Inside Steve's brain - by Leander Kahney

I picked up this book from one of the bookshops in my office campus during an after-lunch-idle-browsing-session. The cover promised to provide 'business lessons from Steve Jobs, the man who saved Apple'. It was curious to see that he was not described as the man who created Apple, but as the man who saved Apple. I guess it is more heroic to 'save' a company than just grow it from nothing. In that sense, it worked out well for Steve that he was kicked out of Apple and that Apple got itself rotted.

I had no expectation from the book and the book met it admirably. It is an easy read, especially if you are interested in Apple and Steve Jobs. It talks about how Steve Jobs rebuilt Apple from the ruins.

The first thing that he did was to clean up the product-line, especially narrowing down the number of models and configurations. While the rest of the PC industry was all about providing as much choice to the customer, he saw that it was Apple's opportunity to differentiate itself by providing the users the freedom from choice.

And he had to reinstate Apple's corporate passion. Steve's Apple was all about creating great products. In his absence the focus had shifted to making money.The book describes in detail his perfectionism, his product focus, his eye for detail, and his idiosyncrasies. The book tends to repeat ideas and thoughts often but I must admit that it does not get too boring.

The book takes a middle path as far as the extreme views on Steve Jobs are concerned. While admiring Steve for his drive for perfection, the errors of judgment made by him are also pointed out - like the impractical Mac cube, early Macintosh with no fan, etc. Steve Jobs is often portrayed as moody and unpredictable. But the author thinks his emotional outbursts are planned and calculated to achieve specific results. Similarly about the view that Steve Jobs is a control freak - He appears to control only where he has definite expertise, as demonstrated by is style of operation in Pixar versus Apple. In Pixar, he lets others run show and hardly interferes.

The corporate persona of Apple seems to closely mirror Steve's own. This might be inevitable since Steve is the visible face of Apple in the media and his interviews and keynotes are the main windows to Apple for us. But it seems to go beyond that. There is a view the most elegant of products are designed by one person or by a very close knit team. A camel is believed to be a horse designed by consortium. Steve Jobs controls his teams very closely to protect his products and designs from 'camelization'. Similarly Apple exercises control over the developers on its platforms to reduce the 'design entropy' and to protect the user experience.

The book does not have many surprises for the reader. The inside of Steve's brain mostly matches with what we would expect to find there. True to what is mentioned on the cover, at the end of every chapter there is a list of business lessons from Steve, summarized probably for those who don't want to read through the whole chapter. Nothing unexpected in those lists either. Does this show lack of research on the part of the author? I don't know. It could be that the media has already dissected Steve enough and that we have heard all that we need to know of him.

What the book did provide at lease for me, was the bigger picture behind Apple's (and Steve Job's) attitudes and behaviour - The secrecy, the walled garden approach, the control over the developers and their tools, the stance on issues like Flash support - have surprised, puzzled, upset or irritated people. But it seems to be part of a clear strategy towards delivering 'flawless user experience by creating insanely great products'. And looking at the results achieved, I am inclined to think that the strategy actually works!