Steve Jobs

Isaacson contrasts Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, who shared many superficial similarities (e.g., they both worked in tech and were born in 1955), but who were fundamentally different in terms of their philosophy and approach. While Jobs pursued Eastern spirituality and often lived as a rebellious hippie during his adolescence, Gates was the son of a wealthy Seattle attorney, attending a prominent private school. Gates was timid, geeky, gifted at computer coding. Jobs was intuitive, intense, and frequently rude.

Their official business relationship began when Gates’s company, Microsoft, started writing software for the Macintosh, mostly word processing and spreadsheet programs. Despite the early hope of a fruitful collaborative relationship, however, Jobs and Gates became rivals after Gates announced that they would be launching Windows, which Jobs felt was just a rip-off of the Mac operating system. In response, Gates made the case that both Macintosh and Windows had heavily borrowed from Xerox. After this perceived betrayal, “Jobs never got over his anger” (179).

After the Mac launched, despite generating a lot of industry buzz, sales eventually diminished, as consumers soon realized that it was “a dazzling but woefully slow and underpowered computer” (186). Frustrated by the Mac’s underperformance, Jobs began lashing out, infuriating more and more people within the company. In fact, many people resigned from Apple after witnessing Jobs’s antics firsthand. Eventually, even John Sculley, with whom Jobs had grown very close, decided that it was time for Apple to move forward without Jobs, a move officialized by the Apple board. Once again, Jobs felt betrayed, having been ousted from his own company.

Jobs’s next move was to start a new company, which he called “NeXT.” In order to start NeXT, he invested his own money and even hired many former Apple employees to join him in his new venture. Jobs envisioned NeXT as a company that would sell its products directly to colleges and universities. Once again, Jobs became obsessed with its look and design, arguing about its logo, its shape, and all of the aesthetic elements that he cared so deeply about throughout his career. At the helm of his own company now, Jobs experienced commercial failure with NeXT, as the computers heavily underperformed in the marketplace.

During his time at NeXT, Jobs became interested in acquiring the animation division at George Lucas’s company, Lucasfilm. Eventually, Jobs bought 70% of the company for $10 million. Initially interested in the company’s computers, Jobs later saw the value in the animated content it was producing. While the computers at Pixar could not be brought to market, Jobs kept investing in Pixar’s animation division, which merged computer technology with artistry. In 1988, after investing $50 million into the company, Pixar’s Tin Toy won the Academy Award for best animated short film.

Isaacson shifts to Jobs’s personal life, chronicling his romantic relationships with Joan Baez and Jennifer Egan, for instance, and detailing his search to connect with Joanne Schieble, now Joanna Simpson, after his mother Clara died in 1986. At a meeting in the lobby at the St. Regis hotel, he finally met his biological mother, discovering also that he had a sister, Mona, who was an up-and-coming writer in Manhattan. Isaacson also writes about Jobs’s relationship with his daughter Lisa, which he describes as volatile, like a roller coaster ride. After they argued or had a major falling out, they would often not speak to each other for months.

In 1989, Jobs met his future wife, Laurene Powell, a new MBA student at the Stanford Business School, when he was there for a guest lecture. Laurene got pregnant during their first vacation as a couple in Kona Village, Hawaii, and they were married in 1991, in a small ceremony in Yosemite National Park. Jobs and Laurene shared an interest in natural foods—Laurene eventually started her own health food company called Terravera—and shared a home together in Palo Alto.

When Jobs’s daughter Lisa was in the eighth grade, she moved in with Jobs and Laurene, remaining at their house until she went to college at Harvard. Her move was precipitated by Lisa’s teachers reaching out to Jobs about serious problems at Lisa’s mother’s house. Jobs and Lisa’s relationship remained tumultuous.

Powell and Jobs eventually have three children: Reed, Erin, and Eve. While Jobs had a strong relationship with Reed, he was mostly distant with his daughters.