Review: 'Steve Jobs'

Where do I start? 

Steve Jobs was a royal ass. And not just an ass but evil on many levels.  

You've heard about Jobs' prickly personality over the years, but after reading Walter Isaacson's magnificent biography of the Apple genius, I was shocked to the degree with which a person can be so removed from the rest of the human race.

This was a man off on his own. Here's just a sampling:

• His refusal to put license plates on his pricey Mercedes.
• His propensity to park in handicapped spaces even when healthy.
• His insistence that non-vegan restaurants serve vegan food, and that huge parties be catered vegan, with full knowledge most would find the dishes unedible.
• His early years at Apple when he refused to wear deodorant, believing a hardcore diet would control body odors (it didn't, to much embarrassment at important meetings with outsiders). 
• His refusal to decorate a pricey new home, leaving it almost devoid of furniture for years. 
• His repeated and seemingly endless use of the phrase, "This is shit," in  responding to nearly every idea or product update, regardless of the source. ... and, after making such statements, his propensity to co-opt those once-"shit" ideas as his own a short time later. 

I'm dumbfounded that a man so abusive, so devious, so arrogant could achieve so much, but Isaacson shows us by detailing the marketing, manipulation and outright theft that forever changed technology and pop culture, all the while leaving layers of scorched earth behind. 

I reached a fork in the road with Jobs a few years back when he cavalierly dismissed growing complaints about the then-new iPhone 4 (my post at that time remains one of my most popular). 

I was so angry -- and still am -- about how Jobs chastised customers for daring to question what turned out to be an egregious design flaw (and one that he championed). The iPhone4 debacle was a classic case of form over function, yet for weeks Jobs refused to believe he couldn't will the populace into believing the problem was theirs, not his. 

I didn't know it at the time, but what I was experiencing Jobs' "reality distortion field," a place where he simply refused to recognize the facts in front of him. Isaacson describes multiple instances of this experience throughout Jobs' career, including a hilarious scene in which his employees come up with secret hand signals to use in meetings with Jobs to warn one another when the "reality distortion field" had been activated.  

In essence, iPhone4 customers were telling Jobs "This is shit," to borrow his go-to phrase. That phrase pops up so many times that it becomes a running joke. But Jobs' blind refusal to accept "good enough" is an underlying theme in Apple and Pixar successes, and led to the Macintosh, "Toy Story," iMac, iPod, iPhone, the app store and iPad. These are brilliant products that no one asked for, and were the result of sheer willpower in pushing and pushing and pushing imagination into new spaces. 

While Jobs the person could be aggravating beyond belief, "Steve Jobs" the book is a delight to read. It's a long book but a fast read, pulling us into the many ups and downs in a truly memorable life. 

To his credit, the typically protective Jobs gave Isaacson wide access into his life and absolute freedom to write what he wanted in delivering an accurate portrait of an enormously successful but deeply flawed and despised man. It's remarkable in this age of political correctness that so many people felt so comfortable in sharing brutally honest opinions about a man who could and would turn on them for the smallest slight. Perhaps that honesty came because they knew Jobs would soon be dead. Nevertheless, that openness is refreshing at a time when many biographies dance around controversies or elephants in the room (EXAMPLE).

I still use and love Apple products, but unlike a lot of "fan boys," I appreciate and use "shit" products from the competition (particularly Android). Those "shit" products often are far more advanced that Apple products. Apple's genius is not in creating an idea from scratch but in taking someone else's poorly executed ideas, giving them focus and polish, and making them sound new (mp3 players, tablets, Siri).

That "borrow and polish" approach seems to be continuing under new CEO Tim Cook, even as he brings a more humane face to Apple. It's heartwarming to know Cook feels like he can be his own man. And really, he has no choice, because his predecessor cast such an enormous shadow in ways we're probably still only grasping.