Revolutionizing, game changer, reflective, and the becoming one of the great innovators and business thinkers of the century are the characteristics of Jobs as he spurs Apple to make history again and again. Walter Isaacson writes about Jobs returning to Apple and reshaping the company to what it is today in his book, Steve Jobs (Simon & Schuster, 2011 ISBN: 978-1-4516-4853-9).
This is last review out of five. This part of the series reviews the final business phase of Jobs’ life. Plus, it looks at what Isaacson writes about what Jobs still wanted to do. Others include: The Book of Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs the Man, The Apple Steve Jobs, The Pixar Steve Jobs.
The iApple Products
Jobs became the iCEO of Apple in 1997. He met a design expert named Jonathan Ive and the two redesigned the Macintosh computer and gave it a new name, iMac. Isaacson wrote, “That was the fundamental principle Jobs and Ive shared. Design was not just about what a product looked like on the surface. It had to reflect the product’s essence.”
After the iMac, iTunes, iPods, iPhones and the iPad were introduced to the world. As most any consumer knows by this time, all of these products revolutionized the world and changed the way people everywhere do business or interact with others both personally and professionally. Isaacson does a good job of detailing how these products were developed, designed and promoted.
Apple Stores and the App Store
One of the great ideas that Jobs insisted be tried was to open Apple stores. Others had failed before him, most notably, Gateway computer stores. Other big computer manufacturers such as Dell and Compaq were selling their products via the Internet only.
Isaacson includes some amazing statistics for the Apple stores including by 2004, Apple stores were averaging 5,400 visitors per week (compared to Gateway stores average of 250 people per week). Plus, the stores had $1.2 billion in revenue, “setting a record in the retail industry for reaching the billion-dollar milestone.”
One other unique store Jobs helped create, somewhat inadvertently, was the Apps Store. Isaacson wrote, “The apps phenomenon began with the iPhone. When it first came out in early 2007, there were no apps you could buy from outside developers, and Jobs initially resisted allowing them.” Jobs did eventually allow outside developers to offer apps for the iPhone and eventually the iPad.
The Apps Store, like so many other Apple products, “created a new industry overnight.” There were over 500,000 apps available for by July 2011.
The Legacy
Isaacson ends his book discussing the cancer that is taking over Steve Jobs’ body. He includes a chapter titled “Legacy” where he wrote, “The unified field theory that ties together Jobs’s personality and products begins with his most salient trait: his intensity. His silences could be as searing as his rants; he had taught himself to stare without blinking.”
Some of the projects that Jobs was working on towards the end included creating electronic textbooks, improving the picture taking features of the iPhone, and he wanted to make televisions “more simple and elegant.”
While his ability to develop great products was never in doubt, his personality was always in question. According to the book, business associates wondered why he was so mean, family members questioned whether he “simply lacked the filter that restrains people form venting their wounding thoughts or willfully bypassed it.”
Isaacson takes a page to list a summary of the products that Jobs helped make a household consumer item. The last item on the list was the Apple company which Isaacson reported that Jobs felt was his “greatest creation, a place where imagination was nurtured, applied and executed in ways so creative that it became the most valuable on earth.”
A Great Biography
The book that Isaacson ended up publishing is one of the last books that the author will have access to Steve Jobs and write using Jobs’s words. It is one of the best biographies to come along in recent history. It is written in a story form. The sections are broken out well and the author appears to have at least touched most parts of the life and times of Steve Jobs. While there may be more to the story, Isaacson told the rest of the story in great form.
