Customer Reviews

The Second Coming of Steve Jobs

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

My 86-year-old mother doesn't have an ATM card but she can use her VCR. She follows the stock market and asks me about Netscape and Yahoo, Intel and 3Com. The family agrees she's sharper than all of us together. So I'm sending her The Second Coming of Steve Jobs for two reasons. One it's the best read I've had in a while. Secondly it's a biography of an interesting man.

Deutschman is a terrific writer who zooms through a lot of esoteric Silicon Valley information in plain English. If you like to read biographies of Marie of Roumania, Edward Prince of Wales, Graham Greene, Madonna or any other public figure, you're going to like this book. It's a great story full of drama. Sure it tells some new anecdotes for computer devotees, professionals and groupies. Sure Jobs is the rock star of technology. But above all he seems to be a formidable charasmatic personality who contributed substantially to shaping our behavior at the end of the twentieth century. Time will tell if that's just a beginning, or if he's reached his peak.

Meanwhile his life is over-endowed with great stories and this book spins the tale. The man goes from working class to millionaire in three or four years; he goes from hippie zen boy to romantic dashing lover to family man in fifteen years (how many other forty-five year old men have reached that point?); he has already managed the invention of major hardware, software and manufacturing businesses; and he's developed an entire culture and way of life.

For me, three quarters through the book in one read on a rainy Monday, Deutschman offered two memorable observations. One refers to the fact that if Jobs had done a deal with IBM for the Next OS, we'd all be in a different place today. The other is that Jobs' personality is closest to a televangelist. I didn't know that piece about Next and IBM and it struck me as one of the weird turning points in computer history and made me sad for the clunkyness we struggle with on PCs today. Deutschman portrays Jobs' intensity as a personality; his changeability; his growth and maturing; and his inevitable conflicts.

I heard Deutschman speak about his book a few weeks ago and was expecting it to really trash Jobs. But it doesn't. It's a wonderful piece of a man's life. Perhaps we should compare it to The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy's great story of a rise and fall of a single human being.

Steve Jobs co-founded one of the largest computer companies in the world and has survived verbal attacks, hero worship, skepticism, triumph, failure, a less than pleasant parting from his company and a courageous return to it. This is the life of Steve Jobs and this book does a wonderful job of chronicling it. Love him, hate him or be somewhere in between, Jobs is a fascinating man who has led, and continues to lead a turbulent and spectacular life. Through the numerous interviews the author has presented to us how Jobs' peers view him. This is a rare glimpse into the private life of one of America's best known executives, a man who, some say, began a technology revolution.

This book might increase or decrease your respect for Steve Jobs, but no matter what, it is sure to entertain.

I am unabashedly one of the (until recently) Macintosh Faithful, having at one time printed my own business cards with "Mac Evangilist" as my title. I would approach customers in the Macitosh section of CompUSA or Computer City and see if they had questions (only while i was there already, mind you!). I have waxed lovingly on the virtues of Macintosh to all my friends and family, and longed for a NextStation, if only as a hobby machine.

Needless to say, I am a died-in-the-wool Steve Jobs fan. In all fairness, the amount of information out there about the MAN is thin and disreputiable. His charm, 'reality distortion field' and his public dressing-down of employees are the stuff of legend, but little concrete has been found about the MAN.

A few years ago I read another biography, called (i think) "Steve Jobs and the NeXT Best Thing". It was a one-sided, blistering account of every failure Jobs made with his founding of Next, and seemingly NO good choices were made.

Picking up this book, The Second Coming, I was expecting more of the same. What I found was a fair, inciteful, and only slightly more vague than it could have been. The writer does seem to set the reader up as to many of Steve's strong points, and then makes a point to tear down Steve and portray him as almost an unfeeling monster. The narrative is a gentle roller-coaster ride between these two extremes, giving the impression that Steve is either a child, or possibly suffering from multiple personality disorder.

One thing to note is that Steve Jobs does not approve of this book, and as I understand sued to stop publication. Needless to say, HIS point of view and interviews with him are not part of the makeup of the book.

Overall, I find this to be an excellent, information packed book on one of the FEW businessmen I would consider a 'hero' to me. However, without Steve's direct input, this book comes across VERY strongly as a coloring-book picture colored from the OUTSIDE up to the outline of the man, not filling in the man himself.

Steve Jobs is a powerful man with a tight grip on his image. The fact that this book was even written is a testament to Deutschman's dedication. I heard that Jobs even leaned on the press to avoid publicizing the book.

After the reading the book, I don't even know why he was pushing so hard. Yes, there's some dirt about his love life, but most of the story is generally good news about a hard working guy with a knack for finding great designs. The chapters about Pixar are a great addition to the history of that company and an important reminder that Jobs helped build two world-class companies.

I read it with pleasure.

"The Second Coming of Steve Jobs" is that most unusual thing -- a business biography that you can't put down. It's a potboiler -- but a fair and accurate one. The book examines Jobs' famed charisma, his egomania, his perfectionism, and drive to succeed. Also his assorted relationships with various women and tastes in furniture. Full disclosure: I'm a reporter who's interviewed Jobs a couple of times, and I'm in the book. I can tell you that those portions are both extremely flattering and 100 percent accurate.

Ever since Apple pioneered the personal computer, first with the Apple I in 1979 and then with the Macintosh in 1984, Steve Jobs has been the computer guy for everyone. With his hip understanding of what computers mean to the people who use them, Jobs has always been the anti-nerd (unlike Bill Gates, who is the Nerd King.) Then in 1985 Jobs was fired from the company he created, and for the next ten years little was heard about Jobs and his vision.

The Second Coming of Steve Jobs by Alan Deutachman is a sequel of sorts not to a book Deutachman had written but to Jobs himself. Deutachman's book starts where Jobs' life seemed to be ending when he was fired from Apple. What now? Jobs was determined that if he could do it once with Apple, he could do it again. Next Computing, his answer to Apple, seemed to be a perfect dream. No one else was in control except Jobs himself. He could design anything he wanted and no one would tell him what to do again.

At the same time, Jobs acquired a 3-D animation studio from movie pioneer George Lucas. Renaming it Pixar, Jobs thought of it as nothing more than a hobby to mess around with while he was trying to get Next off the ground. After several years where he didn't even have a computer yet built, in 1988 he finally had one to sell for a measly $6,500 (over $10,000 with a laser printer.) The problem was he expected college students to buy them, and obviously it didn't happen. The machine itself was beautiful (and a precursor to Apple's own Cube by over ten years), but beauty wasn't enough. It didn't sell, and things got worse from there. The only saving grace was in Pixar and in a little animated film called Toy Story...

Deutachman's book is a fascinating read and it gives the reader a honest view of the "two Steves": the Good Steve who wanted everything with his products to be perfect, and the Bad Steve who treated people like dirt. Throughout the entire book , the Good Steve was so convincing that almost everybody bought into whatever scheme Jobs was selling. The Bad Steve was so bad that even his charm to reporters (which was legendary) almost didn't save him when Next was failing.

Deutachman, an editor for Vanity Fair's technology section for twelve years, really did his homework, and his book backs up other things written about Jobs over the years and in the TNT movie Pirates of Silicon Valley. There are two things he left out, though. One is any highlight of Jobs' life before he got fired from Apple. This didn't have to be much, but to people who didn't know about Apple and Jobs a little history would help. Instead, Deutachman's Preface repeated things that appeared later on in the book.

The other very obvious thing missing is almost any mention of Steve Wozniak, the other partner and parent of Apple computers. While Jobs may have had the vision and the business sense (and the guts) to make Apple fly, it was Wozniak who really knew how computers work from the inside out. Wozniak is only mentioned in passing on two pages, and there is no mention about his previous partnership with Jobs at all. This is especially weird because at one time Wozniak and Jobs were inseparable, and it was Wozniak's leaving Apple that really signaled the end was near for Jobs.

Overall, though, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs is a must-read for any computer, business, or biography fans. If you know about Jobs life before leaving Apple, then this book gives a great history of what happened next.

This book is a very compelling read--fast-paced and full of colorful and revealing anecdotes. It portrays Steve Jobs as a fascinatingly complex figure, someone who is highly intelligent, creative, passionate, and inspiring but whose rage for perfection leads him to verbally abuse and humiliate his colleagues and friends and to act in self-destructive ways. I thought the writer did a good job of showing the complex facets of this extraordinary personality. The book seems fair and well reported. I've been put off by other authors who have been blindly worshipful of Silicon Valley moguls ("eBoys" and "New New Thing" come to mind) so it's refreshing that this book gives a more realistic look at what really happens at high-tech companies. I was especially interested by the eye-opening look behind the scenes at the Pixar movie studio, where the author reveals that Jobs lost a power struggle with John Lasseter for creative control. And the sections about Jobs's return to Apple have some fascinating close-up details, like the scene of Jobs crying when he first viewed the "Think Different" ads or the time when Jobs spied on the private e-mail of a mid-level employee. Overall, a very enjoyable read.

If there is one constant among visionaries, it is their passionate belief in their cause, in fact it is probably the only precondition to being considered one. With that passion must come acceptance, generally of their great faults as well as their vision. In terms of computing for the masses, no one has been able to see further ahead than Steve Jobs, although Bill Gates gets more press.
While at a math conference in 1989, I attended a preview of the Next computer. After the presentation, I turned to my colleague and remarked, "I think we have just seen the future of computing." The Next was of course Jobs' next computer after his forced departure from Apple, which, like the Lisa, was simply too far ahead of its' time to be profitable. Now, the multimedia capability of computers is a given.
Like all cult figures, and Jobs truly is one, he is a very emotional person, with a powerful dark side. His violent tirades, which apparently dwarf those of Larry Ellison, the other notorious bad boy of computing. His occasional childlike reactions to negative conditions are more typical of a teenager than the leader of a major company.
Wrapped in this book, all of the features of the personality of Jobs and his actions leave you transfixed. At times, you despise the man for the brutal, childish ways he treats people. In those sections, he comes across as a thug. His mood swings from good Steve to bad Steve back to good remind you of a psychological study. However, at other times you feel sorry for him. With the advantage of retrospect, you understand that he has not been completely appreciated for his genius. Finally, at all times you admire his chutzpah. Would anyone else have the courage to stand up to Bill Gates and say, "Together we own the desktop market?" While true, the rates were 97 percent versus three percent in favor of Gates.
In a time of dynamic change, Steve Jobs is one of the most dynamically changeable personalities. Given the score to date, only he will go down as someone who reached the level of cult figure among the makers of the computer revolution. There are many reasons for this, most of which you can read in this book. His passion and actions remind you of other historical figures, not all of which are remembered with fondness.

The Second Coming of Steve Jobs is a balanced representation of Steve's struggle to reclaim the popularity and wealth he once had. This book depicts his struggles with his company NeXT, the evolution of Pixar, and his journey back to Apple to turn around his troubled child. The Second Coming depicts Steve as a charismatic business man that sought perfection and would stop at nothing to achieve it. Through his struggles with Pixar and NeXT, Steve always had a vision of how his achievements would fall into place. This book is inspiring to those with entrepreneurial interests and is a great glimpse into one of the "Hollywood like" celebrities of Silicon Valley. Steve Job's effect on people and the representation of his life at home is inspiring and one of a kind. Steve Job's acquirement of Pixar turned out to be yet one of his best inventions. His passions for computer hardware and his love of computer software is what made him one of the found and leading fathers of the computer industry in the present day. This book is highly recommended to those with interest in Apple Computer, Pixar, or Steve Job's himself. The Second Coming remains an easy read and is informative in explaining the events that took place that are documented in favor or against Steve in the media.

You will find it difficult to put down this book even if you are not an Apple fan. The writer's metaphors and his captivating humorous writing style led his readers to discover the intriguing and engimatic Steve Jobs. I find it to be inspirational; one should never give up their dream but continue with tenacity to make it their second coming even if you are no Steve Jobs.

I only knew that I want to meet Steve Jobs like any star struck teenager after reading this book, except that this "star" has not been in any blockbuster movies.