iCon: Steve Jobs The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business


Was the book banning a machiavellan ploy or just Steve being Steve?



I just finished reading iCon and I can't see what all the fuss was over.

The 308-page unauthorised biography by Jeffrey Young and William Simon is a competent, if not terribly revealing, look at the careers, lives and loves of Apple's mercurial co-founder and CEO, Steve Jobs -- who the book's authors call computing's first "rock star". Certainly not the sort of praise that you would think would cause Steve to ban the book from Apple-owned stores all over the world.

The first half of the book covers familiar ground for anyone who was entertained by the TV mini-series, Pirates of Silicon Valley, or Robert X. Cringely's Triumph of the Nerds. Not surprising, since Young plainly drew from material in his earlier book, The Journey is the Reward (a Zen koan close to Steve's heart), covering Steve's rise at Apple to 1987.

It is never a good idea to judge the final book by an uncorrected proof (index) and before the editors have worked their magic -- or wreaked havoc. There are the obvious and forgivable grammatical and spelling errors to corral as well as basic technical issues to resolve. This proof is no different. In a sense, you are seeing the writer's raw understanding of a topic -- with all its misassumptions and flaws -- before outsiders can bring context and shape.

It is like a blog on paper.

I certainly don't fancy the task set before chroniclers of uber-famous people who are still very much alive. They are in the public spotlight so often, and so much is written about them, that it is difficult for a biographer to thrill his audience with insights they don't already have. It is only through deep, thorough research and unlimited access to the subject and those who surround them that you can get the headliners needed to paint a unique picture. You can only do that if you have the subject's trust and willingness to give you a free hand.

The writers of this book didn't have that.

Steve's banning decree is the best gift he could have handed Young and Simon. And you have to wonder if that is exactly what he wanted because, ever the showman, Steve knows nothing sells a lacklustre biography better than the prospect that its subject doesn't want anyone else to read it.

The book leans heavily on existing works such as Alan Deutschman's 2001 book The Second Coming of Steve Jobs and magazines such as Wired, Fortune and Forbes, Young's former employer, for much of its material. Frustratingly, it is often difficult to tell when they are quoting one of their primary sources or reading off the record.

Simon is more recently known for his work on Kevin Mitnick's books, The Art of Deception and The Art of Intrusion (also published by Wiley), where he wrangled the infamous hacker's stream-of-consciousness thoughts into something approaching coherence.

The writers show areas where some skilled technical editing is needed, such as their lack of understanding of the genesis of the MP3 digital audio format. But that is a small point and doesn't distract from the thrust of their treatise on how Steve wooed the music world and thrilled consumers with the iPod portable music player, the book's highlight. The writers also seem a little confused about some of Apple's software products -- it is obvious they don't use Macs because they would only have to look at the Dock to fix these minor errors.

These minor annoyances could easily be forgiven if it were not for the serious, structural problems in the narrative that it seems are too late to fix.

Following a functional, if unexciting, chronological three-act structure, the book starts before Jobs' birth, an unwanted child of an unexpected pregnancy put up for adoption, and moves through his delinquent youth to the fortuitous meeting with Steve "Woz" Wozniak, and the early days of Apple. The writers will return to this theme of his adoption often during the book to try to explain some of Steve's more bizarre behaviour. The first act ends with Jobs, emotionally broken, leaving Apple in 1985 with a few million dollars in the bank and soon to have just one share in the company into which he helped breathe life "so he would continue to receive the company's reports", the authors write.

Act Two kicks off with Steve, 30, casting about for another dominion over which to lord his ill-tempered genius. He found it in the innovative company NeXT, which he formed with many former Apple apprentices, incurring the wrath of the Apple board, which launched legal proceedings against him. While still Apple chairman, although stripped of any real power, Steve began recruiting for the new outfit. No wonder the board was pissed.

In some ways this is the book's most interesting act because it is in this furnace of a decade that the Steve Jobs we know today was forged. Failure piles on success on the top of failure as he struggles to keep afloat NeXT and then Pixar. Steve, ever the hardware-design guy, succeeds in spite of himself and is buoyed in many ways by the actions and unbridled genius of his workers -- people he seldom credits (and sometimes fires) even while he rides on their talents and dedication. His personal life follows a similar roller-coaster path.

For a man who chastises mercilessly those who in his words "don't get it", the authors show how little it was that 30-something "got" the real business he was in. Always trying to clone another Apple, he pushes NeXT and then Pixar to be hardware companies when what they really excelled at was software. This was at the time that Microsoft and Intel were establishing a diad that is still unbroken, although shaky. The square brick in a round hole philosophy is made all the more apparent as the rivalry with Microsoft co-founder and then CEO, Bill Gates, is alluded to. If Steve wants to compete with Bill, why does he use hardware as the battleground, and why don't the writers make more of this struggle?

The third act sees Steve in 1995 not sure "which door he will walk through" -- success with Pixar's and the industry's first ground-breaking, fully computer-generated feature film "Toy Story" or abject failure and public humiliation if he turned in a flop and NeXT folded?

We know the outcome, obviously, but there are some fascinating insights along the way and that is enough to keep us going. We see Steve, who earlier denied the existence of his first daughter, Lisa (the name given to an earlier Apple computer), mature as a human being, take on a wife and have three more kids while reconciling with his first family. He finds his birth mother and then his sister, a noted novellist, who he later discards as if he has learned nothing because she broke his trust, write Young and Williams.

It seems Steve's life is like a waltz -- two steps forward often results in one step back and another to the side. He gets where he is going by just doing an awful lot of dancing with whoever will get on the floor with him.

We learn that family-guy Steve -- the one who shepherded into existence the iPod -- listed under "lust" in the dictionary -- is really turned-on by European washing machines.

"I got more thrill out of them than I have out of any piece of high tech in years," they quote Steve saying of the family's latest whitegoods purchase -- although to who he said it is a bit of a mystery because the writers don't make it clear.

It is in this last part of the book, stripped of all the low-hanging fruit of the on-the-record historical documents and commentaries that the writers could have shined like burning thermite. Yet it is here, the critical act that demands our attention, that the writers show the lack of deep research and their editors' inability to shape direction.

Although we are promised a "wide range of sources in Silicon Valley and Hollywood", the evidence is a little thin of the ground that many spoke to them exclusively, divulging fresh information. A book like this needs scoops, previously untold stories and insights, and unfortunately there aren't many here.

This act has some serious structural problems that a competent editor would have noticed and told the boys to head out on the road or hit the phones and emails to fix.

Even my favourite chapter, the pivotal chapter 11 "iPod, iTune, Therefore I Con", leaves us wondering when certain things happened because, such as when Steve got the idea for the iTunes+iPod marriage that would turn around Apple, the dates are strangely absent. Although it seems to clear Steve of copying Samsung's business plan by heaping the idea on a little-known developer, Jeff Robbin, without digging to find where he got the idea. Despite this failing, I found this the most interesting chapter in the book, and the one we will likely extract for publication in the coming weeks.

It is also in this chapter that the authors extract from former RIAA chief executive, Hilary Rosen, some of the most illuminating quotes I have read from her. It is also in this chapter that some of the most revealing sources come forward to tell us that the "music industry folded at (Steve's) feet". Hilary, perhaps sensing she had to put another spin on her comments, is now trying to rewrite history with this whiny rant.

An epilogue is supposed to tie up loose ends and, possibly, point an arrow to the future. iCon's epilogue just shows that the writers didn't know where the book was heading, and the editors didn't know how to reign it in or toughen up the flabby middle.

The rivalry between Steve and Bill is well-known even outside the computer world and it is the fulcrum that levers the TV mini-series Pirates of Silicon Valley. Yet, even though iCon's epilogue foreshadows a monster confrontation with Bill Gates as the driving force of Steve's life this animosity is rarely mentioned in the book.

"But there's one more battle he (Steve) wants to win," they write in the epilogue.

"It has nothing to do with money or fame or glory. Like all the best fights, this one is personal. Steve Jobs is going to best Bill Gates. This fight is Shakespearian, elemental and emotional; watching it unfold should be the most fascinating business story of this young millennium."

This topic should be at least a chapter, and possibly more, long before we get to the book's final words. And it should be a thread that winds through the book's narrative skein. But it isn't and it doesn't.

Instead, the authors pour ink into pages on the sideshow that was Disney's internecine battle, which dilutes the book's message. The battle between Disney CEO and chairman Michael Eisner, Hollywood powerhouse and number-two at Disney Michael Ovitz, creative demigod Jeffrey Katzenberg, Roy Disney and the Disney board is important to understanding how Eisner dealt with Pixar and Jobs, but not to the extent to which the writers go. It's as if, unable to dish any more dirt on Steve, they decided to spice up the tale (and pad the book) with the dirty underwear from another orgy of capitalist corporate blood-letting. Or perhaps it was a deliberate device to show the shape-up between Jobs and Eisner was like some Greek tragedy -- predestined due to their individual hubris.

It's fascinating, but belongs in another book. It's a common problem of journalists who, given the task to write a particular story, find an equally compelling story elsewhere in their researches. Rather than potentially waste the research, or put it aside until they can flesh it out, they cram it into their existing story where it really doesn't fit.

The writers in a small way fell prey to the same hubris of square blocks in round holes that they show dogged Steve's life.

Although the iPod gathers a chapter to itself, as it deserves, that other great Apple innovation, OS X, is barely mentioned. There is little mention of the role NeXT and its OpenStep operating system had in OS X's formulation, although the bidding battle with Be founder and former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassee is covered in depth. The five-yeaar nightmare that was Copeland is alluded to, but never mentioned by name, which may be confusing to some who know a bit of Apple's history. It is a major omission to ignore the role of NeXT and OS X in reshaping the fortunes of the company, especially given the role that NeXT played in Apple's decision to invite Steve back into its corporate body.

NeXT and OS X was the trojan horse that enabled Steve's reverse palace coup to take over Apple.

True to the American-centric view of the world, the writers leave their audience with the historically inaccurate view that it was Apple, and to a lesser extent Diamond's Rio and Shawn Fanning's Napster, that sparked the digital music download revolution. There is no mention of Samsung's Saehan MPMan player, the first commercial downloadable music store and portable MP3 player combination nearly four years before iPod and iTunes Music Store were a reality. There is no mention of the first modern filesharing application, Hotline (a Macintosh system), that was sponsoring pirate music downloads years before Fanning got his Napster idea off the ground.

This shows a lack of deep research that a true connection with the digital community would have enabled, and over-reliance on the pop-business tabloids that so often don't look beyond their offices' windows for stories or perspective. And certainly not overseas -- unless it has some US connection.

Even the more recent publicity surrounding the global music industry's court case against Sharman Networks and its Kazaa Media Desktop filesharing application is mentioned only in passing and without the weight it likely deserves. The role of expatriate Australian turned Hollywood mogul Kevin Bermeister, is not mentioned at all.

This US-centricity is evident right at the beginning with the false assumption -- sponsored by none other than Apple -- that it was responsible for igniting the global personal computing revolution. This assumption could be taken straight from the "About" section of an Apple press release. Anyone who has travelled outside the continental US will know that although Canadian company, Commodore (later headquartered in Westchester, NY), didn't have Apple's cachet in North America it sold far more of its Commodore64 machines than Apple did the Apple ][ and did more to make the computer a household item than any other company before or since.

My final criticism is this is just a book.

So much of Apple's history is graphical, or needs to be understood in terms of the audio-visual record.

And that means an interactive DVD should be packed-in, or a specific website created to harbour these multimedia assets.

Where is the 8mm vision from the first Homebrew Computer Club meetings that spawned the young Apple?

How about showing us the famous vision of Steve unveiling the first Macintosh in 1984, so we can hear its little spiel to its master (the text is in the book, but nothing beats hearing that staccato artificial voice)?

Where is the famous 1984 Superbowl ad directed by Ridley Scott?

Where are the high-quality demo reels of Luxo Jr and Tin Toy that won over their fellow computer graphicists and set the stage for Toy Story, Nemo and all the other Pixar films that saw it take on and beat the septigenarian Disney empire?

The first iPod ads, where are they?

This last criticism may be perceived as harsh, but I feel that the purpose of a book is to tell a story, and in some cases that story must go beyond the printed word especially when the subject is one that has had such an impact on the new texts of the 21st century -- sight and sound.

And perhaps that is why Steve ultimately decided to not stock the book. It wasn't because he was offended and tried to censor the writers or punish their publisher. It wasn't some machiavellian reverse-psychology way to promote the book.

Maybe he decided not to stock the biography, as is the right of any shopkeeper, because it just didn't match up to his high standards for what is a good book.

Posted: Sat - May 14, 2005 at 02:32 PM          

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