Steve Jobs

Apple went public less than four years after it had been founded. By the end of 1980, it was valued at $1.79 billion by the end of 1980, which meant that Jobs was worth $256 million by age 25.

Jobs’s relationship with wealth, according to Isaacson, was complex. He expressed an anti-materialistic worldview yet was deeply appreciative of some high-end consumer objects, such as Porsches, Henckels knives, or Bösendorfer pianos.

When Apple went public, Jobs cut out many of the earliest employees from having stock options, including for instance his friend Daniel Kottke. Wozniak, on the other hand, generously gifted a significant number of his stocks to these same people, who he believed Jobs had skipped over.

Isaacson focuses on the birth of the Macintosh computer, which initially was headed by Jeff Raskin, who Jobs had brought on to write a manual for the Apple II. In time, however, Jobs assumed full control of the project, which ended up resulting in Raskin’s departure from Apple altogether. The Macintosh, named after Raskin’s favorite apple, would “transform personal computing” (113), which again set the stage for Jobs to increase his influence in the tech world.

Isaacson describes what Jobs’s colleagues referred to as the reality distortion field, which referred to the way Jobs could convince people—including himself—of anything, by willfully distorting reality according to his own needs and desires. According to Isaacson, “at the root of the reality distortion was Jobs’s belief that the rules didn’t apply to him” (119). He had been told from a young age that he was special, chosen by his parents, so that he could find his place among the Einsteins and Ghandis of the world.

His colleagues also complained that Jobs saw the world in an overly simplistic binary—one was either a genius or stupid, for instance. He also seemed to take credit for other people’s ideas without acknowledging their contributions. Yet for all of his quirks and infuriating attributes, many of his colleagues remained inspired and energized to keep working at Apple.

Isaacson explores Jobs’s obsession with finding the perfect design, which he hoped to infuse into every aspect of the Macintosh project. Perfectionism was exemplified by the Macintosh project. This constant search for design perfection stemmed from Jobs’s belief “that design simplicity should be linked to making products easy to use” (127). He wanted products to be intuitive, in order to optimize the customer experience. But more importantly, Jobs urged his engineers to see themselves as artists, as craftsmen who could only sleep at night in good conscience knowing that they had created something meaningful and beautiful. To symbolize this belief, he had all the members of the Macintosh team engrave their names into every Macintosh, just as artists would.

Isaacson portrays Jobs as being fiercely competitive, even within his own company. Having been removed from the Lisa project, he now wanted to make sure that the Macintosh would ship to market before the Lisa. Prior to the market release of both computers, it was clear that the Macintosh would outperform the Lisa, rendering it irrelevant. Yet, according to Isaacson, “Jobs’s reluctance to make the Mac compatible with the architecture of the Lisa was motivated by more than rivalry or revenge” (137).

The Mac was a clearer iteration of what Jobs thought was important in a product. While the Lisa eventually got to market first, a year before the Mac was ready, it was a flop. As anticipation for the Mac grew, however, even Time magazine did a feature on the behind-the-scenes of the project. This led Jobs to believe that he would be 1982 “Man of the Year.” Instead, the 1982 “Machine of the Year” went to the computer, which included a searing piece on Jobs’s leadership style at Apple.

Isaacson tells the story of how Jobs recruited John Sculley, a former PepsiCo president, to take the role of CEO at Apple. Initially reluctant, eventually Sculley was convinced that Apple was the place to be, after some heavy convincing on Jobs’s part. Sculley and Jobs became very close, finishing each other’s sentences and seeking to understand each other. Eventually, though, they would find things to disagree about. Their first major disagreement was about the cost of the Mac, which was initially designed to cost $1,995, but with Sculley’s push for a significant marketing budget, would have to be pushed to $2,495. Looking back, Jobs theorized that this decision allowed Microsoft to dominate the market for a long time.