Inside Steve's Brain [Hardcover]

Leander Kahney (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 17, 2008

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Throughout his storied Silicon Valley career, Apple CEO and Pixar Studios founder Steve Jobs has been labeled, among other things, an egomaniac, a Zen Buddhist, a business mastermind, a sociopath and a music mogul. Blogger, author and Wired News editor Kahney, who has chronicled Apple in previous books (The Cult of Mac), attempts to plumb the depths of Jobs's prodigious mind in this engrossing biography. The author devotes much time to the sensational aspects of Jobs' life, including his demeaning and ferocious interactions with employees, his relentless high-mindedness and fanatical attention to detail, clearly demonstrating how his tyrannical and perfectionist impulses have have shaped the award-winning designs and consumer-friendly products that have made Apple a juggernaut. Though it doesn't penetrate the Mac man's psyche too deeply, and sections on tangential figures like Apple design guru Jonathan Ive and Apple Store visionary Ron Johnson can meander, those searching for a telling portrait of Jobs's management style and its impact on Apple will not be left wanting.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The latest book about the success of Apple is from an avid fan, journalist, and author of two other Apple-related books (including The Cult of Mac, 2004); it is an in-depth profile of CEO Steven Jobs. It is a tale of two Steves: a perfectionist, charming, charismatic executive but also a man who’s known as an elitist, manipulator, and sociopath, all in search of a dream: providing easy-to-use technology for individuals. Kahney begins with Jobs’ return to the company, changes made to save it from bankruptcy, and then the CEO’s attributes as manifested in products, in people, in corporate directions. Take, for example, Steve’s perfectionism, shown through the three years of work to design the Mac; through the hiring of Hartmut Esslinger, of Frogdesign; and through employee perspectives. Every chapter is headlined by specific personality traits, from Focus to Control Freak, and concludes with Lessons from Steve, bullet-point summaries of key chapter learnings. Written and intended for a wide general audience. --Barbara Jacobs

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover; 1ST edition (April 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591841984
• ISBN-13: 978-1591841982
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (82 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #856,699 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm the managing editor at Wired News. Before becoming an editor, I was as a senior reporter at Wired News specializing in Apple and the Mac community, as well internet culture and emerging technologies. I've covered computers and technology for more than a dozen years. I was a senior reporter at MacWeek, and have written for Wired magazine, Scientific American, The Observer in London and many other publications. I worked as a newspaper reporter in Great Britain for several years, covering, among other things, the war in former Yugoslavia.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

102 of 115 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Inside Steve's Bladder June 30, 2008

By Keith Otis Edwards

Format:Hardcover

It's a curious fact that, unlike previous advances in communications technology, the computer revolution has produced only one real celebrity. As movies, radio and TV came along, each spawned dozens of superstars, but with computers, electronics and the Internet, it's only Steve Jobs. Yes, we know who Bill Gates is, but he is regarded only as some fabulously wealthy tycoon -- similar to Warren Buffett or C. Montgomery Burns. But soon, there will be more celebrity profiles written about Steve Jobs than about Elvis or Marilyn Monroe combined.

Unfortunately, such books are seldom literary masterpieces, and "Inside Steve's Brain" by Leander Kahney seems thrown together to make a quick buck. It contains little information that has not seen print many times, and it's certain that Steve Jobs, always wary of the press, provided no more cooperation to Leander Kahney than he would to "Tiger Beat."

Marketed as a sympathetic look at Chairman Steve, the book dishes no dirt. There's no dish at all. Instead, we get yet another history of Apple Computer, a history of Pixar, an interview with Apple's senior vice president for industrial design, Jonathan Ive, the same accounts of the releases of the iPod and the iPhone that you read in the newspaper, and a fulsome testimonial to the Apple Stores. All this may be of interest to someone who is very young or who has just returned from a long journey to a distant galaxy, but the rest of us already know what Jobs said to John Sculley to lure him away from Pepsi Cola. (Hint: something about selling sugar water.)

In the place of any new information, Mr.... Kahney relies on traditional techniques used by schoolboys who must submit a book report for a book they didn't quite read -- padding and repetition and padding and also repetition, a remarkable amount of repetition.

For instance, on page 142 we learn that "When Jobs hired Ron Johnson from Target to head up Apple's retail effort, he asked him to use an alias for several months lest anyone get wind that Apple was planning to open retail stores. Johnson was listed on Apple's phone directory under a false name, which he used to check into hotels."

In case the reader has forgotten this information by page 207, we are again told, "At first Johnson couldn't tell anyone he was working for Apple. He used the alias John Bruce . . . and a phony title to stop competitors from getting wind of Apple's retail plans."

Readers who give serious study to this book will certainly wish to use their yellow highlighters on the amazing fact that the Apple Stores are, ". . . not too big and not too small." Those who have been too timid to enter an Apple Store will be glad to learn on page 203 that, "There's no pressure to spend any money, and the staff is happy to answer any question." And those who are unable to form any short-term memories will be delighted to learn on page 204 that, "There is no pressure to spend, and the staff is friendly and helpful." A sentence later it is revealed that, "Apple's stores are no-pressure hangouts where the customers can play with the machines . . ." All of which makes one relieved that Apple has enough sense not to hire such a hack to write the copy for its ads.

If you have been misinformed and assume that people are interested in computers as furniture, Leander Kahney provides a lightning-bolt of a revelation: "Customers rarely buy computers for the hardware alone; they're more interested in the software it can run." This stuff's gold, people, gold! But as for Apple's iLife suite of applications -- iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand-- "They haven't proven to be killer apps."

So if the book is nothing but threadbare history of Apple and a panegyric to the pressure-free marvel of Apple Stores, why is it called "Inside Steve's Brain"? Because the glory contained inside is that Leander Kahney ends each chapter with a list of "Lessons from Steve," and these are surely the most inspiring truisms you've ever read. Perhaps you'll want to copy these onto flash cards and carry them in your hat band:
* Seek out opportunities.
* Don't worry where the ideas come from.
* Don't be afraid of trial and error.
* Embrace the team.
* Don't lose sight of the customer.
* Concentrate on products.
* Seek out the highest quality.
* Don't force it.
* Find an easy way to present new ideas.

Each of these "Lessons from Steve" (none of which were ever spoken by Steve, of course) is so inspiring that any one of them could replace the "Work Smarter, Not Harder" sign in your cubicle. If he is capable of dispensing such scintillating wisdom, surely "Wired" magazine is too lowly a station for a man of Leander Kahney's talents. I believe it's only a matter of time until he moves up to a medium most suited to his gift with words: say, the covers of matchbooks, washing instruction tags on garments, the safety warnings which begin the owner's manuals of cheap appliances. Read more ›

55 of 60 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Quo vadis? November 11, 2009

By Robert Morris HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Note: The review that follows is of the Expanded Edition.

In my review of an earlier edition, I observed that, paradoxically, Steve Jobs continues to be one of the best known and yet least understood CEOs in recent business history. It is probably true that most of those who once worked or who now work at Apple Computer will learn more about Jobs as they read Leander Kahney's book and the subsequent Expanded Edition than they knew previously. For years, they and others shared the opinions expressed in this brief excerpt from the Introduction:

"Jobs is a control extraordinaire. He's also a perfectionist, an elitist, and a taskmaster to employees. By most accounts, Jobs is a borderline loony. He is portrayed as a basket case who fires people in elevators, manipulates partners, and takes credit for others' achievements. [Alan Deutschman, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, Pages 59, 197, 239, 243, 254, 294-95 and Jeffrey S. Young, icon: Steve Jobs, The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business, Pages 212, 213, and 254]. Recent biographies paint an unflattering portrait of a sociopath motivated by the basest desires - to control, to abuse, to dominate. Most books about Jobs are depressing reads. They're dismissive, little more than catalogs of tantrums and abuse. No wonder he's called them `hatchet jobs.' Where's the genius?" All or at least some of this is may be true and yet....

He is a "control freak" and yet "throughout his career, Jobs has struck up a long string of productive partnerships - both personal and corporate. Jobs's success has depended on attracting great people to do great work for him.... He's always chosen great collaborators [as well as] "forged (mostly) harmonious relationships with some of the world's top brands - Disney, Pepsi, and the big record labels." Kahney also points out that "through judicious use of both the carrot and the stick, Jobs has managed to retain and motivate lots of top-shelf talent...and then given them the freedom to be creative and shielded them from the growing bureaucracy at Apple." As Jobs sees it, "My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay."

In this Expanded Edition, Kahney provides a new chapter devoted entirely to issues concerning Jobs's battle with pancreatic cancer. In a rare memo to the entire company, on August 1, 2004, he offered a number if reassurances, notably that the neuroendocrine or islet-cell tumor is curable by surgery if diagnosed in time, that the operation had already occurred, and that there was no need for follow-up radiation or chemotherapy treatments. All seemed to go well for the next two years and then, at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, Jobs appeared frail, indeed "emaciated" despite claims to the contrary by Apple spokespersons that his health was "robust." Only much later did he admit that his health-related issues were much more serious than previously indicated. What Kahney has to say about subsequent developments is best revealed within the narrative, in context, such as the increasingly more important role that Apple's COO, Tim Cook, has in the company, although Jobs continued as CEO.

During his research for the first edition of this book, Kahney was struck by Jobs's apparent preoccupation with death, indicated by how many times he mentioned it as the driving force in his life. In a commencement speech to the graduating class at Stanford in 2005, he observed, "Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart." This perspective helps to explain why Jobs has always been so impatient, so demanding, and so contemptuous of anything and anyone that is not "insanely great."

Obviously, the Apple culture has been an extension of Jobs's personality and style. To me, his brain resembles a minefield, a lush garden filled with beautiful flowers and plants, a fireworks display, a demolition derby, a six-year old's birthday party, a torture chamber, a vast green meadow, a shooting gallery, and a state fair. When he was in good health and centrally involved, it was never dull. With Jobs, nothing ever is. Although there is other new material in this book, Chapter 9 (what is now the concluding chapter) will probably be of greatest interest to those who ask, "What will happen to Apple after Steve Jobs is no longer involved?" No matter what happens, it does seem certain that an Apple without him will be different and perhaps he would be disappointed if it weren't. Read more ›

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Interesting Points But Sometimes All Over the Place May 5, 2008

By David C.

Format:Hardcover

If you like Apple or Steve Jobs, you should probably read this book. It's got a lot of interesting stories that give you background into some of the most important innovations and inventions of the last 20 years. You learn about the creative, business, product development, and marketing side of Apple that isn't explicitly apparent. You learn about why and how they keep things so secret and you learn about why their team is so good at creating world-changing products.

However, the one negative of the book is the way the author jumps all over the place. Stories sometimes seem to be randomly placed one after another with no logical transition. The author can also get very repetitive, re-introducing certain people such as Jonathan Ives numerous times. It's almost as if he took different magazine articles and put them into his book without removing the introductions. Besides reintroducing people, the author also makes the same points over and over to the point where you feel a sense of deja vu. Finally, I found it awkward when he went on an unprovoked bashing session against HP when discussing why their recent advertising campaign with the hands doing cool things would never measure up to any Apple ad. I thought it was a pretty decent ad.

At first, I felt this was a great book to read. In the beginning, it was very hard to put down. But by the end, I felt a little cheated. Every time a magazine comes out with an article about Apple or Steve Jobs, I jump at the chance to read it. After reading this whole book, I realized that this book is mostly a compilation of all those magazine articles I read. Then again, the author is a magazine editor so what can I expect?