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Steve Jobs... decoded: - Umesh Shanmugam

Do you want to know what kind of music Steve Jobs had on his iPod?

You'll find answers to this and hundreds of questions you might have about the Apple founder and the most enigmatic/charismatic icon of the IT industry… the only one who could make Bill Gates appear a bit of a bore, in Walter Isaacson's biography Steve Jobs (Hachette India).

In his second coming as CEO of Apple Computers in 1997, after being thrown out by the CEO John Sculley and the Board in May 1985, the Apple icon revolutionised the music industry in 2001 by first launching iTunes and then the iPod with “a thousand songs in your pocket” buzz.

By 2001 it was time to “think different”; the dotcom bubble had burst and Nasdaq had fallen 50 per cent from its peak. The personal computer was moving away from being the centrepiece of the digital revolution and tech experts were predicting its central role was ending.

It was left to Steve Jobs of the famous Mac, to launch a new grand strategy to transform Apple — and with it the entire technology industry. The PC, instead of edging towards the sidelines, would become a “digital hub” that co-ordinated a variety of devices from music players to video recorders to cameras. “You'd link and sync all these devices with your computer, and it would manage your music, pictures, video, text and all aspects of what Jobs dubbed your ‘digital lifestyle',” says the author. Jobs reinvigorated the Mac and made it “the hub for an astounding array of new gadgets, such as iPhone, iPod and iPad.”

It didn't take Jobs's razor-sharp brain long to figure out what consumers really wanted, and to realise that music was going to be huge. By 2000, people were ripping music onto their computers from CDs, or downloading it from file-sharing services such as Napster and burning playlists on blank disks. That year 320 million CDs were sold in the US, which had a population of 281 million! Music management applications in the market were clumsy and complex. “So complicated” said Jobs, “that only a genius could figure out half of their features.”

iPod's entry

Nine months after iTunes, when the iPod was launched at a steep $399, “the joke in the blogosphere was that the letters iPod stood for “idiots price our devices”. But consumers made it a hit; “the iPod became the essence of everything Apple was destined to be: poetry connected to engineering, arts and creatively intersecting with technology, design that's bold and simple”.

It is in passages such as this that Isaacson's gripping prose enchants you and tells you why Jobs approached him in the first place to write his biography as early as 2004, when he first knew of his cancer. He took on the project only in 2009, after assurances of a completely free hand. Jobs's wife Laurence, the grounding and sober influence in his life, “encouraged me to be honest about his failings as well as his strengths, saying, ‘There are parts of his life and personality that are extremely messy, and that's the truth. You shouldn't whitewash it. He's good at spin, but he also has a remarkable story'.”

And what a gripping story it is, all through the 571 pages, from his adoption, school and college days, trips to India, getting a woman pregnant when he was only 23 and then abandoning the child before taking responsibility for her, co-founding of Apple, and the see-saw battles at the company. The irony is that in August this year, before he stepped down as CEO because of his advanced cancer, “for the final time, the company endowed with his DNA” had become the world's most valuable firm.

But let's return to the iPod. Says Isaacson, “As the iPod phenomenon grew, it spawned a question that was asked to presidential candidates, B-list celebrities, first dates, the queen of England, and just about anyone else with white ear-buds: ‘What's on your iPod?'”

So what was on Jobs's iPod?

All six volumes of Bob Dylan's Bootleg series, 15 other Dylan albums, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Three of his utmost favourites in that order. And former girlfriend Joan Baez's music, including two versions of Love is just a four-letter word. Comments Isaacson: “His iPod selections were those of a kid from the seventies with his heart in the sixties.” Also present were Aretha, BB King, Buddy Holly, Buffalo, Springfield, Don McLean, Jim Hendrix, Johnny Cash, Simon and Garfunkel, and Bach, who was his favourite classical composer. When the iPad 2 came out in March, he transferred all his favourite music onto it.

A different drummer

Isaacson's book is a treasure trove for not only fans of Apple and Jobs, but also those who look for inspirational stories. Jobs never forgot he was abandoned at birth and battled with it till Paul and Clara, who adopted him, explained that he was chosen by them as he was special. “Abandoned. Chosen. Special. Those concepts became part of who Jobs was and how he regarded himself.” His close friends thought his abandonment was responsible for his desire to have complete control over whatever he made. One of them said: “It made him independent. He followed the beat of a different drummer”. Like his biological father, Jobs, at 23, would abandon his daughter, leading her mother to say: “He who is abandoned is an abandoner.” Extremely curt about his biological parents, he referred to them as “my sperm and egg bank”.

His dropping out of college, starting Apple in a garage, his foul temper, manipulative nature and rude behaviour with colleagues, are all too well known. As also the one calligraphy course he took, which he found “beautiful, historical, and artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture.” These were stepping stones, says the author, to the future where in all his products “technology would be married to great design, elegance, human touches and even romance. He would be in the fore of pushing friendly graphical user interfaces.”

Adds Jobs: “If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces, nor proportionally spaced fonts.”

What Isaacson brings to the table is that rare feature in biographies where the author interviewed “scores of people he had fired, abused, abandoned, or otherwise infuriated.” He had feared Jobs wouldn't be comfortable about this, but after sulking initially, Jobs encouraged people to talk frankly. The rebelliousness and wilfulness ingrained in his character, along with the overpowering feeling that he was special, took him to great heights but also sharpened his angularities, and made him treat colleagues as either “gods or shitheads”.

iPad launch

At the launch of the iPad last January — The Wall Street Journal's comment: “The last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it”; Jobs said: “It is so much more intimate than a laptop”. He then surfed The New York Times Web site, sent a couple of emails, flipped through a photo album, used a calendar, zoomed in on the Eiffel tower on Google Maps, watched some video clips , showed off the iBook shelf and played a Bob Dylan song. And asked: “Isn't that awesome?”

That night he said “I got about 800 email messages — most of them are complaining. There's no USB cord; there's no this, no that. Some of them are like, ‘Fuck you, how can you do that?' I don't usually write people back, but I replied, ‘Your parents would be so proud of how you turned out'. Some don't like the iPad name, and on and on. I kind of got depressed today. It knocks you back a bit.”

But one congratulatory call came from President Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, but Jobs grumbled that the President had not called him since taking office! The iPod had revolutionised music, but the question now changed to what's on your iPad. And with it, Jobs began to “transform all media, from publishing to journalism to television and movies.”

Moral policing

An interesting take in the book is Jobs's attempts to ban controversial political cartoons and porn.

His exchange with one blogger, defending his decision to ban porn on the iPhone and iPad impressed the latter, who wrote: “Rare is the CEO who will spar one-on-one with customers. Jobs deserves big credit for breaking the mould of the typical American executive.” Not for just making great products, building and rebuilding his company around strong opinions but also defending them “vigorously. Bluntly. At two in the morning on a weekend.” But not everybody was impressed. e.Sarcasm.com launched a “Yes, Steve, I want porn” Web campaign. “We are dirty, sex-obsessed miscreants who need access to smut 24 hours a day. Either that, or we just enjoy the idea of an uncensored, open society where a techno-dictator doesn't decide what we can and cannot see,” it fumed.

The man who was called all kinds of names, who could be rude, arrogant, obnoxious, scruffy and unhygienic in his earlier years (he showered once a week, believing his fruit diet prevented terrible body odour; it didn't), could deny paternity for his first child Lisa, was also “the ultimate icon of inventiveness, imagination and sustained innovation.”

He did this, says Isaacson, who so brilliantly brings out the contrasts in his persona, “by connecting creativity to technology; he created a company where leaps of imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.”

When iPhone 4 was battling complaints of dropped calls, he brought his son Reed, a high school senior, to attend two days of a critical office meeting, telling him he would be interacting with “the best people in the world making tough decisions” and would learn “more in these two days than you would in two years at business school.” Later he recalled, misty eyed, about the great opportunity “to have him see me at work. He got to see what his dad does.” After all, he was human.

The greatest distinction of this book is the skilful manner and the simple, lucid prose with which the author draws the portrait of Jobs, complete with sulks and tears —oh yes, he was quite a cry baby — outbursts and periods of sheer brilliance, devil-may-care attitude and a childlike longing to be patted, feted and loved.

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What Isaacson brings to the table is that rare feature in biographies where the author interviewed “scores of people he had fired, abused, abandoned, or otherwise infuriated.”