★★★☆☆ Biography of an awful person

Steve Jobs

Walter Isaacson

I listened to this Walter Isaacson audiobook on a road trip from Richmond, Virginia to Ithaca, New York in 2016. I remember this well, because I was accompanied on this trip by my colleague and very good friend. She is a much nicer person than me, and it was obvious that hearing about Steve Jobs made her suffer. Eventually I asked her if she would rather listen to the Brotherband Chronicles, which I also had available. She had already listened to them, but would rather hear them again than Steve Jobs.

Why? Steve Jobs was an extraordinarily self-centered man, often abusive to the people in his life. Tina Redse, whom Jobs described as "the first person I was truly in love with,” said this

She would later recall how incredibly painful it was to be in love with someone so self-centered.

Even if one does not admire Jobs, it is hard not to admire his accomplishments. I read the biography because I hoped to learn what about him made those accomplishments possible. I did not learn that. Let me dispose immediately of the obvious straw-man -- it is not necessary to be a colossal self-centered jerk to accomplish great things. Many of the most accomplished men and women and history were kind and outgoing. Very nearly all of them, I would venture to guess, were less self-centered than Jobs, because almost everyone is.

In between his screaming abusive rages, Jobs could sometimes be wise. For instance, he said this in a commencement address at Stanford

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

At that time he knew he was dying of cancer.

He was also very determined that he and he only knew The Right Way To Do It. For instance, he was aesthetically (which, for Jobs, translates as "inalterably") opposed to On switches. Thus they are absent from most Apple products. I well remember when I had trouble with my Apple monitor at work -- it would randomly go black. The only way to get it back on was to turn the power off and on. Because of **#!!* Steve Jobs, I had to get up, crawl down under my desk, and unplug it, then plug it back in.

Cory Doctorow, who wrote a manifesto called “Why I Won’t Buy an iPad” for Boing Boing. “There’s a lot of thoughtfulness and smarts that went into the design. But there’s also a palpable contempt for the owner,” he wrote. “Buying an iPad for your kids isn’t a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it’s a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals.”

In summary, this is a good biography that, if you can stomach it, will help you understand a really terrible person who was responsible for some of the creations that have become central to our lives, as well as the history of those things. But the caution, "if you can stomach it," is an important one. My friend could not, and even for me the experience of listening and reading was far from enjoyable.

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