‘Steve Jobs’ by Walter Isaacson is now available via Apple’s iBookstore

37 Comments

Apple’s iTunes Store’s iBookstore has begun informing those who pre-ordered Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson that the download is now available.

To download your book, go to the device or computer where you placed this pre-order and click the link below. Additionally, any devices or computers with Automatic Downloads enabled for Books will automatically receive this book.

Steve Jobs can now be purchased from Apple’s iBookstore (US$16.99) here: Steve Jobs – Walter Isaacson.

37 Comments

      1. This is exactly why I buy all my e-books from the Kindle store currently. I can read them on my iPhone, iPad, Kindle, iMac, and Windows PC at work. An iBooks for Mac and Windows is way overdue (should have been available at launch, IMO).

        In this case though, I got the hardcover book. Can’t understand why they priced the ebook less than $1 less than I can have the hardcover delivered.

        Reply

  3. I watched the “60 Minutes” interview of Walter Isaacson, got the email from iTunes, opened iBooks et voila! Feels bittersweet though since the subject of the blockbuster bio’s no longer around.

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  5. Downloaded it 90 minutes ago and started reading. I chose the Kindle edition because the Kindle app is also available for OS X on the Mac and so I can read it also on my Mac. (I wish the iBook app were also available as a Mac OS X app!)

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  6. Have to buy the Kindle version as I’ll undoubtedly end up reading a few chapters on my Kindle. If only Apple made a paperbook-light e-ink ereader. They could call it the iBook and steal my book-buying business away from Amazon.

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      1. No you won’t. That would be too much choice for an Apple product, its against the philosophy. I too wish for a e-ink iBookDevice though, to move away from Kindle. The iBook(store) experience is superior imho.

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  8. 🙄 Walter Isaacson was interviewed as part of a 60 Minutes episode broadcast this past Sunday on CBS. I could not have been more dismayed when this so-called “expert” on Steve Jobs stated the following regarding the state of Apple at the time of Jobs’ return to Apple:

    ‘Apple was 90 days from bankruptcy! Out of money!’

    Not only is this a LIE, presumably out of ignorance, but it doesn’t even make sense. Somehow, magically, money appears out of nowhere to save Apple simply because Steve Jobs is hired as a consultant. *DING-a-LING* Insert MIRACLE here.RIGHT.

    You’re a sucker for stooopid, Walter Isaacson. You’ve just destroyed your reputation as an historian: TOTAL FAIL.

    Now I’m going to worry what other distortions and rumor mongering this dope puked up into his book about Steve Jobs. This particular type of reality distortion is sick and sad. Steve Jobs deserves a hell of a lot better biographer. Either that, or Isaacson is one gullible dunce for believing this dusty old tall tale about Apple.

    (I have to wonder: Was Steve Jobs pulling a trick on Isaacson by telling this tall tale? Jobs always did have a tinge of berzerker).

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    1. Isaacson takes the role of biographer here, so his prime job was to tell about Jobs’ personal history, rather than Apple’s.

      I also find the claim about ninety days before going bankrupt to a hyperbole (it does not look like this if you check financial statements), however, this is what Jobs mentally believed when he came to Apple back then. Even factually that belief is not correct, Apple was in its decline.

      But, as I said earlier, there is doubt that Isaacson established some of personal Jobs’ facts firmly — this is more important.

      For example, 60 Minutes Isaacson’s interview tells that Jobs was diagnosed with cancer in 2004, what fits to Jobs’ own story. However, in other part of it Isaacson talks about “8 month delay”, so the diagnosis has to be in 2003.

      Also, Isaacson talked that the surrounding tissues were already with cancer by the time of surgery. However, there are no just any random tissues around pancreas, there are other organs such as duodenum, stomach, spleen — yet he does not mention that Jobs had surgery on these organs.

      This confusion does not really look well.

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      1. Not tell about Apple? Steve ran Apple! How do you write about SJ and not Apple? What? Financial statements? Really? Wow! You’re an astute researcher/financial analyst besides being a literary critic! And then to top it off of course you are a world famous surgeon. But of course. you are something you are.

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        1. 1. Isaacson did not have goal to either prove or disprove whatever opinions of Jobs, including about how close Apple was or was not to bankruptcy (and I do understand financial statements since I am in business). If you think this was in the scope of his activity, then you are something indeed.

          2. I said no word about literature qualities of Isaacson’s work. If you imagined this much, you are amazing something.

          3. If you think that some basic school knowledge (somehow unknown to you) requires status of “world famous surgeon”, then you are something extraordinary.

    2. I have read the book. It is truthful. It is as Jobs told the author not the author’s opinion. It’s warts and all as Steve wanted it. Fanboys will be upset but that is to be expected. They never cease to amaze me as to how they can only see what they want when reading about their fascinations. But hey, they probably park in handicap parking spots too. Now there’s something to admire.

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    3. Having read the financials from that period, 90 days to belly up looks pretty plausible to me. What’s the the hard evidence that backs up your contention? Btw… It was SJ himself that is the source of the original quote, not Isaacson.

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      2. Not quite; I looked at SEC filings and while situation was bad, “90 days” is a hyperbole. Conceptually, ideas-wise, products-wise, perpective-wise, future-wise, Apple was close bankruptcy before Steven returned, but not in financial terms. This is not the story, but a hint: Apple only had one huge write-off losses quarter — $730 million in calendar Q4 of 1996, of which $400 million were payment for Next Software.

        Reply

        1. You seem to be ignoring the trajectory of sales and the equally precarious slope of operating income. You also seem to be ignoring the fact that drastic cost cutting had already taken place (not a trick you can pull twice). You can certailnly argue that SJ was using hyperbole to motivate the troops (standard tactic in crisis management). But imho, SJ is not a big BS artist, he simply says things that people find hard to believe.

          As i ty to see how your arguement could be true, it ocurs to me that you may be nitpicking “90 days” to bankruptcy. I say, whatever. Maybe Amelio could have kept the company solvent for 120. In either case, w/o SJ’s turn around effort, Apple would have been acquired within the year.

        2. I do not ignore anything. I am just saying that financially Apple was not “90 days” before bankruptcy, situation was not that bad. Already in Q1 1997 losses were cut to a mere $33 million.

          But, as I wrote, in basically all areas besides strictly financial, Apple was bankrupt. So, of course, Jobs’ return effectively saved Apple.

          I only specify that Apple was near to bankruptcy figuratively, not financially yet.

      3. Uuuh…. at that time they still had more than a billion dollars in cash on hand.
        In what universe does that look like 90 days to insolvency?

        You don’t really have a clue about financials do you?

        Reply

        1. Apparently Steve Jobs didn’t either, since *he* is the one who said it.

          Now, there may have been some hyperbole in his statement – he may have merely been exaggerating to convey how bad things were.

          Either way, don’t shoot the messenger.

        2. warbux said:
          “Having read the financials from that period, 90 days to belly up looks pretty plausible to me”

          That sound like an analyst not a messenger Gordy

  13. Perhaps the biggest selling biography of all time, on pre-oders alone? Is that a stretch?
    Amazon is already chalking it probable for the best selling book of 2011. Question is, by how much margin.

    Reply

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