Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Just my interpretation from the book:

The book provides independent and neutral biography of a person who had arguably the most media attention and possibly one of the greatest visionaries in technical field.

The book is definitely motivational and has some shocking facts on how rude or ruthless the people at these higher management positions can be. The author had lot of discussions with Jobs and also many of the prominent people in his life. Though at times you feel the author might be biased towards Steve Jobs and praising him a lot, there are enough instances described in the book to provide a sort of neutral stance.

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication"
A principle that Jobs strongly believed in and we see that in all the Apple products (I cant speak of Mac as I haven't used it yet). All other devices, iPod, iPhone and iPad are extremely user friendly and do not need any kind of user manual to use. This is a primary feature that still differentiates Apple with others products.

Another line I liked - "Why do we assume that simple is good? Because with physical products, we have to feel we can dominate them. As you bring order to complexity, you find a way to make the product defer to you"

Steve has acknowledged the role of others who have worked at Apple and who have contributed immensely to the building and/or rebuilding of the company. Almost all the people in Apple who were interviewed by author mention the reality distortion field around Steve. People go to Steve to convince him that a particular task is not possible the way he wants it done, but they would end up getting convinced and even doing the task the way they thought is impossible."You did the impossible, because you din't realize it was impossible" he says.

"Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?"
He believed that consumer does not know what they want. This worked magically for iPod, iPhone and now iPad. Though none of these were new inventions, they were merely well packaged, well designed and ease of use that went well with consumers.

Though Apple popularized GUI with Macintosh, it was not the inventor. This was originally done by XEROX who could not capitalize on it and Steve stole the idea and implemented in Mac.
He believed in "Good artists copy, great artists steal"
Much later when Microsoft released Windows, Jobs blasted them saying they copied Mac. This is contradictory.

Jobs had pursued John Sculley to be the CEO of Apple very diligently and apparently these words are the one that finally made Sculley accept Jobs' offer: "Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world"

Sculley was President at Pepsico when Jobs was trying to get him to be Apple CEO. It was Sculley along with other board members who fired Steve from Apple. Steve also did all possible things from his side to get himself fired. Board fired him unanimously.

He then went on to create Next and Pixar of which Pixar was a remarkable company having produced many of very good animation films.

Jobs has mentioned in the book that he wanted his children to know why he was not able to dedicate more time to them or wasn't a perfect father they would have wanted him to be. The book clearly outlines Jobs life in detail and also all the great products he brought out from Apple, Pixar and may be Next, the amount of work put in by Jobs but you do not see any justifiable reason for his ignorance towards family. He was never in control of family life the way he held Apple together. This can be inferred from the book that he realized this and wanted his kids to know and understand him.

Jobs maintained a very tight hold on the units in Apple and ensured they work together. He stressed on end to end control for any product; to have full control over both hardware and software and not to let user to meddle with the system by creating custom screws for the products. This created a closed Apple ecosystem the way it is today. An interesting review mentioned in the book on this model - "Why I won't buy an iPad?. There is a lot of thoughtfulness and smarts that went into the design. but there's also a palpable contempt for the owner. Buying a iPad for your kids isn't a means of jump starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; its a way of telling your offspring that even changing batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals"

Jobs has made lot of other interesting statements in the book about companies like Google, Microsoft, etc. His interactions with Bill Gates and comparison provided of the two pioneers is particularly interesting. Google being and advocate of open systems, Microsoft not fully open but believing in keeping hardware and software independent and Apple believing in integrated system to have full control on hardware and software. Jobs also says - "I have my own theory about why decline happens at companies like IBM or Microsoft. The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the great salesman, because they are the ones who can move the needle on revenues, not the product engineers and designers. So the salespeople end up running the company"
I find this very true and see a lot happening in technology service companies especially the larger ones - No points for guessing the names :)