News
Jobs biography details birth of iPod, iTunes
The Sydney Morning Herald has published an interesting excerpt from “iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business” that details the birth of the iPod, iTunes and the iTunes Music Store. The excerpt touches on the choice of a music device over a PDA, battery issues with the iPod, and more. Apple recently pulled all tech books from the publisher of “iCon,” John Wiley & Sons, because Jobs was reportedly unhappy with the biography. It will go on sale June 1, 2005.
“Jobs stayed close to the project all the way, his brilliance as a marketer and his flawless taste in design shining through in his rigorous-as-ever demands for the highest standards. PortalPlayer’s Ben Knauss recalls, ‘Steve would be horribly offended if he couldn’t get to the song he wanted in less than three pushes of a button.’ Because of the impossibly short schedule, there wasn’t any time for custom-designed computer chips.”
“Unlike in the past Apple’s design chain now relied on off-the-shelf components elegantly integrated. Critical pieces such as the digital-to-analog converters were selected from a manufacturer’s catalogue. Even the hard drive was standard Toshiba hardware. How many companies could tackle a project in a new category, create a ground-breaking widget that looked great and worked better than anyone else’s and do it all in under a year? It only happened because of Steve Jobs cracking the whip.”
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1
Actually, that release date is incorrect. The book is already out—it officially hit on May 16. I picked up a copy this past Friday. Interesting read so far. A little redundant at first—a lot of books have covered the same events about the early years of Steve/Apple. More interesting details come to light further in, but still nothing that I would consider “ban-worthy” Still not done though, so we will see…
Posted by jamie37187 in Nashville, TN on May 24, 2005 at 3:09 PM (PDT)
2
Did Steve jobs write this “Biography”?
Sure he’s done a better job (no pun intended) at giving his market quality, design, security…well you name it…than his rivals but “Jobs stayed close to the project all the way, his brilliance as a marketer and his flawless taste in design shining through in his rigorous-as-ever demands” sounds a little like the cheesiest of PR to me.
Couldn’t a similiar message be brought across without sounding like the promo for a ‘straight-to-DVD’ film by Ben Affleck or Guy Richie. Really!! Who has their tounge firmly in cheek here? Someone with a short career in writing I hope!!
Posted by 52% Fat on May 25, 2005 at 3:48 AM (PDT)
3
An interesting commentary on this book can be found in this book review from the San Francisco Chronicle. It was written by Alan Deutschman, who found that “iCon” lifted quite a bit from Deutschman’s own previously published biography of Jobs!
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/22/RVGQOCO8LP1.DTL&type=books
Posted by zyzyzyzyzyzyx on May 25, 2005 at 7:06 AM (PDT)