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Title: Inside Steve's Brain
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Manufacturer: Portfolio Hardcover
List Price: $23.95
Our Price: $12.86
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| Inside Steve's Brain by Portfolio Hardcover Fascinating Look at Jobs's Techniques | Inside Steve's Brain was a fun and fast read. Author Leander Kahney did a fantastic job summarizing the thought processes Apple CEO Steve Jobs has gone through over the years. Whether it was the start-up period with Woz, when Jobs got tossed out of his own company, his time building NeXT and his subsequent return to Apple, it's all covered here. This is particularly remarkable given the small size of this book (less than 300 pages).
I'm not an Apple fan but this is the second Jobs-related book I've read in the past several months. The other one was Option$, the parody by Fake Steve Jobs. While Option$ was more entertaining, of course, Kahney's book is quite engaging as well. His writing style makes you feel you were right there in the garage, the office or the boardroom setting he's currently describing.
Here are a few of my favorite excerpts:
British comedian Charlie Booker said..."If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that 'says something' about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe -- but not a personality."
Regarding Apple employees...Despite the zeal, employees are distinctly un-cultish. They consciously avoid the cultish types. At a job interview, the worst thing a prospective employee can say is: "I've always wanted to work at Apple," or "I've always been a big fan."
To explain why employees and coworkers put up with him (Jobs), critics invoke the Stockholm Syndrome. His employees are captives who have fallen in love with their captor.
The (Apple) stores are insanely profitable. One Apple store can make as much money as six other stores in the same mall combined -- and can pull in almost the same revenue as a big Best Buy store, but with only 10% of the floor space.
"We said, we want our stores to create an ownership experience for the customer," explained (Apple's Ron) Johnson. The store should be about the lifetime of the product, not the moment of the transaction. | | Inside Steve's Brain by Portfolio Hardcover The virtues of control freakery: the future of PCs? | | Sure, there are repetitions, brochure-like language, and the sense of magazine articles being pasted together in this book. But the latter parts: the creation and the naming of the iPod, the Sony situation, proprietary vs. open-standards, etc., make this book worth reading. | | Inside Steve's Brain by Portfolio Hardcover Inside Steve's Brain | | The Intoduction was good, historical, covered a lot of Steve Job's history. The rest of the book was good and interesting but somewhat repetitious. All in all a good bock for Mac lovers. | | Inside Steve's Brain by Portfolio Hardcover Not a Mac Bashing book! | I've read people bashing this book since BEFORE it's debut, but if they'd actually READ it, it's a fairly flattering portrait of Steve Jobs' handling of Apple. I've heard that Mr. Jobs HATES books written about him, but all in all this is a good read and sheds a good light on his "managerial style".
Definitely worth a peruse! | | Inside Steve's Brain by Portfolio Hardcover A great book for Steve and Apple's fan! | If you are a fan of Apple then you must also be a fan of Steve Jobs. If that is the case, I think you will enjoy this latest book by Leander Kahney - Inside Steve's Brain. Leander Kahney is also the author of The Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod.
In his latest book, Leander talked about what made Apple so special, with Steve Jobs at the helm. If you think that working under a fussy and demanding boss is a bad thing, think again. The bright side to this is that your work will be much more refined and of higher quality. And that's why Apple's products are so different from the rest of the competitors.
Overall, this book is an easy and interesting read and made me rethink about the quality of my work. If you are always curious about Steve Jobs and how he works, I strongly recommend this book. I have enjoyed it greatly and I am sure you will too. And one more thing, hug your fussy and perfectionist boss the next time you meet him at the office - he drives the best out of you.
--
Wei-Meng Lee,
Technologist & Founder, Developer Learning Solutions
[..]
Author of:
* Professional Windows Vista Gadgets Programming (Wrox)
* ASP.NET 2.0 - A Developer's Notebook (O'Reilly) | | Inside Steve's Brain by Portfolio Hardcover Product Description | Steve Jobs has turned his personality traits into a business philosophy. Here’s how he does it.
It’s hard to believe that one man revolutionized computers in the 1970s and ’80s (with the Apple II and the Mac), animated movies in the 1990s (with Pixar), and digital music in the 2000s (with the iPod and iTunes). No wonder some people worship him like a god. On the other hand, stories of his epic tantrums and general bad behavior are legendary.
Inside Steve’s Brain cuts through the cult of personality that surrounds Jobs to unearth the secrets to his unbelievable results. It reveals the real Steve Jobs—not his heart or his famous temper, but his mind. So what’s really inside Steve’s brain? According to Leander Kahney, who has covered Jobs since the early 1990s, it’s a fascinating bundle of contradictions.
Jobs is an elitist who thinks most people are bozos—but he makes gadgets so easy to use, a bozo can master them.
He’s a mercurial obsessive with a filthy temper—but he forges deep partnerships with creative geniuses like Steve Wozniak, Jonathan Ive, and John Lasseter.
He’s a Buddhist and anti-materialist—but he produces mass-market products in Asian factories, and he promotes them with absolute mastery of the crassest medium, advertising.
In short, Jobs has embraced the traits that some consider flaws—narcissism, perfectionism, the desire for total control—to lead Apple and Pixar to triumph against steep odds. And in the process, he has become a self-made billionaire.
In Inside Steve’s Brain, Kahney distills the principles that guide Jobs as he launches killer products, attracts fanatically loyal customers, and manages some of the world’s most powerful brands.
The result is this unique book about Steve Jobs that is part biography and part leadership guide, and impossible to put down. It gives you a peek inside Steve’s brain, and might even teach you something about how to build your own culture of innovation. |
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