Inside Steve's Brain

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Review

There are eight chapters to “Inside Steve’s Brain” and all but chapter seven (which is a case study) focuses on a different aspect of Jobs’ personality. Each chapter starts with a quote from Jobs and all but the last ends with “Lessons from Steve” - a list of important take-aways from the chapter. The introduction is a quick look at part of Jobs’ career and personal life in preparation for the rest of the book.

Focus: How Saying “No” Saved Apple
This chapter is about Jobs’ return to Apple in 1997 and the changes he made to turn the company around. Some of those changes may seem draconian, but they allowed the company to focus on doing what it does best; create innovative products and provide excellent user experience.

Despotism: Apple’s One-Man Focus Group
According to the book, Jobs makes all the decisions on designs. The good news is that he’s very good at it - witness the iPod, and Mac OS X. The bad news is that this approach doesn’t scale very well - and if he's wrong the company loses millions.

Perfectionism: Product Design and the Pursuit of Excellence
One of the reasons Apple has done so well is that Jobs is a perfectionist who understands that attention to detail is the difference between “good enough” and “insanely great” - and that if you want to excel, you can’t afford products that are just good enough.

Elitism: Only Hire A Players, Fire the Bozos
When it comes to product design and development, Jobs is often considered an elitists. He believes that a small team of A-level players will outperform much large groups of B-level players every time. He strongly believes in creating small, self-motivated teams of world class people and then pushing them to create some of their best work.

Passion: Putting a Ding in the Universe
For many of us, the passion for what we do and a deep desire to “change the world” is reason enough to take on difficult projects. If that describes you, then you’ll probably relate to the stories in this chapter.

Inventive Spirit:Where Does the Innovation Come From?
Apple has a reputation for being an innovative company, even though there is no specific “innovation program” or attempt to consciously be innovative. There is, however, a strong focus on all aspects of the customer’s experience with their products, which leads to new ways of thinking about things, which naturally leads to innovation.

Case Study: How It All Came Together with the iPod
The iPod is one of the most popular examples of excellent product and user experience design. As such, the story of how it happened makes a great case study on how the principles described in the earlier chapters can work together to create an awesome product.

Total Control: The Whole Widget
There’s a lot of controversy about Apple’s habit of creating “closed” systems that don’t allow people to extend their system (iPod, or Mac) with third-party options the way you can with a PC. The author attributes this to Jobs’ being a “control-freak extraordinaire” but does point out that there are philosophical and practical reasons for keeping total control.
Making something as complex as the iPod so simple to use would be much more difficult if Apple didn’t control the hardware and software involved. The argument is that having tight control allows for an integrated experience and a more stable product that anyone can use.