Week 7 - Reading Reflection No. 1

For this assignment, I read Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

1. What surprised me most about this book is that until reading it, I didn't know all that much about the distant past in the life of Steve Jobs. As a long-time Apple fan, I was some pretty sad when I first heard when died some five years ago, mainly because he affected both my life and countless others around the world through his passion for making the world a better place through technology, and it's what I admired most about him. I never knew that after being fired from Apple, he attempted to 'come back' into the industry with his NeXT computer, and that it ultimately failed and was considered a total flop. What I found out about him, that I ended up not really liking, was the suggestion that he was actually not a very nice guy. He treated those around him poorly, and was a very demanding boss to work for that often yelled and threw tantrums if he didn't get his way. I understand why he was like this, in that it mainly stemmed from his desire to have complete creative control over Apple's products, and that it had to be 'perfect' in his eyes. Steve Jobs definitely encountered adversity and failure in that the company he started, Apple, eventually voted him out after he proved to be too much of a problem for the board of directors and the CEO, and his previously-mentioned failure in the form of the NeXT computer.

2. I noticed that Steve Jobs was a visionary. A true big-picture guy, with an entrepreneurial mindset from the very beginning, and it allowed him to elevate his products and services to heights because he was excellent at knowing exactly what customers wanted, and how to create a product that would cater to these needs. In addition, he was very good at picking and choosing what ideas and concepts worked (or how they should work), and those that did not. Although he had some misfires earlier in his career, by the time he reached his prime when debuting the iPhone in 2007, he had perfected his craft.

3. The most confusing part of the reading for me, at least, was his attitudes toward his ex-lover and her daughter (which turned out to actually be his). Jobs refused to acknowledge the daughter as his own, and didn't want to pay child support to the mother for some reason that I'm still not entirely clear on. Eventually, he changed his attitudes on this, but as to why he acted like this in the first place, I'm really not quite sure.

4. “If you could live Another 200 Years, what would you want to accomplish?”

I would ask this because I'm curious to see just what exactly Steve Jobs would try to accomplish if he actually could live that long, because I think the answer would truly be fascinating and if I had to guess, would probably involve space exploration.

and

"Why did you, despite all of the urging not to and with all your available capital, decide not to undergo preventative measures to cure your cancer earlier?"

I would ask this because when I found out that Jobs decided to first attempt to cure his treatable form of cancer with homeopathic remedies (none of which helped and actually made the situation worse), I thought that it was completely idiotic and I would like to hear his actual rationale for why he decided to do this. Especially since he'd probably still be alive today if he decided to take the traditional medical route.

5. I think that Jobs greatly valued the concept of hard work, mainly because he was a very demanding person to work with and he only wanted the best people working on developing his products and services, and that those who were not hard-working didn't make the cut, in his eyes.