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.
"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"
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 :)