Reading Reflection 1

The book that I chose to review was Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. Many of us already know the story of Steve Jobs but this book provided the opportunity to take a more in-depth look at the journey of Steve Jobs. The most surprising thing about the story of Steve Jobs is that he started off in a broken family, and for many, that is hard to overcome. He did not let the adversity he faced early on determine his path in life, yet he let this misfortune drive his creative mind. Jobs had many odds against him but that did not allow him to waver. It is well known that Jobs is a College Dropout. This is the attribute that I admired the most about him He did not allow a degree to determine what he is capable of. Where I am from, it is quite common to believe that college is not meant for everybody and I believe that to be true. Everyone has their own talents and college may not be the route for that person. I see college as a gateway for opportunity for the masses. Early on in the biography, you can clearly see that Jobs had a creative mind which allowed him to be a visionary in the technological world. He began his technological journey at Atari then moved on for personal growth. Several years later, Jobs came up with the idea for the “Apple 1.” Interestingly enough, Jobs came up with this name after he left an apple orchard. The inception of Apple was rocky and is comprised of many failed attempts. The original Apple computer went through many iterations as improvements were seen after each model was completed. Soon Jobs was faced with a challenged when his ex-best friend, Bill Gates, went against him as they were following the same pursuit of improving the world as they saw it with computers. Jobs claimed that Gates copied the concepts that he had for Macintosh software for use in his windows software.

 

Some competencies that I see that Steve Jobs had was the ability to see opportunity. This can be seen when he created NeXT and bought Lucasfilms which is now known as Pixar. He used NeXT as an opportunity to help improve computing within the educational world. Pixar, what we know today, became a large animation production which is now owned by Disney. Jobs used NeXT as a learning lesson because that company eventually ended up failing while Pixar is still flourishing today. The part that confuses me about the most in this biography is how Jobs was appointed as an advisor after he returned to Apple. I would be offended if I created the ground works for a company and I have to settle for a low position.

 

If I were to ask two questions I would ask:

1. Where do you think Apple would be if you had joined ventures with Microsoft?
2. Where do you think the computing world would be if Apple didn’t reach the level it is today?

 

I ask these two questions because they are major themes throughout the biography. Jobs did not have a good relationship with Gates so it would be interesting to see if they actually collaborated. I ask the second question because so much of our world is consumed by Apple products. Nearly everyone owns an iPhone or a Mac computer.

 

I think the entrepreneur’s idea of hard work was is to never stop improving. Jobs never stopped at good enough. When he finished one project, he moved on to the next one to see how the previous product can be improved. That can be seen with every generation of iPhones

#Assignment 13