“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” As the words you saw when opening the book, at the end of the book, the author cited Apple’s “Think Different” commercial,1997 again. I had to marvel at the author’s mastery of Jobs, like the AD the author cited repeatedly, if you ask me what do I think about Jobs, I would say he’s crazy, his extreme changed the world.

I will analyze this book from three aspects: reading experience, summary analysis and my viewpoints. Above all, we should know that the author of this book, Walter Isaacson, is the only one that authorized by Jobs, and Jobs had no hand in writing the book. From my reading experience, this book is quite objective and fair. It was so impersonal that I almost can’t stand his intolerance when I read some plots. Isaacson wrote this book in chronological order. He gave a detailed account of Jobs ’life and his legend with Apple. Also, Isaacson gave the book a strong sense of identification. I think it very smoothly to read. This is not so much a biography as a legend.

This book contains Jobs ’s unique personal charm, including the ultimate pursuit of beauty, reality-distortion field and the Zen beliefs that were at odds with his extreme personality, dabbling in business, aesthetics and ups and downs. After reading this book , my personal view of Jobs is that he is not a good guy, at least in the traditional Confucian sense. He is a bigot at work. He often shouted at others and called them stupid just because other people think differently from him. It’s ironic that Apple’s AD in 1997 is “Think Different”.

Because of his extreme, it is interesting to note that Jobs was a frequent crier, he did this often and not mince matters. According to my incomplete count, there are at least twenty places in the book where he cries.

“I knew my stomach and it wasn ’t ready for such a ride”

Job is such a person that his success is unrepeatable. In the 5th Chapter of the book, if Wayne didn’t abandon the partnership agreement in which he draw up with Jobs and Wozniak in Mountain View on April 1,1974,he should have owned own about $2.6billion worth of stock at the end of 2010 instead of $2100.

However, he said “I made the best decision for me at the time. Both of them were real whirlwinds, and I knew my stomach and it wasn’t ready for such a ride”. In a common light, this answer would be nothing more than a matter of pride, but when putting yourself in his shoes, you would think there was nothing wrong with what he said. Jobs’ s success is not universal, it is unrealistic to expect everyone to be as forward-thinking and creative as  Steve Jobs. So objectively speaking, Wayne’ s decision was not bad, at least not the worst one. That, In turn, said something about Jobs’ s brilliance.

“Think Different”

Let’s go back to the year 1997, which was the year that the classic slogan was born which was quoted by the author again and again “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” Jobs distilled the 60-second AD into two words “Think Different”. You may struggle with its grammatical errors, but Jobs offered his explanation , “Think Different” means thinking different things, which is different from “Think Differently” .It is hard to understand at first, but only if you “think different”, it  can make sense.

I’m all for linking “Think Different” to Dead Poets Society, which is one of my favourite films. It really embodies the spirit of Dead Poets Society. I think the Chinese translation “非同凡想” may be more incisive to express it.

“iPhone”

After finishing reading 36th Chapter, I went out for my way to find the iPhone launch event in 2007.It has been more than a decade ,but it still looks impressive. This brings the book to a climax.As if it was Jobs that had been always told consumers what they want. Just as what did Alan Kay said “Steve understands desire.” For the original iPhone’s design, Jobs’ s obsessive pursuit of perfection is recounted at length. I was impressed deeply by his exacting perfectionism. As polarizing as he was, after iPhone lunched, the fact is that he did change the world.

Steve Jobs passed away on October 5,2011 because of the cancer. This book is a very complete record of Jobs from being abandoned to being chosen to abandon his own children, from Apple 1 to Apple 2 to MAC, from founding Apple to being kicked out of Apple and back to Apple, from madness to desolation. On the whole, it’s no doubt that this is a good biography. And, of course, because it is so straight and narrow, that I can hardly see any unique insights into Steve Jobs from Isaacson. Perhaps there are more gems in this book for us to discover on our own.

In a word, when you are different from the world ,then be different, try to change the world ,no matter how odd you are or how extreme it is.

远景学院 彭亚峰

（远景学院 北山书院 创意写作学院 宣传新闻中心）