The Steve Jobs Way: iLeadership for a New Generation

Jay Elliot, the author, is an insider. He worked and spent most of his life with Steve Jobs during the early years when the two Steves started the Apple company, during Steve's hiatus, and then during the subsequent years when he returned to Apple. Jay wrote in cahoots with William Simon, known for his books "iCon" - a Steve Job's bio and "The Art of Deception" - a story on another interesting personality, hacker Kevin Metnick.

The book did not write a lot about Steve's younger years, it is not bio anyway. It just mentioned a very brief story when he was a kid. But early on, it shows how focused Steve is into anything he is working on. Being detailed oriented is a recurring theme throughout the book. Even before, he emphasizes the importance of building a company concentrating on the product. Steve's principle on living simple and his belief on minimalism reflects on every thing that comes from Apple. His house don't have a lot of furniture believing only the things that is needed should be there. No wonder, the first iPhone came out with just a single button.

Steve Jobs as a marketing genius is also covered in the book. He can be as stubborn as a mule which is why we have the single button Apple mice. It also brought up the story of how Steve insisted of making a no fan laptop despite losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in R&D.

Also an interesting part of the book is how Steve built Pixar and how he was able to work with a similarly stubborn Jeffrey Katzenberg. If Steve did not gamble his own money on one particular movie, they may not be Pixar today.

Other than seeing the movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley", a movie that revolves around the rivalry between Steve and Bill Gates, I have not read or seen anything much about Steve Jobs, one of the geniuses in the modern world who gave us iPod, iPhone and much later the iPad. This book did not add just a "one more thing," but a lot more on what I already know about the man.