Biographies are probably my favorite genre to read. I received the new Jobs biography as a gift for my birthday, so it was a match made in heaven.

I am not an Apple fanatic/devotee, etc. We owned a Mac desktop (which did not give me the “Hallelujah” experience everyone raved about, but it was still a good machine) and my wife owns a Mac laptop. My youngest son scowls at me for always bringing PC products into our house. When he has to use our family laptop with Windows 7 he acts like he’s slumming.

That said, I thoroughly enjoyed the Jobs biography. He was definitely a visionary. His work has changed technology for the future.

Isaacson pulls no punches. It was hard reading about Jobs’s tremendous character flaws knowing his family is still around and the world is reading about their father/husband in a not so favorable light. But, that was a Jobs’s request, so the biography is out and this view is definitely a warts and all approach.

THE GOOD

Without a doubt, Jobs was incredibly intense. His incredible focus led him to create products that were highly integrated and flowed well as a product. It wasn’t just about a nice looking design. It was about great function within that design.

The saying goes, “Nature loves simplicity.” That was how Isaacson described Jobs’s mind. Jobs had to keep things clean, simple, beautiful.

This put Jobs in direct confrontations with an “open source” world. Early on he took on Microsoft over that view. Today it’s Android, Google, Facebook, etc. Jobs preferred a closed system so everything functioned better.

His intensity gave him the ability to focus. He could filter out distraction easily. (He also filtered out tasks he needed to do, but didn’t deem them important, which led to problems.) His focus, however, is what saved Apple. It more than saved Apple. It is the most dominant company in America in terms of net worth. Had he not come back in 1997, Apple would be an asterick in American technological history.

Isaacson had this great quote: “Was he smart? No, not exceptionally. Instead, he was a genius.”

History may put him with Edison and Ford as the great innovators of certain eras.

THE BAD

The same traits that led to good things also led to bad things.

Because he was so intense he also saw everything in stark, almost bi-polar terms. Something was the best idea in the world, or it was a piece of junk. (Not his words. I can’t print his words on a blog that has “Jesus” in the title.)

If he didn’t like something (which was most of the time initially) he let the person know. But he didn’t stop there. He would humiliate them if possible.

The upside (if you can call it that) is that Apple has attracted strong personalities. They learned early on how to handle Jobs’s abuse and hurled it right back at him. My question is this: Do we really need to live that way to be successful?

While he had great focus, the downside to that focus was he wanted to build his product his way without regard to the end user. Granted, he could actually see ahead of the user. That’s great vision. However, there was a part of him others would describe as almost a disdain for the end user. He didn’t trust the end user to know what they wanted.

One reviewer said this, “There’s a lot of thoughtfulness and smarts that went into the design (of the iPad). But there’s also a palpable contempt for the owner. Buying an iPad for your kids isn’t a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it’s a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals.” (Let the Apple fans begin their rants now. Maybe that will spike my blog view count. )

His intensity and focus was great for Apple, but it didn’t transfer to his personal life. His Zen training gave him focus for the job, but it never transferred to his personal life. (There is a lot I could riff on here about Buddhism and the power of transformation in Christ, but I will hold off.)

Jobs had personal demons chasing him his entire life. He was highly emotional, often crying in front of board members, other CEOs, corporate executives, etc. He was easily offended when he got bad press.

Adopted as a baby, he may have dealt with issues of abandonment, but he himself abandoned a daughter early in his life. (Things worked out later. Sort of.)

He never had a sense of inner serenity. Right to the end he was venomous toward the Android platform. He just couldn’t let things go.

THE REWARD

There is a bumper sticker that says, “Well behaved women rarely make history.”

Modify that to “Well behaved humans rarely make history” and it’s really true. Jobs was not a nice guy. But he changed the world of technology, and thus our world.

His vision and intensity has led to a great company, great products, and great ideas that help change the world.

The book is very well written and, while quite thick at over 500 pages, a fairly quick read.

Isaacson is honest in his assessments. Millions will disagree with some of his conclusions.

It won’t influence my decisions one way or the other to buy an Apple product in the future. I just like good biographies and this is a good one.