TiPb Book Club: Steve Jobs biography

[Rene Ritchie]

Just downloaded and started reading and it occurred to me... Book club! The only thing better than reading Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson is reading and sharing it with all of you. (Hey, what better book to get us started with, right?)

So pour yourself a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, pull up your comfiest reading chair, and lets get started.

Thoughts, reviews, feelings, critiques, anything welcome.

*Takes a sip, flips a page.*

 

[Freiteez]

I've only read the introduction so far and I'm hooked. Time to start Jobs childhood. Wonder when I'll be able to put this down?

Anyone else feel a little weird reading a biography about a man that created the device your reading it on?

 

[bamf-hacker]

Getting now and will start reading it at lunch.

 

[GibMcFragger]

Just grabbed it too. Reading the intro!


Beamed over the interwebz from my iPhone 4S using Siri.

 

[Fausty82]

Got it on my Kindle last night before heading to bed. I did read the intro, and saved the good stuff for today. Gonna get started soon. Not much productivity-wise going to happen today.

 

[Rene Ritchie]

Dagnabit, I'm falling behind. Just got past the introduction and I still have work to do before I can continue. :-/

 

[bdegrande]

I normally buy my books in Kindle format, but I bought this one from iBooks as a tribute to Steve. Just starting to read it.

 

[meerkat]

Soooo tempted to skip ahead and read some of the later chapters first but so far I've resisted that temptation. I just know I'm going to start hearing bits from the book in the press before I've read that far myself. I read Alan Sugar's autobiography last week while on holiday - a very good read and highly recommended. If only Steve's biography had been released last week then I could have read it too.

Bought the iBooks format and should receive the hardback tomorrow from Amazon. I think I'll stick that on the shelf and stick to the iPad. Seems the "right" thing to do somehow.

 

[fdossantos]

Download begin on my pre-order this AM. I saw the Tweet regarding this book club and so stopping by to say hello. Digging into the intro now. Gonna by the hardcover later this week.

 

[Handlebars]

I just bought the book too I am looking forward to reading when I get home.

 

[BrindawithanI]

I normally buy my books in Kindle format, but I bought this one from iBooks as a tribute to Steve. Just starting to read it.

I haven't "purchased" any books on my iPad, so I thought it only appropriate that this be my first! Saw on TiPb that it was released last night and grabbed a copy Read the intro and started the first chapter at lunch today. First thoughts are that it seems very well written, so far.

Great idea Rene!

 

[Freiteez]

I got hooked last night. Now I'm on chapter 2

 

[nbrunner]

I'm impressed with the fact that Steve didn't want to read the manuscript before it went to the Publisher. I'm looking forward to this read!

 

[ghostface147]

I picked it up at lunch and read the intro and chapter one. Came home, watched the news and caught my Monday prime time shows. Started reading shortly after and just finished chapter 12. My honest impressions? I give it a C+ so far. Hopefully in the later chapters it gets better.

 

[futurecode]

Four chapters deep. Good stuff. Love how matter of fact Steve was from and early age, most unique. The India travels dragged a bit for me, felt impersonal ..... Sort of Incomplete. or, it could just me my total disinterest in all things religion.

 

[meerkat]

Six chapters in so far and apart from the India bit dragging on a bit as futurecode says, it's pretty interesting and well written.

My opinions of Woz have gone up a lot too as he just seems like such a nice guy albeit a bit naive and "childlike". It's not that I had a bad opinion of him before, I really didn't know much about him other than the fact he keeps popping out of the woodwork every time a new Apple device is launched, almost as if to gain free publicity. I'm glad to see this other side of him.

 

[dwilk21]

So far so good. Starting chapter 2

 

[meerkat]

Anyone else just get an email from Apple regarding the updated version of the Steve Jobs eBook? The email talks you through deleting the old one and downloading a new copy. I was all set to do it and then wondered - is there something in the original that isn't supposed to be???

Hmm, I think I'll wait...

Edit:
Went ahead and updated the book and compared table of contents before and after. With font size set to produce a total of 541 pages I found the following differences:

1. Title Page now starts on page 7 instead of 8 so Author Bio is a page shorter. Seems to just be tighter image formatting as no obvious omissions.

2. Footnotes now starts on page 540 instead of 545. Again, this being a photo rich section, I think it is just tighter formatting of the text around images with less whitespace.

I've saved a copy of the original epub file just in case there is anything interesting which turns out to have changed but it looks like just some formatting changes to me.

I hope this is of interest.
Craig.

 

[Fausty82]

I'b currently about half way through chapter 3. Woz's pranks are epic...

 

[anon(39328)]

I just finished reading it. Well, to be honest, I skipped the chapters about Pixar. Will go back and read these chapters later though. All in all, it was a very interesting read. I only knew the basics about Apple's history, so I enjoyed learning more about how it all started. As for Steve himself... well... I'll just say that I'm extremely glad that I don't have to deal with somebody like him on a daily basis. I've always heard that he was a douche bag, but I think that might have been an understatement. The last few chapters were heartbreaking though. Always sad to see people suffer for so long, and not able to do a damn thing about it but wait.