13A Reading Reflection

Walter Isaacson "Steve Jobs"

The first time I read this book, I felt a sense of completeness that I had not felt from an autobiography before, the first aspect that surprised me the most was the development and subsequent firing from Apple after the success of the first Apple computer. This surprised me because a big part of the successful entrepreneur is the story society tells, and Steve Jobs was truly a morally bankrupt individual. As Steve Wozniak said " you can make good products and be a good person, the two are not mutually exclusive."

I admired Steve Jobs ability and willingness to turn away from the crowd in order to conduct the orchestra, it is often necessary to be stubborn in order to seed one's dream, initially Steve wanted to give away the computer interface for free, however, Steve Jobs realized and had the business sense to develop it into a legitimate business one that could change people' s lives and make money.

I did not admire Steve Job's mistreatment and subsequent ignoring of his daughter and first wife Chrisann Brennan. He was a man who truly bad an impact on the universe but the way he conducted his personal life often times, verbally and emotionally abusing his coworkers and family caused him far more problems than necessary, in one particular incident he threatened to discredit one of his employees on the stage if the engineer could not fix the broken demo.

 After his firing from Apple, Steve Jobs sought to start a new education company called NeXT although this and built the Cubi-NeXT workstation the entire station costs nearly 3500$ to build but was initially sold at $2000 it was a complete failure the company actually lost money and eventually closed down.  He eventually used that to capitalize on his return to Apple after he realized the difference between a right product and the wrong time and a right product at the right time, when Apple tried to push the Newton as a new cellular pager that failed but Samsung would soon sell out the same item 15 years later with the Galaxy Note 2

Steve Jobs was brilliant at figuring out what people needed before they even did, Henry Ford once said that "if he asked people what they wanted they would have said faster horses"  Steve Jobs developed a technology people did not realize they wanted but immediately came rushing when it was developed.

The dissolution of NeXT, although the company was failing in its R&D it was bought by Apple in 1997 for $429 million, I never understood why Apple bothered to make this sale, Steve Jobs was already on his way to Apple and it was clear that the company was failing so why waste the capital and resources.

If I had to ask Steve Jobs any question I would ask the following, In order to make an Impact upon the Universe do you believe that one would have to sacrifice their personal happiness with family and other interests? Also if you could go back would you change your relationship with Steve Wozniak?

Work is not Hard as long as it is what you enjoy!!! This is what I believe Steve Jobs would believe