Asshole, crybaby or smelly hippie? Steve Jobs can be described in many ways. He certainly was a flawed man, yet brilliant! The products he brought into this world disrupted whole industries, a result of always demanding the impossible.
What really stood out for me in this book was how much of a hippie this guy actually was, and how the influence of his LSD experiences and eastern philosophy impacted on the products he created.
📝 Steve was adopted, and a sense of abandonment what’s a big theme in his life. One of the most moving parts of the book is when Steve’s biological father casually mentions to his sister that “I had a restaurant ones and this Steve Jobs character used to eat there all the time”. Both not knowing they where family.
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📝 He could bend reality, and make people believe they could achieve the impossible. In essence, this was because Jobs had an unshakable belief that the rules of the game didn’t apply to him.
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📝 Steve hygiene was a huge problem at Apple. He believed firmly that his diet (containing almost exclusively fruits) made it safe for him to not to use deodorant or shower.
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📝 When a reporter asked about the 2 year delay of his NeXT computer, Jobs answer was: “It’s not delayed, it’s five years ahead of its time”.
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📝 “He had a this ability to focus on just 2-3 thing and say no to everything else. This is a rare and valuable trait.”
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📝 Want to see Jobs bringing his A-game? Watch the unveiling of the original iPhone on YouTube. Look how proud he is!
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⭐️ TAKEAWAY: Jobs was sold on on the zen buddhist idea of detachment from material things. Still he created tons of them which might sound very paradoxical. But thinking more thoroughly about it it’s actually the other way around. The thing he created have had a tremendously dematerializing effect on society. The iPod (with iTunes) replaced shelves filled with CDs. The iPhone replaced video players, cameras, photo albums, handheld gaming consoles, calculators etc..
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Excellent book! Probably my favorite biography of all time!
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5/5
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BookLab by Bjorn 