ISteve: The Steve Jobs authorized biography | Hacker News Reader

ISteve: The Steve Jobs authorized biography

abcnews.go.com

67 pointsdr_15 comments

Given his earlier (active) disinterest in biographies, I'd guess this'll prompt all sorts of talk about his health.

Perhaps, but maybe his brush with death as he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in (2005 i think) was the trigger.

Clever how the author implied that with the statement at the end....

"Jobs, 56, has had numerous health problems and announced in January that he would take his third leave of absence in seven years. During that time, he has survived a rare but curable form of pancreatic cancer and undergone a liver transplant."

Jobs wouldn't even endorse "iWoz" (probably because of the story of him conning Woz out of a fair share, long ago).

"iCon" is the most perfect title I've ever seen - obviously the lowercase 'i' and Jobs' reality distortion field; but also the desktop metaphor featuring icons; and that Jobs is definitely an icon himself.

Note we already have a brief Jobs autobiography, in his Stanford commencement address: text http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html; video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd_ptbiPoXM

This is great news, I'm really looking forward to it. I loved "Inside Steve's Brain", by Leander Kahney, though it's the only biography I've read on him so far. It's got a lot of great observations and quotes, like this one on page 34:

"In the 1998 interview with Fortune, Jobs said that he looked to his hero Bob Dylan for inspiration. One of the things that Jobs admired about Dylan was his refusal to stand still. Many successful artists at some point in their careers atrophy: they keep doing what made them successful in the first place, but they don't evolve. "If they keep on risking failure, they're still artists," Jobs said. "Dylan and Picasso were always risking failure.""

The book has the most non-Apple title I could imagine: "iSteve: The Book of Jobs"

Wow - I didn't know Apple banned Wiley for publishing the iCon unauthorized autobiography - with so many stories like this from Apple (remember the one on the one tiny music label getting singled out?) - I'm amazed their image is still as cool it is.

I quite enjoyed Isaacson's biography of Franklin. Will definitely read this one.

Working my way thru it now. His Einstein biography was fantastic.

If you liked it, you may also be interested in the companion reader http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743273982/ -- a collection of the primary source material used for the book.

A bit friendlier than the title of an unauthorized biography which my friend owns: "iCon".

They really screwed up the naming of that book. It's not meant to be unfriendly. It's just meant to say that Steve Jobs is an Icon, and also ties into icons used in graphical computing. But since iMacs and iPods were all the rage, they did that with the title as well, without realizing that people would read it as "I con" and think it was about Steve being a conniving bad guy.

I guess I'm in the minority but I don't see this as being very interesting. To me a biography serves two purposes: To accurately tell the story of someone's life and to give you insight into their thought process

On the first point let me say Steve Jobs is a great man in many respects. But tolerating dissent is not one of them. He's actively worked to destroy not only authors but publishing companies that have dared say anything even slightly negative about him (iCon was 90% positive). So an authorized biography of Steve Jobs is next to useless as an accurate account of his life.

On the second point he isn't writing this or helping in the writing of it. He's simply giving his permission and sitting down for an interview. Having read several thousand pages of Jobs interviews over the years I don't see how this one will be special.

I imagine the author had to pull a lot strings to get the blessings from Jobs to write this book. One of those strings might include the title "ISteve". Although not the best name, most likely willing sacrifice it to be able to write a book about skinning man himself.

With this being said, I wonder how much actual writing he's done (article stayed release for early '12, I don't know the turn around time for authors and publishers), and how much has been 'approved' by Steve. We might see things many things change before its published.

iSteve is a horribly unimaginative title for Steve Jobs' biography. Frankly I thing the second half if the title is better. "The book of Jobs: The authorized biography of an American original."

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