Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography - review - Life Style Books - Life & Style - London Evening Standard

Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography - review

Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography
by Walter Isaacson
(Little, Brown, £25)

The extraordinary scenes worldwide after the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs revealed the incredible affinity people felt for a man they knew virtually nothing about.

Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs, published just weeks after his death, for the first time sheds light on the fiercely, obsessively private man.

In a process instigated by Jobs as a way for his children to learn more about him, Isaacson was given unprecedented access to Jobs and both his friends and enemies.

The attention to detail is astounding, and this is an encyclopaedic record of Jobs's life, right up to his battle against cancer and death.

It also (just) avoids the biggest pitfall of dealing with the hugely charismatic Jobs - falling under his spell.

One of the biggest secrets of his success was his "reality distortion field", an ability to persuade people to give him what he wanted. It worked with individuals and mass audiences too, in the case of Jobs's infamous "Stevenotes", where he addressed thousands to theatrically unveil new products.

Thankfully, Isaacson has produced an honest look at the man who has done more to make technology accessible than anyone else on the planet.

"There are parts of his life and personality that are extremely messy, and that's the truth," Laurene Powell, Jobs's wife, told Isaacson. "You shouldn't whitewash it. He's good at spin but he also has a remarkable story, and I'd like to see that it's all told truthfully."

Jobs's early life, from his birth and adoption to his fascination with Buddhism, is reasonably well known already, but Isaacson uses it to try to explain why Jobs constantly strove for an almost unachievable perfection in everything he did, both in his work and romantic life.

He comes across as a difficult person to like and a near impossible person to work closely with. Prone to severe moods swings, huge tantrums and frequent bouts of tears, the wildly emotional Jobs veers from, to use one of his own ad slogans, "insanely great", to just plain insane.

Key moments in his life were almost always accompanied by weeping. "Every once in a while I find myself in the presence of purity - purity and love, and I always cry," Jobs admitted.

This was a man obsessed with detail, who demanded that not only were the factories that made his gadgets spotlessly clean but that the machinery was the right colour.

Internally, machines also had to look good, even though only engineers would see them. For the external look, colour was all important - there were visits to a jellybean factory with his "soul mate", Chingford-born chief designer Jony Ive, to perfect the translucent plastic case of the iMac.

There are some wonderful insights into the bizarre, celebrity-laden world Jobs moved in - at his own 30th birthday party, he hired Ella Fitzgerald to sing Happy Birthday to him, after his musical hero Bob Dylan turned him down.

The book is also packed with remarkable anecdotes about Jobs's family - for instance, his long-lost sister, Mona Jobs, was actually the inspiration for Homer Simpson's mother (who shares her name) in the TV show The Simpsons. Most intriguing is his aloof and strange relationship with his four children, and it is absolutely fascinating to see him put Apple before even his own family.

"He craved perfection, and he was not always good at figuring out how to settle for something less," Isaacson writes. "He did not like to wrestle with complexity or make accommodations. This was true in products, design, and furnishings for the house. It was also true of personal commitments."

Once Jobs's illness takes hold, Isaacson does rather rush through the story, clearly mindful that his subject was fading fast.

Overall, it's a fascinating insight - although it's tough to decide quite how one should feel about Jobs. An undoubted genius, his almost unnerving ability to zoom in on the tiniest detail and obsess over it also led to his volatile, bullying nature. In Jobs's life, people were binary - they either got it or didn't.

Isaacson is a man who clearly "gets" Jobs, and has provided a fitting legacy to a flawed genius.


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