Customer Reviews

iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

As a former employee of Apple, Disney and Lucasfilm ILM and a lover of Apple's industrial design, I found this book a fascinating read. In fact, once I started it, I had trouble putting it down!

There are a few factual errors that surprised me. Example- about a third of the way into the book, it is incorrectly stated that Ridley Scott directed the movie "Aliens". Strange because later on in the book the authors correctly state that James Cameron was the director. Ridley Scott directed the first movie, "Alien".

The book also talks about Pixar being located in Emeryville California around the time Toy Story came out. In fact, Pixar was in Point Richmond and moved to Emeryville years later. Pointing out these errors might seem like nitpicking but since these errors are fairly simple to check on, it leads me to believe that there might be other factual errors throughout the book as well. In other words, you probably shouldn't believe everything you read in this book.

That said, I still found this book a great read. If you are interested in business, technology and animation or want to gleen a window into the way Steve Jobs' mind operates, you should read this book.

While an entertaining read, the author injects too much venom to make this a balanced story. The author repeatedly attaches motives, emotions, etc to Jobs without attribution as if he divined Jobs inner spirit. The book also seriously understates Jobs business accomplishments in terms of the growth of Apple Computers, the success of NeXT (let's remember that Jobs NeXT for $400M), and the amazing success of Pixar. Only at the end of the book, does Young casually mention that Jobs sunk $50-$60M of his personal money in Pixar before it became a success.

The author's basic premise is that Jobs is a con (hence the title), and that his success was stolen from Woz, Lasseter, and the brilliant engineers at NeXT. The problem is that facts don't support his hatchet-job approach.

If you are looking for an amateurish psychoanalysis of Steve Jobs, then this is your book.

I agree wholeheartedly with the reviewer who observed that this book reads like a tabloid. Many passages read like copy that has been lifted from a script for some cheesy "Entertainment Tonight" type show.

Poorly written and poorly organized. Jumps back and forth through time for no apparent reason and there are many redundant sentences throughout.
Did the author or publisher neglect to have an editor take a look at this?

People in the know will be disappointed to find that much of iCon is recycled information. Speaking of that, a writer for the SF Chronicle noted that much of his research seems to have made an appearance in iCon. He stopped short of calling it plagiarism, but it does make me wonder about the "research" that went into this project.

I have no ties to Apple Computer or Steve Jobs and I am writing this review as objectively as I can. This book stinks! And that's unfortunate because I had hoped for a definitive unauthorized biography of Jobs when I picked up a copy of iCon, but this isn't it. Not by a long shot.

I'd recommend Owen Linzmayer's "Apple Confidential 2.0" over this book even though it is not a biography but more of a history of Apple.

Save your money. Buy used copies of Michael Moritz's "The Little Kingdom" and Young's earlier book "Steve Jobs: The Journey Is the Reward." Both are better written, are more accurate in important details and read less like "The Washington Star." And contain more than three-quarters of what you can read here.

Steve Jobs *IS* an icon. He's also an egomaniac and a control freak. But no one can honestly argue with either his impact on both the computer and animation industries, or his success. A real biography of Jobs, one that provides insight instead of breathless titillation, still needs to be written.

Any success for this book is Jobs' self-inflicted wound. Without his much-publicized efforts to suppress the book, this clinker would already be in the remainder bins. Recommended only for Apple Computer history freaks and as a student's example of plagiarism.

When I first sat down with this book I was EXCITED!

Steve Jobs is sinonymous with Apple, Pixar & the iPod... and as a budding entrepreneur myself, I couldn't wait to learn all about Steve and his philosophy's in business...

However, the author of this book has been disinclined to engage the story of Jobs in an objective way. Instead he is apt to report the story in much the same way the national enquirer might have done it "Apple employee aghast! Jobs washes his feet in toilet to relax at the end of a hard day..."

The petiness that the author bothers to report is quite staggering => the gossip doesn't end with Jobs!

In fact, if you want to hear all about who said what to whom and when, this book will amaze and delight you.

On the other hand, if you want an objective look at an American Icon while learning some business lessons along the way...

Don't bother.

I have a huge collection of Apple history books, and I was about to get this one. That is, until I read Alan Deutschman's review of this book in the San Francisco Chronicle. Deutschman accuses this book of being a rehash of three previous books: Michael Moritz's "The Little Kingdom", Jeffrey Young's own "Steve Jobs: The Journey Is the Reward", and Alan Deutschman's own "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs". (A web search for 'Deutschman "The tight fist clenched around Apple"' should pull up the review.)

For what it's worth, I would recommend "The Little Kingdom" (or "West of Eden" or "Apple Confidential"), "Infinite Loop," and "Second Coming" for coverage of Apple's early (1970-1980s), turbulent middle (1990s), and current (post-iMac) eras, respectively. And no, I don't have ties to any of the authors.

This is a poorly written book. It is biassed toward Steve Jobs and tries to be sensational by exaggerating some events. There are sentences, which are very unfair to Mr. Jobs.

One third of the book is about Disney Corp. !! Why should we read about the fight in Disney Management in so much detail? It could have been explained in few sentences.

The second act of Steve Jobs is poorly written. The stories are taken from magazines. The book doesn't inform us about the new management team at Apple and their relations with Steve Jobs. I am disappointed.

Therefore, don't waste your time and paper. There must be better books about the second act.

I've long been intrigued by the Steve Jobs story as well as the early days of company-building and conflict between he and Bill Gates. This book is a real page-turner as it explores the connection between the technology, consumer-focused brand building and the psyche of the man behind it all. Jobs is a fascinating character and the author's representation of his story is better than fiction.

Another new book I enjoyed recently which has fun analysis of public figures is "The Emotional Intelligence Quick Book." This one also has a cool online application that lets you test your emotional intelligence and learn about it via clips from movies. Fun stuff.

The author simply copied and pasted information available on the internet. I cannot see anything new. There's no research done by the author!

This is a recipe to make money writing these types of books:

1 - Create a title for the book that will draw the
reader's attention
2 - Copy and paste information you find googling
about a specific subject.
3 - Write a book and a audio version of it.

Make thousands of dollars. $$$$$$$$$$$$$

Dear author, next time do your home work and please
go investigate the topics of your book!

I paid good money for this "bewk" (I support brick-and-mortar local stores as well as Amazon!) but found it to be recycled tabloid garbage. Having said that, I confess it had me turning pages very quickly. Each time I hunted for some insight into the Man Behind The Mac, I stumbled upon some awkward "mindreading" of Jobs as he storms through the Clinton White House into obscurity and comes back looking like the Wizard of Oz in flaming technicolour, holding his little "data bucket" (the iPod) up as if it were the Royal Orb!

No such insights, folks. I did a better job in this review than either author of "iCon"! This is a sad excuse for an _unauthorized_ biography, complete with ancient pictures in muddy black and white, surrounded by a sloppy rehash of earlier attempts to capture Jobs between two covers.

Get it for $.01 cent when you qualify for an Amazon Visa... another terrific promotional idea! In our great Land of Competition for the Almighty Buck, such wizards as Jobs are far too elusive and protective of their private lives to be lured into the overheated glare of MSNBC, Vanity Fair, or the Enquirer.

I say save your dough; Jobs is bound to outlive the pitiful authors of this crappy "effort".