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‘Steve Jobs’ delves deep into complex man’s life

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Published : Oct. 25, 2011 - 09:45

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“Steve Jobs” (Simon & Schuster), by Walter Isaacson: “Steve Jobs” takes off the rose-colored glasses that often follow an icon’s untimely death and instead offers something far more valuable: The chronicle of a complex, brash genius who was crazy enough to think he could change the world -- and did.


The book The book "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson, is displayed at a Barnes & Noble Inc. branch in New York, U.S., on Monday, Oct. 24, 2011. (Bloomberg)

Through unprecedented access to Jobs with more than 40 conversations, including long sessions sitting in the Apple co-founder’s living room, walks around his childhood neighborhood and visits to his company’s secretive headquarters, Isaacson takes the reader on a journey that few have had the opportunity to experience.

The book is the first, and with his Oct. 5 death at age 56, the only authorized biography of the famously private Jobs and by extension, the equally secretive Apple Inc. Through Apple, Jobs helped usher in the personal computer era when he put the Macintosh in the hands of regular people. He changed the course of the music, computer animation and mobile phone industries, and touched countless others with the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, Pixar and iTunes.

His biography, therefore, serves as a chronicle of Silicon Valley, of late 20th- and early 21st-century technology, and of American innovation at its best. For the generation that’s grown up in a world where computers are the norm, smartphones feel like fifth limbs and music comes from the Internet rather than record and CD stores, “Steve Jobs” is must-read history.

Isaacson, whose other books include biographies of Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin and Henry Kissinger, uses anecdotes from friends, family, colleagues and adversaries to illustrate sometimes deep contradictions in Jobs.

Given up for adoption at birth, the young Jobs would go on to deny his daughter Lisa for years. The product of 1960s counterculture who shunned materialism, he’d go on to found what would become the world’s most valuable company. Deeply influenced by the tenets of Zen Buddhism, Jobs rarely achieved the internal peace associated with it and was prone to wild mood swings and mean outbursts at people who weren’t living up to his expectations.

But it’s these contradictions that make the out-of-this-world Apple magician human to a fault. And it’s his uncanny ability to meld art and technology, design and engineering, beauty and function that allowed him to put the Macintosh, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad into the hands of millions of people who didn’t even know they wanted them. Jobs changed our relationship with technology because he understood humanity as well as he understood chips and interfaces.

“I’m one of the few people who understands how producing technology requires intuition and creativity, and how producing something artistic takes real discipline,” Jobs tells Isaacson in one of the extended passages in the book that are in his own words.

These longer interview excerpts pepper the book like rare gems. In them, Jobs offers eloquent, no-apologies explanations of why he did things the way he did and what was going on in his mind amid decisions at Apple and in his own life.

Apple fanboys, tech geeks and encyclopedic-minded journalists will likely comb the book for previously unknown details about Jobs and Apple. I went into it with only a little more knowledge than the average reader, and a tenuous, nostalgic connection to him through having attended high school with his daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs. I found myself combing the book not for secrets about Apple, but secrets about Steve Jobs the man, the father, the son.

With little patience for technical details, I found myself skimming through some of the book’s passages detailing the creation of the Apple I computer, the Macintosh and the i-gadgets of Jobs’ later years. It’s in these passages, though, where the reader might find explanations for why the iPhone’s battery is not replaceable, why Macs cost more than PCs and why the iPod’s headphones are white.

The intimate chapters, where Jobs’ personal side shines through, with all his faults and craziness, leave a deep impression. There’s humor, too, especially early on when Isaacson chronicles Jobs’ lack of personal hygiene, the barefoot hippie who runs a corporation. And deeply moving are passages about Jobs’ resignation as Apple’s chief executive, and an afternoon he spent with Isaacson listening to music and reminiscing.

“Steve Jobs” was originally scheduled to hit store shelves in 2012. Its publication date was moved up after Jobs died. As such, there are bits that might have benefited from another round of editing. There are anecdotes, for example, that Isaacson repeats as if introducing them to the reader for the first time.

In the end, it’s a rich portrait of one of the greatest minds of our generation. (AP)

<관련 한글 기사>

"애플의 다음 타깃은 TV…잡스 전기서 시사"

애널리스트 "亞부품업체서 TV견본 작업중"

애플의 공동창업주 고(故) 스티브 잡스의 공식 전기가 나오면서 애플이 개발하고 있는 새로운 형태의 TV세트에 업계의 관심이 집중되고 있다.

잡스는 24일(현지시간) 공식 발매된 전기에서 "통합된 형태의 TV를 만들고 싶다 "며 "아이클라우드와 함께 모든 전자기기와 별다른 장애 없이 동기화되고 가장 단순한 유저 인터페이스를 갖는 것으로, 나는 마침내 해냈다"고 말했다.

업계는 이에 대해 잡스의 이 같은 언급이 2009년부터 꾸준히 흘러나온 애플의 T V사업 참여설을 확인해 주는 것이라고 지적했다.

미국 투자은행 파이퍼 재프리의 애플 담당 애널리스트 진 문스터는 이날 고객들 에게 보낸 보고서에서 "지금까지 나온 셋톱박스형 애플TV와 달리 완전한 형태의 애플TV는 생방송 중계와 함께 아이클라우드에 저장해 놓은 기존 방송을 결합하는 형태 가 될 것"이라고 말했다고 미 경제전문지 포천 인터넷판이 전했다.

그는 "잡스가 '해냈다'고 믿은 부분이 이것일 것"이라며 "특히 각종 프로그램의 제목이나 출연자의 이름 등을 음성으로 입력하면 작동되도록 아이폰4S에 적용된 음성인식기능 '시리'를 이용할 것으로 보인다"고 덧붙였다.

문스터는 올해 초 애플의 TV사업과 관련해 아시아 부품업체들에 대한 애플의 액

정표시장치(LCD) 주문내역에 3.5인치 모바일 액정 뿐 아니라 50인치도 포함돼 있었으며, 무엇보다 지난달 아시아 부품업체와 가까운 한 소식통은 애플 TV의 견본이 작업 중에 있음을 시사했다고 주장했다.

문스터는 또 지난 5월11일과 지난 6일 애플이 미국 특허청(USPTO)에 TV관련 특허를 출원한 것을 파악했다고 전했다.