seriously? he authorized the biography. I think Steve was a pretty good judge of what is and isn't good publicity for his legacy. if he had any doubts of how it would be received, he wouldn't have done it.
As for being "a bit off", when has any genius-innovator-trailblazer not been ”a bit off"? that's what makes them brilliant. they speak their minds whether or not it's popular, they rage against the machine and tread unknown territory when others play it safe. they envision and dream the unfathomable. you'd have to be "a bit off" to build the empire Steve built, to dream the dreams Steve dreamt.
About it being "authorized" in the way you put it, not really. Here's the description from Amazon...
"Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.
Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values."
So, not as
authorized as you'd hope, but I guess we'll have to wait and read. If so, it wouldn't be the first PR mistake he made anyway. Now, everybody is entitled to an opinion, specially in political issues... but Apple has shown a long history of not expressing any opinion or taking sides. And for what we've seen so far, Mr. Jobs gets into those terrains, and that will only be good for those who agree with him, leaving out the rest. As for him being "a pretty good judge of what is and isn't good publicity for his legacy", maybe, maybe not. Just remember that when approaching one's life's end, perpectives change, and emotions can get out of hand, specially when it comes to a man that's used to have total control over everything. The fact that Apple=Steve Jobs really hurts the company with crazy ramblings such as the one about destroying Android, which is nothing short of ridiculous, regardless of any technical opinion... "
spend my last dying breath...
spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank...
thermonuclear??? really? give me a break. I guess someone at Google is having a nice laugh now. Does that sound as
a pretty good judge of what's best in PR terms?
As for the crazy parts, I agree... most visionaries are/were polarizing. But the fact that Mr. Jobs was a brilliant marketer, does not always make him right in everything he said or did, and I'm sure there were a lot of issues of which he didn't know squad, but talked about it nevertheless - as we all do. The problem is that so many people regarded him as a god-like figure, giving his words unwarrented weight.
I too like Apple products and consider Mr. Jobs a brilliant visionary and marketer when it came to consumer gadgets... but he was, after all,
human, you know?
One of the things I look forward about the book, is that it most probably bring him back to the human race, and portray him from a human perspective: the only he had after the keynote ends and the lights go out.
cheers!
)
