Steve Jobs

In 2008, Jobs’s cancer returned, and in 2009 he was forced to get a liver transplant, during which he almost died. Throughout his health struggle, the press speculated the truth about Jobs’s health issues, which were shrouded in secrecy and kept away from the public eye. After Jobs recovered from his liver transplant, his feisty and incisive temperament remained unaltered; he wasn’t ready to let go of Apple, of the company he had created and taken to unimaginable heights. And after the success of both the iPod and the iPhone, Jobs was ready to debut yet another revolutionary product.

When the iPad was unveiled in 2010, many called it the “Jesus tablet” (493). A tablet computer had long been a pet project of Jobs’s, one he even put on hold prior to releasing the iPhone in 2007. Despite some initial skepticism and mixed reactions, Apple sold over a million iPads in the first month, then fifteen million in the first nine months of its existence, making it “the most successful consumer product launch in history” (498). With the multifunctionality of the iPad, Jobs wanted to emphasize the truly special nature of the project, so once again he got personally involved with its ad campaigns. Isaacson notes, “with the iPod, Jobs had transformed the music business. With the iPad and its App Store, he began to transform all media, from publishing to journalism to television and movies” (503).

Only a few days after the iPad was revealed to the public, Jobs went on a tirade about Google’s Android system, which he claimed was a rip-off of Apple’s operating systems. Once again, Jobs experienced this as a personal betrayal, since both Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s founders, had at one time seen him as a mentor. Jobs decided to file a lawsuit, citing copyright infringement. In the midst of this battle, Jobs remained committed to the idea of closed system, compatible only with other Apple devices in order to provide consumers with an optimized, simplified experience. Yet even in his insistence to notions that often-baffled others, Jobs remained deeply passionate about the things he really cared about, including finally bringing the Beatles to iTunes, which happened in the summer of 2010.

After releasing the iPad 2, Jobs prioritized two other passion projects: the iCloud, which he had long envisioned as a “digital hub,” and the new Apple campus, which would eventually hold more than twelve thousand employees. Depleted of physical energy, Jobs remained committed to passion projects, investing time and his usual forcefulness to see them through to fruition.

Isaacson reveals that Jobs “had an aching desire to make it to his son’s graduation from high school in June 2010” (538), after Jobs had first learned about his cancer diagnosis. As he watched Reed earn his high school diploma, he emailed Isaacson that he was living one of the happiest days of life.

After living through this milestone, Jobs gave President Obama advice on education, particularly that the United States simply did not have enough engineers, which is why Apple and so many other global companies sent manufacturing jobs to other countries.

As his cancer resurged, Jobs’s final months were no longer characterized by high-level meetings or historic product launches but by extreme physical frailty and painful good-byes, perhaps most notably his farewell to Apple in August 2011, when he resigned as CEO, handing over the reins to one of his most trusted colleagues, Tim Cook.

In the final chapter of the book, Isaacson offers a reflection on Jobs’s legacy. According to Isaacson, Jobs “became the greatest business executive of our era, the one most certain to be remembered a century from now. History will place him in the pantheon right next to Edison and Ford” (566). Though Jobs was often mean, calculating, and manipulative, his impact on the world is undeniable.

Jobs lived according to his own values, among which were creativity and innovation. He often dreamed the impossible, which placed him appropriately at the intersection of technology and artistry, just as he would have wished. Isaacson then cites Jobs’s own words to conclude the book: “We try to use the talents we do have to express our deep feelings, to show our appreciation of all the contributions that came before us, and to add something to that flow. That’s what has driven me” (570).