FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE BESTSELLING BIOGRAPHIES OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND ALBERT EINSTEIN, THIS IS THE EXCLUSIVE BIOGRAPHY OF STEVE JOBS.
Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.
At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.
Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing offlimits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.
Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.
Walter Isaacson, the CEO of the Aspen Institute, has been the chairman of CNN and the managing editor of
MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
SimonandSchuster.com
• THE SOURCE FOR READING GROUPS •
JACKET PHOTOGRAPHS: FRONT BY ALBERT WATSON;
BACK BY NORMAN SEEFF
COPYRIGHT © 2011 SIMON & SCHUSTER
Thank you for purchasing this Simon & Schuster eBook.
Sign up for our newsletter and receive special offers, access to bonus content, and info on the latest new releases and other great eBooks from Simon & Schuster.
or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com
ALSO BY WALTER ISAACSON
(with Evan Thomas)
Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Copyright © 2011 by Walter Isaacson
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book
or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department,
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition November 2011
SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks
of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Illustration credits appear here.
The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event.
For more information or to book an event contact the
Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049
or visit our website at
www.simonspeakers.com.
Manufactured in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-4516-4853-9
ISBN 978-1-4516-4855-3 (ebook)
The people who are crazy enough
to think they can change
the world are the ones who do.
—Apple’s “Think Different” commercial, 1997
CONTENTS
Introduction:
CHAPTER ONE
Childhood:
CHAPTER TWO
Odd Couple:
CHAPTER THREE