://www.redmondpie.com/isteve-the-book-of-jobs-official-
biography-on-steve-jobs-now-available-for-pre-order/)

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bitwize
Chapter 1.

On February 24, 1955, a strange star appeared over San Francisco...

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rmason
I hope that it reveals more of his business philosophy, reasoning behind some
of the decisions he has made.

For example:

Does he regret hiring John Sculley?

With the benefit of hindsight what mistakes did he make with the original Mac?

What mistakes does he feel he made at NeXt?

What was his pitch to Gates when seeking Microsoft's investment into Apple?

I hope the book answers some of those questions. I am no Apple fanboy but he
is quite simply one of the best business leaders in the past fifty years.

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Anechoic
>What was his pitch to Gates when seeking Microsoft's investment into Apple?

Something to the effect of: "you invest some $$ and we will discontinue the
multi-billion dollar lawsuit we're pursuing against you - win, win!"

~~~
philwelch
Apple had a lot of leverage in that lawsuit, too. It wasn't this vague "look-
and-feel" nonsense that was dismissed before--Apple had MS dead to rights
stealing the source code to QuickTime.

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prbuckley
I hope this is available as an ebook straight out of the gate. It would be
ironic in some ways if this was only available as a paper book and the ebook
was delayed.

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radicaldreamer
It's already available for preorder on the iBooks store and as a Kindle ebook.

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sudont
"This book will be auto-delivered wirelessly to your Kindle on March 6, 2012”

Possibly not soon.

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flyt
Amazon says "This title will be auto-delivered to your Kindle on November 21,
2011." for me

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marcamillion
I wonder if this will be available for the Kindle...or iPad only for a certain
period of time.

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daimyoyo
I find it very odd that Steve would cooperate with a project like this without
so much as the right to read it before it's released. Honestly I wonder why
Steve would agree to that. Any theories?

~~~
danilocampos
This is a man who is staring his mortality in the face. A man with a truly
fascinating story – which can be seen in many, many lights, not all of them
positive.

I think he knows he won't live forever and wanted the opportunity to have his
story told with his input, instead of it leaving it to chance once his voice
was silenced by human impermanence.

~~~
niels_olson
s/morality/mortality/

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danilocampos
Quite so! Lion autocorrect keeps leading me into interesting malapropisms.

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kirubakaran
Perhaps Lion is sentient and unhappy with its creator?

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marcamillion
I wish I could buy futures on the amount of sales this will get.

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nhangen
I've been waiting for something like this for years. Cannot wait to read this
one, if nothing else, for the inspiration.

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brainsqueezer
I will try to read it. But I don't really need to know how he left pregnant a
girl. I need to know how does he work psychologically to motivate people and
get the best of them. Common Jobs, you already did your job in the history,
now give your knowledge to the next generation. I can't afford having him as
company advisor so a book would be ok.

Maybe Jobs is not the right person to write the book about the Jobs way. Any
book recomendation my fellows?

~~~
wisty
I don't know that much about Jobs, but at a guess:

1) He "manages by end state and intent", just like the Marines are trained to
do. Instead of trying to tell engineers how to do their jobs, he tells them
what the customer should see, and why that's important. All good non-technical
managers do that.

2) He has a rough idea of what all the elements of the system are, how they
interact, and how they scale. For example, he talks about how some decisions
will reduce API complexity, which increases developer productivity. Few
technical managers do that well, and very few non-technical managers
understand what technical constraints to focus on. I'm guessing this is
something he's improved at, over the years. He screwed up a lot with in his
earlier years (doing stuff that wouldn't scale well), and learnt his lessons.
Every CEO tries to "understand the big picture". Steve seems to actually get
it right.

3) When somebody sounds like they are fudging or hedging, he starts
interrogating them to figure out what they are trying to imply. Engineers can
be very indirect when they suspect a problem is looming. Steve picks this up,
and goes after it like a terrier. It's scary stuff when he does this in
public, with a reporter. I'd imagine it's even scarier when he does it with
his employees.

4) He's got pretty good taste, and can hire good designers and people with
good soft skills.

5) He was lucky enough to hire a few brilliant techies, at the start (Woz, in
particular).

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DavidTO1
Fantastic. Can't wait.

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nQuo
I'm thrilled that it'll be released on my birthday. Can't wait.

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justanotheratom
I was starting to wonder what his next billion dollar business is going to be.

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Zolomon
So this was why he took a sick leave? _tongue-in-cheek_

