Architect of Icons

My earliest memories of Apple computers were of beige consoles with green screens. My classmates and I would go to our school's computer lab for scheduled time to become acquainted with the technology. We practiced limited programming with Logo, or at least I think that was the name of the software. We learned to make shapes on the screen by typing in certain commands. Forward 10, Left 20, and so on. Several of us tried rendering our school's house-shape logo in pixels. Little did we know then the impact that computers in general and Apple and its ubiquitous products in particular would have on our lives and the world. 

Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, the enigmatic personality behind the company that gave us the iconic iPods, iPads and other revolutionary products and experiences is insightful, fair and elegantly written. Isaacson's prose and descriptions are accessible to those of us more experienced as consumers as opposed to innovators of technology. And he is fair to the protagonist - a complicated person, to put it mildly. Jobs and his spouse made it clear, Isaacson reveals, that they didn't want the biographer to sugarcoat anything. The author reports that as Jobs lay dying during their last interview, Jobs suspected that there would be parts of the book that he wouldn't like, and Isaacson, whom Jobs specifically asked to be his biographer, agreed. In that scene, one imagines a wise, loving father being honest with a son he respects too much to engage in dissembling, even as the latter has one foot in the grave.

It is not hard to see why some people hated Jobs. As is described and repeated to a nearly comical extent by the end of the story, Jobs's first reaction to a new idea was often "this is shit" (did he suffer from Asperger's, one wonders?). He didn't tolerate "B-team" players, actively ensuring that he had the smartest, most dedicated people working for him. Those who were not A-team were summarily shown the door. He initially abandoned his eldest daughter - when he was the same age that his parents were when they put him up for adoption. He maintained, as Isaacson and others described, a "reality distortion field," selectively refusing to accept things as they were, and instead willing them with the full force of his personality to be as he wanted them to be. "It can't be done" was never an acceptable reply. Some people were intimidated, others motivated, by Jobs's style.

But where his ability to bend reality to his will was effective in his professional life, it  likely caused Jobs's early death from cancer. When the disease was first discovered in his body, by chance, immediate surgery to remove the tumor might have saved his life. But over the pleas of his doctors and spouse, he waited many months, preferring to try more homeopathic, non-invasive therapies, convinced he could beat the disease on his terms. By the time he decided on surgery, the cancer had metastasized.

Jobs wasn't sure what happened after death - whether there was a spiritual afterlife, or whether life and consciousness were like an on-off switch, which he asserts might have been a reason for his veto of such buttons on Apple's products. Given his intimate involvement in the creation of his company's iconic devices, I, and I suspect other readers of Isaacson's work, can't help but admire the architect.