Book 2: Steve Jobs, Another Thought

So of course the day after I finish reading the Steve Jobs biography I see the news report that a Steve Jobs action figure will NOT be produced and is being taken off the market. I literally laughed out loud and giggled every time I thought about it.

STEVE JOBS THE ACTION FIGURE!!! For a geek's desk world wide! It would be sporting his black turtle neck, blue jeans and white tennis shoes reminding you to work hard, love what you do, think like an A Player and not to produce "shit work". Hahahaha.

But in all honesty... if they did make one... I'd probably have him sitting on my desk!

News Article: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/01/17/steve-jobs-action-figure-pulled-from-market/

Book 2: Steve Jobs, Completed!

My eMac from college. Still hangs out on my dresser but rarely turned on.
After reading this book I think I'll be hanging around even longer.

WOW. That pretty much sums up the book. Not only did I get a huge history lesson on the development of technology and design but I also got to view a visionary at work.

Walter Isaacson did an EXCELLENT job writing this book. There was honesty, truth and emotion on every page (Nook screen). It was a book that was hard to put down and not think about or talk about when I wasn't reading it. I know I thoroughly annoyed my husband with all my geeky technology talk and how my love for Jobs was growing at every chapter. I can see why the following of Apple users are so strong, they have a company that is there supporting them and providing them with quality tools. I started the book thinking how could a ass like this push his way to be so successful and loved? By the end of the book, my heart ached with each medical leave and I cried when Jobs finally resigned for good as Apple's CEO. Half way through you just see Jobs for who he is and why he's doing what he's doing.

So my thoughts? What did I learn?

Well the biggest thing I learned was Jobs' involvement with Pixar. I had no clue. NONE! What was especially endearing is my 2 year old, Connor, has taken interest in Toy Story in the last month and now carries his Buzz and Woody around with him where ever we go. He also has a Buzz stuffed animal that he sleeps with at night. Reading about the process and beginning life stages that Toy Story had and how it was almost shelved made my heart flutter. As a kid I loved that movie and now my son was enjoying it too. Then I started imagining the world without Pixar films. I mean... could we live without the movie Finding Nemo? Uh... NO! I also didn't realize how bad off Disney was in their animation department at the time. I grew up with Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and Lion King. At that point, I was out growing the animated films and didn't notice their 10 year stint of uncreative movies. Pixar brought Disney back to life.

When Jobs' decided to pull the floppy drive off the Mac and put in a disc drive only, I loved when he voiced that you have to keep looking forward. He said that you can't move forward if you keep looking back at what has already been done. Sure enough.... the floppy drives are gone! Technology is such a fast paced moving world that you do have to keep looking forward.

Another thing I learned was Jobs' and Wozniak's involvement with Atari. Together, they designed the first one-player game for Atari. My knowledge of Atari was that my parent's had a system in our house while I was growing up, but that's about it. I could picture myself as a kid playing pong while Job's was already working on the Mac!

Who would have thought a computer company would have put a dent in the history of the music world? Jobs did! Who would have though a compute company would have put a dent in the mobile device world? Jobs did! Jobs was dreaming about a computer the size of your hand in 1982.. we now have the iPad.

I could go on and on about everything he thought and helped produce and the legacy he left behind. BUT that is what this book is about. Read it! It's fascinating and entrancing.

Jobs' was Zen but feisty, simple but full of visions, and he pushed us forward in so many levels it's unreal. He was always looking for and thinking about what we would want next. He pushed his engineers to think forward and creatively and brought design to the forefront. Obsessed and crazed over perfection and simplicity scream from this book. This book reminds us to love what we do and to work hard at it. He was definitely sent here to get the job done and he did. He had a knowing about that too. Like I said in my last post, he mentioned to Sculley that he felt like he had little time on this earth. It was also mentioned several other times to several other people in the book.

We have his legacy that was left behind and I'm sure I will find myself more interested in how Apple will continue to grown and produce. Hopefully they can continue to focus on the total user experience.


"Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That's had a big impact on my work" - Steve Jobs

Book 2: Steve Jobs, Continued!

Out of 642 Nook pages (not sure what at equals to in regular book pages) I'm in the 220's. I read through Jobs' childhood, teenagehood, his brief college career and on to the birth of Apple all the way through the birth of the Mac and its eventual drop in sales and Jobs' eventual push to having no power in Apple.

I have notes written all over a random envelope that I scooped up when I started reading because I realized there is so much to take in and fascinate over that I wasn't going to remember it all when it came time for the final completed blog post.

For right now, one moment I'm thinking Job's is a crazy genius and was placed here to push our technology and the way we think about it forward. Then on the next page, I'm thinking, "Wow this guys was a real asshole!" It's almost like his ideas were so grand and so necessary that he had to be the "bad guy" to get things accomplished. And then.... my other thought is he was just an assholeish genius and HR's biggest nightmare. But I'm not done reading yet so my thoughts may change.

One MAJOR thing that stuck out to me the other night while I was reading was Jobs told the new President of Apple (when he started), John Sculley, that he felt he didn't have a lot of time on this earth and he had a lot of ideas to put together and little time to do it. My jaw literally dropped open. Its like he knew his main purpose and needed to get it knocked out.

I was googling around looking for an image of the original mac to include with this post but I found something EVEN better. I found a video on youtube of Steve Jobs introducing the Mac in 1984 for the first time. I JUST read about this last night!!! Walter Isaacson got it right on point! Watching the video had me just as excited as I was when I was reading it.

I'll be moving onward and upward on pages this evening!

Book 2: Steve Jobs, Started!

Image from:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/
steve-jobs-walter-isaacson/1104099551

Wednesday evening I started the biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.As I slipped off into slumber last night I was already moving on to page 104 and didn't want to go to sleep but I couldn't keep my eyes open. This is a MUCH more easier read than Book 1 (probably because I've been looking forward to reading it for well over a month).

Prior to beginning this challenge, I was in a book club and focused on the books that we were reading. Between homework and book club I didn't have time to squeeze in other books before the next book club meeting and getting the next book read. Sooooo the Steve Jobs biography was released and my inner Apple / technology fan was DIEING to read it but I couldn't squeeze it in. When I decided to start this journey and step away from book club, I decided the Steve Jobs book was the FIRST one I was going to read. BUT I found the free Ben Franklin book on the nook and decided to start with that one because it was the holiday season and the budget was a little tight.

So why am I so excited to start reading this book? Did I jump on the Steve Job's hype after he passed away and became the ultimate Apple fan? NOPE. In my early days of school we used Apple computers until reaching the upper grades where we were switched to PC. I then used PCs for the most part and could have cared less about the history of the computers or technology. When I started the community college I wasn't sure WHAT I wanted to do so I focused on getting my Associates in General Studies and took a bunch of Accounting classes. I found out that I was pretty darn good at Accounting. Moving forward to my Bachelors I decided to go to University of Baltimore for their Accounting degree... but then..... I discovered their Corporate Communications degree......... I had finally found what I wanted to go to college for! Corporate Communications had me learning the history of technology, the advancement of media, the advancement of technology, graphic design and web design. Somewhere in all those teachings we touched on Steve Jobs. He just fascinated me.

I don't own an iPhone but I do own an old old old iPod. I don't have an iPad or MacBook... but I do have a really old eMac. I bought the eMac when I started at University of Baltimore because they used Macs for their graphic design classes. I lived in Glen Burnie, worked in Annapolis and UB was in Baltimore. There was no way I was going to drive up to the computer lab at the end of the day or on a weekend just to do my homework. Soooooooo I scraped together my money and my savings bonds from over the years and bought my eMac. I LOVED (and pretty much still do) it! And while I don't have an iPad or iPod Touch (hubby has the iTouch) and I own a Droid instead of an iPhone its all because of the cost of things and our budget. If I could.... I would. I switched to using PC when I became a programmer and deep down inside my heart still belongs to Apple.

All these reasons add up to why I'm excited to read this book.