It was a book that I shied away from reading for a few years now. I guess there were a few reasons (assumptions perhaps?) for this – It is a biography of a person whose love for technology and computers is all known and so the book will be loaded with technical terms.. It is pretty thick and so can’t sustain that attention.. I am not a big fan of the products he created and therefore not so keen on reading the book. Does sound crazy, doesn’t it?

The lockdown has its own benefits and one of them was that it gave me an opportunity to read this book and I am yet to finish it. I have been reading and reading and reading it for almost 4 months now.. Why is it taking unusually this long for me? Attention sustenance issue? No.. Not able to comprehend the technical terms in the book? A definite no (thankfully there isn’t too much of the technical terms in the book)..

Then why is it taking me this long to finish reading the book? Is it the sheer intensity of the writing.? or is it the way it was written? or is it the persona of the person whose biography it is? Well, I think it is a combination of all of it and perhaps much much more..

I have been able to only read a few pages a day and then I would close the book; and my thoughts would go whirring!!! I would go back a page or two and read a few sentences over and over again, just to understand what was said, as what was said would have been thought provoking. One of my questions always was – can there be someone as complex as the person whose biography it is?

The second question that would pop quite frequently was – How can a person have so many facets to him with a bundle of many an emotion and feeling? And display those at different times and yet, so sure of himself? The more I read, the more fascinated I became!! What is shared in this blogpost are some aspects of this person that immediately struck a chord in me..

A person with an apparent reality distortion, who saw what he wanted to see and if he didn’t want to see it, he pretended that it didn’t exist..

A person who would listen to someone’s idea and beat it down on the grounds of it being nonsensical; but was seen to have implemented the same idea and made it appear as though the idea was his!!

A person who took to Zen and Veganism so fervently..

A person who was very particular about what he wanted, how he wanted it and would rarely settle for anything less..

A person who in my view shied away from people and yet designed his office building in such a way, that human interaction was given importance..

A person who was very passionate about designing his products to be user friendly, unique and ensured that each of his products looked aesthetic..

A person who could get so angry that he spewed words that were hurting; but had the ability to talk to another person and convince them of doing what he wanted to be done, even though they may have been reluctant to do it before he spoke to them..

The sheer persona of his radiates thru the book and there are those times when you like the person he is and there are those times when you are like, “Duh!! Why is he like this?”

Wondering whose biography it is? The face of Apple – Steve Jobs written by Walter Isaacson. There must have been a deep research done, many interviews conducted and many a meeting with Steve Jobs, for this book to be written and published. Whoa!! What a read it is!! Though there were many an aspect of Steve Jobs that I didn’t like, I couldn’t but admire this man for his dedication to the design products and for the products themselves, for his aesthetic sense, for his idiosyncrasies and eccentricities and for his different shades of rebellion.

There are those people who you wish you had met.. and there are those you wish you didn’t. Well, one part of me wishes that I had met Steve Jobs; and another part of me thinks that I wouldn’t have relished the experience of meeting him. So hypothetical!!

As I am almost reach the end of reading the biography, there is that wee bit of a germination of an interest to try out one of his products – perhaps an iphone, some day? If that day comes, I am sure Steve Jobs would be smiling, wherever he is!! 🙂