I guess the title was meant to be a pun by the authors Young and Simons or atleast I think so. I am talking about the book "iCon: Steve Jobs, The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business". Its an unauthorised biography of Jobs. The price of which for the authors and the publisher was to get banned from the Apple retail stores. Now if you would have read this book you would not be surprised by Steve's reaction.
The book talks about Steve and some of his closests friends, colleagues and enemies in both his professional and personal lives. It is full of facts from new papers, televison channels and interviews that in any small way relates to Steve or Apple. Some of the facts are really shocking, like this one, did you know that the only think that Steve contribute to the making of the first Apple computer was the external design, everything else inside was Woz (a.k.a. Steve Wozniak).
The book also accounts how these two young guns, or rather a young gun (read Woz) and the gun-man (Steve) got out there and created the only competition that IBM ever had in the hardware industry back then. It also talks about how Gates allegedly stole his OS ideas from the MacOS, which originally was a Xerox idea. But mainly its about how Steve after creating Apple Inc. got all power crazy and got himself fired from the very company he built.
He then started another venture NeXT which didnt work either but finally by a stroke of luck ended up owning Pixar. Yep Pixar, Steve bought it from George Lucas for a modest price as Lucas was trying to get a divorce from his wife. Although it was always treated as a step child because Steve considered himself a "harware" guy and gave all his love to NeXT.
There is also a spiritual side to Jobs, in fact his spiritual journey got him to india, atop the Himalayas. During his stint to India he almost got himself killed. Once back to US he got into Zen and till date is a big follower.
The big closing to the book is how Steve got his way back into Apple infact a sinking Apple and not only salvaged it but also took it to the heights, where it is today. I guess most of the credit goes to iPod, the best electronic device on the market today. Today apple has a cult status, a very loyal fan following and the market image that Windows or IBM could never have.
My next book is going to be iWoz which is an authorized biography of Steve Wozniak as narrated to Gina Smith.
Hope to see you back soon.
