Biographies
by Walter Isaacson
What made Steve Jobs different?
Walter Isaacson interviewed Jobs more than forty times, and spoke to over a hundred of his friends, family, rivals and colleagues. The question running through the book is how one difficult, demanding man changed computers, animated films, music and phones.
Hear a sample · read by Laura
Jobs liked to say Apple stood where the humanities meet technology. Isaacson sees this as the heart of his story. Jobs was no engineer. His gift was sensing what people would love, then pushing engineers and designers until the product matched it.
Bud Tribble, who worked on the Mac, borrowed the phrase from Star Trek. Jobs could convince people, and himself, that an impossible deadline could be met. Isaacson shows both sides. Sometimes the team did what seemed impossible, and sometimes reality won.
When Jobs returned to a struggling Apple in 1997, it sold about a dozen confusing versions of the Mac. He cut the whole range to four. He said deciding what not to do was as important as deciding what to do, for products and for companies.
Jobs wanted Apple to make the hardware and the software, so everything worked together. Bill Gates licensed Windows to any computer maker instead. Isaacson shows each approach winning at different times. Jobs's closed approach is why the iPod and iTunes felt like one thing.
Chosen
Adopted as a baby, Jobs felt both abandoned and chosen, and that feeling drove him.
Simplicity
He believed the simplest design was the hardest to reach and the best.
Reality distortion
He could talk people into deadlines they thought impossible, and they often met them. Staff called it his reality distortion field.
Pushed out
Being pushed out of Apple in 1985 led him to NeXT and Pixar, and back to Apple wiser.
Focus
Back at Apple he cut the product list down to four, deciding what not to do.
A story from the book
After dropping out of Reed College, Jobs hung around and sat in on classes that interested him, including calligraphy. He learned about typefaces and spacing for the pleasure of it. Ten years later that class shaped the Macintosh, which came with a range of carefully designed fonts.
Hot take · true or myth?
Jobs graduated from college before starting Apple.
Myth. He dropped out of Reed College in Oregon after one term, though he stayed around for months sitting in on classes he liked, including calligraphy.
One thing to try
Each year Jobs took his top hundred people on a retreat. He'd ask for the ten things Apple should do next, write them up, then cross out the bottom seven. Try it with this week's to-do list. Write ten, keep three, and do those first.
Knotd has the key ideas from 250+ non-fiction books, each in a few minutes, in plain words. Steve Jobs comes with a Hot Take round and a Your Move story to make it stick.
Get the whole book on KnotdOpen in the appWhat made Steve Jobs different? Walter Isaacson interviewed Jobs more than forty times, and spoke to over a hundred of his friends, family, rivals and colleagues. The question running through the book is how one difficult, demanding man changed computers, animated films, music and phones.
Where art meets technology; The reality distortion field; Deciding what not to do; Control it end to end.
Each year Jobs took his top hundred people on a retreat. He'd ask for the ten things Apple should do next, write them up, then cross out the bottom seven. Try it with this week's to-do list. Write ten, keep three, and do those first.
Yes. Knotd has the key ideas from Steve Jobs in a few minutes, in plain words, plus a Hot Take round and a Your Move story to test them. It's one of 250+ non-fiction books in the app.
