Read as a novel
2016-01-26
Approximately two years ago, I started reading Steve Jobs. Six months passed, I finished half and stopped to focus on job hunting. Nearly 2 months ago, my interest on this book raised again, this time I read the rest more quickly and just enjoyed as a novel.
I think it may be true for most people who bought this book, including me, that they want to "learn something" in this book, as Steve Jobs was generally considered the excellent product manager and CEO, it was no surprising that we began to read this book with the intention of obtaining something different and useful, which turned out to be not that easy, even painful and exhausting, at least for me. That may be the main reason why I spent half a year reading the first half slowly and low efficiently.
This time, when my interest once again turned to this book, I decided to simply read as a novel, which really brought me a lot of joy and happiness. I love the beautiful words, I love the brilliant and smart conclusions, I love the details about the products from zero to one in apple, I simply love the stories in this "novel".
And after reading this book, I would like to write and share something which impressed most.
### Apple's Early times
In the very first part of the book, it mainly focuses on the foundation of Apple.
I knew Steve Jobs was adopted which affected him in the way to a sense of rebellion.
I knew another Steve, Steve Wozniak, more often called Woz, wrote both software and hardware of the Apple I and II alone, who, as the nowadays' popular sayings, should be definitely regarded as a full-stack engineer. He owned this unbelievable ability because of his father's well teaching
> “He would explain what a resistor was by going all the way back to atoms and electrons. He explained how resistors worked when I was in second grade, not by equations but by having me picture it.”
I knew during the birth of Apple I and II, Steve Jobs' main work focuses on the beautiful layout of circuit board and product marketing.
I knew his trip to India and Japan, his young life experience slowly changed the way of his thinking, who dropped out from Reed and took calligraphy class, which lays the foundation of Mac's beautiful typography and font design. This calligraphy class experience was particularly quoted in his speech on the Stanford commencement in 2005.
But I also knew that his personality absolutely did not make any sense except himself, I mean, it cannot be learned. In fact, the interesting classes he took, the experience he worked, and the corporation with Woz did make sense for the future apple's setting up.
### Open v.s. Integration
In the last thirty years, people have been keeping discussing which design philosophy is better, open or integration. Steve Jobs' Apple, of course, focus and insist on integration, or in other words, end-to-end control, has been fought two battles with Microsoft and Google, each focuses on computer OS and mobile OS competion respectively.
In the computer operating systems' battle with Microsoft during the 1980s and 1990s, Apple has been defeated totally considering the marketing share, which eventually led to Steve's leave. He ended up to start NeXT, Microsoft's windows has dominated since. But after Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1996, he re-focus and re-design the new Mac OS based on the technique accumulation in NeXT, the marketing share began to increase, the balance scales began to fall into Apple, especially when the whole PC sales dropped by 1%, Apple's Mac series increased by 35% reversely.
In the mobile OS battle, iOS did not repeat the tragedy of old Apple's computer OS. Although Android had a bigger market share, more profits falled into Apple's iPhone based on iOS.
In conclusion, the battle between open and integration is not live or die, open, horizontal model does a pretty good job, while integrated, vertical model could also be great. This conclusion has been approved by both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
For personl users, we may do not quite care about whether it's open or integrated. The most valuable evaluation judgement is which one works better.
Considering the computer OS, since I've been using both windows and Mac OS for several years, I would definitely choose Mac OS, which perfectly meets almost all I need.
I love the beautiful industrial design, making it looks like an art.
I love OS X's details, making surfing and coding so conveniently, multi-touch support makes it no need for mouse, plus incredible 12 hours battery endurance (MBA 13).
I love its state-of-art tools, such as Xcode, the most beautiful and comfortable IDE I've ever used, Terminal, integrated with Python, enables me to enjoy coding similar to Linux environment, and of course, the Monaco font, which is my favourite.
What puzzles me is the author did not write too much about the details on the two revolutionary products, iPhone and iPad (compared to iPod), nor did him pay any attention on Macbook Air and Pro, which did frustrate me.
### Not just a product manager
I used to think Steve Jobs to be an excellent product manager, who not only focused on the integration design of a product, but also paid much attention in the achievement details. This book tells me he is not just a product manager, actually his interest expands from product design to marketing, anything that links to the end-to-end control. He wants to control the whole process of a product cycle, from the product's birth to the consumer. His wide interest may be the reason of Apple's flat administration infrastructure. He encourages challenging between each other, if you don't say anything or express your own opinion in the meeting, you may be soon eliminated or even fired. He tried to fill Apple a whole company of A players. He made people to have a collaborative ability, even if one's going to be in marketing, he would have him talk to the design folks and engineers, which generally learned from his idol J. Robert Oppenheimer, the leader of Manhattan Project.
### The end
Learning while reading is really hard and exhausting, enjoying as a novel is more comfortable. I would like to end up with part of Steve Jobs' own statement in his final moments.
> My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. Everything else was secondary. Sure, it was great to make a profit, because that was what allowed you to make great products. But the products, not the profits, were the motivation. Sculley flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money. It's a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything: the people you hire, who gets promoted, what you discuss in meetings.
> I hate it when people call themselves "entrepreneurs" when what they're really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on. They're unwilling to do the work it takes to build a real company, which is the hardest work in business.
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