Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography

Citation

Storch Rudall, Y.R. (2012), "Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography", Kybernetes, Vol. 41 No. 7/8, pp. 1160-1161. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.2012.41.7_8.1160.2

This will be one of many books about the recently demised icon of the computer world and already a legend in his own right. Was he just a computer entrepreneur and an astute businessman, as he was usually portrayed? What sort of man was he really? Do we actually believe and accept what the media says about him? This book helps us to answer some of these questions because it is well structured and written in an authoritative way.

We all seem to forget, particularly the current generation of academics that just 40 years ago there were no personal computers, mobile phones or derivatives of the technology that allowed them to be produced. In the 1950‐1960s large mainframe computers without parallel working were the machines in use and the concept of a computer as an electronic brain was still the one held by the public of computing machines. This was the scenario that heralded the era of computer people like Bill Gates and, of course, the subject of this book, Steve Jobs.

This book was, the author writes, approved by Jobs and does aim to provide a very personal and intimate account of Jobs' life in the world of the new technology that produced both personal and very marketable consumer devices.

It is amazing how the author obtained so much information about Jobs. It includes details of his early Iife, the much publicised use of drugs and also his health challenges. It was perhaps these that led him to unusual dietary regimes and also his spiritual beliefs.

Most readers although interested in the man himself are also intrigued by both his creation and commercial success with Apple Computers. lt also tells us about his other links with people and computer consumer companies and his various successful projects as well as his unsuccessful ones.

Cyberneticians and management scientists perhaps expected more details of his methods of interacting with his staff and the way in which he was able to get the best out of the very talented people who worked on both his and their ideas for new and sometimes quite astonishing digital consumer devices.

The book's title promises an Exclusive Biography and the author produces just that by looking first at Steve Jobs the man, and then at the great contribution that he made to the development of the new electronic age.

No doubt there will be many other books about Jobs but it is unlikely that any will surpass its intimate and fascinating narrative about an extraordinary human being.