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Official Steve Jobs Biography Explains It All

As if destined by the powers that be, a biography commissioned by Steve Jobs to document his life was released on Oct. 24, two weeks after the technological titan’s death.

Walter Isaacson, responsible for biographies on Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein, was put to the task.

The once editor-in-chief for Time magazine interviewed over a hundred of Jobs’ associates, including such notables as Al Gore and Bill Gates, to construct a tome that would present both Jobs’ breathtaking career and astonishing idiosyncrasies.

This biography was set to make him a pop and tech culture icon and bring his company Apple to acclaim as the most valuable company in the world.

Jobs was not an easy person to get along with. He said he’d been enlightened, but often acted like a brat.

No one seemed to discount his vision or his brilliance, rather his complete disregard for cordiality and humility, which almost everyone agreed to.

Jobs could be smooth and was driven by a strong ethical code, but would often humiliate his staff and competitors to get what he wanted. He was mean, he was a bully, but almost always he got things right.

Jobs revolutionized at least six industries that most consumers nowadays take for granted, with personal computers, mobile phones, music publishing, animated films, MP3 players and tablet computers among them.

He was a rock star of the technology world and was often met with the cheers and ovations reserved for only the likes of his favorite bands such as Bob Dylan or The Beatles at his yearly event Macworld.

It was his intuition about design, interface and the user experience that would make Apple products such a success and the man behind them such a legend.

Steven Paul Jobs was raised by middle class parents of Palo Alto and born to a Wisconsin mother and Syrian father who put him up for adoption. His birth parents would later in fact raise their next child Mona, Jobs’ full sister, who Jobs eventually would become very close with and who would be with Jobs until his very end.

While many believed that Jobs’ separation from his birth parents caused his demanding and control freakish attitudes, Jobs disagreed. He felt he was raised as he should have been, just as special and that his adopted parents did everything they could to bring him up with as much of their integrity as they had to offer.

“Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson does a terrific job of chronicling the man behind the myth.

It gives a studious dissertation on the beginning to the end of one of the most driven people of the 20th and 21st centuries. There are enticing tidbits that would surprise most people.

The book also dealt with his complete involvement with Disney (at the time of his death he was Disney’s largest stock shareholder at 7 percent) and his beginnings with the animation studio Pixar of which he was CEO, among other kernels of knowledge that any Steve Jobs fan would be delighted to discover.

Jobs was an interesting man with habits and features that led to an almost neurotic personality. His anecdotes paint him as someone with supreme confidence who always held his goal in reach, but who could have a peculiar, darker side.

For having such a great impact on modern society, and for redefining the role of CEO, it seems that Jobs was really just someone who had a burning dream and a driving attitude that served to fuel his quest for supreme innovation any way he could muster it.

Steve Jobs made the world accessible from a pocket, stood for excellence, and knew how to make a difference.

His official authorized biography does a wonderful job of showing how he did this all and more.

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Official Steve Jobs Biography Explains It All