Customer Reviews

Inside Steve's Brain

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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.

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?

Unfortunately, this book doesn't come close to delivering on the promise of the title. Kahney extrapolates from a variety of sources but he ultimately offers no special insight into how Steve Jobs thinks. His guesses about Jobs' thought process might be informed and even occasionally insightful but, at the end of the day, they're just guesses.

Rather than a glimpse of what's going on in Steve Jobs' brain, the reader is left with a glimpse of what goes on in the author's brain as he thinks about Steve Jobs. Not worthless by any means (the anecdotes are often entertaining) but definitely not what most readers are looking for.

There have been plenty of books that tell the story of Apple Computers' origins and the early days, and as correctly pointed out by some other reviewers there has been a lot of press about Steve Jobs and Apple over the years. However, I find it useful and interesting to have many of those stories collected in a single book, especially if it mostly deals with Apple's recent resurgence. Steve Jobs, somewhat predictably, does not feature too prominently in this book. This may be surprising considering that the book's title promises to deal with nothing less than Steve's brain. However, Steve Jobs is notoriously private person and his interaction with the media is very limited. There have been very few interviews that he gave over the years, and those that he did give reveal very little about his own personal life, musings or misgivings. Most of what we know about him comes from people who had closely observed him work, mostly his current and former employees. One such employee is Jonathan Ive, the designer that is the great driving forces behind recent surge of Apple success. He is the designer behind iPod, iMac and a host of other products. The book is very good at documenting how some of these products came about, but it still doesn't reveal too much as much of it remains in the realm of industrial secrets. Each chapter ends with a few bullet-pointed "lessons" that we are supposed to take away from the way that Steve Jobs approaches design and business decisions. Most of these are rather trite and are reminiscent of the self-help manuals. They also detract from the main narrative of the book, but fortunately they are very short and don't really affect the overall message.

To conclude, this is an interesting look at Steve Jobs and Apple, especially over the last ten years or so. If you are not a die-hard Mac fanatic who follows each and every Mac-related story that comes out in the press you will learn a lot about these topics. Even if you are a walking Mac encyclopedia, it might still be fun to read a book that documents much of the recent Mac lore in an accessible and self-contained form.

Hi,

I found this book by mistake. In that moment I was a brand manager in México for a French organization. I never imaging that this book was so interesting because let you improve your capabilities as a brandmanager.

Before this book, I thought that the loyalty to the MAC rpoducts was only Marketing. After read this book, I understand the complex strategy and effort of Steve and his team.

This guy is not Henry Ford. But in my opinion, the author let you see his strenghs, its weaknesses between differents situations and the kind of decisions and ...maybe this guy is so close to create that kind of change that ford did last century.

Enjoy it!!

Valenzo

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.

This book was a fun read, but is not without flaws. Numerous typos, repetition, and somewhat random jumping about marred an otherwise excellent book. If you're a Mac fan, you'll still enjoy it!

This book is very sympathic towards Steve Jobs and Apple. It is very difficult to get any objective facts from it. The lessons that are summed up on the end of the chapters are a good laugh sometimes but almost never contain any solid advise. Simple advise like 'Never compromise' or 'fire all dumb people' is not really the business advise I expected.
But if you do your best to filter out all this 'Steve is a god' stuff you will get an overview of how Steve tends to work. I think there is a lot of information in the book but it is extremely difficult to read between the lines and pick out the lessons that are valuable.

For me this book was disappointing.

The author compiled his material from public media as he did not have access to Steve Jobs. If you have followed Jobs career closely this book may not offer many new insights. On the other hand, if you have not this book is a treat. The author has followed Apple closely. He has already written The Cult of Mac, The Cult of iPod and covered Apple as a journalist for 12 years.

Jobs thinks differently from any other CEOs. He is primarily focused on design and simplicity of products. Everything he does is original from the iPod to today's network of Apple stores. Jobs is obsessed about packaging and advertising that most other CEOs ignore.

Jobs is a paradox. He is known to be the most charming person one minute and the number one bully the next. Also, he manages Apple as the archetypal micromanager from hell. However, he manages Pixar as a hands off manner. And, he is equally successful in both ventures. At Apple, he has created the most innovative environment within the hi-tech industry. But, it is a pressure cooker. Burn outs and firings are common. Somehow, Jobs keeps attracting top talent to revive innovation and keep Apple way ahead of the PC industry.

Pixar is a different story. There Jobs has created a unique nurturing environment unlike the cut-throat short term contract model of the movie business. Pixar programmers, designers, story tellers, and directors are long term employees. Their livelihood is secure. Their creativity is unbound and is 100% retained by Pixar. This is a huge competitive advantage. As a result, they have a 10 year lead in animation technology.

Despite the huge differences between Apple and Pixar, there is one area where Apple is like Pixar. This is design. Apple outsources a lot of the manufacturing and assembling but not the design. Jobs treats design as the number one proprietary competitive edge of Apple. It is managed by one of the best industrial designer, Jonathan Ives. Similar to Pixar, the Apple's design team is closely knit and has a very long tenure at the company.

When Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian economist, came up with his concept of "creative destruction" as explained in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy first published in 1942, he must have anticipated Steve Jobs rising. Indeed, Jobs is a top creative destroyer. Think of what he did to the movie business (Pixar), the music business (iTunes, iPod), the smart cell phone business (iPhone with apps store). In each cases, he has taken those industry apart and created new business models.

The author explains why Apple has been a closed system for so long. It insures robustness, compatibility, and ease of use that Microsoft will never match. Microsoft has to work out compatibility with so many different PC manufacturers and peripheral companies, it is a losing battle. Today, Apple is more open. The inner components of its PCs are increasingly interchangeable with Windows PCs. But, the difference is that Apple develops its own operating system that serves only its own hardware. Also, Apple's vertical integration allows it to seamlessly develop digital ecosystems. Everything works with everything else, the hardware, the software, the digital interface. That's why no one can readily compete with the iPod or the iPhone. To take on those products you first have to develop the counterpart to iTunes and the special apps stores. That's so far too tall an order.

With all of those achievements, Jobs has no college degree and is not an engineer or a programmer. The author suggests his lack of hi tech skills is a competitive advantage. He does not think like a programmer or an engineer. He does not know what is impossible. So, he barges through barriers others would consider terminal constraints. In every product Apple delivered, he had to challenge his engineers and programmers who told him certain features were just impossible... maybe not... not for Steve!

Very nice book, giving a generic but yet very good vision of many projects at Apple. If you want an easy-to-read introduction to Steve's world this one is a good choice.